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Google Is Lighting Up Dark Fiber All Over the Country (vice.com)

Posted by timothy on from the enlightenment-circa-2016 dept.

sarahnaomi writes: For years, San Francisco has had a robust fiber optic infrastructure laying dormant underneath its streets. Google announced Wednesday that it's going to start lighting some of those cables up. Welcome to the future of broadband in major cities. Most people don't know that many cities throughout the United States are already wired with "dark fiber": infrastructure that, for a variety of reasons, is never used to provide gigabit connections to actual residents. This fiber is often laid by companies you rarely hear about, like Zayo and Level 3, which lay fiber infrastructure in hopes the city, a provider like Google, or a corporate customer (like an office building) will eventually make use of it.

4 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Been here since the late 90's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Google long ago bought up much of this fiber and has been sitting on it. Patiently waiting for ATT,Comcast, Verizon to all back themselves into a corner.

  2. Google also putting down lots of new fiber by DRichardHipp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Here in Charlotte, there are crews all over trenching in new fiber conduit - both for Google and for AT&T. I found it interesting that the AT&T crews that I've seen are putting in a single 1-inch conduit, whereas the Google crews are putting in multiple (sometimes as many as five) 2-inch conduits. Maybe Google is just trying to catch up. Or maybe they have bigger plans.

    1. Re:Google also putting down lots of new fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Seattle...Director's Rules.

      I'm sick of my ISDN line at home. Fifteen years ago when I lived in Rock Hill, SC, just south of Charlotte, NC mentioned by the GP, I had a connection over a hundred times faster than I now have in Seattle, WA. This is supposed to be a tech city, but everyone I know outside of work hates the Internet and wants to limit access to it. The city is very anti-Internet. They won't allow CenturyLink to upgrade to fiber in my area, and they won't allow Comcast, despite their government-granted monopoly for the area, to dig up the street to bury cable.

  3. Most People Don't Know by 31415926535897 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most people don't know that many cities throughout the United States are already wired with "dark fiber"...

    except those who have been a part of Slashdot because it's been talked about before, more than once. E.G. (ca. 2005) http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

    If they actually start lighting it up in more places, however, that would indeed be good news.