On who pays & does the internal wiring: I agree & agree. This is a capex
spend and asset improvement so payments come from the property owner(s)
somehow. My thoughts are this is a new industry for the trades. My
interactions with many in their 20s suggest that starting or working for
a fiber & wifi install company is something they'd like.
On investor owned vs publicly owned: The broadband providers in the U.S.
are mostly investor owned. Our water supplies are publicly owned but in
Europe mostly privately owned. Similar, but not exact, for medical.
These outcomes are per critical junctures, e.g. London was bombed in
WWII but the U.S. really wasn't so British society turned to their govt
to provide the NHS. So, I don't think there is a universal answer.
Over the last 20+ years in the U.S., the major investment in broadband
has been investor-owned companies and not from the regulated RBOCs.
Note: The point of this thread is to show the state of where we are now
to help us focus our energies on the next ten years. That's what my plan
is, leave things a little better than what it was when we showed up.
Bob
Hi Bob,
On Mar 25, 2023, at 21:43, rjmcmahon <[email protected]> wrote:
It's not just one phone call. I've been figuring this out for about
two years now. I've been working with some strategic people in Boston,
colos & dark fiber providers, and professional installers that wired
up many of the Boston universities, some universities themselves to
offer co-ops to students to run networsk, trainings for DIC and other
high value IoT offerings, blue collar principals (with staffs of about
100) to help them learn to install fiber and provide better jobs for
their employees.
My conclusion is that Comcast is best suited for the job as the
broadband provider, at least in Boston, for multiple reasons. One chat
isn't going to block me ;)
Yes, but they clearly are not the party best selected to to the
internal wiring... this is a question of incentives and cost... if you
pay their technicians by the hour to do the internal wiring according
to your plan (assuming that they would accept that) then your goals
are aligned, if the cost of the installation is to be carried by the
ISP, they likely are motivated to the the kind of job I saw in
California*.
Over here the situation is slightly different, in-house cabling from
the first demarking socket (which is considered to be ISP owned) is
clearly the responsibility of the owner/resident not the ISP. ISPs
offer to route cables, but on a per-hour basis, or for MDUs often used
to make contracts with the owner that they would build the internal
wiring (in an agreed upon fashion) for the right to be sole provider
of e.g. cable TV services (with the cable fees mandatorily folded into
the rent) for a fixed multi-year period (10-15 IIRC), after that the
plant would end-up property of the building owner. Recent changes in
law made the "mandatory cable fees as part of the rent" much
harder/impossible, turning the in-house wiring back into an
owner/resident problem.
The point of the thread is that we still do not treat digital
communications infrastructure as life support critical.
Well, let's keep things in perspective, unlike power, water (fresh
and waste), and often gas, communications infrastructure is mostly not
critical yet. But I agree that we are clearly on a path in that
direction, so it is time to look at that from a different perspective.
Personally, I am a big fan of putting the access network into
communal hands, as these guys already do a decent job with other
critical infrastructure (see list above, plus roads) and I see a PtP
fiber access network terminating in some CO-like locations a viable
way to allow ISPs to compete in the internet service field all the
while using the communally build access network for a few. IIRC this
is how Amsterdam organized its FTTH roll-out. Just as POTS wiring has
beed essentially unchanged for decades, I estimate that current fiber
access lines would also last for decades requiring no active component
changes in the field, making them candidates for communal management.
(With all my love for communal ownership and maintenance, these
typically are not very nimble and hence best when we talk about life
times of decades).
It reminds me of Elon Musk and his claims on FSD.
;) I had to look up FSD, I guess full self driving (aka
pie-in-the-sky)?
I could do the whole thing myself - but that's not going to achieve
what's needed. We need systems that our loved ones can call and those
systems will care for them. Similar to how the medical community
works, though imperfect, in caring for our loved one's and their
healths.
I think I get your point. The question is how do we get from where we
are now to that place your are describing here and in the FiWi
concept?
I think we all are responsible for changing our belief sets &
developing ourselves to better serve others. Most won't act until they
can actually see what's possible. So let's start to show them.
Sure, having real implemented examples always helps!
Regards
Sebastian
Bob
P.S.: Bruce's point about placing ducts/conduits seems like to only
way to gain some future-proofeness. For multi-story and/or
multi-dweller units this introduces the question how to stop fire
using these conduits to "jump" between levels, but I assume that is a
solved problem already, and can be squelches with throwing money in
its direction.
*)A IIRC charter technician routing coaxial cable on the outside of
the two story building and drilling through the (wooden) wall to set
the cable socket inside, all the while casually cutting the Dish
coaxial cable that was still connected to a satellite dish... Not that
I cared, we were using ADSL at the time, and in accordance with the
old "when in Rome..." rule, I bridged over the deteriorated in-house
phone wiring by running a 30m Cat5 cable on the outside of the
building to the first hand-over box.
Hi Bob,
somewhat sad. Have you considered that your described requirements
and
the use-case might be outside of the mass-market envelope for which
the big ISPs taylor/rig their processes? Maybe, not sure that is an
option, if you approach this as a "business"* asking for a fiber
uplink for an already "wired" 5 unit property you might get better
service? You still would need to do the in-house re-wiring, but you
likely would avoid scripted hot-lines that hang up when in the
allotted time the agent sees little chance of "closing" the call. All
(big) ISPs I know treat hotline as a cost factor and not as the first
line of customer retention...
I would also not be amazed if Boston had smaller ISPs that are
willing
and able to listen to customers (but that might be a bit more
expensive than the big ISPs).
That or try to get your foot into Comcast's PR department to sell
them
on the "reference installation" for all Boston historic buildings, so
they can offset the custom tailoring effort with the expected good
press of doing the "right thing" publicly.
Good luck
Sebastian
*) I understand you are not, but I assume the business units to have
more leeway to actually offer more bespoke solutions than the likely
cost-optimized to Mars and back residental customer unit.
On Mar 25, 2023, at 20:39, rjmcmahon via Bloat
<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi All,
I've been trying to modernize a building in Boston where I'm an HOA
board member over the last 18 mos. I perceive the broadband network
as a critical infrastructure to our 5 unit building.
Unfortunately, Comcast staff doesn't seem to agree. The agent
basically closed the chat on me mid-stream (chat attached.) I've
been at this for about 18 mos now.
While I think bufferbloat is a big issue, the bigger issue is that
our last-mile providers must change their cultures to understand
that life support use cases that require proper pathways, conduits &
cabling can no longer be ignored. These buildings have coaxial
thrown over the exterior walls done in the 80s then drilling holes
without consideration of structures. This and the lack of
environmental protections for our HOA's critical infrastructure is
disheartening. It's past time to remove this shoddy work on our
building and all buildings in Boston as well as across the globe.
My hope was by now I'd have shown through actions what a historic
building in Boston looks like when we, as humans in our short lives,
act as both stewards of history and as responsible guardians to
those that share living spaces and neighborhoods today & tomorrow.
Motivating humans to better serve one another is hard.
Bob<comcast.pdf>_______________________________________________
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