Muni Fiber and Politics

Wed Aug 6 16:39:09 UTC 2014

> On Aug 5, 2014, at 10:56, Eugeniu Patrascu <eugen at imacandi.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 8:26 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >>
>> >> This one is a bad idea cause you have lots of people pushing fiber through
>> >> pipes with active fiber in them... and their incentives not to screw up
>> >> other people's glass are... unclear?  :-)
>> >
>> > Not really, if one company starts making mistakes, the other will also
>> > mistake their cables. It's like a working mexican standoff :)
>> >
>> >
>> 
>> In reality, Mexican standoffs are often fatal.
> 
> If you blink.
>  
>> >> Oh, wait: the conduit installer isn't a contractor, they're a monopoly?
>> > The people pushing fiber through the conduits are contractors. There are a
>> > handful of companies licensed to operate this.
>> 
>> May be workable, but seems more expensive than operating cross connects in a serving wire center with little or no plausible benefit.
> 
> So how is blowing microfibre in some tubes more expensive? You pay a one off installation fee and then a small monthly rate for the circuit (payable yearly).

And then when you switch providers, you pay all of that again instead of a quick move of a cross connect inside a building. 

> 
> The really nice and geeky part is that you can actually choose how your fiber will run, so if you want diverse paths to a location you can achieve that with certainty.

Not particularly important to 99.999+% of residential users. 

>  
>> >
>> >
>> >> No, that's even worse.
>> >
>> >
>> > It's not perfect, but it works.
>> 
>> People say that about windows. I don't use it, either.
> 
> :) It works because it's very cheap to get high speed internet into all kinds of areas, especially residential ones.

So is what I am proposing. In fact, I'm pretty sure my proposal is cheaper, especially in the long run. 