13 ms·

> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.

adrr 4y ago
Friend of mine needed to run fiber across the street. They had to dig up the road. Cost was $50k. This was in a city where there aren’t large pools of money from the government to get people decent Internet address.
rvnx 4y ago
To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes
- deelowe 4y ago
  I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?
  - rvnx 4y ago
    You are a private person and you choose to live deep in the country-side / on a desert / on an island / remote location / deep in the forest. Who should pay for your road, your electricity, your water, your internet connection when you are the one mostly benefiting from it ? Taxes have to be used primarily with the goal to maximize public interest, not the interests of single private persons. Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family. Could there have been alternatives that maximize coverage ? For example, by supporting deployment of 5G antennas as public infrastructure (thus, benefiting the whole area). This family doesn't necessarily need a single fiber cable to reach their house.
    - tyen_ 4y ago
      That's fair, maybe this family should be able to opt out of taxes that don't benefit them then, you know since they are so remote and everything.
      - rvnx 4y ago
        Well it's not a stupid idea at all, that when you pay taxes, you could vote for the 3 or 4 topics that you want support in priority, and they get allocated a more budget in proportion or something like that. This could even increase support of people to pay taxes (reducing fraud) as the taxpayers would know they would be supporting projects in line with their vision and lifestyle.
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I get the idea, but this is basically just admitting that our representative form of government doesn't work. Ostensibly we control our taxes already by who we vote for.
        4ggr0 4y ago
        That sounds like it would bring even more political divisiveness and injustice to the US.
      - Consultant32452 4y ago
        Yes.
        InitialLastName 4y ago
        Further, they should be forcibly blocked from using any services they refused to pay taxes for. No highways, flood protection, low food prices, or access to the global trade network for you!
        PythagoRascal 4y ago
        Except if they purchase a subscription to these benefits through one of the two companies (same parent company) that provide them. The subscriptions are of course competitively priced, since they only have the best interest of their customers at heart.
        4y ago
    - gvb 4y ago
      > Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family. Oh the irony... Starlink is also tapping (federal) government subsidies to provide internet service to rural areas. Tapping government subsidies is a very important part of Starlink's plan to become profitable. Ref: "SpaceX's Starlink wins nearly $900 million in FCC subsidies to bring internet to rural areas" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-900-million-in-fcc-subsidies-auction.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-...
      - jeremyjh 4y ago
        The difference is that those investments will be usable by anyone who wants the service and can setup the antenna. Where-as a half mile fiber run to your house in the boonies can only ever be useful to you.
        welterde 4y ago
        The subsidy is for the company though and not this specific fiber run, which was a sort of worst-case. The company is quite limited in geographical scope, so they got a fairly small subsidy, while Starlink is much larger in scope and thus got a larger one. Also that fiber run will remain useful for far longer than the Starlink satellites. It's pretty much a one-time cost with negligible operating cost, whereas Starlink will have to continuously keep launching satellites to keep it running.
        jeremyjh 4y ago
        One way or another, tax payers spent $30K on a fiber run to one house. Yes, they spent less on some other ones too. The indirection just increases cost insensitivity.
        welterde 4y ago
        It's all about averages though. Some people will be cheap to connect, while others will be expensive to connect. And the subsidies are most likely written in a way, such that the ISPs can't only go for the low-hanging fruit. Same with Starlink on a bigger scale. Some ground station will have more people near them than others (absent satellite to satellite comms). Some orbits will be used by more people than others..
    - jeffdn 4y ago
      It's pretty widely accepted that the government will help people gain and maintain access to infrastructure, even (especially?) in rural areas. Ever heard of the Rural Electrification Administration[0]? The Tennessee Valley Authority[1]? Despite the fact that it is not considered a _necessary_ utility de jure, internet access is hugely important in our modern society and economy. These areas have post offices, electricity, trash service, etc., so why shouldn't they also have access to internet? Those other utilities cost money to install as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority
    - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
      I don't understand this comment. There are a lot of places in the country where a majority pays for the minority when it comes to infrastructure. Case in point NYC or Chicago, whose populations and tax bases make up a majority of the state, yet their taxes still go to maintaining the state infrastructure as a whole. The state, in order to function, needs some kind of continuity and predictability to plan for population dynamics and spread out taxes accordingly.
      - cestith 4y ago
        Even beyond helping the state as a whole, they are also helping themselves. Good luck getting anything into or out of Chicago or New York without rail, roads, locks, dams, and airports. Infrastructure that connects to nothing isn't all that useful. All that downstate Illinois roadway, railway, navigable rivers, and smaller airports have their uses for Chicago, too. That's what networks - like the Internet - do.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - romellem 4y ago
      Do you also think the [16th amendment][1] should be repealed? Because what you are arguing is basically the same as the opponents of that amendment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...
    - InitialLastName 4y ago
      5G base stations have a range on the order of 1000 feet, and need to be connected to a high-speed backbone to function. In rural areas, a 1000 foot radius doesn't get you very many people, and since you ran fiber all the way to that antenna, you might as well run fiber the rest of the way.
    - treesknees 4y ago
      You should look up the area that Jared is building his fiber network. These homes are probably 10 minutes from the University of Michigan. It's not a remote country-side, it's just far enough out of reach of Comcast that they won't build out. I understand your point if someone decides to build their house on 20 acres of forest, but this is not that. That's why we need these programs.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      5G internet is no replacement for wired internet. The latency is terrible for use cases like gaming.
      - deelowe 4y ago
        I thought 5G was in the range of 1-10ms.
        charcircuit 4y ago
        You are thinking of 5G mmwave which trades off better range for better speed and latency. For maximizing coverage you are looking at something that looks like 4G.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Some people are farmers. Everyone benefits if there is Internet in remote places in order to help people stay and live where the farming is going to happen.
  - TulliusCicero 4y ago
    As a general principle it's fine. The issue is a combination of: * Providing infrastructure and services for rural areas like this is inherently monumentally expensive. * For most people, rural living is some kind of choice: most could likely move to a cheap suburb that could be served much more easily, but don't want to. * Far from having more money to fund things like this, rural areas are actually much less economically productive per person, on average. Of course you need some people to farm, but in practice you have many more people than that. Essentially, society is providing a heavy subsidy for a lifestyle choice for most people, with no compelling government interest there. While I do think we should make a goal of hooking everyone up to decent internet, any sensible plan has to look at how we can do this efficiently. Absolutely bare minimum, we should be superceding local zoning laws and similar that often make it illegal for people to build more densely in these areas (small town city centers), such that people can individually choose to live in a more efficient way in the same general area if they want. Not talking about skyscrapers obviously, but traditional, walkable downtowns with townhomes or duplexes would be a great thing. Some Americans may scoff at this, but you don't need large numbers of people to get walkable neighborhoods. I've been through Bavarian villages of a few hundred people that were more walkable than US cities 100x their size. It's especially nonsensical that we'd heavily subsidize super low density living when that's basically always gonna be worse for the environment. It means you need much more land per person, obviously, so you gotta cut into nature more, plus higher energy requirements.
- basilgohar 4y ago
  He's actually connecting hundreds of people that otherwise wouldn't have such access to fiber. The big ISPs took WAY more money [0] and delivered less. [0] https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm
- toss1 4y ago
  The point of taxes is to provide collective goods, such as infrastructure, defense, education. One of the first thing the US's founders did was create the postal service, which was to provide mail service to everyone, regardless of location; it literally costs the same to mail a letter across the street as to send it to some house in Whoknowswhere, Alaska. This provides a minimum communications infrastructure. One of the best things that were done in the New Deal was the Rural Electrification Act, which ensured that electrical service was provided to everyone, providing a minimum availability of a critical energy source. Also essential was the initial telecommunications acts, which required providing telephone service at the same rates to all addresses. Again, providing this service universally ensures that the entire country has a baseline communications infrastructure. This is why the telecomm companies have been aggressively stripping copper telephone wires from their system and replacing everything with fiber or coax — because the laws requiring universal service are tied to phone service and copper wires. This is why we wind up with companies like Comcast saying "F*$k-You - $50,000 for 500m of wire" to to everyone that isn't instantly profitable. These universal service mandates are not to benefit each individual living on some remote farm or homestead, or just more remote suburbs/exurbs. They are to benefit THE ENTIRE NATION. Everyone benefits from infrastructure, and benefits most when the infrastructure is more universal, when everyone can has power, can communicate and can transport goods. You live in an advanced society with advanced infrastructure. When that infrastructure gets built out, perhaps notice that it is a good thing, instead of thinking of only your own petty concerns. Or, go find someplace where there are no taxes and you get to do everything yourself (hey, if you want it done right, do it yourself, right?) - see what you can find and how well you can live with no roads, comms, power, security, etc. Report back.
  - rvnx 4y ago
    I'm saying to allocate budget to maximize as much as possible the public/global interest. Yes it's nicer to have optic fiber, but this is somewhat luxury if Starlink exists, and if the gov funds it already. I'm sure some other people in the US need more these 30'000 USD than optic fiber to watch Netflix with a little less buffering. Budget could be used somewhere else (to build roads, or to support medicine/health, education, animal welfare, etc). So it's not about refusing to help rural / remote people, but rather about optimising allocation in order to support as much people as possible.
- failrate 4y ago
  The resources of this country are to be allocated for the benefit of its citizens. In other words, it is our money, and we can spend it on decent internet for rural areas. Lack of internet access is disenfranchising when numerous necessary government and school services has been moved online.
  - Bloating 4y ago
    >The resources of this country are to be allocated for the benefit of its citizens. Sounds like a great idea! When can we get started?
    - failrate 4y ago
      What do you think roads are? Snark aside, I spent years being angry about every government subsidy until I learned that some subsidies are pork barrel spending and some are just the normal allocations required by a functioning government to maintain the expected standard of living.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sgerenser 4y ago
Yeah seems like some sort of mix of fiber and wireless for the "last mile" would make more sense for installations like this.
- philote 4y ago
  Depends on the area. Wireless won't work well in the mountains, and I assume weather could affect some wireless technologies as well. I live in a mountainous area and we have a local ISP that provides fiber to our entire county. Which is weird, because I recently lived in a major city and couldn't get fiber.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It's way easier to push fiber through the ground in rural areas where there's basically nothing than it is in major cities where there are tons of things and already some form of wired internet. And if you're within a mile of the destination, that last mile isn't actually that terribly expensive, especially if it's literally rural and that mile is on the property owner's land. They can figure out how to get to the box at the road.
throwaway787544 4y ago
.....have you ever dug fiber in Michigan?
fourthark 4y ago
At $55/mo, he'll start making a profit in 45 years.
- TrueGeek 4y ago
  From the article: he had $2.6MM in help from the "American Rescue Plan's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds". He's being paid by the government to bring Internet access to homes in the state that aren't currently wired for it.
  - qwe----3 4y ago
    That bill and these types of projects are basically why we have 10% inflation now.
    - LetsGetTechnicl 4y ago
      Inflation isn't at 10% but it seems like investing in infrastructure is a good idea. If we needed to pinch pennies we could start at the bloated military budget
      - _wolfie_ 4y ago
        Right, in the middle of war with Russia and with war with China on the horizon. Great idea.
        themoonisachees 4y ago
        The US aren't at war with Russia. Sure, they're helping an ally in a De facto war against Russia, but currently the us spends more on "defense" than both Russia and China combined, when it is technically at peace. In case of a war with China, are you expecting the military budget to not increase at all?
        Thetawaves 4y ago
toast0 4y ago
If utilities are underground, it can be pretty expensive to install anything. I have an estimate for municipal fiber that's about that much to get fiber a mile or two down the street overhead, and then about that much to go down my driveway underground 400 feet. It's hard to justify when the local phone company is probably going to roll out fiber in the next few years without a direct charge, at least for the portion on the street. Of course, that'll probably be PPPoE, maybe asymetrical, likely limited to 1G, etc. Comcast won't even quote me to come down my driveway, even though they serve my neighbor across the street from the pole at the corner of my driveway.
- ericd 4y ago
  Wow, have you considered buying some conduit and renting a trenching machine and giving the driveway portion a go yourself? Might be worth talking over that option with the muni fiber people. Though sounds like the overhead portion would still be $$$.
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    A friend did this at his farm in central VA, but for power line instead of fiber. It was previously above ground, unsightly, and occasionally damaged by trees. He dug the trench from the road and had the power company lay the wire in it and make connections at each end. I don't remember the total numbers, but he saved thousands by doing the dig himself (with rented equipment) vs paying the power company to manage it. Of course, this assume you're comfortable with heavy machinery and can work around other utilities (most counties have a "Miss Utility" service that will mark existing services).
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Yep, depending on the lay of the land doing the grunt work can save thousands or tens of thousands - if you have the company do it they'll almost certainly bring in a crew of 4 or 5 with a underground "hog" machine that's supposed to work perfectly but doesn't actually so the backhoe appears and then they cut into a buried utility line that was marked but backhoes can't read and then you wait for the power company to come out and then they fight over whose fault it was while the freezer slowly drips onto your floor. Or you can rent a ditch witch and do it yourself and dig by hand near anything remotely marked by the marking crew.
omvtam 4y ago
You can hang your fiber on existing infrastructure like electric distribution poles. edit: If you're the electric company.
- dboreham 4y ago
  In most locations in the US any entity can hang wire on utility poles (the poles are often owned by the city, with an open access policy -- this is how CATV and PSTN wires are up there on poles, and more recently 5GUWB base stations). There are certain requirements (e.g. insurance, you have to have assets on hand to repair your cable when someone drives into a pole, you need workers who are certified to work near high tension wires, etc). Usually you can outsource that stuff, for a price, possibly to the same contracting company who does the same work for Comcast.
bodfinch 4y ago
Same sentiment here. Maybe he could look into some WAN to CPE connections from the fibre terminations
burntsushi 4y ago
It's funny because he said one of the houses needed 0.5 miles of cable. My jaw dropped when he said it would only be $30K for that. I'm speaking as someone who has had a few hundred foot trenches dug in my yard for running cable. Extrapolating it to 0.5 miles would come out to a lot more than $30K.
- brianwawok 4y ago
  You get bigger machines, which do work faster.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    And you dig smaller trenches with them. Microtrenching digs a foot deep and two inch wide hole for direct bury fiber cable, saving time and money over older techniques.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      Only a foot deep? My sprinkler system is deeper than that. ATT recently did fiber by my house with some kind of machine. It did some kind of U shaped trench, where it drilled down (not sure how deep), then over about 200 feet, and back up. So you only see a hole every 200 or so feet, vs a solid trench. Let them go under driveways and all of that. A team of 4 guys was able to do my entire neighborhood in a day. Still waiting for ATT to actually wire up the fiber, until them I am stuck with comcast cable (which is fine ,except the data cap doesn't scale with speed, so the faster connections cap cap you out in like 15 minutes).
- strken 4y ago
  What's the expensive part of a new fibre run? With $30k you could hire an excavator and operator for maybe 15 to 20 weeks straight, but I'm guessing the pits are expensive and dealing with obstacles is hard.
  - burntsushi 4y ago
    I don't know. I didn't do it. I just know how much money came out of my wallet and how long the trench was. :-) So that means I paid for labor. But presumably some part of that $30K will be going to labor as well. Another possibility is that when you get to the scale of 0.5 miles, you start using different tactics or machines than the small little backhoe loader that the guy used in our yard. So, more capital required but overall more efficient. Anyway, I don't mean to try and offer an accurate accounting of all of this. I mostly just meant to provide a counter-expectation.
Vaslo 4y ago
Agreed - that much money could put in a computer lab in a local library for everyone to use. I’m very supportive of rural people and the life they choose to live, but you are right - they should understand the drawbacks.
inopinatus 4y ago
It isn't, but that's the norm for all internet infrastructure, both last-mile and backbone. Since time immemorial, the gap between the amortized cost of building it, and anyone's willingness to pay for transport or transit, has been a) huge (that is, commercially insurmountable), and b) traditionally covered by one of two means: 1. Government subsidy, or 2. Attempting to offer services at the high prices necessary to recoup the investment, consequently going bust due to low volumes, selling the infrastructure for a pittance in a fire sale, and the next owner gets to offer services for prices the market is willing to tolerate. With this approach, it merely remains to find some VCs to sucker for the build phase. It was also possible, back in the day, to run tunnels across your peers since they would announce the IXP networks at each end into their IGP, but folks got wise to that scam. There is a variation on (2) involving anti-trust laws during M&A but it amounts to the same thing.
rasz 4y ago
Its more than he personally was willing to pay ;-) >Comcast once told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Im guessing being a nerd working at akamai he wont be the one spending ~1-2 days on a Ditch Witch/trencher to make those. He probably wont even hire anyone to work a rental from United Rentals. He will subcontract to same company that does trenches for Comcast.

adrr 4y ago

Friend of mine needed to run fiber across the street. They had to dig up the road. Cost was $50k. This was in a city where there aren’t large pools of money from the government to get people decent Internet address.

rvnx 4y ago

To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes

deelowe 4y ago
I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?
- rvnx 4y ago
  You are a private person and you choose to live deep in the country-side / on a desert / on an island / remote location / deep in the forest. Who should pay for your road, your electricity, your water, your internet connection when you are the one mostly benefiting from it ? Taxes have to be used primarily with the goal to maximize public interest, not the interests of single private persons. Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family. Could there have been alternatives that maximize coverage ? For example, by supporting deployment of 5G antennas as public infrastructure (thus, benefiting the whole area). This family doesn't necessarily need a single fiber cable to reach their house.
  - tyen_ 4y ago
    That's fair, maybe this family should be able to opt out of taxes that don't benefit them then, you know since they are so remote and everything.
    - rvnx 4y ago
      Well it's not a stupid idea at all, that when you pay taxes, you could vote for the 3 or 4 topics that you want support in priority, and they get allocated a more budget in proportion or something like that. This could even increase support of people to pay taxes (reducing fraud) as the taxpayers would know they would be supporting projects in line with their vision and lifestyle.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        I get the idea, but this is basically just admitting that our representative form of government doesn't work. Ostensibly we control our taxes already by who we vote for.
      - 4ggr0 4y ago
        That sounds like it would bring even more political divisiveness and injustice to the US.
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      Yes.
      - InitialLastName 4y ago
        Further, they should be forcibly blocked from using any services they refused to pay taxes for. No highways, flood protection, low food prices, or access to the global trade network for you!
        PythagoRascal 4y ago
        Except if they purchase a subscription to these benefits through one of the two companies (same parent company) that provide them. The subscriptions are of course competitively priced, since they only have the best interest of their customers at heart.
        4y ago
  - gvb 4y ago
    > Perhaps a Starlink connection would have been enough for them and perfectly fine if it's a single family. Oh the irony... Starlink is also tapping (federal) government subsidies to provide internet service to rural areas. Tapping government subsidies is a very important part of Starlink's plan to become profitable. Ref: "SpaceX's Starlink wins nearly $900 million in FCC subsidies to bring internet to rural areas" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-900-million-in-fcc-subsidies-auction.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/07/spacex-starlink-wins-nearly-...
    - jeremyjh 4y ago
      The difference is that those investments will be usable by anyone who wants the service and can setup the antenna. Where-as a half mile fiber run to your house in the boonies can only ever be useful to you.
      - welterde 4y ago
        The subsidy is for the company though and not this specific fiber run, which was a sort of worst-case. The company is quite limited in geographical scope, so they got a fairly small subsidy, while Starlink is much larger in scope and thus got a larger one. Also that fiber run will remain useful for far longer than the Starlink satellites. It's pretty much a one-time cost with negligible operating cost, whereas Starlink will have to continuously keep launching satellites to keep it running.
        jeremyjh 4y ago
        One way or another, tax payers spent $30K on a fiber run to one house. Yes, they spent less on some other ones too. The indirection just increases cost insensitivity.
        welterde 4y ago
        It's all about averages though. Some people will be cheap to connect, while others will be expensive to connect. And the subsidies are most likely written in a way, such that the ISPs can't only go for the low-hanging fruit. Same with Starlink on a bigger scale. Some ground station will have more people near them than others (absent satellite to satellite comms). Some orbits will be used by more people than others..
  - jeffdn 4y ago
    It's pretty widely accepted that the government will help people gain and maintain access to infrastructure, even (especially?) in rural areas. Ever heard of the Rural Electrification Administration[0]? The Tennessee Valley Authority[1]? Despite the fact that it is not considered a _necessary_ utility de jure, internet access is hugely important in our modern society and economy. These areas have post offices, electricity, trash service, etc., so why shouldn't they also have access to internet? Those other utilities cost money to install as well. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority
  - halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
    I don't understand this comment. There are a lot of places in the country where a majority pays for the minority when it comes to infrastructure. Case in point NYC or Chicago, whose populations and tax bases make up a majority of the state, yet their taxes still go to maintaining the state infrastructure as a whole. The state, in order to function, needs some kind of continuity and predictability to plan for population dynamics and spread out taxes accordingly.
    - cestith 4y ago
      Even beyond helping the state as a whole, they are also helping themselves. Good luck getting anything into or out of Chicago or New York without rail, roads, locks, dams, and airports. Infrastructure that connects to nothing isn't all that useful. All that downstate Illinois roadway, railway, navigable rivers, and smaller airports have their uses for Chicago, too. That's what networks - like the Internet - do.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - romellem 4y ago
    Do you also think the [16th amendment][1] should be repealed? Because what you are arguing is basically the same as the opponents of that amendment. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...
  - InitialLastName 4y ago
    5G base stations have a range on the order of 1000 feet, and need to be connected to a high-speed backbone to function. In rural areas, a 1000 foot radius doesn't get you very many people, and since you ran fiber all the way to that antenna, you might as well run fiber the rest of the way.
  - treesknees 4y ago
    You should look up the area that Jared is building his fiber network. These homes are probably 10 minutes from the University of Michigan. It's not a remote country-side, it's just far enough out of reach of Comcast that they won't build out. I understand your point if someone decides to build their house on 20 acres of forest, but this is not that. That's why we need these programs.
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    5G internet is no replacement for wired internet. The latency is terrible for use cases like gaming.
    - deelowe 4y ago
      I thought 5G was in the range of 1-10ms.
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        You are thinking of 5G mmwave which trades off better range for better speed and latency. For maximizing coverage you are looking at something that looks like 4G.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Some people are farmers. Everyone benefits if there is Internet in remote places in order to help people stay and live where the farming is going to happen.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  As a general principle it's fine. The issue is a combination of: * Providing infrastructure and services for rural areas like this is inherently monumentally expensive. * For most people, rural living is some kind of choice: most could likely move to a cheap suburb that could be served much more easily, but don't want to. * Far from having more money to fund things like this, rural areas are actually much less economically productive per person, on average. Of course you need some people to farm, but in practice you have many more people than that. Essentially, society is providing a heavy subsidy for a lifestyle choice for most people, with no compelling government interest there. While I do think we should make a goal of hooking everyone up to decent internet, any sensible plan has to look at how we can do this efficiently. Absolutely bare minimum, we should be superceding local zoning laws and similar that often make it illegal for people to build more densely in these areas (small town city centers), such that people can individually choose to live in a more efficient way in the same general area if they want. Not talking about skyscrapers obviously, but traditional, walkable downtowns with townhomes or duplexes would be a great thing. Some Americans may scoff at this, but you don't need large numbers of people to get walkable neighborhoods. I've been through Bavarian villages of a few hundred people that were more walkable than US cities 100x their size. It's especially nonsensical that we'd heavily subsidize super low density living when that's basically always gonna be worse for the environment. It means you need much more land per person, obviously, so you gotta cut into nature more, plus higher energy requirements.
basilgohar 4y ago
He's actually connecting hundreds of people that otherwise wouldn't have such access to fiber. The big ISPs took WAY more money [0] and delivered less. [0] https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm https://newnetworks.com/bookofbrokenpromises.htm
toss1 4y ago
The point of taxes is to provide collective goods, such as infrastructure, defense, education. One of the first thing the US's founders did was create the postal service, which was to provide mail service to everyone, regardless of location; it literally costs the same to mail a letter across the street as to send it to some house in Whoknowswhere, Alaska. This provides a minimum communications infrastructure. One of the best things that were done in the New Deal was the Rural Electrification Act, which ensured that electrical service was provided to everyone, providing a minimum availability of a critical energy source. Also essential was the initial telecommunications acts, which required providing telephone service at the same rates to all addresses. Again, providing this service universally ensures that the entire country has a baseline communications infrastructure. This is why the telecomm companies have been aggressively stripping copper telephone wires from their system and replacing everything with fiber or coax — because the laws requiring universal service are tied to phone service and copper wires. This is why we wind up with companies like Comcast saying "F*$k-You - $50,000 for 500m of wire" to to everyone that isn't instantly profitable. These universal service mandates are not to benefit each individual living on some remote farm or homestead, or just more remote suburbs/exurbs. They are to benefit THE ENTIRE NATION. Everyone benefits from infrastructure, and benefits most when the infrastructure is more universal, when everyone can has power, can communicate and can transport goods. You live in an advanced society with advanced infrastructure. When that infrastructure gets built out, perhaps notice that it is a good thing, instead of thinking of only your own petty concerns. Or, go find someplace where there are no taxes and you get to do everything yourself (hey, if you want it done right, do it yourself, right?) - see what you can find and how well you can live with no roads, comms, power, security, etc. Report back.
- rvnx 4y ago
  I'm saying to allocate budget to maximize as much as possible the public/global interest. Yes it's nicer to have optic fiber, but this is somewhat luxury if Starlink exists, and if the gov funds it already. I'm sure some other people in the US need more these 30'000 USD than optic fiber to watch Netflix with a little less buffering. Budget could be used somewhere else (to build roads, or to support medicine/health, education, animal welfare, etc). So it's not about refusing to help rural / remote people, but rather about optimising allocation in order to support as much people as possible.
failrate 4y ago
The resources of this country are to be allocated for the benefit of its citizens. In other words, it is our money, and we can spend it on decent internet for rural areas. Lack of internet access is disenfranchising when numerous necessary government and school services has been moved online.
- Bloating 4y ago
  >The resources of this country are to be allocated for the benefit of its citizens. Sounds like a great idea! When can we get started?
  - failrate 4y ago
    What do you think roads are? Snark aside, I spent years being angry about every government subsidy until I learned that some subsidies are pork barrel spending and some are just the normal allocations required by a functioning government to maintain the expected standard of living.

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sgerenser 4y ago

Yeah seems like some sort of mix of fiber and wireless for the "last mile" would make more sense for installations like this.

philote 4y ago
Depends on the area. Wireless won't work well in the mountains, and I assume weather could affect some wireless technologies as well. I live in a mountainous area and we have a local ISP that provides fiber to our entire county. Which is weird, because I recently lived in a major city and couldn't get fiber.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It's way easier to push fiber through the ground in rural areas where there's basically nothing than it is in major cities where there are tons of things and already some form of wired internet. And if you're within a mile of the destination, that last mile isn't actually that terribly expensive, especially if it's literally rural and that mile is on the property owner's land. They can figure out how to get to the box at the road.

throwaway787544 4y ago

.....have you ever dug fiber in Michigan?

fourthark 4y ago

At $55/mo, he'll start making a profit in 45 years.

TrueGeek 4y ago
From the article: he had $2.6MM in help from the "American Rescue Plan's Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds". He's being paid by the government to bring Internet access to homes in the state that aren't currently wired for it.
- qwe----3 4y ago
  That bill and these types of projects are basically why we have 10% inflation now.
  - LetsGetTechnicl 4y ago
    Inflation isn't at 10% but it seems like investing in infrastructure is a good idea. If we needed to pinch pennies we could start at the bloated military budget
    - _wolfie_ 4y ago
      Right, in the middle of war with Russia and with war with China on the horizon. Great idea.
      - themoonisachees 4y ago
        The US aren't at war with Russia. Sure, they're helping an ally in a De facto war against Russia, but currently the us spends more on "defense" than both Russia and China combined, when it is technically at peace. In case of a war with China, are you expecting the military budget to not increase at all?
        Thetawaves 4y ago

toast0 4y ago

If utilities are underground, it can be pretty expensive to install anything. I have an estimate for municipal fiber that's about that much to get fiber a mile or two down the street overhead, and then about that much to go down my driveway underground 400 feet. It's hard to justify when the local phone company is probably going to roll out fiber in the next few years without a direct charge, at least for the portion on the street. Of course, that'll probably be PPPoE, maybe asymetrical, likely limited to 1G, etc. Comcast won't even quote me to come down my driveway, even though they serve my neighbor across the street from the pole at the corner of my driveway.

ericd 4y ago
Wow, have you considered buying some conduit and renting a trenching machine and giving the driveway portion a go yourself? Might be worth talking over that option with the muni fiber people. Though sounds like the overhead portion would still be $$$.
- alistairSH 4y ago
  A friend did this at his farm in central VA, but for power line instead of fiber. It was previously above ground, unsightly, and occasionally damaged by trees. He dug the trench from the road and had the power company lay the wire in it and make connections at each end. I don't remember the total numbers, but he saved thousands by doing the dig himself (with rented equipment) vs paying the power company to manage it. Of course, this assume you're comfortable with heavy machinery and can work around other utilities (most counties have a "Miss Utility" service that will mark existing services).
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Yep, depending on the lay of the land doing the grunt work can save thousands or tens of thousands - if you have the company do it they'll almost certainly bring in a crew of 4 or 5 with a underground "hog" machine that's supposed to work perfectly but doesn't actually so the backhoe appears and then they cut into a buried utility line that was marked but backhoes can't read and then you wait for the power company to come out and then they fight over whose fault it was while the freezer slowly drips onto your floor. Or you can rent a ditch witch and do it yourself and dig by hand near anything remotely marked by the marking crew.

omvtam 4y ago

You can hang your fiber on existing infrastructure like electric distribution poles. edit: If you're the electric company.

dboreham 4y ago
In most locations in the US any entity can hang wire on utility poles (the poles are often owned by the city, with an open access policy -- this is how CATV and PSTN wires are up there on poles, and more recently 5GUWB base stations). There are certain requirements (e.g. insurance, you have to have assets on hand to repair your cable when someone drives into a pole, you need workers who are certified to work near high tension wires, etc). Usually you can outsource that stuff, for a price, possibly to the same contracting company who does the same work for Comcast.

bodfinch 4y ago

Same sentiment here. Maybe he could look into some WAN to CPE connections from the fibre terminations

burntsushi 4y ago

It's funny because he said one of the houses needed 0.5 miles of cable. My jaw dropped when he said it would only be $30K for that. I'm speaking as someone who has had a few hundred foot trenches dug in my yard for running cable. Extrapolating it to 0.5 miles would come out to a lot more than $30K.

brianwawok 4y ago
You get bigger machines, which do work faster.
- fragmede 4y ago
  And you dig smaller trenches with them. Microtrenching digs a foot deep and two inch wide hole for direct bury fiber cable, saving time and money over older techniques.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    Only a foot deep? My sprinkler system is deeper than that. ATT recently did fiber by my house with some kind of machine. It did some kind of U shaped trench, where it drilled down (not sure how deep), then over about 200 feet, and back up. So you only see a hole every 200 or so feet, vs a solid trench. Let them go under driveways and all of that. A team of 4 guys was able to do my entire neighborhood in a day. Still waiting for ATT to actually wire up the fiber, until them I am stuck with comcast cable (which is fine ,except the data cap doesn't scale with speed, so the faster connections cap cap you out in like 15 minutes).
strken 4y ago
What's the expensive part of a new fibre run? With $30k you could hire an excavator and operator for maybe 15 to 20 weeks straight, but I'm guessing the pits are expensive and dealing with obstacles is hard.
- burntsushi 4y ago
  I don't know. I didn't do it. I just know how much money came out of my wallet and how long the trench was. :-) So that means I paid for labor. But presumably some part of that $30K will be going to labor as well. Another possibility is that when you get to the scale of 0.5 miles, you start using different tactics or machines than the small little backhoe loader that the guy used in our yard. So, more capital required but overall more efficient. Anyway, I don't mean to try and offer an accurate accounting of all of this. I mostly just meant to provide a counter-expectation.

Vaslo 4y ago

Agreed - that much money could put in a computer lab in a local library for everyone to use. I’m very supportive of rural people and the life they choose to live, but you are right - they should understand the drawbacks.

inopinatus 4y ago

It isn't, but that's the norm for all internet infrastructure, both last-mile and backbone. Since time immemorial, the gap between the amortized cost of building it, and anyone's willingness to pay for transport or transit, has been a) huge (that is, commercially insurmountable), and b) traditionally covered by one of two means: 1. Government subsidy, or 2. Attempting to offer services at the high prices necessary to recoup the investment, consequently going bust due to low volumes, selling the infrastructure for a pittance in a fire sale, and the next owner gets to offer services for prices the market is willing to tolerate. With this approach, it merely remains to find some VCs to sucker for the build phase. It was also possible, back in the day, to run tunnels across your peers since they would announce the IXP networks at each end into their IGP, but folks got wise to that scam. There is a variation on (2) involving anti-trust laws during M&A but it amounts to the same thing.

rasz 4y ago

Its more than he personally was willing to pay ;-) >Comcast once told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Im guessing being a nerd working at akamai he wont be the one spending ~1-2 days on a Ditch Witch/trencher to make those. He probably wont even hire anyone to work a rental from United Rentals. He will subcontract to same company that does trenches for Comcast.