Muni broadband sucks (was: New minimum speed for US broadband connections)

Thu Jun 3 07:27:13 UTC 2021

On Thu, 3 Jun 2021, Masataka Ohta wrote:

> Mark Tinka wrote:
>
>> Which is the Stokab model.
>
> Does it use single star?
>
>> The city should provide base infrastructure, lease it to operators atthe 
>> same price, and get out of the way. End of.
>
> With single star topology, that's fine.

https://stokab.se/download/18.310b3d5c174c5513aec263/1601471204836/Framtidens%20kommunikationsn%C3%A4t%20LOWRES.pdf

It's in swede-crypt, but it boils down to single strand of fiber from a 
central area node, to the basement, one for each apartment. However, the 
building owner has to arrange for the cabling within the building. It's 
single star, and typically the "node" it's all connected to will serve 
thousands of apartments. So an ISP will colocate in this "node" and can 
then rent fibers to provide FTTH services, at a fixed monthly cost (last I 
heard it was in the ~10USD a month range).

Stokab isn't alone in this model, they're not the most successful, there 
are better examples of this.

Sweden is also home to a lot of worse examples, all from "muni networks" 
that will be L2 transport providers, that will have L3 networks, to the 
ones who are L2/L3 but also sell services themselves. It's a zoo.

There is muni broadband that sucks and there is muni broadband that is 
great. Without defining what kind of muni broadband we're talking about 
it's impossible to have a productive discussion.

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se