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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."
The reason 95% percent of lines arne't being used is because that would create more bandwidth, and lower the cost of said bandwidth and the phone companies wouldn't have the justification of hosing you monthly.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
roughly half of the companies who laid the fiber are now gone
So how does the ownership of these lines pass on? Can just anybody take the existing lines, plug in, and make use of them - or do they have to be bought?
If there were one large company that could buy out and connect most these unused lines, they could probably make something out of them. Since they're just sitting unused, I'd imagine it wouldn't cost too much to buy ownership
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.
I live in HIGHLY rural area, consisting mostly of lakehouses used as weekend getaway accomodations.
At the time, I thought that the installation of fiber in my front yard might eventually lead to allowing me to get a really high-speed broadband connection. To this day, however, if I were to call Bellsouth, the best they could offer is an ISDN connection, as DSL is unavailable.
But, I guess that it leaves Bellsouth's options open for the future.
Somehow I don't see it as happening this way.
Ever go to a car lot and see all of those cars just sitting around. The dealer thinks he knows what they are worth, and he is not going to sell them unless he gets that price.
The same goes for the Telco's, and fiber holders. Even if they are way out of whack as to the actual value of the dark fiber.
So they will sit on dark fiber until someone comes along that is willing to pay their insane prices.
Fast-forward 30 years, and they were all running at capacity. The fiber is there, it's not going to go away. 5, 10, maybe 15 years down the road, someone who picks it up cheap now will make a fortune off of it.
--Dave
--
nich
37 - what does it stand for really...
The bottleneck is not on the internet; it is between the POP and the average consumer, who is generally too stingy to get a faster connection than dialup.
/. via a PC so much any more, as it is about sexy stuff like streaming video, and VoIP, and its about half a dozen devices in your home with a full connection to the outside world. I don't think its to far fetched to think that your average home in the future will require (and use) 10 or 20 times the bandwidth they use today.
:)
I really don't see stinginess as the reason there. Virtually everybody I know that still uses dialup does so not because of money, but because the service still isn't available to them. At least in my city, there is still way too much copper in them thar lines...
Wireless solutions are taking over the last mile.
Yeah, but wireless is still insecure, and relatively slow. All the providers know that fiber into the home still remains the holy grail of the industry, so to speak. Its not about reading
Its like my grandfather used to say, good fiber is never wasted....
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Even applying conservative estimates to costs of construction, the companies spent more than $570 million laying long-distance fiber cables across Oregon, and they shelled out at least $265 million more equipping the 5% of fiber that is used
It costs almost 10 times as much to light a fiber as it does to lay it according to these numbers. Most of the cost in laying fiber isn't the fiber itself, but the labor and the property rights involved in doing it. So, you may as well lay 95% more fiber than you really need because you might need it some day and it doesn't cost you that much more. You'd be insane to try to terminate all of those fibers though since they cost so damn much.
Furthermore, bandwidth is a matter of supply and demand, and as long as demand isn't increasing, increasing supply will force down prices and make your business less profitable. Let's say everybody started needing DS-3 speeds into their home. Somebody would come in and offer that speed for a hefty premium, but as demand for that service built up, people would come into lower the prices to get into that market. Eventually you end up paying the same amount for your DS-3 as you did for your DSL and you've got a few more of those fibers on the coast glowing.
The problem is that there's nothing driving bandwidth demand substantially above what it is right now. Most people will tolerate modem speeds, and those that won't are mostly pretty happy with DSL or cable. A few of us want more bandwidth, and because we aren't the majority of users we will have to pay handsomly for it. As long as the majority of users are content with the bandwidth they have there is no incentive to expand their networks.
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Since the companies that put it there are no longer around, who owns them? I mean, what would stop someone from tapping into it. Or did ma gobble them up for $.000015 a mile only to not use it. Where's my any-media-ever-produced-any-time-I-want-it-for-nex t-to-nothing? Huh, where is it. I was promised in the early 90s by many many commercials that by now we'd have this. I don't see it. Someone has some explaining to do. What was it they said...and the company that'll bring it to you, ATT. I wonder if I google search for and image of thier CEO with his pants of fire I'll find it.
I live in Washington state, in a small rural town called Omak. Years ago there was a huge hype on bringing Fiber into Okanogan county.
Thousands where spent to lay this fiber, Miles upon miles of fiber. It's been in place for some time now, and is being used by the one local ISP who pushed for the fiber.
Though as in the subject of this article, a majority of the fiber is dark. We have OC-192 capacity, of which at least 2 Megabits is being used. Perhaps more, but not much.
Now, the people who pushed so hard for this fiber are fighting it, trying to lay fault for the expense and misuse of at the feet of various parties involved. All of this blaming in the midst of a community lagging behind in the digital age.
Computational Madness in a round package.
Phone companies will light up the fiber when it makes fiscal sense to do so.
Except there is little compelling reason to do so...
Folks forget that while running fiber is cheap (relatively so), switching and last mile is not.
I sat through a small community presentation last month on how they want to overbuild the town (population 5,000) with fiber to every home, business, etc. "It'll only cost $2500 per location" was their estimate (double that and take twice as long and you might have a final number:-) ).
Even at their number, who wants to take a $12.5 million risk when at $20/mo. for resi phone service (half of which at most can be allocated for repayment of infrastructure), takes 20+ months for a marginal return? And I'm foolishly assuming 100% marketshare - something I'm certain the incumbant won't let me have, let alone other competitors.
The truth is that the same dollar invested elsewhere generates greater return. Nobody will pay $100/month for phone, even though their current $16-25/month (pre-tax) line sucks. They'll tolerate suck lines at $16-$25 while bitching about it all the time.
Meanwhile, many of these long-line fiber networks still expect the great returns promised in their business plan (written during dot-com). They'll keep asking pre-telco collapse prices until their assets are locked up in bankruptcy.
Look at how many people bitch about taxes, but keep voting Democrat... don't expect a change any time soon in wireline service.
*scoove*
First off, laying fiber is -expensive-, in the thousands of dollars/mile. So when runs were mapped out, even if they planned on actually -using- only 2 strands of fiber, they would go ahead and lay a bundle 'for future use,' because it'd be more cost-effective than laying new fiber in the future. And we're talking usually a bundle of at least 8, and that's for a low traffic area (ie, on the far west side of Salt Lake Valley, with only 2 buildings spliced into the particular loop I mapped, no residential, and very sparse commercial). In downtown areas, a bundle of 16 is on the slim side.
Secondly, most of you probably don't know how difficult is it to work fiber optic. You don't just 'tap in,' you splice into a specific strand that has to be active on the telco end (most buildings are connected to a loop at two separate points, for redundancy in case one 'loop to building' leg gets severed), and you have to have the optic hardware, which is certainly not cheap. For fiber optic splices, things must be -precisely- done, ends ground and capped within very narrow tolerances for error. And if you think Joe Sixpack has trouble with CAT5...
And so, you have the price of laying it (which is why there's so much dark fiber in the first place, it was laid when the future actually looked bright), the price of hardware, the price of labor and expertise to tap into even an existing loop...
Yeah, the average consumer is likely to NEVER see him/herself with a fiber hookup, no matter how much 'dark fiber' there is...
There's no wrong way, to eat a Rhesus...
I don't see stinginess as the reason, but I can understand why some people would think so. The people I know who use dialup generally have other options available. However, they don't see a reason to trade their $10/month dialup for a $50/month cable/DSL connection. If the content isn't worth $600/year, people aren't going to pay.
Let's face it, the only reason the current content requires the higher bandwidth is because most web designers don't design for their audience. Every day I see pages (& emails) which waste bandwidth for no reason. For example, I just saw an email yesterday that used light blue text. It was an HTML mail. The HTML which was included was *HUGE*, but all it did was turn the text blue. The message would have been easier to read if it was sent as plain ascii. Now, who in their right mind is going to pay $40 more per month to read blue email?
The post to which I am replying is one of the few posts here that demonstrates an actual understanding of the economics involved in laying and lighting fiber.
To expand a little bit: Most of the existing fiber was laid in the "build it and they will come" dot-com era. There's a huge amount of it primarily for two reasons: (1) there were a lot of companies doing it independently--all hoping to get a big chunk of the bandwidth pie, and (2) when laying fiber, it makes economic sense to lay a lot of it, because (as pointed out) much of the cost in laying fiber is in the process of laying the fiber (lots of digging, etc.) and not in the actual fiber itself.
We now know that "build it and they will come," one of the assumptions of this business model, didn't quite happen--or at least didn't happen as quickly as what these companies' business models predicted: The voracious demand for long-haul capacity just isn't there today. Also, as a direct result of this capacity glut, the price (and profitability) of long haul bandwidth has decreased much faster than what these business models depended on. There's simply way too much supply. As for the companies that haven't yet fallen by the wayside, they're lighting only a fraction of the fiber that they own, simply because that fraction is capable of carrying the bandwidth that the company is currently able to sell.
Another thing to keep in mind is that almost none of this fiber is "last mile" (if any of it is at all). It's all comprised of "long haul" routes, e.g. connecting NYC and DC. So if you wanted to lease a dark fiber route from one metro area to another, you probably could, but it's not like the bandwidth companies are prepared to light up an OC3 to your suburban residence.
Finally, another key issue seems to be ignored here: IT COSTS MONEY TO LIGHT FIBER. Lots of money. The optical equipment itself is very expensive, and of course there are the operational costs of managing a transport network. Just as airlines don't want to spend money to fly empty planes from city to city (they still have to pay the crew, maintenance costs, fuel costs, etc. regardless of whether a flight carries 1 passenger or 100), bit pipe companies don't want to spend money to manage additional fiber when they aren't even saturating the fiber that they currently have lit.
Of course, it's also possible that the telcos have already run fiber to everyone's doorstep, but they're holding out on us because they want to "hold the man down" or for some other nefarious reason...
Cheers,
Jeremy
The IEEE has an article entitled "the economics of DSL regulation" which clearly outlines that the Baby Bells have an unfair monopoly position over bandwidth.
Using this monopoly over the last mile, they jack up prices (so they do not poach their T1 business).
The reason the demand is not there is because the prices are artifically high.
Bandwidth is the only economically unscalable part of the internet. (see another IEEE article on this subject) -- and it's for a reason -- the price of bandwidth is ARTIFICALLY HIGH.
This has been an economic crime.
There is no free market for bandwidth.
I would really like to point out that the US has fallen so far behind in broadband services compared to other countries. I was looking at a Japanese magazine the other day and there was and ad for ADSL 12Megabit service to the home for around 1995 Yen per month, about 17 bucks! A few people have commented about, who needs dark fiber besides telcos and realted companies? I can think of several companies related to the entertainment business. I used to work at Warner Brothers Studios and we had a few OC-3 and a few OC-12 circuits interconnecting various facilities. We shared files, and provided a host of services to other divisions. It was great.. it was a part of a grander scheme at the studio,but thanks to the merger with TBS. The project was canned. This is just one example of how dark fiber can be used, granted that not everyone has the requirements of a motion picture studio. But you're only limited by your creativity. I am very frustrated that dark fiber isn't more readily available. I can think of so many uses and potential useful business that would make great use of dark fibre..But it's financialy not feasible.. Unfortunately, the telco monopolies are fat, lazy and their own financial problems, are a result of their own ineptness. ARgh!
I had a discussion with the other geeks in my office a while back about how fast we can ramp up the expectations of high-bandwidth amongst our customers. We came to the conclusion that it is likely to be many years before the high-bandwidth-everywhere (I mean more than 1 megabit per second) to all homes and all businesses cheaply.
Here is why:
1. Assume you can light all that fiber and run it effectively around the world
2. Connect the last mile
3. Now that everyone has the capability, route the traffic
After all this, we came to the conclusion that dial-up is here to stay for the duration of our careers; unless traffic is routed in a fundamentally different way than it is now (more efficiently) or a revolution in router technology happens so that a router box capable of handling the traffic becomes dirt cheap, really small and fiber ready out of the box. Otherwise, no ISP will ever be able to afford the routing requirements alone of high-bandwidth for everybody even if the fiber is there and lit.
Any one of the steps or sub-steps can be a difficult problem to solve. Though I would like to see it, I am convinced that the broadband for everybody will be a slow (decades) and painful process.
There are those that will bitch all day about regulation, de-regulation, etc etc, but the fact is that 22% of american households with the internet have broadband. I think that qualifies as the post-early-adopter market. The problem as I see it is that many have fast internet access at work, and dont have any desire to have it at home. Unless you weave your life around the internet, there is not yet a compelling reason to have broadband. What the hell do you do with 100mbps? Seriously? I dont mind waiting 30 seconds for my personal email to download. I dont need to download music or movies, and I dont run my own server.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Another thing to add is the advance in fibre terminating gear, bandwidth increases even faster than Moores Law predicts for transistors.
Every new fibre that's lit up has the capacity of serveral fibres using the previous generation equipment.
IIRC, long haul DWDM does 400Gb per fibre.
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- Watch video.
Of what? There's still no good solution for streaming first-run movies over the 'net (Movielink is a first step, and a small one at that). I'm not aware of any major broadcasters making a lot of content available, either.
From where? The costs of serving up 300kbps streams are so high that many outlets (e.g., CNN, MSNBC) are charging for their content. Who's gonna pony up for fatter streams? Servers and access cost $$.
- Share files.
What kind of files? You better believe copyright owners would focus more on file sharing of their intellectual property if it were super easy.
- Voice service.
Current residential broadband service is just fine for voice. Granted, the upstream can't handle multiple simultaneous sessions without significant compression, but the current broadband access speeds will handle VOIP for a while.
How would you store the data that would stream down the pipe? Big hard drives are cheap, but we would have to redefine "big." 250GB wouldn't last long.
Without question content will come, and uses would pop up that we haven't even thought of yet. But I just don't see the need right now.
I'm not being critical -- just curious. What *would* you do with 10Mbps? How much a month would you pay for it? It wouldn't be cheap. The companies that spend the bucks to lay the pipe and hook up will need to make money. Would you pay $150/month for super high-speed Internet service?
-Ray
Prices and reliability of equipment to operate the fiber and subsequently lack of demand have left the fiber dormant on the pole. I asked the guys laying the fiber about when it would be available, and they said then that they expected the necessary switching technology to be developed in about 6 months. Other people I spoke with at the time said that the optical switches of the time only had a life expectancy of a few months, which was prohibitive of deploying residential connections. z1