Slashdot Mirror
Starting a Local Fibre Co-Op?
swordsaintzero wonders: "I have seen several articles mentioning local co-ops implementing fiber. I am moving to a smaller town to take a position as a Solaris Administrator for a large university. After calling around, I found out the fastest bandwidth package available is half the speed of my previous package. For all of you Slashdot readers, who have worked on getting fibre implemented for your town through a co-op, what was involved in presenting it to the city government? What would be the best way to get the ball rolling on getting fiber for home use implemented?"
If the city were funding it, it wouldn't be a co-op, would it?
Another out-of-the-box answer to the question suggests itself, since the poster missed the other 50% of their former bandwidth: Get 2 lines and aggregrate.
Anyhow, if you want to share fiber to defray installation costs, just start talking to your neighbors about it. If you can get contiguous propery owners to collaborate, no right-of-way is needed, and it becomes much more practical. It's also a good way to get to know your neighbors. Probably, wireless point-to-point links will be a lot cheaper, however. Then suddenly you're a wireless ISP. Lots of folks are doing it.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
If you can get contiguous propery owners to collaborate, no right-of-way is needed
Depending on your state laws, no right of way may be needed at all. Lots of states are so pro-development that they'll bend over backwards to help you take the land you need. Most will happily fine anyone who cuts your lines as well. I'm looking at 150' power lines in my back yard that got built despite rejecting the power companies offer, and despite any condemnation procedures. As a property owner, there's technically not a damn thing I can do about it.
Fudging by way of drainage ditches and easements can also go a long ways.
Probably, wireless point-to-point links will be a lot cheaper, however.
For a few points, maybe, but for a neighborhood, I doubt it. Towers and antennas add up quickly. In a neighborhood with reasonable density and reasonable take-up, fiber should be doable, and scales much better.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Keller TX has it through verizon. A semi rural area just north of Fort Worth.
1) The speed is only restricted by the speed of the lines going to the CO. In a small suburban town, this isn't necessarily very fast. I doubt that each strand goes straight to verizon's backbone
2) The max speed with current technology IIRC is quite high, although I think equipment to transmit at these speeds would be prohibitively expensive. Last time I checked, Verizon was using some sort of technology to allow multiple houses to run off of one strand by sending multiple wavelengths of light down a single fibre. I can't confirum this.
3) All of your existing copper phone services will come over the fiber. This takes up a portion of bandwidth. I have absolutely no idea how voice signals are compressed, etc....
4) Verizon is using PPPoE for authentication. Not sure if ATM is anywhere in the mix -- I'm pretty sure Verizon has phased out ATM for DSL, so I doubt that they're using it for FiOS. They supply a router, so it appears to the end-user as pure ethernet.
5) They have a business plan that offers static IP and has port 80 unblocked, but is more expensive. This is pretty much in line with their current DSL offerings.
Google is your best bet for any more information
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
- Ashland Fiber Network http://www.ashlandfiber.net/ (Ashland,OR) is shared by all utilities in Ashland (population @ 21k) -- it is community owned
- The Portland,OR metro still doesn't have fiber access
- Verizon FIOS is not planned to be installed in the Portland metro for quite some time (no ETA)
- World Wide Packets business model is to provide the infrastructure for ISPs to provide fiber to the end user, but they don't work directly with end-users
- 6 years ago [Beaverton,OR], I had Telocity SDSL for $20/mo @ 802/802
- 3 years ago [Beaverton,OR], when I tried to sign up for 1.5/768 Verizon DSL, we found out (after they set us up and started charging for said speed) that the best we can get is 384/384 for $60/mo ($40 Line[Verizon] + $20 ISP [Aracnet]) because of a 26-gauge wire between me and the C.O. They also stated there is no intention to ever upgrade that line unless it is damaged. Of course, they wouldn't tell me where it was.
- A few months after talking with Speakeasy about the last bullet point, they sent me a letter saying that they could get me 6MB/768 over their fiber network without using Verizon's phone line. When I called them, they said that they couldn't because it still has to go over Verizon's line. Of course, they still wanted me to try to set it up, without installing a replacement for that 26-gauge wire.
All in all, I think Ashland has it made. Community-owned fiber network that the cable companies and phone companies have to pay to use -- and you don't HAVE to go through any one of them to get service from a 3rd party. I wish Beaverton would do that.http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid