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The farmer who built her own broadband
- finid 10y agoDIY broadband. Can that happen in the US of A?
- Mz 10y agoI don't know, but you might be interested in this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/technology/how-to-give-rural-america-broadband-look-to-the-early-1900s.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/technology/how-to-give-rur...
- toomuchtodo 10y agoTotally. My cousin and her husband are moving from the Wesley Chapel area of Tampa (where they had 100Mb up/down at my uncle's house) about 20 miles north to 1000 acres of rural farmland, where no connectivity options exist. We're using two 65 foot self supporting towers and $400 worth of point to point Ubiquiti wifi gear to bring 100Mb to their property. The difficulty level goes up if you want to run copper, coax, or fiber, but it too can be done. Just google "community broadband", "municipal broadband", or "broadband coop".
- codeddesign 10y agoI believe what he meant was that this would be against the TOS of many providers. You are essentially buying a service plan for one location and distributing it. While I would agree that "if I am buying 100mbps than I should be able to use it how I wish" unfortunately just isn't the case and not how u.s telecom works. With that assumption, a city could technically buy 10 packages and distribute free wifi internet to an entire city on the cheap.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoYes, you're correct. You cannot just buy residential service from a provider and share it out to the entire neighborhood. In that case, you need to buy transit/business/commercial service from them and use that as your upstream.
- SCHiM 10y agoWell you _can_ just do it ;). What can't be enforced can't be effectively outlawed.
- jcrawfordor 10y agoAgainst the ToS of home providers, sure, but there are tons of companies who will happily sell you transit for your small ISP - including some of the big incumbents, e.g., most of the small wireless ISPs in my area use CenturyLink as their upstream provider. This is a standard service offering in the commercial space, and if you want enough capacity to get 100+mbps service to multiple people, then you're going to be shopping in the commercial space.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoCenturyLink is good, and believe it or not, I had an excellent experience with Comcast Business running greenfield fiber for me for backhaul (no one was more surprised than I!). ~$3000/month with a 3 year commit, 100mb symmetrical, and they ran the fiber over a mile with no up front cost.
- closeparen 10y agoWhy does that cost 30x more than a personal 100mbit connection?
- pjc50 10y agoYou can actually put 100mbit down it constantly without getting cut off, overcharged, or contended with 30 other people. Plus 50% extra ISP monopoly pricing.
- feld 10y ago$30/mbit is still far too much. $10/mbit maybe would be reasonable
- toomuchtodo 10y agoYou missed the part where I said they rolled the construction costs into the monthly payment. This was in a suburban area that required permitting and working with other utilities to run underground fiber.
- amazon_not 10y agoIt doesn't really make sense to run copper or coax anymore. Fiber is where it's at. It's not very hard if you do it on private property, but the difficulty level does go up if you have to use public right of way due to red tape.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- karambahh 10y agoScani is a DIY ISP in France, member of the French Data Network Federation [0] initiative. They run a wifi (ubiquiti based) mesh network[1] in a rural part of France, which spans roughly 100km north to south and 60km west to east. They are about to roll out their own fiber network in this rural area. If some of you are interested in these subjects, there will be a decentralised internet devroom at FOSDEM in Brussels in early February[2] [0]https://www.ffdn.org/en https://www.ffdn.org/en [1]https://cooperateurs.scani.fr/openinfos.html#11/47.9508/3.7676 https://cooperateurs.scani.fr/openinfos.html#11/47.9508/3.76... [2]https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/decentralised_internet/ https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/decentralised_interne...
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThis is my favorite one which seems like it could be done in U.S. rural areas: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-building-its-own-gigabit-fibre-network https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-bu... One local for dense, suburban areas or maybe urban. Helps to run the fiber on the utility poles instead of underground. More risk with weather, etc but cheaper. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/gigabit-internet-for-80-the-unlikely-success-of-californias-sonicnet/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/02/gigabit-internet-...
- pkaye 10y agoYou need to live in the rural areas where the city and county regulations are not onerous but the population density is low enough that the big players don't care.
- dboreham 10y agoI've been doing it for more than a decade, so yes. Using fixed wireless though, not fiber. Trenching fiber on a private basis is possible, but expensive.
- jt2190 10y agoThis video goes into some of the details: B4RN Launch Event Presentation, 2012 (with CEO Barry Forde) https://youtu.be/LmzvzT9Qd58 https://youtu.be/LmzvzT9Qd58 00:27 What is the problem? 02:35 Does it matter? 03:46 VIDEO Cabinet Office: Director of Digital Engagement 05:03 VIDEO Google Fibre Kansas City project 06:08 Solutions 07:07 Community Initiative 08:07 It needn't be complicated 09:37 Cost (laying and connecting the cable) 10:46 Community Involvement 14:25 Skills (laying and connecting the cable) 15:56 How? (laying and connecting the cable) 17:36 VIDEO Mole Ploughing (JFDIT) 18:36 Numbers (parishes, routes, distances) 20:43 Phase 1 Map 12:12 Broadband for the Rural North Ltd 22:31 Building it ---- FUNDRAISING 25:05 Membership (Mutual Society) 26:34 Funding the build out 27:35 Type "A" shares 28:04 Type "B" shares 28:40 Enterprise Initiative Scheme (EIS) 30:01 Holding Shares 1 31:14 Holding Shares 2 31:48 Holding Shares 3 32:38 Incentives to Invest 34:14 CLOSE
- stuaxo 10y agoAs she is a service provider, does she have to provide a GCHQ backdoor into her own internet?
- dboreham 10y agoI've run a small ISP for the past 14 years. Men in black suits and mirrored sunglasses never showed up (actually they did show up, but for an unrelated issue..)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gigatexal 10y agoIf only the telcos here weren't so corrupt we could have more municipal fiber projects. Yes I'm looking at you Comcast.
- tnuc 10y agoCorrupt? They all follow the law. The problem may be the way the laws get enacted. What might be considered very corrupt in one country is just how business is done in the USA.
- deepnotderp 10y agoFound the Comcast shareholder.... They literally lobby to make the laws.
- chomp 10y agoLobbying is legal though, and is a tool used by charities/public interest advocates as well as big corporations.
- Veratyr 10y agoYes but the difference is that what's called "lobbying" in the US often consists of what most other governments consider "bribery".
- afarrell 10y agoLiteral quid-pro-quo bribery is illegal and people go to jail for it. I get that you are talking about other corrupt phenomena, but we need a different word than bribery because I've run into way too many people who think our corruption problem comes from bribery. We also need a better way for elected officials to be able to tap into citizen expertise rather than just the slice of it which is sponsored by a rent-seeking profit motive.
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- Adaptive 10y agoWorth reading Tim Wu's "The Master Switch". He has a chapter that discusses the early history of wiring up the United States for telephony and how in the 1890s many of the early telephone lines in rural America were run by farmers (based on cheap "squirrel line" wire often just nailed to existing fence lines). This is followed by the inevitable buy out of these rural telcos and the even more inevitable shuttering of what (for AT&T) was unprofitable business. Wu, T. (2010). The master switch: the rise and fall of information empires (pp. 48-49). New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
- drdeadringer 10y agoOn a related note "Victorian Internet" is also a good read regarding developing and wiring up for telegraphy.
- agumonkey 10y agoIt's funny, there's some cycle, a DIY friendly period, heavily regulated, then back to DIY pressure.
- g00gler 10y agoI love this. I have to pay Comcast for TV when I just want internet, that'd be bad enough but my parents pay 2x more for 20x slower connection (5mb/100b). Kinda inspired me to talk to some of my neighbors and ask if they'd like to share internet.
- amazon_not 10y agoJust make sure you use an Internet connection that allows sharing. Residential connections can't be shared.
- djhworld 10y agoI think there's something really endearing about this, I love the idea of a group of people coming together to effectively bootstrap their own ISP
- sandworm101 10y agoThese stories from the uk are great, but i envy their soil. Im in BC with mountains and rock. Running a cable through or over 100m of granite is horribly difficult, as too is digging a path through rainforest roots. And dont get me started on distances. The uk seems a sandbox in comparison to running broadbad in rural bc. I just installed a dish on a property because the nearest broadband/cell tower was only 800m away... 150m vertical of forest and rock blocking any good signal. Sats will be around here for a long while.
- agumonkey 10y agoI remember the feeling of confusion when digging trenches manually. Roots where the most difficult part, their less predictable than rocks to break.
- scott_karana 10y agoIs stringing outdoor-rated fibre from tree to tree or ad-hoc utility poles viable, or are there issues doing that in crown land?
- sandworm101 10y agoPoles ŕequire setbacks, cutting lots of trees. Even then, it isnt easy to mount a pole on bare rock. That needs an engineered tower bolted in place. Is it even possible to hang fiber? Ive never seen it done.
- scott_karana 10y agoBeats me: I don't know anything about this topic, and was hoping to learn by asking you :)
- amazon_not 10y agoYes, you can hang fiber, it's called aerial fiber.
- tnvaught 10y agoSo, they had to have access to the backbone somehow. Is this possible for an individual rural location? Or even a small community in the U.S.? Do backbone providers have to give you access? Are the rates at all reasonable?
- amazon_not 10y agoB4RN connects to the Internet backbones in Manchester, some 70 miles away. While it is possible in rural locations to do the same, rural locations do not have many access points, very few providers to select from and no Internet Exchanges. Backbone providers don't have to give you access, but they will sell to you, provided there is a way to connect you. Backbone providers sell you IP transit, which is a very competitive market in well connected locations. The problem is to get to those well connected locations. You often pay far more (like 10x) for the transport to that location than for the actual IP transit.
- amelius 10y ago> Her motto, which she repeats often in conversation, is JFDI. Three of those letters stand for Just Do It. The fourth you can work out for yourself. That's all nice, but what if local governments and businesses start counteracting the project with bureaucratic rules, and lawsuits? It seems to me that the "JFDI" mantra doesn't really work then.
- mrbill 10y agoMy mother lives out in the boonies of rural Oklahoma, and until about five years ago, had to make-do with 28.8 (on a good day) dialup. She now has up-to-3Mbps/1Mbps via a WiMax antenna on the roof, pointed at another antenna on the water tower of the nearest "town" a few miles away. For this, she pays $65/month. It's expensive, but it's her only option. If she lived just a few miles in another direction, she could get these awesome DSL prices (from her ISP's website): "Extreme Package = 5 Meg bps at $84.95 per month Premium Package = 3 Meg bps at $64.95 per month Gold Package = 2 Meg bps at $54.95 per month Silver Package = 1.5 Meg bps at $44.95 per month Bronze Package = 512 Kbps at $27.95 per month"
- gargarplex 10y agoIf it was really important to her, she could use TV White Space for less than $6500 in equipment costs, assuming that whoever controls the water tower would be okay with installing a base station. She could get 60mbps raw rate UDP (or 30mbps if two adjacent channels are not available in her area, but they probably would be).
- mrbill 10y agoShe's on retirement income, $65/month is barely justifiable. Fortunately for her needs, 2-3Mbps is adequate.
- kilroy123 10y agoCould she use this? http://boingboing.net/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunnel-t.html http://boingboing.net/2016/09/22/i-have-found-a-secret-tunne...
- Friedduck 10y agoI've seen firsthand how difficult and time-consuming the buildout is of Google and AT&T fiber is in Atlanta. Idle fiber runs just 100 yards from my house, where it's been sitting for months. Just for this single run it's required dozens of people, traffic permits, closed roads, sidewalk repair, new access panels embedded in sidewalk, let alone pulling the fiber itself. At the phone poles there are large devices (repeaters?) and I assume more equipment at the nearest colo. This is all on a street that already had a lot of infrastructure and easy access. I haven't seen a single run through people's backyards in a hilly, densely populated neighborhood. It's going to be difficult. I'm in awe of what this woman and others like her have done.
- amazon_not 10y ago> At the phone poles there are large devices (repeaters?) and I assume more equipment at the nearest colo. Fiber networks don't use repeaters out in the field. It may have been a (large) splice enclosure or some non-fiber equipment.
- ge96 10y agoJFDI haha, no excuse