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'Dig Once' Bill Could Bring Fiber Internet To Much of the US (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If the U.S. adopts a "dig once" policy, construction workers would install conduits just about any time they build new roads and sidewalks or upgrade existing ones. These conduits are plastic pipes that can house fiber cables. The conduits might be empty when installed, but their presence makes it a lot cheaper and easier to install fiber later, after the road construction is finished. The idea is an old one. U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has been proposing dig once legislation since 2009, and it has widespread support from broadband-focused consumer advocacy groups. It has never made it all the way through Congress, but it has bipartisan backing from lawmakers who often disagree on the most controversial broadband policy questions, such as net neutrality and municipal broadband. It even got a boost from Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who has frequently clashed with Democrats and consumer advocacy groups over broadband -- her "Internet Freedom Act" would wipe out the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules, and she supports state laws that restrict growth of municipal broadband. Blackburn, chair of the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee, put Eshoo's dig once legislation on the agenda for a hearing she held yesterday on broadband deployment and infrastructure. Blackburn's opening statement (PDF) said that dig once is among the policies she's considering to "facilitate the deployment of communications infrastructure." But her statement did not specifically endorse Eshoo's dig once proposal, which was presented only as a discussion draft with no vote scheduled. The subcommittee also considered a discussion draft that would "creat[e] an inventory of federal assets that can be used to attach or install broadband infrastructure." Dig once legislation received specific support from Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who said that he is "glad to see Ms. Eshoo's 'Dig Once' bill has made a return this Congress. I think that this is smart policy and will help spur broadband deployment across the country."
..In new construction or total replacement of old roads
Most existing areas, especially rural, still can't get good internet
Misleading headline. Saying "Dig Once Bill Could Bring Fiber..." implies that there is currently a bill undergoing consideration. The article says that the same guy has been proposing it over and over for 8 years.
You could also say "If US Politicians stopped being twats, it could bring internet to people." Or "If people stopped killing people, the world would be better." Or ...you get the picture.
...in a 1000 years or so, perhaps yeah
Or, you know, you could just eliminate the laws that prohibit/restrict Municipal and/or County fiber projects. Two counties I know have PUDs that have deployed fiber to pretty much every address also serviced by their power connection. Residents then have the option to choose Internet service from several different providers (Zayo and Level 3 will also do transit over it), and TV service from several providers, and it's all very reasonably priced and reliable.
Of course, the big boys (Verizon et al) Hate it, because it dramatically lowers the bar to their competition.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
While I'm not terribly familiar with the responsibilities of levels of US government, this seems like something appropriate to being dealt with at the local body or possibly state level. Why is the federal government involved?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
LTE is fast enough for me.
Nobody complains about LTE speeds. Everybody complains about LTE data caps.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Anyone around here here have any practical experience with long runs of conduit in rural areas? I'm all in favor of it if it works. But how do you keep the conduit from filling up with water ... at least in places where it rains now and then? And what happens when that water freezes and expands? And is there a problem with critters homesteading in the pipe? And sediment? And what happens where it crosses active slip-strike fault lines? In other words -- What could possibly go wrong?
Also, shouldn't this be a state and local thing, not a federal government thing? I have no problem with the feds doing the R&D and laying out best practices. But if the Feds pay for this, they'll probably have the entire country including every swamp in Florida and dry lake in the Mojave conduited with mil-spec pipes and full time inspectors and mandatory 20 year replacement cycles. While it's probably a better investment than 22 goddamn aircraft carriers, Or the planned massive rollout of overpriced and underperforming F-35 aircraft, I'm not sure it should be that high on our list of national priorities.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
First i fail to understand why any honest politician would not want broadband everywhere for all people to use. Next make that pipe large enough so that numerous competing companies can offer broadband services thus causing competition and that should drive prices downward. As far as free, municipal access that would be wonderful and bring many poor neighborhoods into the modern world. The basic idea is to protect the public from wallet vampires who seek endless paths to extract money from the public.
I shall name my cuntry Seamenland.
So joining the navy will be compulsory then?
Agreed. PRIVATE industry knows that there's only one acceptable way to squander resources - executive bonuses.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I fully support this idea and I can tell you that their are a handful of multi-billion dollar companies that would rather see the nation go back to using slow-ass DSL before it sees a competitive landscape. They honestly don't care about providing a service, the only thing they care about is that they be the ones to profit from it no matter what the cost to the consumer. As such, you can be assured, the people they bought will kill this bill quite quickly or put in enough legal landmines that only they can makes use of such pipes.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
but who owns the ducts and what if the comms companies don't want to pay the price to use them and would rather lay their own. Are they forced to pay the monopoly rates?
Why should city-dwellers subsidize your chosen lifestyle.
"Dig once" is cheaper, and reduces the need for rural internet subsidies.
Norway
Mean: 47 Mbit
Median: 27.7 Mbit
People <4 Mbit: 3.9%
People <1 Mbit: 0.5%
People who can't get fiber: 54%
People who can't get 100/10 Mbit: 22%
People who can't get 4 Mbit on a fixed connection: 5%
People who can't get 10 Mbit LTE outdoor w/antenna: 0.06%
I thought maybe the fiber rollout would slow down, but the last stats indicate a speed up going from 41% to 46% in last year. Next year it seems likely a majority of the population can get fiber.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I like the concept but regulations likes these are historically the domain of the State. Does the Federal government even have the authority to regulate how roads are constructed?
Why should city-dwellers subsidize your chosen lifestyle.
Because city dwellers need to eat. Or would you prefer farming within city limits?
It'd be no different from Switzerland, Israel, or any other country that makes every man part of the military reserve.
Somehow, our primitive forebears wired up the whole vast continent for the telephone and we now know what effect that had on the US economy. If we want to stay on top, we need to do the same for gigabit data. Doesn't really matter what technology is used, as long as it's robust and universal.
There are large areas of the country served by overhead power and telephone lines. Bringing fiber to these areas would be cheap compared to those with underground utilities. The poles are there. It's just a matter of hanging the fiber from them and paying a (regulated) per pole rental fee. And yet we don't see fiber going up in these areas any faster than in neighborhoods served by underground utilities.
Overhead fiber can be so cheap that a few power companies have gone ahead and put it up whenever they have a maintenance and/or upgrade project in the neighborhood. But often, due to non-compete agreements with telcos/cable companies, or restrictions on municipal broadband systems, this fiber is relegated to the power companies internal use for SCADA and metering systems.
When the government can get to the root of the economics that broadband providers use not to compete with each other, perhaps the installation of fiber will start to take off in this country. But that will also see some execs off to prison for antitrust violations, so don't hold your breath.
Have gnu, will travel.
I buy their crops, and my tax dollars subsidize growing those crops.
Try again.
FYI... they already do this without a law telling them to and have been doing it for years. lt's called Dark Fiber, and I've had a first-hand tech power company tech tell me that.
Now granted, it may not be all/most companies. But the power companies are eager to make money off of selling wires they can lay for almost free, while they're already laying power lines. So it stands to reason that we shouldn't need much of a legislative push to get them to do what's already clearly in their best financial interest.
Laying fiber to the 99% of the USA that's ALREADY paved, however, that's going to be an interesting, less short-term profitable venture.
threatening to veto the bill.
Farmers pay artificially low taxes on their farms - that's a subsidy.
Farmers get federal money to encourage certain crops and the gov't then requires industries to buy those crops (think corn for ethanol)
Rural telcos get direct cash payments to offset increased cost of pay their infrastructure - that's a subsidy.
Farmers get crop insurance at an artificially low price because of gov't guarantees - that's a subsidy.
Federal money flows to help support rural schools, hospitals, police and fire departments - that's a subsidy.
And after the road is complete, it will be DUG it. Dig-Dug
Why wouldn't she and her pimps love it? Yet again, monopolistic corporations will be given valuable infrastructure to hoard for their own (and rent seek), all ENTIRELY on the taxpayers' dime.
Also LTE latency.
The ping is not really that bad compared to a dsl connection anyway. It's just not as consistent I'd like.
This was a speed test from a few hours ago on my grandfathered verizon unlimited LTE line I use for internet at home.
http://www.speedtest.net/my-re...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Everybody complains about LTE data caps.
I would replace my home internet service with LTE if there were no caps (and the cost were reasonable). LTE in my area is at least twice as fast as what I can get on a physical connection.
"Dig once" is cheaper, and reduces the need for rural internet subsidies.
That, and the fact that people with good internet access should be more productive and hence pay more in taxes, so it's an investment. (I throw that in because his answer would probably be "but why have internet subsidies at all?".)
The ping is not really that bad compared to a dsl connection anyway.
Probably because your ISP QoS's ICMP and bandwidth test sites to highest priority. Try running some real time apps and see how it compares.
Bullshit. 2010 (most recent year for which I could find hard figures) Per capita Federal funding: Metro $10,976, Nonmetro $10,293. And those figures include retirement/disability benefits. Not surprising that category has the highest expenditures in rural areas classified as "Retirement Destinations." I submit that category should be excluded - if someone moved between urban and rural areas, those payments would move with them - they're associated with individuals, not location. Excluding that single category, Per capita Federal funding: Metro $8,171, Nonmetro $6,773.
And don't bother with your crap about artificial taxes and subsidies - those are economic and also occur in the industries which support urban incomes. Crop subsidies are skewed one way, defense spending (which is much greater) is skewed the other. All considered, the facts show your claim is wrong.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Excluding that single category, Per capita Federal funding: Metro $8,171, Nonmetro $6,773.
Of course, that's only the spending side. Urban household income is $71k, where rural household income is just $50k (2015). Federal taxes for a family of 4 on $70k is about $5400 and on $50k roughly $2300. So, your average metro denizen "gets" maybe 6x his federal taxes back, where the average non-metro "gets" about 12x.
Obviously, because of the progressive income tax, averages aren't going to add up. The fact is that there are more humans living in cities. Those city dwellers earn more money and pay more taxes than rural residents. Money is going to flow from cities to the country.
So, you would argue that a person paying millions/year in taxes should receive comparable government benefits in return, and someone living at the poverty line and paying no taxes should receive none. Right?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Ummm, if indoor farms are "far, far, far more efficient, profitable, and easy to control without herbicides and pesticides" wouldn't all "farms" be indoor farms. I''' admit I'm not an economist but from what I know of their theories anything that can lower production costs is a good thing right?
Indoor farms aren't suitable for things like growing wheat for bread, which requires huge expanses of land. The capital expenses for covering thousands of square miles with greenhouses would be enormous, and environmentalists would have fits.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Why would latency matter much on a mobile connection? The only time I'm even aware of latency is when I'm playing twitchy multiplayer games, which will never be on a mobile connection. I don't think I'd even notice latency issues on my phone unless it got to be like 4000 ms.
Why should city-dwellers subsidize your chosen lifestyle. You don't want concrete and police sirens? Well, you don't get fast Internet, either.
For the same reason the rural dwellers subsidize your life style. You wouldn't have much in the way of transit if the rest of us were not paying towards it. Also it is not always a choice. People have to live where they can find work. Well unless you want an oil refinery, sewage treatment plant, or power plant in the heart of your urban "lifestyle"?
Why should city-dwellers subsidize your chosen lifestyle.
We want internet when we go on vacation.
The area isn't that much, you're thinking too flat. You need to build up.
I guess you think the interstate highway was a bad idea..
So this adds to the cost of infrastructure immensely and doesn't imply a useful map or topology. It is darts at a wall. And it may delay projects that are needed. Additionally when a road needs to be moved, the possibly empty fiber needs to me moved as well. And taking on a life of its on, the additional steps needed when some local jurisdiction decides to slam dark fiber in all these conduits then say a large construction project buys up a few dozen square blocks of property, now they have to relocate all the fiber and conduits of the ill planned installations. Just widening roads which is a very normal event gets horribly complicated. And what size conduit gets installed? I watched in my local area a fairly main road under construction for over a year as they installed 12 conduits over a very long piece of the road. So If I have a road with one empty conduit; who decides what can go in the conduit. Sure the municipality could install something like the 768 fiber cable, if that is legal in their jurisdiction, which isn't guaranteed, and still leaves maintenance issues. Also multiple services in the same conduit is a single point of failure. One cut dozens of fibers bite it. And where do cable vaults get placed? And how is power delivered to them. It isn't enough to have a conduit, you need all the support that is needed to fill it, and a well thought out local plan for each mile of conduit so you can responsibly place cable vaults that have power delivery space for multiple meters breaking off the power and room for multiple pieces of hardware for fiber repeaters. And even nitrogen pressurization equipment. Maybe instead of jumping the gun and creating more problems that it solves at a huge national cost ... (and perhaps becoming yet another unfunded federal mandate the courts will strike down) they might better engage in planning and standardization, then establish a pilot program in some small city, have the federal government pay for the repaving of the town and installation, track costs and problems. Sometimes speed is essential, but this seems to be setting the country up for huge expenses and potentially poor results plagued by problems. And often high power lines can't be installed, or shouldn't be installed, in the same conduit. Maybe install empty concrete 2 meter diameter concrete pipes with a cable vault every kilometer. or a six foot diameter pipe with vaults every 5/8 of a mile. Leave slack for geography, define bridge standards, consider opening bridges and tunnels, define responsibility roles and provide a support and emergency plan. Consider all that can go wrong in a system so large it will go wrong, often. plan for it. Unfunded, ill conceived. I don't like it. No sir I don't like it.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
We can buy it from the 3rd world countries around the world for cheaper than what it costs to subsidize the albatrosses that are rural communities.
You don't. Those funds come from the cities themselves.
Rural dwellers do NOT subsidize Urban residents. There is nothing rural communities provide that the cities can not buy on international markets for a fraction of the price it costs to subsidize the boonies. It has come to the point where the civilization has come to realize that the country folk are an albatross we no longer feel like carrying.
Until 3rd world food-producing countries become hostile to the US, such as if they join the 2nd world by becoming more closely allied with Russia and China than with North America and Western Europe. Domestic production must be prepared to cover for sudden interruptions in the flow of imports.
OK where I am there are more of us living in the subburbs and rural communities that are paying for the big city infrastructure without any of the benefits... if asking the government to put in a conduit while repairing a road is a big deal then perhaps we can start saying no to subsidizing the city on its infrastructure?
Nobody complains about LTE speeds. Everybody complains about LTE data caps.
You are kidding, right? LTE speeds are maybe fast enough to do a little playing around or watching some 4Mbps stream, but pushing 10GB across to another site? I don't think so, not when I can't even keep a conference call going reliably after 9am.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Mine's 58 down, 62 up. I think I'll stick to mine, since I have need of pushing 100s of MB or even GBs to various places.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
It would matter if you're replacing your home internet connection with an LTE connection.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
All that conduit will be plastic and the plastic comes from Big Oil. So of course Trump and the Republicans will want it passed to help out their friends. Just think that with every meter, sorry foot, of new road laid down then a food of conduit will have to be put down too.
I presume this will be part of Our President's promised initiative to renew our infrastructure?