
Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project - zantzinger
A community in Lancashire, England, has taken it upon themselves to dig, lay and build a complete 1 Gbps FTTH network. Members of the community have been able to buy shares to finance the project, and then they've mucked in to carry out all the leg-work themselves, with farmers digging trenches and other locals installing the technology. I find it very inspiring: especially given I live in London and still can't get FTTH. Business plan, videos and info on their website: http://b4rn.org.uk<p>EDIT: title changed from "...DIY Google Fiber project" to "...DIY 1Gbps fibre project"
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nemilar
This may actually be much easier in a rural area, as opposed to
urban/suburban.

Rural landowners have large tracts of land, and the land is in fewer hands.
You need less individuals to buy-in, since a single buy-in on the project can
mean miles of line.

You don't need a jackhammer to dig up sidewalks and streets, and you
(presumably) don't need as many (if any) permits; you don't need to take as
much care not to disrupt existing utilities, and you don't need to worry so
much about noise and other regulations.

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ricardobeat
Shouldn't this be a very attractive market for commercial ISPs then?

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InclinedPlane
Of course not, the expense of the fiber and equipment itself is the same but
the number of customers and thus the maximum revenue is far lower.

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kalleboo
Communities like this were a factor in accelerating the broadband buildout in
Sweden as well.

Here, when we broke up the telco monopoly, instead of splitting it up
regionally (like AT&T), they were split into roles. So after the splitup, the
ownership of all the POTS copper and related infrastructure (buildings,
backhaul etc) ended up as a separate entity[0] who had to treat everyone the
same and couldn't favor a single telco.

Come DSL. To get DSL, this company obviously has to upgrade the local switches
for DSLAM operations, and for this operation they would charge the first telco
to request a DSL connection for the upgrade. In the DSL buildout rush at the
turn of the century, the big telcos obviously focused on densely populated
areas. So people who lived on switches that were too small to be attractive to
any big telco would start up a coop like this to save up to pay for the
upgrade themselves, and there were several small broadband operators who would
take care of the technical, broadband-providing bit. And once your switch was
upgraded, suddenly you could get your pick of any of the DSL providers.

There were/are also a ton of small, local wireless providers who use
directional antennas to service people who live too far away from a DSLAM.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skanova>

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Hoff
B4RN is using burial, which is a great approach for reducing long-term
maintenance, but the extra costs of burial may or may not work in other
localities.

Burying wires in gravel, or burying below the usual furrow depths in farmer's
fields is fairly easy, and trenchers are commonly available. (And if you bury
your wires outside of the growing season, you won't disrupt the farming.)

In an area of the US that I'm familiar with, the granite ledge and glacial
erratics (big rocks) would make burial problematic. Nearly all electric and
telecommunications distribution wiring is accordingly overhead; on poles. With
the problems that brings; ice storms, trees, etc.

Rural distribution does have some advantages in terms of not digging up
existing infrastructure, and the ability to easily trench connections across
the gravel-surface roads, but the cabling distances are usually (much) longer,
and the numbers of and densities of houses and potential subscribers are
(much) lower than in urban areas.

This means that the survival economics of the installation are fully in play;
how many subscribers you'll gather, and how much to join, and how much to
maintain the (overhead) wiring. This is why many rural areas of the US will
tend to have DSL broadband, at best. DSL is cheap(er), and it uses the
existing copper.

As with the rural electrification and rural telephone efforts that preceded
this in the US, the stumbling block for rural broadband is the (large)
installation costs; they're not a financially viable undertaking for
commercial entities.

Incumbent telcos are seeing their business go to cellular, and wireline
subscribers are dropping. Some of the telcos have been in and out of
bankruptcy. Because of the budgets and the wireline subscriber trends,
incumbent telcos also aren't inclined to install wiring ahead of a
requirement; dark fiber isn't commonly installed during repairs in this area.

Yes, you might hope to see some of the incumbents build out broadband as a way
to stay relevant. But in rural areas, that build-out involves greater
distances and lower (potential) customer densities, and with higher on-going
maintenance costs. And around we go...

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morphle
We build a fiber optic link of 10 miles in rural areas for less then $400 per
house. I think many of the assumptions you make are incorrect, as we find no
rural area that is to expensive to service. Just don't ask the incumbents.

~~~
Retric
The problem with incumbents is there already making money selling the old
product which means Fiber instillation needs to be paid back on their 'extra'
profits from running Fiber.

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EliRivers
Here in the U.S., the local monopoly would have had the law changed to make
this illegal :)

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profquail
Like this?

[http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/time-warner-and-embarq-
ca...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/22/time-warner-and-embarq-cant-compete-
with-city-owned-isp-trying/)

See also: <https://savencbb.wordpress.com/>

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sdoering
What I really like about projects like this is the fact, that local
communities organize themselves and get things done, that the bigger entities
are not able to tackle.

The more I read about such endeavors and the more I think about it, I believe,
that local communities in a connected world have more power than

a; they thought for a long time, due to the fact, that a lot of things are
decided far away. b; a lot of bigger players would like them to have.

They might not be as "efficient" or as "moneymaking" but that might be
actually a good thing.

For example, building this network underground is much more resilient, than on
poles. But I also believe, that the bigger players, will try to enforce their
role, as such initiatives get more common.

The same might happen, as power generation becomes much less centralized or as
food production (hopefully) returns to a much more local situation.

I really hope to see more such initiatives, not only in Britain, or Europe,
but on planet-scale.

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geuis
Interesting project, thanks for sharing.

The link, <http://b4rn.org.uk>, should have been directly used when submitting
this.

This is not digg, nor slashdot, nor reddit. A description of, or commentary
about, what you are submitting is not required, as the content should speak
for itself.

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vitno
How is this "Google Fiber"? Can't we just call it fiber?

edit: title changed, thanks!

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Retric
I think they meant "Google Fiber" as "Google class Fiber" meaning that 1Gbps
standard. But, I agree "1Gbps Fiber" is clearer.

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johnohara
I applaud the effort but not the method.

The last video on their website shows the trenching, laying and backfill
operation. IMO, it's better to lay a 2" or 4" continuous PVC pipe between the
access points rather than lay the outdoor fiber directly into the trench.

It's better for protection, diagnostics, additional capacity, and if needed,
other types of cable (twisted pair, coax) can be run alongside.

I think what they are doing is great, but seeing the workers walking all over
the fiber while backfilling the trench made me shiver. Isolating and repairing
a break is going to be difficult downstream.

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zzuser
Trenching a conduit is multiple times more expensive than laying fiber direct.
More than likely using conduit would not be cost effective.

With a conduit you have to: (i) purchase the conduit, which is more expensive
than the fibre cable itself, (ii) install the conduit, (iii) blow the fiber
cable into the conduit and (iv) install all the support infrastructure
required for a conduit system, such as manholes and cable wells.

Furthermore access points have to be installed at close enough intervalls to
make air blowing or water jetting possible. In rural settings this might well
be far more often than otherwise needed for a direct burial network. In all
the steps along the way, a conduit based network drives up the cost, resulting
in a multiple on the buildout cost.

Protection, diagnostics, additional capacity and other media. None of the
aforementioned are necessary any better or easier in a ducted network. A duct
does not protect against backhoe fade any better than a proper direct burial
cable. Diagnostics are done the same way in a ducted and a direct buried
network. However direct burial cables with metallic streng members are easier
to find than a non-metallic ducted cable. Adding more cables to a small
diameter duct is not always easy, feasible or straightforward, especially if
the duct was not properly or professionally installed. As to other media, such
as metallic cables, the whole point of installing a fiber network is to only
need to maintain one outdoor plant, not multiple legacy networks.

In addition to the extra cost, there is a lot of fun and games to be had if
you install ducts in regions with subzero temperatures. Water is going to get
into the ducts and then you are going to have giant icicles with cable in the
middle and duct on the outside.

Walking on a proper direct burial fiber optic cable is not even going to
register. Anything less than a backhoe is unlikely to even leave a mark. On
the other hand if you even look funny at a ducted cable, you might have
problems.

Repairing a ducted network or a direct burial network is basically the same.
You excavate the problem area and you replace the faulty parts. The main
difference is that in a ducted network, you are going to spend most of your
time fiddling and fixing the ducts, less time with fixing the fiber optic
part.

Now, what a ducted network gives you, is flexibility, but at a greater cost.
If properly built that is. A ducted network means you might not have to
retrench later, but this might not be an issue in a rural setting.

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kbob
There is some financial trickery going on here. It's buried in Section 6.1.3
of the business plan (pp 23-24).

Any resident who invests £1500 or more can nominate a property for free
connection and one year's free service. The tax authority gives a tax credit
of 30% of that £1500, and the investment can be sold back in year 4 (2016?) at
full value.

So, pay £1500 (or more) in 2012, get £450 in 2012 tax credit, then sell for
£1500 in 2016. That's a 9.2% ROI plus free Gigabit Internet service. Of
course, there's risk involved, just like any startup investment.

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morphle
We run a couple of startups like B4RN, one in the US, one in Europe en one in
South America. We build our own 10 GBps routers.

Come join us, we have room for extra founders. info at buurtnet dot org

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wcunning
I see nothing on that site about the US. Where would I find such information?

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morphle
I'm not displaying any info on the US on our sites, as we are still in stealth
mode and have fierce (but toothless) competitors. If you want info, email me
at info at buurtnet dot org

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jiggy2011
As someone who grew up in a rural part of the UK, I can empathise with how
annoying it is to be limited to a 56k connection with daily timed limits
(usually around 3 hours or so) to be connected when all of your city dwelling
friends have 1mbps broadband.

I wonder if this is as much to do with property values as anything? It must be
very difficult to sell a house with no option of fast internet and the modern
internet must be basically unusable on 56k.

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andyking
I live in rural Yorkshire, and there's a village about five miles from me
where broadband is not available - at all. There's no FTTC/H, no ADSL, no 3G
coverage from any network, nothing. Residents still use either dial-up, or
expensive, high-latency satellite connections from an outfit called Tooway.

It's a beautiful little village, not bad for commuting into the nearby city of
Sheffield, but last time I looked, there were several houses to rent, that had
been up for rent for over three months each, in a rental market that's
generally red-hot. The lack of broadband is surely an issue. I'd move there if
broadband was available, and I'm sure a lot of other people are in the same
boat.

The issue here is that the rest of South Yorkshire has now been wired into a
publicly-funded FTTC operation called Digital Region
(<http://www.digitalregion.co.uk/>) which I'm using right now. The connection
quality is good, I get a full 40Mbps with the option of raising it to around
110Mbps for more money - but the network is failing financially, because
they've wired up places that are already connected to BT "Infinity" FTTC,
instead of those areas which don't get broadband/fast broadband. My small town
is one of the few places which has Digital Region and not Infinity, and I
don't know anyone else with a DR connection.

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morphle
If you tell us the name of the beautiful little village, we'll be happy to
come build our 1-40 Gbps fiber in this village. Finding a local contact to
help us get started would speed up that process.

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walrus0
If you go active ethernet, not GPON/EPON...

This is now particularly economical for two reasons, aside from the cost of
the fiber to the home itself (either aerial or buried, which is going to cost
more for labor/bucket trucks/trenching than for the fiber itself). Why?

1) Inexpensive good quality 24-port 1U switches from Taiwan (Planet.com.tw)
with 24 1000Mbps SFP ports, 10gigE uplink.

2) Inexpensive $65 1000BaseLX SFPs

3) CPE routers like the Mikrotik RB2011Ls which have a SFP port.

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alt_
I helped build a couple in Finland back in 2003. The lack of bureaucracy and
city infrastructure in rural areas likely helped, but the driving force was my
uncle - a CS professor/farmer who retired from teaching and had to find
something else to occupy his time ;)

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webmonkeyuk
This is a great initiative. I wonder if there are any plans to bridge sections
with WiMax or similar and/or break out from 1G fibre to Copper GigE or wifi in
population points to reduce the client-side install and equipment cost.

~~~
morphle
We use some of these tricks to reduce cost for people who don't need 1 GBps.
But serious users all want 10 GBps fiber. We deliver that over 4 redundant
connections of 10 Gbps each.

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cheez
Haha, I just got a picture of "There Will Be Blood" 1Gbps version :)

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JoshTriplett
One notable thing I don't see mentioned anywhere on the site: where do they
plan to get their upstream bandwidth from, and for how much?

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morphle
We buy our transit and our peering at neutral not-for-profit internet
exchanges.

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ommunist
Thnk you for sharing. The business plan is a very eloquent document, that
helps.

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cyberdoyle
Power to the People!

