Is Google Fiber a model for Municipal Networks?

Mon Feb 4 04:56:15 UTC 2013

When comparing costs of building (per home passed/connected), it is also
important to see if those quoted costs include the regulatory costs of
dealing with cities.

If a municipal project won't suffer costs of negotiating for
diggging/building permits, already has the land to build the "CO", and
won't be delayed by stalled paperwork, this could represent a
significant difference compared to an incumbent that constant hits a
brick wall of bureaucracy which cost money and delays the project. (In
Canada, a delay of a couple of months can cause a delay of 1 year due to
winter).

In the case of Google, with cities begging on their knees to get
Google's project, I suspect they didn't have many problems getting the
city's cooperation. Yet, there have been stories of delays due to
bureaucracy.

In the case of Verizon, I suspect those bureaucracy costs are much higher.

The other aspect which you need to compare is existing infrastructure.
If there are already conduits between CO and neighbourhood, and there is
room inside, you can just blow your new fibre through them which costs a
lot less than having to dig and install new conduits.

(and "space available" is one of the issues that lead telcos to go GPON
instead of wanting 1:1 strand to home ratios since that requires much
more conduit capacity the closer you get to your point of aggregation.

So when comparing both Verizon and Google projects, you need to factor
exactly how much needed to be built for them, and how much will be
needed for you. If you have 0 existing conduits and need to build 100%
of your FTTH plant, while Verizon had x% of conduits already built, then
your cost per home may be higher.

BTW, out of curiosity, how many spare copper pairs were traditionally
provisionsed on a cable run that passed 100 homes ? And in a fibre
system, do you keep the same ratio of extra strands for each home passed ?