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The biggest problem with these grants is that it is tax payer money that is then used to build private non open network monopolies. Easiest solution would be w

The biggest problem with these grants is that it is tax payer money that is then used to build private non open network monopolies. Easiest solution would be what we have in Switzerland. If you want that government money, the fiber you lay needs to be accessible to any competitor otherwise you aren't getting any of it. This is the only reason we have 25gbit symmetrical available for only around $70/month [1] because the fiber has to be available for anyone to use. Recently the largest phone provider here tried to lay p2mp instead of p2p which would result in requiring splitters setting the max speed and features to what they define giving them a competitive advantage over anyone else. Luckily Init7 took them to court and they are now back peddling. Sadly that phone provider wasted an enormous amount of tax payers money and now need to undo the damage they did. [1] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/

networkchad 3y ago
[dead]
bcrl 3y ago
P2MP is fine -- you can use EPON/GPON/XGSPON/10G-EPON that are designed for shared optical networks with passive splitters or even run DWDM over those splitters to provide P2P circuits over those same infrastructure (PLC splitters really don't care what you're doing with the optical signal so long as it meets the optical signal budget). Cutting the cost of feeder fibres is worthwhile unless you happen to have infinite money available.
- sschueller 3y ago
  The addional cost per connection was estimated at only around $50. With the splitter any 3rd party will always be limited with what the ISP has installed or decides to allow. Who decides who gets which part of the optical budget? That is considered "market manipulation" here.
  - bcrl 3y ago
    Depends on the market. If you're in a high density area the cost of feeder fibres is inconsequential. If you're in a low density rural market, additional feeder fibres are expensive. Smaller market players can't get the 30 year amortization that governments can which makes cost matter. The optical signal budget in a Passive Optical Network (PON) is a function of the split ratio (commonly 1:32 => 2^5 => 5 * 3dB = ~15dB) and distance involved (typically 0.35 dB/km), which both are a function of the network design. Passive optical networks are typically designed around a 20 km distance with a 1:32 (sometimes 1:64 for 10G PON variants) splitter ratio. You can trade splitter ratio for distance if needed. An 80km DWDM optic is tight at the extreme distance, but 120km is pretty close to the 1:32 / 20km link budget. My point is that it is viable to overlay DWDM on a network designed for PON.
    - midasuni 3y ago
      Is the cost of a single core with a 32 way splitter really a lot cheaper than a 32 core cable?
      - bcrl 3y ago
        A 1x32 splitter costs somewhere between $20-70 (unless you pay exorbitant Corning prices). 32 core (well, 36 core) cables are cheap enough, but that's not what you need for a pure point to point network. Let's say you've got a local convergence point with 576 fibres facing the distribution network. With 1x32 splitters you need 18 feeder fibres. You can get a 24 core cable for $350/km. Now, let's say you're building a fully point to point network. You now need a 576 core cable for your feeder in the access network. That's going to cost north of $6000/km (that's a wild guess -- sorry, I don't have accurate numbers for high count cables as I haven't bought any in the past few years). If your access network is 10 km, that's the difference between $3,500 in cables vs $60,000 in cables. Plus you're adding a good $1,500-3,000/km in cost for larger splice closures and increased splicing labour. Where it really hurts is when you start getting close to your Central Office (CO). With P2P networks, you need more larger cables in the first few kilometers closest to the CO, which is often the most congested part of a network. For brownfield builds, that might require directional boring to install new conduit in a town to bring the new cables into the CO. That can get really expensive. Designing fibre networks is a game of whack-a-mole. Spending less on one component drives up costs on other components. Sure a P2P network means you can use cheaper SFPs, but the outside plant is more expensive. There's good reason that most carriers are building Passive Optical Networks -- P2P just isn't economically viable in all scenarios.
mr337 3y ago
> 25gbit symmetrical available Unless I was building a data center, think AWS/Azure, 25gb would not even be an option given I would want to burn money in the US.
- thfuran 3y ago
  I'd happily switch to it tomorrow if I could get it close to that price. I'd probably even eventually get around to getting switches and NICs that'd let me actually see the speed.
- inetknght 3y ago
  As a software engineer, I would use 25gbit daily, particularly during EU and US work hours (my team crosses continents). I'd download those yuuuuuge deployments in seconds instead of minutes. And the scary thing is... I'd be super tempted to actually get it if it were offered here. I already have 1gbit fiber and the hardware for 10gbit. I wouldn't need to upgrade much to utilize it. Well, I would if the servers I'm downloading from could provide at that speed. I'm pretty sure they're connected at 10gbit for a lot of the same reasons.
  - jiofj 3y ago
    No server is going to give you 25 gbit for yourself. Or routes are going to be congested. I have 1 gbit and almost all servers don't have that available for me.
    - msh 3y ago
      I have one 1 gigabit and can fill it out using several services, downloading from steam and the playstation store will max out my one gigabits. But in general I think if you build it people will find usecases for it.
  - wil421 3y ago
    Your company will give you 25gbit bandwidth on a VPN?
- 3y ago
pkaye 3y ago
Are there benchmarks websites that show average fixed broadband performance for Switzerland? Switzerland is not that in the rankings on Speedtest for example.
- rhino369 3y ago
  I'm skeptical too.
- sschueller 3y ago
  I am not aware of such a site. Customer to customer I have 25 gbits, uplink I believe is 100gbits shared between each 48 port which can have modules between 1 and 25gbit. Init7 is the only ISP I know here that offers this speed. Most people are happy with 1gbit or less and there are also still many areas that do not have fiber plus the over 600k illegal p2mp connections that can't be used. Also many of the others have an insane oversubscribe factor. More information on their setup they presented in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmJCzMeIBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmJCzMeIBo
bsder 3y ago
The US had exactly this back in late 1990s. Then the US government let the telcos off the hook for carrying all traffic. And thus the shitty system we have now.
- toast0 3y ago
  Since congress never repealed the Telecom act of 1996, I wonder if the FCC could decide to reinstate it, as long as they applied it evenly instead of exempting cable like they did before; leading telcos to complain and it to not be enforced at all. Of course, enforcement on telcos was pretty iffy too. While initial DSL rollouts were subject to linesharing, expanded rollouts were designed to hit the exception so linesharing wasn't required. Additionally, it was pretty common for telcos to have retail prices less than the price for linesharing, so competitive carriers couldn't have price parity without losing money even before considering operating costs. If we get new legislation, we really need something with real separation; the company managing last mile should be separate from the company providing IP services. A last mile provider would be on the hook to get (ethernet) packets between my house and somewhere nearby where the IP service provider picks them up. This could be at a central exchange building, a local internet exchange if one exists, cable company headend locations, or somewhere mutually agreeable otherwise. But, there's not really any appetite for this kind of thing, so we're kind of stuck. sigh
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
metaphor 3y ago
> Easiest solution would be what we have in Switzerland. If you want that government money, the fiber you lay needs to be accessible to any competitor otherwise you aren't getting any of it. How would you square that against one of the core objectives of targeting rural, unserved/underserved communities? E.g. consider Iowa[1], a single state which is ~3.5x larger in land (144,660 km^2), ~63% smaller in population (3.2 million), and ~90% lower density (22/km^2) compared to Switzerland...never mind that there are roughly a dozen other states in similar or more challenging situations. Suppose a small business establishes infra in a way that must be "accessible to any competitor". After laying the ground work and establishing a customer base, what's to stop an asymmetrically well-capitalized competitor from stepping in with the intent of swallowing a relatively small loss to operationally bleed out a much smaller incumbent with no margin? E.g. if your local addressable market were half the population of Iowa with service aggressively priced at what Switzerland customers pay, we'd still be talking about a notional revenue cap that's ~1% of what whales like AT&T and Verizon with growing fiber segments generate annually. I can imagine how outcomes might work out favorably for consumers when the addressable market is a small, wealthy sovereign nation with significant population density...much less when considering rural communities in fly-over states that the rest of the country has a tendency to neglect yet whose economic contributions remain significant. [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/IA/ https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/IA/
- maxerickson 3y ago
  I live in a small town in a flyover area. I have 300/10 cable (up might be more, I don't bump into it). It doesn't do me much good to have access to 1 gig symmetric that costs more.
  - metaphor 3y ago
    It sounds like you're not part of the addressable market[1][2]: > BEAD prioritizes unserved locations that have no internet access or that only have access under 25/3 Mbps and underserved locations only have access under 100/20 Mbps. [1] https://www.internetforall.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/BEAD%20Info%20Sheet%20-%20IFA%20Launch%20-%20Final.pdf https://www.internetforall.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/B... [2] https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home
thayne 3y ago
> 25gbit symmetrical available for only around $70/month Wow. Most places I've lived in the US that price will get you maybe 50Mbit down 10Mbit up. If you're lucky.
Hinrik 3y ago
>Luckily Init7 took them to court and they are now back peddling. You mean back-pedaling. Peddling is something different.

networkchad 3y ago

[dead]

bcrl 3y ago

P2MP is fine -- you can use EPON/GPON/XGSPON/10G-EPON that are designed for shared optical networks with passive splitters or even run DWDM over those splitters to provide P2P circuits over those same infrastructure (PLC splitters really don't care what you're doing with the optical signal so long as it meets the optical signal budget). Cutting the cost of feeder fibres is worthwhile unless you happen to have infinite money available.

sschueller 3y ago
The addional cost per connection was estimated at only around $50. With the splitter any 3rd party will always be limited with what the ISP has installed or decides to allow. Who decides who gets which part of the optical budget? That is considered "market manipulation" here.
- bcrl 3y ago
  Depends on the market. If you're in a high density area the cost of feeder fibres is inconsequential. If you're in a low density rural market, additional feeder fibres are expensive. Smaller market players can't get the 30 year amortization that governments can which makes cost matter. The optical signal budget in a Passive Optical Network (PON) is a function of the split ratio (commonly 1:32 => 2^5 => 5 * 3dB = ~15dB) and distance involved (typically 0.35 dB/km), which both are a function of the network design. Passive optical networks are typically designed around a 20 km distance with a 1:32 (sometimes 1:64 for 10G PON variants) splitter ratio. You can trade splitter ratio for distance if needed. An 80km DWDM optic is tight at the extreme distance, but 120km is pretty close to the 1:32 / 20km link budget. My point is that it is viable to overlay DWDM on a network designed for PON.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    Is the cost of a single core with a 32 way splitter really a lot cheaper than a 32 core cable?
    - bcrl 3y ago
      A 1x32 splitter costs somewhere between $20-70 (unless you pay exorbitant Corning prices). 32 core (well, 36 core) cables are cheap enough, but that's not what you need for a pure point to point network. Let's say you've got a local convergence point with 576 fibres facing the distribution network. With 1x32 splitters you need 18 feeder fibres. You can get a 24 core cable for $350/km. Now, let's say you're building a fully point to point network. You now need a 576 core cable for your feeder in the access network. That's going to cost north of $6000/km (that's a wild guess -- sorry, I don't have accurate numbers for high count cables as I haven't bought any in the past few years). If your access network is 10 km, that's the difference between $3,500 in cables vs $60,000 in cables. Plus you're adding a good $1,500-3,000/km in cost for larger splice closures and increased splicing labour. Where it really hurts is when you start getting close to your Central Office (CO). With P2P networks, you need more larger cables in the first few kilometers closest to the CO, which is often the most congested part of a network. For brownfield builds, that might require directional boring to install new conduit in a town to bring the new cables into the CO. That can get really expensive. Designing fibre networks is a game of whack-a-mole. Spending less on one component drives up costs on other components. Sure a P2P network means you can use cheaper SFPs, but the outside plant is more expensive. There's good reason that most carriers are building Passive Optical Networks -- P2P just isn't economically viable in all scenarios.

mr337 3y ago

> 25gbit symmetrical available Unless I was building a data center, think AWS/Azure, 25gb would not even be an option given I would want to burn money in the US.

thfuran 3y ago
I'd happily switch to it tomorrow if I could get it close to that price. I'd probably even eventually get around to getting switches and NICs that'd let me actually see the speed.
inetknght 3y ago
As a software engineer, I would use 25gbit daily, particularly during EU and US work hours (my team crosses continents). I'd download those yuuuuuge deployments in seconds instead of minutes. And the scary thing is... I'd be super tempted to actually get it if it were offered here. I already have 1gbit fiber and the hardware for 10gbit. I wouldn't need to upgrade much to utilize it. Well, I would if the servers I'm downloading from could provide at that speed. I'm pretty sure they're connected at 10gbit for a lot of the same reasons.
- jiofj 3y ago
  No server is going to give you 25 gbit for yourself. Or routes are going to be congested. I have 1 gbit and almost all servers don't have that available for me.
  - msh 3y ago
    I have one 1 gigabit and can fill it out using several services, downloading from steam and the playstation store will max out my one gigabits. But in general I think if you build it people will find usecases for it.
- wil421 3y ago
  Your company will give you 25gbit bandwidth on a VPN?
3y ago

pkaye 3y ago

Are there benchmarks websites that show average fixed broadband performance for Switzerland? Switzerland is not that in the rankings on Speedtest for example.

rhino369 3y ago
I'm skeptical too.
sschueller 3y ago
I am not aware of such a site. Customer to customer I have 25 gbits, uplink I believe is 100gbits shared between each 48 port which can have modules between 1 and 25gbit. Init7 is the only ISP I know here that offers this speed. Most people are happy with 1gbit or less and there are also still many areas that do not have fiber plus the over 600k illegal p2mp connections that can't be used. Also many of the others have an insane oversubscribe factor. More information on their setup they presented in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmJCzMeIBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmJCzMeIBo

bsder 3y ago

The US had exactly this back in late 1990s. Then the US government let the telcos off the hook for carrying all traffic. And thus the shitty system we have now.

toast0 3y ago
Since congress never repealed the Telecom act of 1996, I wonder if the FCC could decide to reinstate it, as long as they applied it evenly instead of exempting cable like they did before; leading telcos to complain and it to not be enforced at all. Of course, enforcement on telcos was pretty iffy too. While initial DSL rollouts were subject to linesharing, expanded rollouts were designed to hit the exception so linesharing wasn't required. Additionally, it was pretty common for telcos to have retail prices less than the price for linesharing, so competitive carriers couldn't have price parity without losing money even before considering operating costs. If we get new legislation, we really need something with real separation; the company managing last mile should be separate from the company providing IP services. A last mile provider would be on the hook to get (ethernet) packets between my house and somewhere nearby where the IP service provider picks them up. This could be at a central exchange building, a local internet exchange if one exists, cable company headend locations, or somewhere mutually agreeable otherwise. But, there's not really any appetite for this kind of thing, so we're kind of stuck. sigh

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

metaphor 3y ago

> Easiest solution would be what we have in Switzerland. If you want that government money, the fiber you lay needs to be accessible to any competitor otherwise you aren't getting any of it. How would you square that against one of the core objectives of targeting rural, unserved/underserved communities? E.g. consider Iowa[1], a single state which is ~3.5x larger in land (144,660 km^2), ~63% smaller in population (3.2 million), and ~90% lower density (22/km^2) compared to Switzerland...never mind that there are roughly a dozen other states in similar or more challenging situations. Suppose a small business establishes infra in a way that must be "accessible to any competitor". After laying the ground work and establishing a customer base, what's to stop an asymmetrically well-capitalized competitor from stepping in with the intent of swallowing a relatively small loss to operationally bleed out a much smaller incumbent with no margin? E.g. if your local addressable market were half the population of Iowa with service aggressively priced at what Switzerland customers pay, we'd still be talking about a notional revenue cap that's ~1% of what whales like AT&T and Verizon with growing fiber segments generate annually. I can imagine how outcomes might work out favorably for consumers when the addressable market is a small, wealthy sovereign nation with significant population density...much less when considering rural communities in fly-over states that the rest of the country has a tendency to neglect yet whose economic contributions remain significant. [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/IA/ https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/IA/

maxerickson 3y ago
I live in a small town in a flyover area. I have 300/10 cable (up might be more, I don't bump into it). It doesn't do me much good to have access to 1 gig symmetric that costs more.
- metaphor 3y ago
  It sounds like you're not part of the addressable market[1][2]: > BEAD prioritizes unserved locations that have no internet access or that only have access under 25/3 Mbps and underserved locations only have access under 100/20 Mbps. [1] https://www.internetforall.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/BEAD%20Info%20Sheet%20-%20IFA%20Launch%20-%20Final.pdf https://www.internetforall.gov/sites/default/files/2022-05/B... [2] https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/home

thayne 3y ago

> 25gbit symmetrical available for only around $70/month Wow. Most places I've lived in the US that price will get you maybe 50Mbit down 10Mbit up. If you're lucky.

Hinrik 3y ago

>Luckily Init7 took them to court and they are now back peddling. You mean back-pedaling. Peddling is something different.