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

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.

Comments

Former Level3 employee here

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Level3 laid a lot of extra fiber (and conduits) throughout major metro areas.

The fiber itself was not very expensive (they use horizontal boring tools that have become the standard for under-street improvements), the real cost is in the gear needed to light and amplify signals on the fiber. My most recent former employer set up a 10GbS link between primary and colo sites for minimal cost by leveraging the Level3 fiber.

If a well-funded organization like Google (Level3 has been cash constrained since the telecom crash) can lease and light these fibers it will be (yet) another major disruption to the metro network players, and frankly, it is about damned time

Re:Former Level3 employee here

[rsborg]

Yes, Level3 laid a lot of extra fiber (and conduits) throughout major metro areas.

The fiber itself was not very expensive (they use horizontal boring tools that have become the standard for under-street improvements), the real cost is in the gear needed to light and amplify signals on the fiber. My most recent former employer set up a 10GbS link between primary and colo sites for minimal cost by leveraging the Level3 fiber.

If a well-funded organization like Google (Level3 has been cash constrained since the telecom crash) can lease and light these fibers it will be (yet) another major disruption to the metro network players, and frankly, it is about damned time

I can't find it by googling (amusing that) but I heard that Google over a decade ago snapped up a bunch of dark fiber after the .com bust. I had wondered what they were intending to do with that...

Here's hoping they light that shit up like a christmas tree :)

Google also putting down lots of new fiber

[DRichardHipp]

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.

Re:Google also putting down lots of new fiber

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

I apologize in advance but I don't get many opportunities to do this... but...

I have Time Warner, bitch!! Envy me!! AHAHAHAHA!

Okay, sorry about that. It's one of those bucket-list things I never thought I'd ever get to check off.

Re:Attributing it to private industry...

[Archangel Michael]

Once again, we see the government stepping in to solve a problem private industry wouldn't touch.

The problem you describe, is caused by government in the first place. In this case, municipalities offering up "Franchise" agreements to ONE company for Cable (not Fiber) and excluding all others.

Yes, this is typical "Government" causing a problem that only it can solve by itself. And not really solving ANY problems in the long run, but actually causing MORE problems than needed.

IF the Municipalities instead built a single COLO facility and brought fiber to every residence or business (or at least Conduit), we could have private enterprise competing for customers, without needing a franchise agreement. BUT nobody thinks along those lines, and thus, we have government solving problems, that create more problems, that only government can solve!

And in the end, you have bureaucrats and politicians taking over more and more control of our lives, while people like yourself blame businesses for doing exactly what governments are telling them what they can and cannot do!