Broadband Black Holes > roll your own

roll your own

You must be kidding? Do you know what it cost to lay fiber and the BS you need to go thru to get right of ways? And at the end of the day you got dark fiber...which we in the US have 50% more than we need.
Then what are you going to put on the end of this fiber...happen to have a cable company or ISP handy?
Look at all the fiber companies struggling to stay afloat...Fibernet, Metro Media Fiber just a few come to mind.
There isn't enough traffic to make it worth while. So my friend if you've got about 8-10 mil laying around...why don't you start laying your own fiber...or have you become spritually flacid too.

Thats what we did here. Rather simple really, just run multi-mode fibre along the backside of everyone's buildings and installed surplus ethernet switches in everyone's basement for the conversion to cat5 for running inside the buildings.

Not too difficult when your motivated to bypass the somewhat lackluster "broadband" offerings from the cable and dsl providers.

Instead of whining, we did something about it.

reply to odnc
Because unlike the Swedes, the local governments in the US don't willy-nilly allow people to dig up right of ways. Could you image the chaos if a 300 to 400 home subdivision just decided to lay their own fiber network? Then where are they going to connect too? The local bell company, I think not! The baby bells have to much self interest in controlling the deployment (read slowdown) of broadband to just allow competition.

The real issue is not regulation or the lack of, nor is it cost (as the government and taxpayer pretty much subsidice the cost of broadband with universal fees), but the lack of direct that the baby bells and cable companies have. It seems that every two years they change direct to take advantage of the last/greatest technology, but never quite get to the deployment phase, so the process loops and repeats endlessly costing billions upon billions of dollars. If they wanted to, they could have deployment of services to everywhere in a few years, they just need to make a commitment.

Jim
--
"May we all get fiber to our homes and offices before we're too old or dead to enjoy it." -- Che Guevara

First rule of fiber optics: you do not talk about fiber optics

Why would there be chaos in the 400 home subdivision? I recall the cable companies doing the same thing during the 1970's.

The bells will lease a T3 to anyone, so $5000-$20,000/month divided amongst 400 homes isnt a bad monthly fee for the speed.

The roll out cost will be a burden, but when its time to sell your house, you should be able to recover the cost.

You might get a T3, but would you get reliable service. As for the cable companies, they got right of way permits from the local governments, they did not just start digging.

Jim

T carriers are reliable, its almost a law that they be reliable. The cable companies needed permits for encroachment. The owner of a property may dig a trench across his property and connect it to his neighbours trench if he so chooses. Thus a long trench is formed for the fibre's path. Many "subdivisions" are laid out in a cloverleaf pattern, so a trench through everyone's back yard would not encroach upon public property.