Slashdot Mirror
Last-Mile Fiber Optic
Johnny Mnemonic writes "The newsletter "The Town Paper" tracks the development of "traditional" new developments--developments with integrated shopping, parks, and that are pedestrian friendly. Their recent issue has an article that describes a new community in Issaquah WA that has, among it's interesting features: a wired LAN in every home, free community Intranet, and a choice for a fiber optic connection. It is probably no coincidence that Microsoft is planning on building 3 million square feet of office space there. How much is a pre-wired house worth to you? What will this do for community building?"
This is a pretty good plan--the "last mile" has always been the slow point in internet connections.
This will also do wonders for the local economy; having built-in fiber will be a massive attraction to tech businesses. I daresay we'll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing from now on.
This is a very common thing in Washington, especially in Issaquah. I'm not sure if I've visted this location, but I went to one like it in the same area... they had a little courtyard type deal with a little cafe, a couple restaurants, a grocery store, and a video rental place. There is also complete excersize and sports facilites, a community garden, a large playground, etc. The tie-in with Microsoft only makes sense... nearly everyone that lives there is somehow involved with them.
sig.
Did someone try this around the turn of the century with the works even being paid in company script to be used in company stores?
Of course, it seems more cost-effective to just blanket the area with Wi-Fi...
:)
Just picking! I know what you meant!
Blanketing the area with Wi-Fi misses the point behind this....ie:easily upgradeable last mile delivery. Current Wi-Fi speeds are great for small areas, but shared 11Mbit (or 54 or whatever) will only last so long. Fiber, however, has nearly unlimited capacity, for all intents and purposes.
Put Wi-Fi in, and you'll be replacing it in 5 or 6 years due to larger bandwidth needs. Use fiber, and in 5-6 years you'll STILL be thinking how to saturate that link. Oh, and BTW, Cat 5 hasn't been around since '86
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
The idea of building fiber to the home in new developments is not a bad idea in some locations. In others, it makes no sense at all. The issue for builders is going to be whether the item is a value-add for their buyers. Right now, there is just no compelling reason to have fiber to newly developed houses in most places. WiFi or cable or DSl are quite simply enough. In certain areas that are R&D hotbeds or technology havens, perhaps. In most of the rest of the US it just makes no sense.
A new 2000-2500 square foot house on a half acre costs about 150-200k here. Tack on a grand or even $500 for just 10 base T wiring, which is a feature that most people will not use, really eats into your margins as a builder. Why do it?
As I mentioned above, you have to look at your area and your demographics if you are a contractor/developer. There may be niches for this, but I just do not see it being standard for all new development.
FWIW, any house I build or do any significant renovations to will have more network ports than phone jacks. If I were building houses for others, there's no way I'd sink the money into it.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
On the first month of home sales, Red Hat should offer fresh boxed copies of Linux (yes, with the usual support) to each new resident. Just drop off the promotional crate with the sales agent; it's just like some laundry detergent, barbecue briquette or furniture coupons that other subdivisions offer their new home-owning residents.
[
I always wondered why urban comunities didn't have all the wiring and fiber available to the residents
1. Retrofitting the buildings is expensive - it is not just a matter of running fiber to buildings -- ethernet jacks need to be put into rooms in apartments and cabling needs to be arranged. Who will manage the wire closet, etc.
2. Not everyone wants/uses the service, so landlords are not necessarily going to spring for the cost
3. Residential services are not where the money is
Large apartment buildings next to eachother would probably find it cheaper to have one large connection into the complexes and hire a network technican
You don't know many apartment operators, obviously. Even the large companies (mostly REITs) are extraordinarily conservative operators who do not change their ways of doing business easily. Especially post-bubble, most are likely to look at other amenities first, such as security, fitness centers, etc. Putting in technology infrastructure, which will likely involve additional costs, is not going to be an easy sell.
I think some bigger aparment REITs may have been doing deals with some of the CLECs in the 90's, but I just don't see a tremendous desire by internet companies to chase the consumer in this manner. They just don't pay enough, and fiber infrastructure isn't exactly cheap.
I can see this model working in some local environments, but as a business model, I can say pretty comfortably that there just is not much money there to be chased when you are talking about mega bandwidth to residences. Some people would pay big bucks, but most folks would say fuck it and go with the ILEC's $45 DSL or the cable company's $30 plan. Nobody will make money (today) selling fiber connections for $30 or selling $300 fiber connections to residences.
Remember -- it's all about the "Profit!!"
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
- when somebody switched on Kazaa, everyone's connection came almost to a standstill
- we had to wire the house ourselves to make it cost efficient
- somebody had to maintain everything
To me it seems like the biggest problem in an apartment complex or neighborhood would be the last issue. Who maintains it? For us, it was essentially somebody's job to tend to it (just like it was somebody's job to wash dishes on Sunday morning). Anybody know how this happens in these cases we're talking about? Is there a benevolent net admin (dictator) or do people pay a fee to some 3rd party?
...is because of the excellent connection I get from my college dorm room. Reading this article reminds me of why I haven't opted to get an appartment in the city surrounding my University; I'd have to go through the hassle of getting myself a cable modem or other sort of broadband connection, or send myself back to the "Dark Ages" ;) by putting up with a phone line connection.
I see myself considering a house's connection as a definite bonus in the future. Admittedly, it isn't that hard to wire a home, but if the house is in one of those areas that still can't get a cable modem connection, it'll definitely affect my choices.
I think municipal fiber or any other high capacity medium is a project everyone ought to be pressuring their city or town counsils for. There's currently two groups laying network cabling down, telephone companies and cable companies. Being commercial interest these groups will always do what is better or more beneficial to them than what is more beneficial or better for the communities they serve.
Being as their commercial interest is rarely in line with what is good for the people it should be the people putting up the lines and selling that space to people providing them service. I see it like this, if a town lays down some fiber they can put it just about anywhere without worrying about right of way issues or zoning restrictions. They are also laying out an infrastructure they are able to rent out to companies to offer services on. Renting out the infrastructure means they can issue bonds to pay for the line installation with a nice return. The line installation itself can be piggybacked on top of routine road, sewer, or power maintenance to keep man hour prices down.
Once the lines are in place and going out to homes it would be up to providers to rent space on the lines in a non-exclusive manner to sell services on. Without the overhead of upkeep a service provider can offer cheaper service than a provider paying the whole bill from head end to household. The rent goes to pay back the issued bond measures and commercial property and operating taxes go back into the municipal coffers.
By having really high bandwidth lines like fiber or high grade copper the municipality can offer bandwidth on a channel by channel basis. Want to offer internet access to the city? Rent out a couple data channels on the fiber lines and connect your head end to a top tier carrier. Want to have a public access television channel? Invest in some video equipment and rent a channel. All municipal services could have their own cheap and easy network access via such a set-up as well. Public and private schools could have dirt cheap network connectivity as could libraries and social services.
I think a lot of good could come from projects like this and with it being a local municipal issue a couple people writing letters and making phone calls might actually DO something other than give paper shredders a workout.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I live in one of these new developments - Mawson Lakes (South Australia) - which is located right next to technology park. (Motorolla, BAE systems etc are located there)
We were made all sorts of promises about cable tv & internet. We even had to have the house pre-wired. I recently got pay tv which had to be connected by satelite and our broad-band internet must be wireless because the developer (delfin) put in the cheapest exchange which is not capable of ADSL. Apparently the cable is even in the ground!
Although, reading up on some of the benfits of wire less it may turn out to be the best way to go.
my 2 cents
when somebody switched on Kazaa, everyone's connection came almost to a standstill
Why didn't you use a bandwidth shaper then?
We were running some sort of consumer-grade Linksys home router dealie, which didn't support such fancy things. People were encouraged to do file trading during non-peak hours. When that strategy failed, I would block ports, but only when things got really out of hand. Looking back now, it could have been an interesting project replacing it with some sort of linux box. Probably would have been more stable too.
Most geeks seem to forget that there are these rules known as "building codes" that regulate how houses are built and just what type of material is required.
Good luck getting THAT requirement inserted into local building codes. Most of these codes derive from what is known as the International Building Code (IBC). The electricity and wiring usually derives (in America) from the National Electric Code (NEC)...
Speaking of which... when you do have your new construction/renovation wired, be sure that your wiring is to code (plenum rated cable if appropriate, no drilling through fire breaks, no sharing conduits with romex, that sort of thing).
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I just bought a new house in a new community and was so excited because the whole thing is wired for network, cable, satellite, and phone. The bad news is there was no broadband Internet available. I had a great in-home network that didn't go anywhere.
Just in the last month, we finally were able to get DSL service. Before that, the only option was to get microwave service from a local wireless provider with $500 in up-front equipment charges and about $60/Month for use.
I really wish all new developments would include broadband Internet in some form. I don't feel it would be that big of a deal to buy a few T1s (or better) and provide broadband to everyone in the community. They could just figure the costs into the HOA dues.