Steam Heat to High Speed Internet

jrmski writes "Thom Greco, an astute businessman from the crumbling town of Wilkes-Barre is betting the future of its downtown on a new state of the art fiber optic network. He recently purchased the former Steam Heat Authority, and the underground pipes associated with it. The pipes provide clear advantages in connecting every downtown building with access faster than what's currently available in Philly."

Comments

Only Good Things

[gurutechanimal]

Only good things can come from a tech visionary who purchases Old World infrastructure and is willing to run fiber to them.

Re:Only Good Things

[general_re]

Uh-huh. Spoken like someone who's never actually been to that part of PA.

The problems of the Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania will not be solved by running fiber through steam tunnels. Bank on it.

Re:Only Good Things

[GnarlyNome]

If and only If he uses his(the investors money)would it be a good idea outherwise it just sounds like a high tech version of the professional sports team scam.

Re:Only Good Things

[The FooMiester]

You're right. Between all the businesses coming in and giving us the bone by starting up and saying that they are the next greatest thing, then shutting down after a few months, and the generally inadequate infrastructure . . .

And besides. Everyone who knows anything knows that you don't run a business in Wilkes-Barre, the taxes are too high, and the regulations too cumbersome. You run your business in Plains. Same with Scranton. Why do you think all those buildings downtown are half-empty? Everyone is doing business up on Montage Mountain. Granted, the bigwigs never have to DRIVE in there, but that's another rant for another day and time.

Re:Only Good Things

[inode_buddha]

Same goes for Buffalo NY area. It's an economic ghost town, been going downhill all my life. That's 35 years of losing. The fact that some of the original fiber (Sprint) backbone runs directly underneath downtown hasn't really meant much, even at the height of the dot-coms. From what I heard in my networking 101 classes, at least 1/2 of it is dark. Other than that, one of the original ARPAnet lines is nearby (appliedtheory.com). Again, no difference. The taxes and regulations here are absolute hell, let alone utilities. Hence, no business.

Good Idea

[dirkdidit]

This is actually a good way to get use of something that would otherwise just sit and decay.

Having fast internet and reliable forms of connectivity are important things businesses look for when they come to towns. Hopefully what this guy is doing can spur some growth there.

I wonder what else you could do with a steam tunnels. Live in them maybe? :)

Re:Good Idea

[t0ny]

Personally, I thought the belief of 'If you build it they will come' died out with the 'new economy'.

Well, I guess this isnt as expensive as all that, and hopefully it will bring some positive results. But I think it will take more than fibre-optics to attract businesses.

Re:Good Idea

[siliconwafer]

I wonder what else you could do with a steam tunnels. Live in them maybe? :)

Makes me wonder what the diameter of the pipes is, and if they are actually tunnels.. hopefully they won't have to worry about steam-tunnel rats chewing through their fiber, heh.

Know something we don't?

[puppetman]

Dark fibre, the collapse of many companies that built these networks (and then had other companies buy them at pennies on the dollar), etc, then why do this?

Or maybe someone is thinking long-term; five-years, and maybe this will be a very valuable asset. Bah. Perhaps I need more foresight.

Re:Know something we don't?

[puppetman]

"from the crumbling town of Wilkes-Barre"...

Wilkes-Barre is a (dead) coal-mining town; "As the stock market crashed in 1929, the coal industry struggled, but it never recovered after World War II. By the 1920's consumers gradually switched from coal to oil, gas, and electricity. One by one, the collieries were shutdown, and mine operators moved on to other enterprises, leaving the area with an unemployment rate in excess of 12% after the war..." (from this site).

Unfort, I think it's tough to turn towns like this around. Go see Michael Moore's "Roger and Me" (ignore his politics if you disagree with them - the message in the documentary is pretty important). He talks about how Flint tried to revitalize itself after an industry (auto) that it had grown all-too-dependant on shut down.

Re:Know something we don't?

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

""Thom Greco, an astute businessman from the crumbling town of Wilkes-Barre is..."

Man why is it when we have a story from one of our not so glorious Pa cities it has to be brought up like this. Any other city and it wouldn't be mentioned. I read that and just bowed my head. Growing up for me Wilkes-barre was the big city, drive north on route 6 for an hour and you will understand. Wilkes-barre ins't that bad.

I would personaly prefer to live there then anywhere in NJ, Philly, deap south, or LA cali.

Re:Know something we don't?

[AlaskanUnderachiever]

Jesus, another "dark fiber" post.

I'm guessing none of you guys have ever DONE a cable/fiber install. You don't lay excess capacity for "future use". You lay excess capacity because no sane company wants to have to dig up a 2 mile stretch of trench to fix the line every time it goes dark.

It's not EXCESS CAPACITY. It's being cheap. You lay enough fiber that you should almost never have to dig it up to repair it again. Fibers go dark for all sorts of stupid reasons. Even in good installs.

The idea is to lay SO MUCH that you can always just switch over to another "good" line when one goes bad.

What's cheaper? The extra cost of the fiber initially or the HUGE cost in having to dig up the line multiple times to repair it?

Re:Know something we don't?

[The_Dougster]

That seems to be the issue here to me. This guy can blow fiber through these old steam pipes cheap, he found a conduit system just ready to go. Excavating in these old cities is a nightmare, pipes and heaven knows what just everywhere underground, and probably in bad decay. You don't want to go digging in these kinds of places.

Re:Know something we don't?

[T-Ranger]

That, and the incremental cost of laying twice, or even ten times the amount of light pipe when the street is already dug up is nothing.

Re:Know something we don't?

[bryanp]

Completely off-topic I know, but I wish a few people would actually check out the "Deep South" before putting it down. And no, watching "Deliverence" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" doesn't count. Speaking as a geek who lives in the Nashville TN area, let me give you a few facts -

We actually have floors here, not dirt and hay.

We wear shoes!

Indoor plumbing, even!

There are radio stations that do not play country. Really. There are some of us here who have never set foot in the "Grand Ole Opry."

Oh, and before you start talking politics and race, you *really* need to catch up. A good friend of mine has told me that she experienced more racism living in the Northwest (Oregon, Washington) than she has ever experienced down here in the south (and she lives in Alabama, no less). Racism is individual, not regional. I saw more racism when I lived in Delaware than I do down here.

Okay, rant time over. We now return you to you your regular Slashdot Paranoia Check.

Re:Know something we don't?

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I don't know about that. Philly has a habit of letting anyone with a pulse trench under the streets. About every 6 months somebody is jackhammering the street next to my apartment to lay new fiber.

(Do I get any of the bandwidth... nooooo...)

I should also not that in my parent's place out in the burbs Comcast ran fiber through overhead poles, next to phone lines. Data from above...

Re:Know something we don't?

[Dun Malg]

no sane company wants to have to dig up a 2 mile stretch of trench to fix the line every time it goes dark.

Hah! The company I work for does. We also want our customers to dump Diet Coke on their phones, block the air intakes on their network hubs, and hire moron painters who spray EVERYTHING in the phone closet (KSU, 66 blocks, HDSL backplanes) a nice semi-gloss beige. We have one client so penny-wise and pound-foolish that they've insisted upon 2-pair wire runs instead of 4-pair because it was CHEAPER by 4 cents a foot. Of course, they had to pay for a SECOND installation of wire when the 2-pair turned out to be inadequate, but hey, they saved almost 40 dollars up front!

Re:Know something we don't?

[drinkypoo]

The whole point is that it costs more to dig than to not dig. When you trench you have to submit a plan, examine everyone else's old plans to make sure you're not cutting anything, and kiss a large number of asses to even get the permit. Usually this takes the form of a simple bribe, of course, unless you just want to wait a long-ass time. Meanwhile, he has to do no digging whatsoever, just poke a lot of cable through some pipes (if they're steam PIPES - I didn't read the article) or lay a bunch of cable in some conduit to protect it from rats if it's steam TUNNELS.

People laying new fiber are either idiots or different individuals. If it's the phone company, then it's safe to assume they're idiots - they seem to be morons everywhere. Hell, when I was working in SF at the foot of Potrero Hill, Pacific Bell cut their own fiber in that neighborhood and took hours to fix it. How the hell do you do that?

Re:Know something we don't?

[einhverfr]

You lay excess capacity because no sane company wants to have to dig up a 2 mile stretch of trench to fix the line every time it goes dark.

I think you have not been reading enough Dilbert lately ;-)

Re:Know something we don't?

[UniverseIsADoughnut]

"" Completely off-topic I know, but I wish a few people would actually check out the "Deep South" before putting it down. And no, watching "Deliverence" and "The Dukes of Hazzard" doesn't count. Speaking as a geek who lives in the Nashville TN area, let me give you a few facts -

We actually have floors here, not dirt and hay.

We wear shoes!

Indoor plumbing, even!

There are radio stations that do not play country. Really. There are some of us here who have never set foot in the "Grand Ole Opry."

Oh, and before you start talking politics and race, you *really* need to catch up. A good friend of mine has told me that she experienced more racism living in the Northwest (Oregon, Washington) than she has ever experienced down here in the south (and she lives in Alabama, no less). Racism is individual, not regional. I saw more racism when I lived in Delaware than I do down here.""

you could have asked why I put deep south. It has nothing at all to do with anything you said. I don't like the deep south because it becomes a hot , dull boring place. I have been there and am glad to get out of there. Also I wouldn't consider TN the deep south. Most all the stuff you said is things that people will say about anyplace. Sometimes it's true for places. I know people with dirt floors, and they don't live in the deep south. Reacting like you did, isn't helping anything for people's impressions of the south.

Re:Know something we don't?

[bonnyman]

Fibers in a well-made cable that's been properly installed should not go dark unless the entire cable is damaged. I spent 3 years doing nothing but OTDR work and I seldom saw single fibers break; when they did, it was always due to improper installation. Folks do install lots of extra fiber because as additional capacity is needed, it's a pain to dig up streets. Depending on the location, the cost of the fiber cable itslef can sometimes be a fraction of the installation cost.

I wouldn't say so

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

"Only good things can come from a tech visionary who purchases Old World infrastructure and is willing to run fiber to them."

I wouldn't call that an absolute. Look at the nightmare that Qwest Communications has caused. They're still using Pair Gain, in a city that is supposedly modern in design. We can't get DSL service in half of Phoenix that is within the copper distance needed to do it, and Phoenix was originally a US West Communications test city for the technology. I've had friends who couldn't get the phone company to install a copper circuit, and would not say who was responsible for Qwest's engineering decision to implement pair gain on every phone line.

So, I don't believe that companies usisng old-world, middle-world (not to be confused with middle-earth), or brand-new technologies are any better simply because of the tech. They have to actually provide service, not claim to be able to without delivering.

Re:I wouldn't say so

[skillet-thief]

Qwest will always be an exception to any kind of rule like this.

Re:I wouldn't say so

[The_Laughing_God]

Actually, though I understand you problem with such blanket statements, your example actually proves his point. Phoenix would be far better off if (as the original poster said) some entrepreneur had run fiber through existing conduits, instead of (as Qwest and many companies have done) tried to over-leverage existing infrastructure (twisted pair copper) for more bandwidth.

Fiber is a mature technology, whose properties and system design are very well known. It's been in use since the 50's, though it was too expensive and awkward to implement. Through improvments over the decades, the signal loss, noise, interrepeater distance, repeater design, durability, etc. have improved dramatically. Better manufacturing and the economies of large-scale deployment have also cut the cost per kilometer of fiber.

Pair gain is a kludge, originally intended for use on existing twisted pair, but often deployed by companies that didn't want to invest in in-house re-training, equipment, and other costs of moving to another medium (which often was, indeed a bit more expensive at roll-out, at the time) I don't know exactly when Pair Gain or its immediate antecedent technology were invented (it might have been the 50's, too) but twisted pair deployments were very different form each other, because each deployment had to accomodate the unique situation in each city, industrial park, etc. -- and these accomodations weren't always the best choice.

In short, Pair Gain (and several other twisted Pair techs) are not as mature as fiber, because there is less actual experience with any given style of deployment; and worse, it was originally meant only as a stopgap extension of an older technology, compared to pulling fiber and laying repeaters for a consistent, mature, intrinsically higher bandwidth solution.

Don't get me wrong: fiber has its addon "extender" technologies, too (multi mode multiple frequency, in-line laser pumped erbium amplifiers, etc.) but though these represent more radical changes than pair gain vs. POTS, I'd call them 'improvements', doing what (intrinsically higher bandwidth) fiber was always designed to do; while Pair Gain, etc. use Twisted Pair for things the original install never intended (or lay new twisted pair, knowing it is more limited than the (maybe) slightly more expensive, longer-term alternative, in an era when the quarterly bottom line was king.

To me th point of the article is that they DID lay fiber, instead of trying to leverage the old TP,

I don't get this.

[the_2nd_coming]

he is investing in infrastructure in a decaying town with very little future for comercial exploit. well, money is cheap now-a-days. good thng for people with stupid ideas.

Darn those things are fun to explore

[Billly Gates]

They sure are.

Re:Darn those things are fun to explore

[blincoln]

They sure are [infiltration.org].

Holy crap, that is the coolest website ever.

Re:Darn those things are fun to explore

[Billly Gates]

Was it this ghost here?

I have never been there but I have seen haunted stuff before and I am a believer. However the picture looks fake. Its the only one I could find. A simple search on seaview and haunted brings up quite a few hits though.

Duh ! Problem is

[Anonymous Coward]

It's plumbing and the corners will be to sharp for fiber. If you could even manage to get a fish threw it you'll never manage to get the fiber pulled into it with the fish. But strait sections no problem it's the bends that will kill you. That's why conduit for electical wires is vastly different from plumbing parts. Fiber is going to be stiff. Trust me I've installed it. You'l never get it install in plumbing pipes. Plus imagine the rust and crud in the pipes. I'll pass on that job.

Re:Duh ! Problem is

[InfiniteWisdom]

WHOA!!!!!

Better go warn them! I'll bet that thought NEVER crossed their mind. Surely they never even CONSIDERED whether they would actually be able to run the fiber before making the deal.

Quick! Warn them! There may still be time.

Re:Duh ! Problem is

[virtual_mps]

It's plumbing and the corners will be to sharp for fiber. If you could even manage to get a fish threw it you'll never manage to get the fiber pulled into it with the fish. But strait sections no problem it's the bends that will kill you.

It's not indoor plumbing, it's a distribution system for a municiple steam system. The pipes are probably huge, not some little tiny things like you'd buy in a hardware store. The bend radius from outer wall to outer wall of the pipe, touching the inner curve of a bend, is probably not that tight.

Better than copper

[rf0]

This is a good thing to see with people taking advantage of fibre. Here in the UK we are in the stupid position in that there is lots of dark fibre which was layed by British Telecom (BT), our telephony monopoly, but they have no product which can use it so we have to get (A)DSL over copper which works apart from those of us who live in the middle of nowhere

Rus

Re:Better than copper

[SmackCrackandPot]

Yes, it's just amazing how much fibre there is around the UK, yet so difficult to access. Ten years ago, the pavement outside my flat was dug up to install a 2 Gigabyte fibre path for the local university. At the same time, PC's were stuck with 14K modems or ISDN. Last year, I moved to a newly built complex. Even though there were underground conduits in the street for the national telecom providers and the local cable TV company, no ducting existed that would allow connection to the flats. And the satellite TV didn't work, since the dish was pointed to an analogue service. Finally, I'm in a Telewest area and have broadband service. Excellent even with the fiasco of the 2-Mbit trial service. Give up on trying to push BT to provide broadband service for rural communities. They will only move when there is competition from the cable companies. The pressure should be on getting cable TV service to rural villages. (How much would it cost to install a couple of satellite dishes, head-end and have the village streets cabled with fibre?)

Great idea . . . in 1999!

[jhylkema]

Okay, so some guy gets the bright idea to run fiber through steam pipes . . . with how many miles of *dark* fiber out there already?!? And how many big telcos with the similar idea are already bankrupt or are about to go there (JDS Uniphase, anyone?)

This sounds like some idiot who thinks he can revitalize his city by "hookin' it up to that thar new internet thang. We done gunna make it real real real fast." They did the same thing in Washington with Tacoma. They even call it "The Wired City." And you know what? It's still a crime-infested shithole with no jobs!

Wake up, fellas. This was cool at the height of the boom whem Amazon.bomb sold for $400 and the lemmings bought it. But now that reality has set in, it's just another bunch of idiots buying into the Ponzi scheme - after it has collapsed!

Re:Great idea . . . in 1999!

[LaCosaNostradamus]

I agree with your sentiment, and I have my own invective to add.

This was never a "great idea", 1999 or otherwise. The "build it and they will come" idea was completely assinine long before its demonstrated collapse across this American nation of "revitalized" city centers.

I live in Toledo, Ohio (yeah, yeah, I know, now please stop laughing) and I've been seeing the ponzi scheme of revitalization up close and personal for years. Home prices are still rising, investment is still being lavished on the downtown area and certain rapid-growth outlier towns. This can only lead to a terrible real estate market crash, and the public is walking around blissfully unaware that their municipalities have undersigned much of the debt behind these new developments.

Into this sick, sick economy, we have the constant drone of tax abatements, restructurings, bonds, levies, and a newspaper happily chirping out stories of local entrepreneurs looking to make it big.

The looting of America just has to stop. We can't continue to fall for this empty line of hope and glitz without taking the serious risk of civil war. Such a war grows more and more possible due to several factors. American savings have been zeroized (allegedly rebounding slightly for early 2003) and we are firmly a culture of debtors now. Those two margins of safety are effectively gone. The middle class and "home-owners" (a term I use advisedly since so many people's mortgages are effectively rentals) are being forced to shoulder more and more of the general tax burden, as the wealthy and corporations escape more taxes and the lower class expands. There's another shrinking margin of safety. Homes and lives are being organized around non-self-sufficient services like natural gas, gasoline, electricity, package delivery and foreign maintenance labor. Price bumps in these areas have abrupt fiscal consequences for the populace, who are also ill equipped to reduce dependency.

What would fix all of this is "restraint of trade". I've no problem with that since what is happening now is clearly capitalism out of control (I call it "hypercapitalism"), and humane social controls need to be re-applied. * Some controls spring immediately to mind. Companies should not be exempted from taxation. Nor should they be allowed to close down factories -- destroying lives -- just to chase a few more percentage points of profit elsewhere. Little old ladies who can't afford their home taxes shouldn't be kicked out of their homes. Etc.

The "fear of falling" which is the cultural foundation of a place like Toledo, Ohio is not natural nor necessary. But despotic plans are easy to sell to people in a state of terrible desperation. If this city is any indication, tyranny is being manufactured in America's heartland, leading to a great deal of pain and probably death for the population.

* The most recent piece of evidence that comes to mind is an article that reported that during 2002, corp executive pay rose 15%. Now, 2002 is definitely a year of pain for the working man, and I spend the entire year watching all manner of news media report on the fiscal condition of the nation. The condition was terrible, and about 1 million Americans lost their jobs during that period. Yet the execs on average continued to receive excessive awards while all that was going on. This is clearly OUT OF CONTROL.

Wilkes Where?

[KaosConMan]

For those who don't know where Wilkes Barre is:

Here's a map

Re:Wilkes Where?

[FryGuy1013]

Maybe mapquest will get the clue now :)

Re:Wilkes Where?

[evanbd]

Hmm, looks like somebody didn't check before they posted a link:

"The City you provided could not be found. The map is centered on the State or Province."

Re:Wilkes Where?

[KaosConMan]

oops:
here's the corrected link

Confused

[jchawk]

How does Wilkes-Barre == Philly?

There two different places that happen to be in the same state.

Pass me some of what the poster was smoking.

Re:Confused

[alienmole]

Attempting to read the submitter's mind, perhaps he's thinking that this could make Wilkes-Barre more attractive to some businesses than the Philly area.

It's a stretch, maybe, but for example, there are a bunch of companies with call centers and the like in the New Jersey suburbs across the Delaware from Philly (Cherry Hill, Marlton, Mt Laurel). Call centers just need office space, warm bodies, and connectivity, and all but the latter are cheaper in out of the way places. Wilkes-Barre is 2 hours from Philly, so it's not as far from actual civilization :) as some such places are.

This is not a new idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Metropolitan areas can run fiber much more effectively through the sewer system than by digging trenches for a few hundred miles. They've already done this in Indianapolis recently:

http://www.citynettelecom.com/newsroom/show_rele as e.php?HANDLE=14

Re:Know something we don't?-Diversity.

[puppetman]

Not just small towns. States/provinces, regions, countries. Diversification is key. Go ask the French about their only exported product, the French Fry. I hear they're really hurting right now :)

what if?

[MoFoYa]

what if those steam pipes had not been there?

would this guy have found another way to *connect* the town?

i guess what i wonder is: is his primary motive to create a fast reliable network so high tech business will enhance the town. or, has he stumbled upon a cost effective way to get high speed, marketable connectivity to a place that has never had it and is willing pay for it?

either way i suppose it's good for the community.
old steam pipes carry information as well as anything else.

Professor Steamhead was right!

[dacarr]

The world CAN be saved by steam*!

OK, fine, it's downtown Wilkes-Barre PA and they're using steam pipe as conduit. But still.

* People who read Ninja High School, a dead-tree comic, will understand this immediately.

Just Plain Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Very little future commercial exploitation? You're not qualified enough to say that. As a long time resident, I can say that the Scranton/ Wilkes-Barre area certainly has the possibility for future growth. We're "decaying" aren't we? To where else can you possibly go from the decayed?

Let's be sensible here.

Re:Just Plain Wrong

[the_2nd_coming]

ghoast town.

Whoa!

[Fjornir]

city's steam pipes that are ready to be filled with conduit then fiber optics," said Greco. Is this a hot technology?

Am I the only one...

[evanbd]

who read this as

"Steam to Heat High Speed Internet"?

Re:Am I the only one...

[nmg196]

...I couldn't work out why you'd need to heat the internet. It's not like it goes all slow and starts shaking in the Internet. :)

Nick...

Re:Am I the only one...

[nmg196]

shaking in the *cold* I meant. DOH!

Time for 1st coffee...

This is a publicity ploy to get city money

[Dr. Spork]

Umm, I read the story and it seems pretty clear to me that this guy wants to butter up city officials so that they give him some money as an "investment" in the city.

If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Springfield gets a fancy monorail, you'll recognize immediately what this is really about. It's a con artist selling false hope using technobabble that probably sounds impressive to some provincial mayor in Amish country. Only a fool could think that all you need to bring in tech companies is a place for them to plug in. Luckily for these snake-oil-selling jerks, many of our leaders really are fools.

Re:This is a publicity ploy to get city money

[general_re]

Only a fool could think that all you need to bring in tech companies is a place for them to plug in. Luckily for these snake-oil-selling jerks, many of our leaders really are fools.

People by and large get the sort of government they deserve. Watch how many people on this very thread - among the self-proclaimed digerati, no less - proclaim what a great idea this is ;)

Re:This is a publicity ploy to get city money

[transient]

Projects like this are in various stages of completion all over the country. In most of these undertakings, the goal is simply to make the city a more attractive place for new businesses (not necessarily tech companies). In particular, it can lower barriers of entry for telecommunications companies. Does it work? Nobody really knows yet. These networks are relatively new and so there's no significant data on their economic impact.

But a lot of cities are building these networks, so it's a real gamble not to. What if they turn out to be really valuable? What if they become a basic public utility? If that happens, then not having a fiber network will be like not having sewers.

Then again, all that fiber could end up just like those steam pipes -- abandoned and useless.

Er...

[neostorm]

When I first read the headline I thought it was an "Old tech put to new uses" topic. I could have sworn it said: "Steam to heat Highspeed Internet"

Awe...

Genetti

[chuckw]

I remember driving through Pennsylvania late at night about 4 years ago with my Son and girlfriend in the car. We were looking for a decent place to stay. We found this hole-in-the-wall town that had an old, but rather quaint looking, hotel called the Genetti. That morning, as I was packing up the car, I noticed the pictures of some very famous people on the wall, such as baseball legend Pete Rose as well as a few presidents IIRC. I remember thinking about what a neat place the Genetti was and that I might like to come back again some day.

It's really neat to see that the Genetti is going to be the center of attention for this town's revitalization on Sunday. If I didn't live so far away (Seattle, Washington USA) I'd probably make the trek out there to watch the fun.

Anyone else...

[Xenographic]

Anyone else read this too fast and envision a computer or router or something that ran on steam power?

For some reason, that notion made me think of an AMD Athalon system...

I knew I'd heard this town's name before...

[orbital3]

Wilkes-Barre was featured in a previous Slashdot article when they decided not to renew their maintainence contract with IBM and their AS/400 with all of their tax records crashed... in light of that whole situation, unless Wilkes-Barre has done a technological 180 since then, I can't imagine what they'd do with all of this fiber.

Re:I knew I'd heard this town's name before...

[Aquitaine]

Wilkes-Barre is also the birthplace of HBO, for what it's worth.

Can't really complain

[mharris007]

I mean you can't really complain, he is creating jobs, and running fiber. But in all honesty, are businesses in that downtown grid a) all going to want to pay for his G-Net networking services and b) if they do buy it, is it going to make a serious difference that its going to turn the whole city around, and make it become a thriving city once again?

I can't imagine a high-speed and high tech networking technology turning a whole downtown city around.

Crumbling town?

[KentoNET]

Being a resident of Pennsylvania in close proximity to Wilkes-Barre I've gotta say that it is not exactly crumbling. It may not have great downtown business at the moment, but neither does Bethlehem, which I think is worse off. This place has its own AHL hockey team too. It's not a big city, but definitely not crumbling.

Re:Crumbling town?

[rmgrotkierii]

Beyond crumbling: Steelton, which is only a few miles away from here in Middletown. I wonder if/when the higher middle/lower rich class will ever leave Middletown... Hrm.

Re:Crumbling town?

[Cirvam]

Your in Middletown? I go to school there (PSU Harrisburg) and I agree whole heartedly, the only reason steelton exists is because of the steel mills down there and now that they are pretty much out of business the town is just dead. Hell the whole steel mill property is some special economic zone where they give you grants and no taxes and all sorts of stuff and it doesn't seem to be attracting any companies of any sort.

What higher/middle/lower rich class is there in middletown? It seems very middle class everywhere, although I guess they have new developments or whatever outside of town.

Re:Crumbling town?

[cowboy andy]

And as of last night, our AHL team is in the playoffs. Go Pens. :D

Re:Crumbling town?

[ContraB]

It may not have great downtown business at the moment, but neither does Bethlehem, which I think is worse off.

Having gone to college in Bethlehem (Lehigh) and having spent a good deal of time in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area visiting friends, I can honestly say that the Wilkes-Barre area is far more depressed than Bethlehem.

The North side of the Lehigh is beautiful. The newly renovated Hotel Bethlehem. The Moravian College area (Main St.). Very few empty store fronts. (Wilkes-Barre can't claim that.) Beautiful historic sites. New development. A wondeful stock of well maintained older brick Victorian homes.

Though I can see how if you've only been to South Bethlehem, you might think otherwise. Still, even the South Side is improving. On a recent visit, I was amazed to see 3rd St (for those that know it) loaded with new stores, clean, and people shopping. (Bear in mind, this is happening even during a recession!) Bethlehem Steel closed 8 years ago. In its place on the old Bethlehem Steel property is the new high tech company incubation district. Hi-tech, biotech startups, fostered by below market rent and help from Lehigh. A new Rail intermodal terminal already functioning, providing replacement non-service-sector blue-collar jobs. A new natural gas power plant (more replacement jobs). A new hockey rink will soon be built by the Philladelphia Flyers. And the piece de resistance, the Smithsonian is planning on opening a large museum of industrial history around the old steel blast furnaces. Awesome!

In short, there's plenty of hope (and progress) in Bethlehem.

Go to Pittston, near W-B, and tell me about the empty lots, burned down buildings (just last week this huge downtown place went up) and vacant, decaying store fronts. The Wilkes-Barre area's number #1 employer is the government. #2 is Techneglas, which just layed off one of my engineer friends and who knows how many other workers. #3... the service industry (you know, minimum wage jobs like at CVS). So you have only one company bringing money -into- the W-B area, and they're having real difficulty.

On the plus side, the people are really really nice and real estate sure is cheap...

I dunno. Driving around the W-B area I get this feeling of hopelessness that I don't get in Bethlehem.

Now Allentown and Easton... feel free to dis those cities, because they aren't doing well like Bethlehem... Sorry about the rant. There's just no way you can say Wilkes-Barre is doing better than Bethlehem...

Re:Crumbling town?

[miranel]

i agree. wilkes-barre is one of the most depressing places i've ever been (i grew up there)...but i didn't know it until i moved away. anyone who thinks wilkes-barre isn't that bad probably hasn't ever been more than 4 or 5 hours away from there.

Sounds like...

[benja]

1. Buy former Steam Heat Authority
2. Create a state-of-the-art fiber optic network using the steam pipes
3. ???
4. Profit!

At least the article doesn't really say more than that.

Re:Sounds like...

[kryptkpr]

I think step 3 is "Sell bandwidth to businesses that need it" ..

Running fibre through the sewers

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering why my connection had gone to shit.

*sight*

[WegianWarrior]

Don't feed the trolls, and they will go away.. or at least be modded down.

Metro WANs

[green pizza]

I've often though about the possibilies of a metro LAN or WAN setup. It would require a lot of security and gobs of bandwidth, but could be a interesting test case for "the future city". Consider linking dozens of downtown businesses with GigE or faster fiber. I would imagine the first few applications would be gimmicky, but may eventually bring about some rather innovative uses. I doubt a bakery would have much use for such a setup, but they may be others that would.

Why send expensive tanks into battle when a beowulf cluster of used AK-47s can theoretically do as much damage?

Infrastructure reuse?

[WegianWarrior]

Now, I don't now more about laying fiber than I do about giving birth, but the consept this fellow is fronting is interesting; take whats basicly a 19th century infrastructure and use it for a 21st century purpose. In a way, it is as if London would start using mag-lev trains in the Underground.

So what other uses can we put old, more or less abandoned infrastructure to?

Steam tunnels at my school

[httpamphibio.us]

My universities campus is heated entirely by steam. Among other things, all the internet, security, and power cables run through these tunnels as well. Not many people, other than campus police, the steam plant workers, and a couple bums have been down there.

Re:Steam tunnels at my school

[bluGill]

The University of Minnesota has the same tunnels, and used to have the same "nobody allowed in the tunnels policy". Then someone realised that it gets cold in Minnesota, and these tunnels run between most of the buildings, so they opened them up. Most people still don't use them, often to get from twon bulding 100 feet apart you needed to travel 700 feet or more. Still I did use them on the coldest days when it wasn't too far out of my way to do so, and was surprized how few people were down there.

Mind you the tunnels are official open, but they are not well labeled, often you have to go through a door where they scratched out the "private" sign. If you didn't know that you are now allowed in them you would think it is an off limits area. (I don't know why that would stop a student, but appearently it did) There also were few signs, so you had to know where they led. More than once I've seen someone ask a maintance person where the tunnel to some building was only to find they were in the building.

Chess?

[Usquebaugh]

So this i sthe new Wilkkes-Barres defence?

I had enough trouble with the old one.

Four times faster than what's in Philly?

[GLX]

Tell that to the numerous OC-192's coming into 401 N. Broad (the local telecom hotel) from various different carriers - that none of them would ever in their wildest dreams pull up to Wilkes Barre.

Smoking crack, I tell ya'.

good luck!

[benny_lama]

I would not want to be the engineer responsible for putting inner duct and fiber optic into steam pipes. Think about this for a second......steam has no limitations on how pipes are connected, what the radius of bends is, putting a Y in the pipe line, etc. However, fiber does have all kinds of limitations. I've seen people try to shove inner duct and fiber down a conduit run with a 90 in it and it wasn't pretty. For a conduit large enough to put 4 inner ducts in, we could only get one.

I think this guy is having a pipe dream....

Informative post

[Old Wolf]

This is the same Wilkes-Barre as in the club who developed the Traxler variation in chess.

Great!

[Usefull Idiot]

If you want to live between nowhere and bumblef*ck with a bunch of hicks. Also, if you don't care about the steering alignment on your car (pothole heaven). I thought the Tech VC bubble burst and these wacky ideas were on the drop. Guess not.

A Waste of Money

[superdan2k]

This sounds like a Field of Dreams mentality, the same mentality that plagued countless dot-com startups -- if you build it, they will come. Yeah. I used to live not far from Wilkes-Barre, and commute through it on my way to my dot-com job down in Philly. The place is, by no means, a gem on the map that is Pennsylvania. Furthermore, the place may have scorching fast bandwidth by the time the project is done, but it doesn't have the social or economic infrastructure to support the companies they're trying to attract to the area -- ie.: no mall, no Starbucks, no CompUSA or Fry's or whatever, no IKEA, etc. The best these guys can hope for is a few datacenters in their town staffed by a few dozen people, because no one in their right mind is going to establish a whole new business or move themselves and their families to a podunk little scumhole of a town just because it has large bandwidth...

Steam Heat To High Speed Internet

[london bloke]

Nothing new under the sun, in case you care. In 1990, Mercury Communications (where are they now?) used an underground City of London network of pipes for a steam driven messagng system (like those little shuttles you used to see in shops) so it could install an alternative network to compete with British Telecommunications ("BT" today)

An Old Steam Plant and The Internet?

[Doodleman3]

Bah! Its been done before.

http://www.gamespy.com/fargo/december00/dsl/

Not that new of an idea...

[John Murray]

Many universities have done this same thing. I know Virginia Tech uses their still used steam tunnels to run fiber to the many buildings on campus.

CkY2k

[CrazyJim0]

I think some of the members from Jackass come from Wilkes-Barre.

The whole of South Western Pennsylvannia has been on a downhill slope since the coal mines closed, and it never recovered.

On the other hand

[drinkypoo]

Lots of high-tech companies that don't need real talent (READ: Technical Support organizations - they NEED real talent of course, but seldom get it) can put their office in bumfuck but they do need more bandwidth than is currently available in most places categorized as such. Usually they do look for bandwidth and a tax break, though.

RFC?

[Webmoth]

Where's the RFC for "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Low-Pressure Steam?"

Whoa...

[cowboy andy]

It's kinda crazy to wake up, check Slashdot, and see your hometown mentioned on the front page. Well, former hometown. I now live 15 minutes away in an even less developed town, if you can believe it. Here in Mountaintop, there's absolutely no broadband, and we're just getting a Burger King now. It's being built as we speak. Wilkes-Barre's situation is a pretty sad one. Hell, make that most of northeastern PA. Broadband penetration here is pretty bad. Unless you happen to be one of the lucky people with Adelphia cable in the area, or in Jack Flash's tiny DSL coverage area, you probably can't get it. My father's office sits about 20 feet from public square in downtown Wilkes-Barre. Can't get broadband. Funny about that. People have been proposing solutions for all of this city's problems for years. It desperately needs modernization, but I don't think it's going to happen. That's why I'm leaving. I've seen the do-nothing mayor and the Chamber of Commerce sit on their asses for too long, and every attempt at bringing the area into the present totally failing, with the exception of the First Union Arena. Though, with that said, it's not the worst place to live. Everything I said sounds very negative, and things may be pretty quiet here, but I'd rather live here than a lot of places. I just want broadband, dammit.

Re:Whoa...

[teknikl]

The major industry for Pennsylvania is Education - we literally have dozens of public and private colleges. Consequent to this, the major item of export for Pennsylvania is knowledge - trained and educated students leave here in droves.

Re:Whoa...

[BlueDraco]

Wow .. someone else lives in this area and posts on slashdot .. scary .. just saying hi from white haven.

Pittock Building in Portland, OR

[vanyel]

That's why the Pittock Building in Portland, OR is one of the major telco central locations here --- it used to be a steam generation facility and there are pipes connecting it all over downtown that have been filled with cable for years now.

There is something to this--but...

[John Murdoch]

Hi!

The fellow who is promoting has a decent idea--albeit not an original one. The concept was promoted in Allentown (an hour south of Wilkes-Barre) almost two years ago. And prompted by some of the same ideas, the local power company (PP&L) developed a subsidiary to locate and light redundant fiber along some of its rights-of-way throughout northeastern Pennsylvania.

Two thoughts:
First, this is just a proposal--and a proposal that heavily depends (I'm sure) on state technology grant funding. Consider the last paragraph of the WNEP article:

Plans for the project will be unveiled to the public Sunday at Genetti Hotel and Conference Center in Wilkes Barre at 3:00 p.m. Greco will also present his plan to Governor Ed Rendell on Monday when he is in town for a private economic summit. He hopes to get a promise of state support for his plan.

Translation: Greco is fishing for a six-figure grant from the Pennsylvania Technology Investment Authority, and is hoping for support from the governor.

Second, just because he's fishing for a big grant doesn't mean that it isn't a bad idea. Several people have criticized this as a "build it and they will come" investment. Yeah, and so was the Interstate System. Which will go down in history as the single most tranformational use of federal government money in the history of our nation. (For fun--ponder the impact of building all those highways on the auto, steel, aluminum, glass, plastic, concrete, paint, and petroleum industries over the years.)

Using state economic development funding to develop IP-based infrastructure makes an enormous amount of sense. Adding another inch to the depth of pavement on a street in Wilkes-Barre isn't going to make a big dent in Luzerne County unemployment. But providing low-cost bandwidth might induce somebody to stay in town, rather than move his business elsewhere--or convince somebody in New York or Philadelphia to decide to locate his business someplace a lot saner (and safer), where costs are a low lower. In a sense, the question to ask isn't why they're doing it--the question should be, why haven't they done anything sooner?

Re:PA = Hicks

[the_2nd_coming]

you just did the same damn thing to me that I did to you....you classified me as a conservative, with out saying it of cource.

just so you know, I am an indipendant and domake decisions on a case by case basis and do actualy support ideas on both sides of the center.

you however in both your statements have shown just how liberal you are. oh sure you might say that you make your decisions on a case by case basis but when you consistently side with the liberal ideas you are a liberal.

rail networks too

[Submarine]

It's interesting how "old style" utility or transportation networks can be the basis for modern high-speed transmission.

For instance, the French train network authority has thousands of kilometers of optic fibers laid along its tracks, the use of which is partially leased to telecommunication companies.

Malls do not breed innovation

[King Babar]

This sounds like a Field of Dreams mentality, the same mentality that plagued countless dot-com startups -- if you build it, they will come. Yeah. I used to live not far from Wilkes-Barre, and commute through it on my way to my dot-com job down in Philly. The place is, by no means, a gem on the map that is Pennsylvania. Furthermore, the place may have scorching fast bandwidth by the time the project is done, but it doesn't have the social or economic infrastructure to support the companies they're trying to attract to the area -- ie.: no mall, no Starbucks, no CompUSA or Fry's or whatever, no IKEA, etc.

Ooh, you're close to being insightful until you get to that last couple of sentences. :-) First of all, you can check and find out that Wilkes-Barre does indeed have malls and Starbucks, Best Buy and probably most of the trappings you think are important. But, to quote Richard Feynman, they are missing something essential because the [hi-tech] planes don't land. For whatever reason, nobody thinks to locate (or re-locate) facilities there. Worse than that, it apparently just does not happen that two people having lunch over a novel idea ever decide to make it happen in Wilkes-Barre and succeed. And, to be brutally honest, this hypotheical lunch would have to occur spontaneously in Wilkes-Barre for anything to happen, because it isn't going to happen anywhere else. Having a mall or a Starbucks or a couple of minor league teams frankly doesn't mean anything for relocation, because, well, everybody has those. What many places *don't* have are a strong university or two and a city that is sufficiently cool so that people in their 20s hang around long enough to make things happen.

So, if you think about it long enough, the prototypical "missing" high tech center in the US is in fact Pittsburgh, PA. Two world-class universities, cleaned up from its steel days, interesting and attractive housing, some high cultural advantages...and people can't seem to leave the place fast enough, let alone make tech start-ups work. I don't completely accept his analysis, but Richard Florida does seem to be onto something in his analsysis of how the creative class affords economic development.

So among non-major metros, Austin and Madison and Burlington, Vermont end up being hot, Portland Maine and Gainesville have a future, and Wilkes-Barre...is like 150 places down the list and without a plausible story of how it rises up to challenge even Fort Wayne, Indiana (which isn't exactly on people's short lists, either). If Florida is right, the root cause of Wilkes-Barre's funk is neither a lack of optical fiber nor upscale shopping per se, but rather the fact that the young and the hip and the gay and the smart don't live there and won't move there.

Which brings me to my current home town: Columbia, Missouri. Yes, the major state research university campus is here, and the population is growing about as fast as they can put up houses, but at the end of the day, you're still in central MIssouri surrounded by soybeans. Is there any hope for the future? I am now cautiously optimistic. So one of the big issues of the day is whether or not we should cover the downtown with a wireless cloud. Superficially, it's the same kind of question being faced by Wilkes-Barre now, except that there it's about business infrastructure, while here it's about helping people hang out.

This Tuesday, there is a ballot question that seeks to put all small-time marijuana possession offenses into the municipal court (i.e., just pay the fine); you can argue about whether or not this is a good idea, but the question is actually being asked. Similarly, a few years ago, some movie buffs were annoyed at the fact that many indie films were making it to Columbia very late if at all, so they said "hey; we could project them ourselves" and

Re:PA = Hicks

[Grishnakh]

Better yet, more Americans should stop thinking about relocating to another state, and instead relocate to another country.

Why would you want to pollute the rest of the world with a bunch of country music-listening hicks? I'm sure the rest of the world doesn't want that either.

Personally, as an engineer, it'd be nice if some more progressive country would take advantage of the current conditions and import lots of disenchanted American engineers to improve their competitiveness in technology. We need another global brain drain, except this time away from America which doesn't appreciate its scientists and engineers.