It might look low cost until you look at a post-1980s suburb in the USA or Canada where 100% of the utilities are underground. There may be no fiber or duct routes. Just old coax used for DOCSIS3 owned/run by the local cable incumbent and copper POTS wiring belonging to the ILEC. The cost to retrofit such a neighborhood and reach every house with a fiber architecture can be quite high in construction and labor.
On Thu, Feb 2, 2023 at 9:14 AM Forrest Christian (List Account) < li...@packetflux.com> wrote: > The cost to build physical layer in much of the suburban and somewhat > rural US is low enough anymore that lots of smaller, independent, ISPs are > overbuilding the incumbent with fiber and taking a big chunk of their > customer base because they are local and care. And making money while > doing it. > > > On Thu, Feb 2, 2023, 8:22 AM Masataka Ohta < > mo...@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp> wrote: > >> Mike Hammett wrote: >> >> > I selfishly hope they don't because that's where independent >> > operators will succeed. ;-) >> >> Because of natural regional monopoly at physical layer (cabling >> cost for a certain region is same between competitors but their >> revenues are proportional to their regional market shares), they >> can't succeed unless the physical layer is regulated to be >> unbundled, which is hard with PON. >> >> But, in US where regional telephone network has been operated >> by, unlike Europe/Japan, a private company enjoying natural >> regional monopoly, economic situation today should be no worse >> than that at that time. >> >> Masataka Ohta >> >