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Test Selling "Last Mile" Fiber to Homeowners Under Way in Canada
Ars Technica is covering an interesting pilot program taking place in Ottawa, CA. 400 homes are being outfitted with fiber optic cables; however, the "last mile" of fiber is going to be sold outright to the homeowners rather than providing internet at a monthly fee. "In the future, it could become commonplace for homes to come with 'tails.' These customer-owned, fiber-optic connections would link them to a network peering point. Without the expense of rolling out last mile infrastructure to every home, many more ISPs could afford to serve a given neighborhood by running wiring to the peering point, leading to more competition and lower prices. Perhaps best of all, the growth of customer-owned fiber could make debates over 'open access' and network neutrality moot, as robust telecom competition should prevent the worst of the monopolistic behavior exhibited by telco and cable incumbents."
I remember back in the day a wealthy friend of mine had a line to his house that he had actually paid for, a quarter T I believe it was -- he was still liable for all full payments (even more), and susceptible to shutoffs at a whim.
This will be great... so much better than being at the whims of our ISPs (which are going the way of AT&T and comcast - changing policies and restricting access because they can).
I do shudder at paying for repairs to 'my' section of fibre optics - I mean, what happens when they get cut because someone is out digging in the yard? It is pretty hard to get other people to pay for their mistakes... especially if they're expensive!
But, I certainly could go for a community network, even if it was partly independant of the internet - it would make p2p much faster, and more difficulty to monitor.
Paying $2700 for a fiber connection may seem like a lot, but plenty of people spend more than that on other high-tech gadgets. High-end gaming machines and laptops still cost more than $2700. And, Wu notes, a fiber connection will probably sell with the house; a couple thousand dollars is a pittance compared with the amounts many customers pay for remodeled kitchens and bathrooms, new windows, and the like.
I have fiber running less than 100 feet from my house. Why the fuck can't I just access that? I realize that they are talking about Ottawa Canada here, but why can't someone just ask me if I want to pay money to tap into the cables that are so close to me? While I don't believe $2700 is at all reasonable for what they are asking (especially in the United States) and I couldn't tell you more than a handful of people that would even know what Fiber to your door means let alone have it be a selling point, I still want someone to come to me and say, "hey, you can use that McLeod fiber that is right there -- today -- enjoy."
Ah, my dreams.
You use a ditchwitch to cut a trench, not a backhoe. It only needs to be a few inches wide. Right tool for the right job.
Backhoes are more fun!
The creator of this post (Jacob Smith) hereby releases it, and all of his other posts, into the public domain.
When I read this, the first thing that came to mind was that in theory, you could do a similar thing with electricity, and then maybe the electric company wouldn't have to be a sanctioned monopoly anymore.
And then that thought went the other direction: maybe the broadband internet access market will start looking more like the electricity market, rather than the other way around.
As things stand now (in the US at least), broadband competition is all but non-existent for the same reasons as more conventional utilities: the prohibitively high infrastructure cost for competitors to enter the market. If this experiment doesn't enable viable competition, maybe it's time to think about applying the regulated-monopoly idea to internet access.
Like say some idiot knocking out your connection because they knocked it out with a backhoe. Or even the city tearing up the street, and saying you have to pay to relocate your fiber.
It's a hell of a lot easier for someone that owns a LOT of the fiber to hire lawyers and get someone else to pay for mistakes than it is for one person.
AccountKiller
I would definitely pay to have fiber drawn at my house.
I think a peering agreement is way easier than using an ISP.
This increases competition and provides infinitely more options to customers.
For instance, I could peer with a large network provider and ask for 100Mbits both way. The price would drop significantly since it's just a simple network connection after that.
They're using their grammar skills there.
I have suggested many times, that a monopoly should be created from the block level green box, to the house. That monopoly should not do anything BUT that monopoly. Nothing else. Then it should allow up to 50-100 providers to come to each box. Any smart company who goes block level to CO will then sell hookups to others. Of course, competition means prices will be kept low.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hoes is always more fun on they backs... DIG THAT SHIT!
I own a backhoe, not a ditchwitch, otherwise would use it.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
with your neighbors and buy it together, then share it with a wireless mesh network.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Here in Ottawa we have the vast majority of our cables on poles.
A fiber isn't something you can just tap into without negative results. You'll need to cut it then add a splitter.
Assuming it went perfectly, you've just
1) Killed the network for everyone using that fiber for the time it was cut
2) degraded the signal(light) for everyone
3) ponied up for several (10's of?) thousands of dollars in equipment because that signal won't likely be usable by low-end short-haul consumer equipment.
Now imagine all your neighbors doing that.
You'll need some type of remote terminal for your neighborhood.
Even in the old days of vampire taps on coax there were limits.
I know this is Slashdot, but if you had bothered to read the article you would have discovered that the cable would be managed and maintained by a management company. So the cost of maintenance would be shared among the community. Just like existing home owners associations today.
I currently pay a monthly fee to my association and it covers lawn care, water, sewer, snow removal and garbage removal. This would just tack on "fiber internet connection" to that list.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
In my neighborhood - suburb of DC - I can't get Verizon's FIOS because I live in a low-ish density single-family community. I live 7500 feet from the CO and have DSL. The townhouses on either side of me have FIOS, as do the apartments across the street. Apparently there isn't enough incentive to bring their fancy fibers my way. I'd love to run privately owned dark fiber to a co-lo where the bastards *would* take my money. I'd expect a better rate due to the need to use *my* infrastructure. I've been speaking to the Verizon customer service reps on and off for several years now, and they expect to have the service in my area "any day now." Uh huh ...
The ideal would be for it to operate like any other civic infrastructure (water, sewer, power, etc.) where the homeowner is responsible only past a certain point (demarc point, property boundary, etc.) and the utility company is responsible for the rest.
Realistically, bandwidth _should_ be a utility.
So, I pay $2700 for a company to "pull" fiber directly to my house/condo. But, according to the article, even though it throws around the word "ownership" there's nothing defining that ownership.
When this company goes belly up in the future, I will lose this fiber because I don't have an easement for it. And because there isn't an easement, nothing gets transferred with the property, except a gentleman's agreement. And what's to stop this company from doing something else with the fiber?
This sounds suspiciously like a cableco/telco that allows you to use another network on their physical line. I own nothing. I have no rights. It also sounds like a subscription music service.
Maybe a bunch of us in my neighborhood could get together and arrange something like this. We could string fiber to all of the homes in an area, like on poles or something... Maybe, since we're putting up poles we could get electricity to the homes as well.
We need a name for something like this that expresses the general usefulness of it for all the customers in the area. I know... let's call it a "public utility district."
Now how to pay for it... since it affects everybody, maybe some sort of property tax.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I currently pay a monthly fee to my association and it covers lawn care, water, sewer, snow removal and garbage removal.
Me too. It also pays for them to dig a hole in my yard, not fill it in, then send me a nasty notice threatening me with fines if I don't fix the hole in my yard. Depending on them for Internet access, too? God almighty!
I'm on a farm in the country (in Ontario) that is serviced by a "baby bell" This is a co-op where all the people on the line have a share in the company.
The neat thing about this is, Bell and Rogers and all the baby bells go to Ottawa to discuss what a proper service rate is. Rogers and Bell, present their case that it costs $$$$ to do their thing. My co-op costs $$$, but because of anti-competition rules the bigger guys their their way with $$$$ and the co-op has to have the same prices.
So I'm paying $$$$ for my phone service. BUT.....
All is not lost, remember the share in the company? Well if it only costs $$$ to run a service that $$$$ is being charged, then the owners receive a dividend at the end of the year! Whee.
Or alternatively we get better service!
Whee!!!
On Tuseday (yup this really is relevant!) they were installing Fiber Optic in front of my house. In the near futures I'll be getting it inside.
Don't forget, I live on a Farm, in the middle of the farming area.
Don't you wish you didn't have to deal with the monopolies?
Does this mean that the street will be opened every week, when the next person in a neighbourhood wants fiber, instead of every month? ...
Nope! Thanks to the innovative people at Google, there is no trenching involved! With their latest beta release of TiSP, all the end user has to do is flush one end of the fiber down the nearest toilet, and wait for the plumbing techs to plug it in to the nearest node!
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Don't scoff. A neighborhood only dark network for "sharing"
stuff could be a very interesting possibility. It would be
like a neighborhood private BBS and could be completely
invisible to prying eyes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
A trencher is good but sometimes the ground has huge nasty rocks. We use all three here on the farm do do trenching, ditchwitch, backhoe, trackhoe. You can even use a ripper plow and then go back over it with the blade and smooth it back out if it is all soft mostly. That's really fast if you have a big crawler to drag it, it's like butter then. Just depends on your terrain and how deep you want to go.
With that said, I wish we had better options on wireless. It's gotten really old them tards in government selling all the good spectrum to the same billionaires all the time and leaving john q. public with the *dregs*.
You have to have sigs turned on in order for this joke to work. Here, I'll help:
A public utility district is authorized to provide telecommunications services. - WA SB 6102 2007
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Boy, that's some SHITTY service :D
The population of Canada is pretty low (about 35 million), spread out across the second largest country in the world and frozen solid for at least two or three months in the warmest areas, it's a big deal if this was offered.
Some places near me have just got cable access last year because they were so isolated the cable company wasn't going to put up miles of cable for one house.
I would pay up front for fiber if that meant I would get it sooner...it'll probably still end up being throttled to death somehow!
Which ditch did the ditchwitch witch if the ditchwitch did witch ditch?
So, there will be a new Fiber Management Company (FMC ?) setup to manage your own fiber and arguably the peering point.
Who would this Company report to and how would it too its business ?
Would it report to the Homeowners through some kind of HOA ?
If not, then you just moved the monopoly from the ISP to the FMC.
But if the peering point and fibers are really owned by the HOA, can an HOA really ensure quality service to its member ? Do you feel comfortable with your neighbors handling this ? I mean my HOA is trying to regulate the Satellite Dishes, in the complex, with very little success. And I dont really want my neighboors to have access to my connection logs.
It is likely that the local cable or phone company will be first to connect to your peering point and try to keep the competition out by the usual means.
I'm not saying its a bad idea, but I doubt it will be a perfect solution...
A couple days of using the backhoe to dig the ditch would pay for itself.
Ottawa is a city. There tend to be pavements, roads, concrete etc. in the way not to mention a city council that will get rather ticked off if you dig a large trench into the middle of the street. While the idea seems nice in principle is the city going to give homeowners the right to dig up the street to fix their connection if it fails? Are there really going to be multiple companies connecting to the streets central hub to provide a real choice of service? On the face of it it seems rather impractical.
The ditch that the ditchwitch would witch if the ditchwitch did witch ditch.
I'm waiting for my +2 Offtopic.
--The FNP
You use a ditchwitch to cut a trench, not a backhoe. It only needs to be a few inches wide. Right tool for the right job.
Usually not. Most communications trenches are 18 to 24 inches wide. Why? Because the cable is pulled in 3" or 4" conduits, which must be laid on a bed of compacted gravel (called "shading"), covered with more shade, and then backfilled. This requires working space in the trench. Usually multiple conduits are laid too, and telecom is often co-trenched with other utilities below it. A narrow bucket on a backhoe is the tool of choice. I have never seen a ditchwitch used to install pipe for telecom. Ditchwitches are the tool of choice for small irrigation pipe, small buried electrical feeders, and other really light duty applications. Yes, IAACC (commercial contractor).
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Can a ditchwitch fill the trench back in too ?
Automatically. You can either run it to cut a narrow trench and deposit the dirt off to the side, or you can run it to automatically cut the trench, lay in pipe or wire from a spool, and drop the dirt back on top. It then requires only a little watering and compaction and you are done. Fast and easy.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
In fact my new house is in a community (in WA) where, during the plan of the subdivision, they mandated fiber to every home.
The service provider is owned by the local council. They provide 24x7 support. All hardware, including the hookup and the fiber router is free.
The only drawback is that every home owner - even those who do not use the service - have to pay the minimum fee, which is $42 per month for 6MB symmetrical / 20MB symmetrical is an extra $50.
I think this service has been around for about 5 years.
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You know what they say... when all you have is a backhoe, everything looks like a quarry.
I've never heard of a ditchwitch before, so I just googled for a picture of one, and I have to ask the question: Why on has no one thought to have the hero drive one of these things in a zombie film?
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
You know what they say ... once you've had a backhoe, you never go back yo.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Here in the US, Federal, State, and Local governments either directly build roads, or hire private companies to build and maintain the roads.
Why can't the US do this with fiber? Competing ISPs, could provide service over the fiber to end users, and tax dollars would pay to maintain the fiber "roads". Your monthly ISP bill would cover the services provided over the fiber (data, voice, video...etc).
I'm sure many will argue that they don't want their tax dollars paying for someone to download music and porn, but your tax dollars already pay for roads, even if you don't drive.
A reliable, public, fiber infrastructure will be as important to the US in the future as telephones and electricity are now. We need leaders that are smart enough to see that.
-ted