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You just included a lot of land nobody lives on in that number. The US only has 4.09 million miles of road, that’s roughly how much fiber you need to get it to

by Retric 3y ago

You just included a lot of land nobody lives on in that number. The US only has 4.09 million miles of road, that’s roughly how much fiber you need to get it to everyone’s driveway. At ~1-10$ a foot we’re talking ~20-200billion dollars etc and most of it’s already in the ground or dangling from utility poles. We don’t have fiber everywhere because we didn’t mandate it the way we mandated electricity or phone lines to every home. It was billions of subsidies without sufficient strings so of course companies only built the most profitable networks.

infecto 3y ago
I don't follow your last part but yes, in the US the federal government subsidized the electrification of rural America and with a add-on to give loans to telephone companies that wanted to expand service at the same time. I do not believe it is so much of a "mandate" but a subsidy that allowed for the majority of expansion. At this point most of rural America is already serviced by cell, satellite and now starlink that in a lot of areas it may not be cost effective. I say cost effective not from a corporate profitability but a non-profit community run initiative.
- Retric 3y ago
  The last part is this: The government already handed over the full cost of Fiber to the home everywhere. Just the Federal government alone has handed out over 90 Billion dollars for rural high speed internet. That estimate I gave also included profitable areas, the unprofitable rural network requiring strings is only a fraction of the total cost. The money just didn’t have enough strings to require companies taking it to actually build out their networks everywhere.
somenameforme 3y ago
Your cost estimate is not really reasonable for what it would cost to lay fiber out in the middle of nowhere at extreme scale using labor sources that don't currently exist. But the differences here are so stark that I'm not even going to argue against that, beyond what I've done. Let's go with it, while also considering you also have maintenance costs of course - quite large ones in fact when you're obligated to support and maintain wiring/towers even out in the middle of nowhere. Now let's compare to Starlink. That system was privately designed, built, and deployed for a total cost of ~$10 billion. And while I don't know their maintenance costs, I do know they're now already turning a profit with a relatively small number of users. So that's providing complete and stable connectivity for the entire globe, at half of the bottom of an unrealistically low price for wiring a single country. And you get vastly better reliability, and near 0 labor maintenance. I don't think this is particularly close.

by Retric 3y ago

infecto 3y ago

I don't follow your last part but yes, in the US the federal government subsidized the electrification of rural America and with a add-on to give loans to telephone companies that wanted to expand service at the same time. I do not believe it is so much of a "mandate" but a subsidy that allowed for the majority of expansion. At this point most of rural America is already serviced by cell, satellite and now starlink that in a lot of areas it may not be cost effective. I say cost effective not from a corporate profitability but a non-profit community run initiative.

Retric 3y ago
The last part is this: The government already handed over the full cost of Fiber to the home everywhere. Just the Federal government alone has handed out over 90 Billion dollars for rural high speed internet. That estimate I gave also included profitable areas, the unprofitable rural network requiring strings is only a fraction of the total cost. The money just didn’t have enough strings to require companies taking it to actually build out their networks everywhere.

somenameforme 3y ago

Your cost estimate is not really reasonable for what it would cost to lay fiber out in the middle of nowhere at extreme scale using labor sources that don't currently exist. But the differences here are so stark that I'm not even going to argue against that, beyond what I've done. Let's go with it, while also considering you also have maintenance costs of course - quite large ones in fact when you're obligated to support and maintain wiring/towers even out in the middle of nowhere. Now let's compare to Starlink. That system was privately designed, built, and deployed for a total cost of ~$10 billion. And while I don't know their maintenance costs, I do know they're now already turning a profit with a relatively small number of users. So that's providing complete and stable connectivity for the entire globe, at half of the bottom of an unrealistically low price for wiring a single country. And you get vastly better reliability, and near 0 labor maintenance. I don't think this is particularly close.