There is fiber in Portland now. I have gigabit fiber to my house (since 2015). Most of the footprint of Portland has it available right now. How complex was that to install? Not so complex that they didn't manage to do it. Furthermore, the revenue derived from the Comcast and CenturyLink infrastructure in the City of Portland is on the order of $300 million/year. An entire network costs about $500 million, once. I took some math classes in college. I have this strange sense that there is some substantial surpluses floating around in those numbers. Further, I want the users to get to decide how they use that infrastructure, rather than arbitrary rules imposed by owners trying to squeeze even more revenue from it. The fat margins that the incumbents are charging not only displace wealth from the local economy, they keep unwealthy children from succeeding in school, where they are expected to have easy access to the Internet. They are empowered to charge those fat margins because of captured regulators at the federal level and by inaction at the local level. The local problem is starting to become unstuck.
There is no prospect of fiber becoming obsolete. You might have heard ads for Comcast's "gig-speed network". If you check their pricing, you will find that it will cost you $12,000 for the two-year commitment required, and it's not remotely symmetric (1G/35M). For reference, building a fiber optic network cost ~$3k per customer in Portland (per estimate of 10 years ago), so that's a 4X ROI in 2 years. The reality (assuming remotely rational actors) is that no one is paying that, because it would be crazy. So Comcast gets a marketing slogan, but they don't have to actually provide it to anyone because they've priced it to ensure no one accepts their offer. I said recently in an interview about the local organizing for a publicly-owned at-cost telecommunications utility, that we've had two very large organizations lobbying on our behalf for decades. And those have been the Cable and Telephone companies, and the way they've educated their subscribers about how horrible they are. They send out our marketing literature every month in the form of their bills and every time they pick up their customer and billing support lines to talk with their customers. With such powerful allies, I am not worried about the campaign. -- Russell Senior [email protected] On Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 3:36 PM Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Feb 02, 2019 at 07:57:07AM -0800, mitch Stanley wrote: > > If Roseburg can do it , Portland should have accomplished this too! > The > > only thing affecting this lack of Fiber in PDX is entrenched interests - > > Literally entrenched - digging up a century of urban > infrastructure and adding optical fiber to that rat's nest > of pipes and cables and sewers and tanks and long-forgotten > buried toxics isn't impossible, but it will be very very > complicated. Meanwhile, Portland City government has > accumulated its own byzantine network of rules and > sub-organizations and established interests. Meshing > all of those complexities will be ... complex. > > And while it is fashionable to hate the companies that > provide services now, they accomplish more than 98% of us > sidewalk superintendents do. For the 2% of us who (like > Russell) actually make some forward progress, the question > is whether they can grow those efforts to citywide scale. > Very few of us have the discipline and commitment for that. > > Far more of us spend our time attacking those very few > who devoted their lives and succeeded with such efforts. > If Portland is fibered 30 years from now, faux-populists > will attack the creators of that network 50 years from now. > > Roseburg and Sandy can do fiber because they are small > and relatively young. A small committed team can get the > whole job done quickly. Beaverton has fiber, installed by > visionary Verizon NW, but now owned by corrupt and inept > Frontier. I have fiber and a disabled optical network > terminal in my Beaverton house. I will turn that back on > when Frontier goes bankrupt and its successors show more > customer savvy than my "new" provider Comcast currently > offers. Verizon and Comcast reformed themselves; perhaps > Frontier and Centurylink will as well. > > The new highrise portions of Portland are fibered already, > supplied by independent non-public-utility companies. In > the natural course of things, old neighborhoods will be > torn down and rebuilt with highrise fiber as well. As > a fifties child, I distain highrise living, but that is > vastly "greener" than single-family dwellings. Stubborn > housegrubbing old hippies like me must die off, too. > > I'm not saying that fibering an ENTIRE city as complex as > Portland is impossible, but it will require a hell of a > lot more effort and capability than just demanding "gimme". > > It has been a little more than half a century since Charles > Kao and his team in the UK made the first practical fiber > optics. Half a century from now, other technologies will > connect young folks living "beyond highrise". My guess is > orbit-linked bio-smartsuits, no fixed dwelling or permanent > physical possessions. The "fiber generation" will be the > antiquated old farts in artifact-cluttered high rises. > > Keith > > -- > Keith Lofstrom [email protected] > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
