3 ms·

Most of the non-SpaceX blocks are areas that have had terabits/sec of fiber running through them for the last decade as part of long-haul intercity links. Sinc

Most of the non-SpaceX blocks are areas that have had terabits/sec of fiber running through them for the last decade as part of long-haul intercity links. Since the last mile(s) of rural fiber is so much cheaper than the last mile of urban fiber [1] this is a massive windfall for the telephone companies. The FCC created some very perverse incentives with this auction. They actually made it more profitable for telcos to leave intercity fiber unused than to splice a strand to serve the neighborhood it passes through, no matter how little the splice would cost. This led many providers (cough cough CenturyLink cough) to refuse to use or even license their fiber until they could scoop up this cash first. If even one residence in the block has service above 25mbit/sec the whole block is taken out of the auction. I previously submitted a much-less-useful version that was colored by speed tier (there are only four) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25368927 This updated map has all sorts of goodies if you click on the region... stuff like the dollar amount of the winning bid and so forth. [1] 100% aerial, no trenching, no manholes, no ducts, uncongested utility poles, simple (two-dimensional!) property boundaries, terminate at the property line not deep inside a multitenant/condoized building. The conventional wisdom "rural internet is expensive" got turned on its head by the counterintuitive economics of ADSS optical cabling.

iagovar 6y ago
IDK in the US, but in my country rural internet is indeed expensive. Using old telephone poles makes it easier, but you still need network elements, pay people for deployment and it's very low density. The most expensive part is paying construction workers if you have to bury cable and all the stuff that involves that.
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  Fiber to the home is only buried when the electrical lines are underground (i.e. no poles). That is incredibly rare in rural areas. And gigabit switches ("network elements") are stupidly cheap now. People have been totally bamboozled about what this stuff really costs.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Lots of this seems obviously wrong? https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/our-network/ https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/our-network/ B4RN is a pretty typical British rural broadband offer, in a rural area there's no real problem with just digging a trench, dropping the ducts into the trench, then blow fibre through a completed duct. In a city if you dig a trench that's a huge pain, because the city is paved or built on everywhere, but in rural areas it's no hassle. With modern agricultural practices a relatively shallow trench is enough that the fibre won't be disturbed by subsequent farming activity, these days nobody churns up half the planet to grow stuff because we know that destroying soil structure reduces long term productivity. And as to those "network elements" it's GPON, the elements are passive splitters, basically a fancy prism, completely passive. There's only bit of actual electronics in each region but it's quite a bit fancier than a "gigabit switch" because it's multiplexing the light for all the nodes behind the GPON splitters.
    - octoberfranklin 6y ago
      Post starts with a non-question followed by a question mark? This map is a map of the USA. Underground electrical service is extremely rare in rural areas of the USA. We have these things called utility poles. And we use them. On what planet do GPON prisms cost more than switches? The whole reason it got popular was that it was even cheaper than active optical. Here's a 32-way prism for $14: https://www.fs.com/products/11528.html https://www.fs.com/products/11528.html . That's under $0.50/customer. You pay a bit more for the weatherproof enclosure for it that mounts on a pole. Frankly, GPON is for losers. 144-count ADSS is so cheap now it's stupid to build GPON/EPON/BPON these days. Most of central Washington State (Grant County) has a dedicated strand of fiber to each household -- it's future-proof. Just do it. GPON is a scam by large telcos who are afraid that unless they have the whole neighborhood sharing something (i.e. a fiber) they'll be forced to let each customer choose a different provider for that customer's strand. I predict that we will see stupid telcos keep rolling out GPON even after it becomes way more expensive than dedicated dark fiber. It's greed and bamboozlement. Bamboozlers gonna bamboozle.
friendofblueno 6y ago
Not sure what urban fiber costs, but in rural the overall cost of Fiber-to-the-home comes out to at least $30-40k a mile for aerial construction, which is legitimately hard to make work if you have less than 10 homes per mile without some subsidy. The cost is ~30% cheaper if you are a telephone company though and can overlash the fiber on your existing telephone lines.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- octoberfranklin 6y ago
  Your costs are way, way, off, on the high end. Think about it: why would overlashing be 30% cheaper? It involves exactly the same materials (the fiber) and labor (one bucket-truck visit to each pole) save for a $5 bracket. The only thing you save is an extra pole attachment fee. But that's a monthly running cost, not an upfront construction cost. Attachments are ~$1/pole/month in the 30 states with regulated pole attachment rates and in the same ballpark for most (though not all) jurisdictions in the other 20. Dunno how you got from that to $10k construction cost savings. Sounds like you got quoted some fiber contractor's "I get to buy a new car" price. ISPs buy their own bucket trucks and hire linemen. Even so, $250/home setup cost for fiber is a bargain. CenturyLink charges $200 setup for crappy 10mbit copper DSL and people still buy it.

iagovar 6y ago

IDK in the US, but in my country rural internet is indeed expensive. Using old telephone poles makes it easier, but you still need network elements, pay people for deployment and it's very low density. The most expensive part is paying construction workers if you have to bury cable and all the stuff that involves that.

octoberfranklin 6y ago
Fiber to the home is only buried when the electrical lines are underground (i.e. no poles). That is incredibly rare in rural areas. And gigabit switches ("network elements") are stupidly cheap now. People have been totally bamboozled about what this stuff really costs.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Lots of this seems obviously wrong? https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/our-network/ https://b4rn.org.uk/about-us/our-network/ B4RN is a pretty typical British rural broadband offer, in a rural area there's no real problem with just digging a trench, dropping the ducts into the trench, then blow fibre through a completed duct. In a city if you dig a trench that's a huge pain, because the city is paved or built on everywhere, but in rural areas it's no hassle. With modern agricultural practices a relatively shallow trench is enough that the fibre won't be disturbed by subsequent farming activity, these days nobody churns up half the planet to grow stuff because we know that destroying soil structure reduces long term productivity. And as to those "network elements" it's GPON, the elements are passive splitters, basically a fancy prism, completely passive. There's only bit of actual electronics in each region but it's quite a bit fancier than a "gigabit switch" because it's multiplexing the light for all the nodes behind the GPON splitters.
  - octoberfranklin 6y ago
    Post starts with a non-question followed by a question mark? This map is a map of the USA. Underground electrical service is extremely rare in rural areas of the USA. We have these things called utility poles. And we use them. On what planet do GPON prisms cost more than switches? The whole reason it got popular was that it was even cheaper than active optical. Here's a 32-way prism for $14: https://www.fs.com/products/11528.html https://www.fs.com/products/11528.html . That's under $0.50/customer. You pay a bit more for the weatherproof enclosure for it that mounts on a pole. Frankly, GPON is for losers. 144-count ADSS is so cheap now it's stupid to build GPON/EPON/BPON these days. Most of central Washington State (Grant County) has a dedicated strand of fiber to each household -- it's future-proof. Just do it. GPON is a scam by large telcos who are afraid that unless they have the whole neighborhood sharing something (i.e. a fiber) they'll be forced to let each customer choose a different provider for that customer's strand. I predict that we will see stupid telcos keep rolling out GPON even after it becomes way more expensive than dedicated dark fiber. It's greed and bamboozlement. Bamboozlers gonna bamboozle.

friendofblueno 6y ago

Not sure what urban fiber costs, but in rural the overall cost of Fiber-to-the-home comes out to at least $30-40k a mile for aerial construction, which is legitimately hard to make work if you have less than 10 homes per mile without some subsidy. The cost is ~30% cheaper if you are a telephone company though and can overlash the fiber on your existing telephone lines.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
octoberfranklin 6y ago
Your costs are way, way, off, on the high end. Think about it: why would overlashing be 30% cheaper? It involves exactly the same materials (the fiber) and labor (one bucket-truck visit to each pole) save for a $5 bracket. The only thing you save is an extra pole attachment fee. But that's a monthly running cost, not an upfront construction cost. Attachments are ~$1/pole/month in the 30 states with regulated pole attachment rates and in the same ballpark for most (though not all) jurisdictions in the other 20. Dunno how you got from that to $10k construction cost savings. Sounds like you got quoted some fiber contractor's "I get to buy a new car" price. ISPs buy their own bucket trucks and hire linemen. Even so, $250/home setup cost for fiber is a bargain. CenturyLink charges $200 setup for crappy 10mbit copper DSL and people still buy it.