Trading Right-Of-Way For High Bandwidth?

eldub asks: "I want to trade several miles of right-of-way for an OC3 or T3 line. A local phone company needs to cross several miles of my ranch in order to lay a new fiber backbone. They are asking for a ridiculous easement granting full access not only to the affected areas but the entire property. That being said, I'm thinking of asking them for something equally ridiculous--a full T3 or OC3 line dropped into the house in exchange for the privilege of digging around in my dirt." This seems like a fair thing to ask for, but how likely is a company to grant such a boon, even if they do want to use your property to run their wires?

"I'm not sure exactly what I should ask for--I'd like to enumerate everything I would need to plug a computer at the house and have mucho grande broadband access. Any of this crowd have any tips?"

Comments

They'll probably say 'sure'.

[danpbrowning]

You may get them to agree with you, but they'll still charge you the cross-connect fee to your ISP, and your ISP will charge you bucks too. Unless you get them to agree to pay the cross connect and the ISP fees for you (or have the telco *be* your ISP).

Class D IP space?

[schnurble]

CID 3:

This has got to be the best way of getting bandwidth, for close to nothing. I'd ask for at least a T3, make sure they include a CSU/DSU, and a full class D IP range. Then you could run fiber to all of your neighbors and charge them for access. :)

CID 5:

First off, don't ask for a full Class D, unless you're planning on giving the entire town internet access, or literally wall-papering your house with terminals, you'd need at most a 16-IP class D, or in techno-speak, a /28 IP block.

Guys. Please. If you're going to reply and spout off smart-sounding technical terms, at least use the correct ones.

A class A is a /8 (16,777,216 IPs), a class B is a /16 (65,536 IPs), and a class C is a /24 (256 IPs). Class D IP space is -MULTICAST-. Not unicast IP space. It's multicast (224.0.0.0). It's not the size of an IP block. And given that noone uses classful IP anymore (at least, not anyone with a clue), asking an ISP for a Class anything block will probably get inquisitive stares and/or laughter.

That said, we'll move on now to the "ask for a guaranteed minimum of 400Mbit/s full duplex" comment.

Basically, you're full of crap. OC3 is 155Mbit, an OC12 is 622Mbit. There's nothing in between. Telco's dont run Ethernet (100xX or 1000xX) over WAN, so where did you get this "100mbit per fiber" crap? You really expect to take an underground-rated singlemode pair of fiber $TELCO ran into your back yard and plug it into some $1200 Linksys switch? And, do you -really- think some telco is going to just GIVE you this kind of bandwidth? The cheapest I've seen bandwidth sold for is around $400 PER MEGABIT per MONTH. You expect $TELCO to give away $62,000 (OC3) in revenue a MONTH just to drop a conduit on this guy's property? Where do you buy your crack, and can I have some?

Remember, telco's would sell their own mothers for a price. And not necessarily a high one, either.

Here's a more realistic request.

Ask for a 768K FT1 or frame + transit, a /28 (16 IPs, 14 useable), a DSU and router (nothing fancy, a cisco 2611 with WIC-1T would do nicely), and offer to take the rep out to lunch. Even this is probably a stretch, but it's one HELL of a lot more likely than the previous suggestions.

If you act like an ass, and start getting pie-in-the-sky-dreams of an OC12 for your bathroom (like previous posters), complete with termination and routing equipment, $TELCO is going to tell you to stuff it where the sun don't shine, and alter their plans to move about 5 miles around you and you get nothing.

-j

You need much more info

[anticypher]

Let me point out there is some serious mis-information in some of these posts. Ignore any post with the term class-D IP address. That's multicast. You aren't even at the stage of getting internet connectivity at this point.

First, you will have to approach the telco, and possibly local councils who have copies of the proposed line, maybe even the state PUC, and gather as much info as possible. Find out where the cable will start and end, and what other easements they are obtaining. Perhaps your neighbors would also like to share in an additional line for internet access. Find out what kinds of equipment will be connected at each end of the cable. Find out everything.

Educate yourself on telco terminology, since it has nothing to do with the internet. Start with capacity reference and do searches on the terms "Class 5" "tandem switches" "SS7" "IXC" "ILEC/CLEC".

Then go down to the local county planning office, and ask around about easements and payments, or ask a licensed realtor. The clause for full access to a property is normal, because they want to use your road to get to the cable, and you might block it in the future. You can negotiate a specific route for them to use, but you can't just give an easement without access. It is pretty normal for an easement to be given for a one time payment or a continuing royalty scheme. With continuing royalties, make sure you have a lawyer and accountant review everything otherwise the cheques dry up after a year or two, the same probably goes for an internet connection.

Now we'll get into the realm of guesswork.

I'd guess that the telco is not laying a backbone, not if its something tiny like a T3 or OC3 (T3 is a layer 2 signalling spec, OCx is the physical spec). It sounds like a trunk (errr, trunkgroup) connecting two COs or a CO directly with an IXC tandem. Chances are they aren't just laying a single fibre, it will be a cable with 8 or 12 or more pairs, capacity for a predicted 20 years of growth. If they are hauling OC3/12/48 on monomode fibre, then one pair in the cable will probably be dedicated to SS7 traffic, and can't be subverted for anything else. The other pairs will be earmarked for leasing to customers over the years, and if there isn't a customer willing to pay market rates, the accountants will not allow it to be used for lesser revenue streams. Be forewarned, accountants are the enemy, even if the engineers and negotiators like your idea!

If you do get them to loan you a spare pair, you will need to get the telco end terminated at an ISP's router located in the same building. So you will have to find out if there is any colo space in the CO, and then start negotiations with the ISP. The ISP will probably have a big cisco router like this and you will probably have to buy an additional optical line card for them, or somehow pay them enough money to ammortize their investment over the life of your connection. I would charge US$600/month for a simple connection to one of my OC3/ATM line cards, plus additional for IP addresses, management, bandwith guarantees, traffic, etc. At your end, you will have to buy a small router capable of handling the conversion from optical and providing you with a 10/100 ethernet connection.

On the plus side, if you are going in for a full optical connection, you should lease a block of at least 16 or 32 IP addresses from the ISP, and have room to add extra devices. Chances are, if they are giving you a connection on one of their big routers, they would love to sell you more than just a single static IP address (actually, you will have to have at least a /30 block, one IP address for the router, broadcast, net, and 1 for you).

If you are truly far away from any big urban ISP coverage for high speed internet, you might consider adding a wireless card to your router, and running an antenna up high on your property, and letting your neighbors share in the excess bandwidth. Or find a local ISP who would love the extra revenue from locating a router/wireless on your property to sell to your neighbors, and let them deal with the business and support issues while you just have your own hardline connection.

No matter what you do, this will cost you money. Telcos don't want to have to engineer a simple internet connection for a rancher just so he can download his pr0n faster, it just isn't their business. Their business is laying optical interconnects between plants, so that is what you will have to ask them for, and leave the internet stuff until later.

You have a better chance if you can get a lot of technical help from the bitheads at a local ISP, or by approaching a local community college with courses in networking. Maybe you can purchase your own fibre cable and have it laid at the same time, and then plan on reselling the excess capacity to cell phone operators and ISPs. A cell site on your own fibre can earn you some revenue as well. Email with questions, and put slashdot in the subject or it gets auto-deleted.

the AC