FTTH Coming To Lincoln, Nebraska

andyring writes: Lincoln, Neb., in the heart of silicon prairie is getting gigabit fiber to every home and business in the next four years. It's a wet dream for anyone in the tech world. No install fees, no contracts, no modem rentals, guaranteed minimum of 100 mbit, no throttling, etc. It'll provide phone and TV as well. I've read the entire franchise agreement and it's a very good arrangement for the city. Interestingly enough, it's largely possible because back in the 1970s, a public works guy had the brilliant idea to install conduit to all the city's traffic signals. So there's more than 300 miles of conduit already installed and leasable. A local company, Nelnet, bought a western Nebraska company, Allo Communications, apparently because the top Nelnet guy couldn't get fiber to his home very easily. So he figured, heck, I'll just buy the company and get fiber to the whole city.

Comments

Scratching an itch

[RandomFactor]

Doesn't just work for software apparently. That public works guy sounds like a hero.

Be nice if the city here would work on things like this instead of putting our lanes on a diet so they can screw up traffic squeezing in bike paths.

Yeah, It's Nice

[Greyfox]

They ran a metric fuck-ton of fiber under Longmont back in the '90's, just before the state passed a law that municipalities couldn't offer communications services. There was a loophole in the law, though. If a majority of voters in the municipality voted that their municipality would be exempt from this, then they could offer communication services. We had the vote a couple years ago and it passed by something like 86%. 600 mbps up to youtube is pretty nice. I usually upload a few boring skydiving videos a week. Pulling games down from steam in a couple of minutes is also pretty nice. The city can also offer a pretty sweet deal to companies wanting to move into the area. My link to the internet now is faster that most companies' private LAN connections.

Re:It's a lot easier to pull off

[ArmoredDragon]

Not so much the layout as the size as well. Phoenix is laid out like this, only the area it covers is vast. We also have conduit everywhere, and even already existing fiber (both dark and otherwise.) Supposedly Tempe already hammered out an agreement for Google to begin deploying fiber here, until Cox sued the city to stop it from happening (I think that lawsuit is still pending.) Probably not coincidentally, Cox has been deploying its own FTTH services all over Tempe (or at least, there's city-placed orange signs everywhere indicating ordinances about Cox fiber service being deployed, similar to what happens i.e. during zoning changes) so perhaps it's just a play to beat Google to the punch, who knows.

The Commons

[PopeRatzo]

it's largely possible because back in the 1970s, a public works guy had the brilliant idea to install conduit to all the city's traffic signals.

Thank your government.