4 ms·

Having deployed extensive optical networks both aerially and underground throughout Iowa, my recommendation would be to locate a community that would value your

Having deployed extensive optical networks both aerially and underground throughout Iowa, my recommendation would be to locate a community that would value your contribution as a starting point. I would then deploy physical plant for specific customers overbuilding the fiber optics (e.g. if the customer wants 12 fibers, deploy 48 selling 12 and keeping 36 for your own future use). In my experience VERY few people in the optical networking space understand how to engineer a municipal fiber optic network - they invest thousands of dollars per customer when it can be done with best practices for well under $1k per customer (let me just say that 802.1w RSTP is your friend). You need to combine all the different ISO networking layers into a SINGLE business model (ie. physical plant and Ethernet/VLAN circuits all by the SAME engineer not by different departments, otherwise things get unnecessarily over-engineered). Even more important than the technical engineering is the financial engineering. Once you understand you will never produce more capital from selling customers than it will cost to provision those customers, you need to consider more advanced financial engineering models - the one that worked great for the cellular industry and several optical networks is commercial paper. Find a lawyer that REALLY understands commercial paper - then every contract signed by a customer actually IS cash and does not need to be converted to cash. It's one of the only ways I know of releasing capital invested into physical plant. Good luck!

brudgers 4y ago
On my in-laws side there were a couple of cousins who each worked for a phone coop in Kasuth County. They were busily installing fiber to hogging operations back around 2000. As a byproduct, small town residents were paying something like $15 a month for cable and phone lines with every possible feature. It totally blew my mind.
gz5 4y ago
Even if the cited $1k per customer varies by density etc., and perhaps you mix in some fixed-wireless, then how about a business model in which you sell your network to providers (internet providers, telco providers, tv providers...and likely specialty content, business app and service providers...who then sell to the end users)? You sell B2B (you would need to solve for multi-tenancy), and help facilitate a lot of consumer choice and competition by decoupling the pipe from the services...
foobiekr 4y ago
This is excellent advice. (Though I am curious why RSTP is so deserving of a call out - I mean, yes, but there's a lot of basics here that someone starting out would need to know, including things like avoiding fate sharing and basic planning, equipment realities, etc. if laying fiber.)
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  > curious why RSTP is so deserving of a call out I consider RSTP a core foundational technology for FTTH, not some condiment sprinkled on the network afterwards. Plus it is the Ethernet technology I find most typically missing from FTTH network design. Let me explain by way of an example: imagine a typical small town, population less than 50,000, with 2.60 people on average per household => less than 19,231 households. Traditional FTTH networks were modeled much like a POTS network in a star pattern with a dedicated optical fiber to each household from a central office. That then evolved (or should I say got bastardized) to a HFC (hybrid fiber coax) model by the MSO's as they already had a coax local loop going to each house. Clearly any kind of centralized distributed FTTH is doomed to financial ruin. As an alternative, image this: same community. You get the local school district as your first customer (or other geographically dispersed participant), where you deploy a ring of fiber circumnavigating the community, interconnecting every school. As above you over build their fiber, keeping some for yourself. Of course, you will have a peering point (or two) to interconnect 10 gigabit Ethernet with a tier one provider. You now have a ring of optical fibers less than a few miles from every home in town (typically less than a mile). Built on top of RSTP, the ring of fiber gives every node on the network route-diversified redundancy and protection. But not every residential customer is going to sign up with you, so the last thing you want to do is build out to every home. Instead you build out from your ring to those households that do sign up, where every home has a route-diversified optical connection extending the RSTP ring to the customer premise. This topology negates the need for a massive star network emanating from a central office. Literally with a handful of fibers you can provide for an entire community at a standard of engineering and quality of service the MSOs cannot even fathom. Massive reduction in physical plant requirement, massive reduction in capital per customer.
  - 4y ago
bcrl 4y ago
On top of that: avoid engineering consulting firms. Hire an engineer that can stamp and sign off on plans to do the work for you. Pole surveying is not all that expensive to do yourself, and there are multiple technology solutions in that space now that didn't exist 10+ years ago. The first engineering consultants I had to pay were billing $6/m. Doing it myself with a P.Eng reviewing is under $1/m.
- stevenjgarner 4y ago
  I cannot agree enough. Design engineering of an FTTH solution is not the domain of a single engineering discipline. If you "locate a community that would value your contribution as a starting point", that city council will move heaven and hell to ensure you have the rights to enhance their town. If you do everything underground, then the city can usually sign off on your easement rights and access (plus they will give you the friendly coordination of the water and sewer department and maybe other local utilities). Going aerially will be quicker and cheaper, but it will be fraught with more potential obstacles from the incumbents. Directional boring, plowing and trenching have become commodity priced construction costs ($ per ft), with massive competition. Many underground construction firms will give you the credibility you need to work responsibly and with accountability (bonding and liability insurance). Once the physical plant is design engineered, your Ethernet and Internet engineering is virtually unregulated. You will want specialists to set up your BGP constellation and other things that will only be done once, but if you have a good working knowledge of routing and Q-tagged VLANs and other core Ethernet technologies, you will be amazed how much you can do yourself.

brudgers 4y ago

On my in-laws side there were a couple of cousins who each worked for a phone coop in Kasuth County. They were busily installing fiber to hogging operations back around 2000. As a byproduct, small town residents were paying something like $15 a month for cable and phone lines with every possible feature. It totally blew my mind.

gz5 4y ago

Even if the cited $1k per customer varies by density etc., and perhaps you mix in some fixed-wireless, then how about a business model in which you sell your network to providers (internet providers, telco providers, tv providers...and likely specialty content, business app and service providers...who then sell to the end users)? You sell B2B (you would need to solve for multi-tenancy), and help facilitate a lot of consumer choice and competition by decoupling the pipe from the services...

foobiekr 4y ago

This is excellent advice. (Though I am curious why RSTP is so deserving of a call out - I mean, yes, but there's a lot of basics here that someone starting out would need to know, including things like avoiding fate sharing and basic planning, equipment realities, etc. if laying fiber.)

stevenjgarner 4y ago
> curious why RSTP is so deserving of a call out I consider RSTP a core foundational technology for FTTH, not some condiment sprinkled on the network afterwards. Plus it is the Ethernet technology I find most typically missing from FTTH network design. Let me explain by way of an example: imagine a typical small town, population less than 50,000, with 2.60 people on average per household => less than 19,231 households. Traditional FTTH networks were modeled much like a POTS network in a star pattern with a dedicated optical fiber to each household from a central office. That then evolved (or should I say got bastardized) to a HFC (hybrid fiber coax) model by the MSO's as they already had a coax local loop going to each house. Clearly any kind of centralized distributed FTTH is doomed to financial ruin. As an alternative, image this: same community. You get the local school district as your first customer (or other geographically dispersed participant), where you deploy a ring of fiber circumnavigating the community, interconnecting every school. As above you over build their fiber, keeping some for yourself. Of course, you will have a peering point (or two) to interconnect 10 gigabit Ethernet with a tier one provider. You now have a ring of optical fibers less than a few miles from every home in town (typically less than a mile). Built on top of RSTP, the ring of fiber gives every node on the network route-diversified redundancy and protection. But not every residential customer is going to sign up with you, so the last thing you want to do is build out to every home. Instead you build out from your ring to those households that do sign up, where every home has a route-diversified optical connection extending the RSTP ring to the customer premise. This topology negates the need for a massive star network emanating from a central office. Literally with a handful of fibers you can provide for an entire community at a standard of engineering and quality of service the MSOs cannot even fathom. Massive reduction in physical plant requirement, massive reduction in capital per customer.
- 4y ago

bcrl 4y ago

On top of that: avoid engineering consulting firms. Hire an engineer that can stamp and sign off on plans to do the work for you. Pole surveying is not all that expensive to do yourself, and there are multiple technology solutions in that space now that didn't exist 10+ years ago. The first engineering consultants I had to pay were billing $6/m. Doing it myself with a P.Eng reviewing is under $1/m.

stevenjgarner 4y ago
I cannot agree enough. Design engineering of an FTTH solution is not the domain of a single engineering discipline. If you "locate a community that would value your contribution as a starting point", that city council will move heaven and hell to ensure you have the rights to enhance their town. If you do everything underground, then the city can usually sign off on your easement rights and access (plus they will give you the friendly coordination of the water and sewer department and maybe other local utilities). Going aerially will be quicker and cheaper, but it will be fraught with more potential obstacles from the incumbents. Directional boring, plowing and trenching have become commodity priced construction costs ($ per ft), with massive competition. Many underground construction firms will give you the credibility you need to work responsibly and with accountability (bonding and liability insurance). Once the physical plant is design engineered, your Ethernet and Internet engineering is virtually unregulated. You will want specialists to set up your BGP constellation and other things that will only be done once, but if you have a good working knowledge of routing and Q-tagged VLANs and other core Ethernet technologies, you will be amazed how much you can do yourself.