Dark Fiber: A Case In Point

Anonymous Coward writes "CNN has posted a story regarding the overabundance of fiber lines that were laid during the 90s gold rush along Oregons Interstate 5 corridor. While over 140,000 miles of fiber has been laid 95 percent of the fiber goes unused and roughly half of the companies who laid the fiber are now gone. The article goes on to further say that even with all that fiber, there is little availability to the consumer because either the local connections aren't there or, because of monopolization by phone companies, too expensive. Even for businesses."

Comments

Re:If I didnt' have a day job

[nocomment]

i'd sell it there but I wouldn't dig it up. I'd just ignore the person who bought it from me until they eventually stopped sending me emails.

Suggestions for recovery?

[peculiarmethod]

We should either:

1. Take donations from the open-fiber community to purchase these lines and turn them into open source peeer-to-peer Bluegrass mp3 and ogg file trading networks

2. Turn Oregon into a large Beowolf cluster and assign it the task of figuring out how to decentralized the Internet the Al Gore Invented

3. Dig all the lines up and make the worlds largest light-brite

4. Ask Microsoft to buy into a Ma Bell and bury enough copper lines to nullify the use of the fibers

pm

They had....

[craenor]

They had so much fiber, their whole company went down the toilet.

Dark Fiber

[scrytch]

Choose not the dark side of the fiber, for dark fiber leads to constipation, and constipation leads to *ZWONNNG* *GLITCH* (sound of a muppet getting its head lightsabered off)

Re:Dark Fiber in the front yard.

[Xerithane]

Shortly after I moved into my house, almost five years ago, Bellsouth paid me $400 so that they could lay fiber along the roadside in my front yard.

You should have asked for a drop to be installed that you could hook into, and waive the $400. Pay them routing fees, and be straight on their tier. You just need to negotiate better ^_^