> >>>>> "Keith" == Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> writes: > Keith> Perhaps you should look at the numbers for a comparable > Keith> non-capital city such as Upsalla,
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 09:20:59AM -0700, Russell Senior wrote: > How dense is Lafayette LA? Or the network in Burlington VT? The dude > from Burlington, Tim Nulty, says building fiber is cheaper than > wireless (assuming you actually provide decent service). See this: > > http://www.fiberevolution.com/2009/04/interview-tim-nulty.html You tell us. East coast towns are pretty dense, more like urban Europe than eastern Portland. I would like to see a map of fiber endpoints in the broader region, not just these "rural" towns with much-higher-than-Portland densities. The fact remains that provisioning fiber to the home costs about $1000 per endpoint for something durable (source: the guy that installed fiber to my house). And that is here in suburbia, where they string the fiber between poles, and don't run it in underground vaulting, which costs about $300/foot (source: a guy from Electric Lightwave, whose company some of us helped get permission to compete with Verizon here in Beaverton). If you are willing to personally fork out the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to pay for this, go ahead. Yuppies in the city of Portland will be grateful, and I will be grateful that my Portland friends finally get some decent broadband. But in case you haven't noticed, there are people in Portland with much more immediate needs than our internet hobby. I donate time and money to them, too. Go ask a city firefighter: if she could choose only one, would she rather have broadband internet, or a non-antiquated fire engine? In the Real World, most of this stuff gets paid for by companies making long term investments, for stable customers who can be counted on to make the investment profitable. That is what Verizon is doing out here in the 'burbs. Companies don't make investments in areas where their infrastructure is going to be "seized", to use your word. You talk about "paying" them - but I doubt you will let them set the price. If I steal your wallet and let you keep your pocket change, is that "paying" you? In the long term, fiber is better than wireless, and a lot better than copper, especially here in the Pacific northwet. I would love to see Portland get fiber, and all that copper ripped out and sold. But the payback comes over a long period, and politicians and their constituents want payback within one political cycle. Some longer term projects get built, sure, but if you follow the money through the construction contracts and back through campaign contributions, it is all short term politics and short term money. Provisioning fiber is not like that, especially because Portland doesn't have the provisioning companies (and campaign contributors) that can perform a task of this magnitude. If there are, you should be talking to them, not to us. We will see more fiber in the urban core, the Pearl, and such. That is mostly providing fiber endpoints to multifamily buildings, which is a lot cheaper than bundles of twisted pair copper to a central office. A bit later there will be fiber to richer neighborhoods, because they have political clout. North Portland? Southeast below Powell? Don't hold your breath. Portland is a vast, sprawling city, far less dense than LA. Unless the city becomes a lot more successful at attracting wealth, most of it will stay unfibered for a long time. Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected] Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
