4 ms·
Broadband rollout costs suffer horribly with 80/20 rule, with rolling out broadband to the last 5% being extremely expensive. I’d like to see something like fi
by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
Broadband rollout costs suffer horribly with 80/20 rule, with rolling out broadband to the last 5% being extremely expensive.
I’d like to see something like fiber to 80% of the country, and then alternatives (like low-attitude satellite internet) for the last 20%.
Give companies huge tax breaks if they’re doing this work.
- iron0013 7y agoWe tried tax breaks--hell, we even tried simply giving companies like comcast billions to do the job. Instead they just took the money and didn't do anything. If we the people want something done, we have to do it ourselves.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoGiving contracts and giving tax breaks are very different things.
- pwinnski 7y agoWe've done this once or twice already, with electricity and telephone service, and that followed the same economic pattern. No need to reinvent a process that worked well the first time around.
- rayiner 7y agoLabor costs have changed dramatically since then. We couldn’t build the New York Subway at today’s prices, for example.
- dv_dt 7y agoDecades of productivity of improvements make higher labor costs completely bearable. In fact, one might say that is the fundamental basis of advancing civilization.
- bcrosby95 7y agoHas that really affected labor costs related to broadband rollout? We're still sticking wires up on poles or in the ground - from what I can tell by using the same machinery we have for decades now.
- dv_dt 7y agoSmall scale digging & semi-automated specialized trenching equipment makes for smaller crews, smaller capital investment, and less time to dig a given trench. (Did you know that there's a delightfully named machine called a Ditch Witch?) For another, the equipment you need to support a given level of bandwidth has dropped orders of magnitude in cost. For another, endpoint hookups are faster and easier, we know much better how to splice fiber faster and cheaper. etc etc... it takes a real lack of imagination to claim it's the same as when we put in electricity and telephone networks or even early fiber or copper networks.
- spaceribs 7y agobut we can afford multi-billionaires and imperialism...
- nutshell89 7y agoPublic good construction costs have increased for reasons other than high western labor costs. Take for example this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21716312 Alon Levy mainly cites the flawed design-build model where design and construction contracts are awarded to the same firm as well as the comparatively high cost of TBM use for deep stations / tunnels versus cut-and-cover construction techniques for simpler, shallow stations.
- AngryData 7y agoUnderground work is multiple times cheaper these days and aerial installations are easier than ever because you can wrap fiber over already existent copper phone lines. And even when doing aerials, you don't even need any kind of certifications or permits because you are never going past phone line height towards power. Your arguments are the same exact same arguments big companies had when rolling out the initial electrical and phone grids, and yet today we would find it ridiculous if you said you weren't able to get electrical service to your house.