
“Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US - walterbell
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/nationwide-fiber-proposed-law-could-add-broadband-to-road-projects/
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rayiner
This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but
the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already
going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe
construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got
someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more
expensive).

Most importantly, it minimizes market distortion. Inatead of making it more
expensive to deploy broadband (which is the ironic side effect of many
broadband deployment policies), it makes it cheaper for competitors to enter
the market.

~~~
DiabloD3
More importantly: we already did this. Remember when they overhauled the
highway system in a lot of areas back in the late 80s and through the 90s?
While they were digging, they dropped a lot of fiber.

Almost all of the major routes we use today for teleco/internet routing were
laid or substantially upgraded then. Almost all the dark fiber laid was laid
then.

The hilarious part? Most of the fiber laid could do at least 40gbit, thus the
cost of upgrading a lot of the existing backbone could be as easy as just
swapping the line cards on either side.

IMO, we may not actually need _more_ fiber (outside of last mile usage, which
this bill is directed at), but just better use of existing fiber. If you're
wasting fiber on anything less than 10 gigabit, _please_ stop. It costs you
next to nothing to upgrade compared to what it cost a decade ago: upgrading to
equipment that can handle 10GBase-LR/ER/ZR or OC-192/STM-64 or better is worth
every dime.

Literally, if the US government passed a law stating, say, any fiber over 5
miles long must have a line rate of at least 10 gigabit, and heavily subsidize
upgrading equipment that is simply too old to handle it, a _lot_ of Internet
speed WTFery would go away in rural and suburban areas.

You'd be surprised how many LTE/4G cell phone towers, DOCSIS 3.x headends, or
modern ADSL2+/VDSL2/possibly G.Fast DSLAMs do _not_ have 10gbit or greater
backbones. It's just absurd in 2017 that we're using stuff that is 90s era at
best.

~~~
rayiner
I think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country
are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built, and people are
moving there from established northeastern/midwestern states. Requiring
conduit to be put underground as you build the roads for a new subdivision,
for example, would dramatically reduce the costs to deploy fiber in these
places.

~~~
samstave
> ___think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the
> country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built_ __

Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes,
regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such...

We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what
the data line requirements to a building should be.

DATA SHOULD BE A UTILITY - just like the sewer, water, etc...

we should stop bitching about FCC this and that - and REQUIRE that
construction includes the data plan as well. This will alleviate much of this
kvetching.

Please give me your opinion on the above as I respect your perspective.

~~~
hvidgaard
A "radical" idea I'm advocating for, is that all of the following is
concidered nessesary for the society, and thus should be done by the
government, or heavyly regulared (non profit, enduser owned type of
companies):

\- Roads

\- Water

\- Sewer

\- Community heat

\- Healthcare

\- Education

\- Pension

\- Internet connectivity

\- Banking (including loans for 1 family houses) and card payment

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Off the top of my head, you're also missing electricity, food, shelter,
clothing, and entertainment. Those are more necessary than some of the things
you've listed here.

So I guess we'll have the government own or heavily regulate 90% of the
economy. Gee, that's historically worked so well in the past... :)

------
phkahler
There is a down side to this. It would use government money to create a new
finite resource and there will be battles over it just like spectrum. From
TFA:

"Dig once requirements are often opposed by deep pocketed incumbent telephone
and cable companies, who build their own infrastructure and would prefer that
smaller competitors not have access to cheap and freely available conduit,"

I suspect the big incumbents would simply lease the space and throw their own
fiber in there to monopolize this new federally funded conduit. Then some of
the maintenance burden falls on the government. Such wonderful corporate
welfare well see down the road!

~~~
matt_wulfeck
I think the government here is taking a good approach by putting down at least
_empty pipes_ , which can be filled by anyone who wants to run fiber through
them. This is a reasonable compromise in my opinion.

Personally I'd rather they put the fiber in themselves and lease it out, while
also giving others the ability to pull their own lines through the pipes.

~~~
phkahler
>> which can be filled by anyone who wants to run fiber through them.

No, there is only so much space in the pipe. It has a limited capacity so the
next logical step is to charge for access.

>> Personally I'd rather they put the fiber in themselves and lease it out...

At that point why not just have the government be an ISP an route any and all
packets that come their way? See, they're proposing to take care of the hard
part - digging and laying the pipe - on behalf of companies. The biggest
companies will have the least trouble filling those pipes with light pipes.

~~~
1_2__3
Couldn't you plausibly argue that you're in either case you're constrained -
in one, by money, and in the other, by money? If so then doesn't it make sense
to pick the approach the best benefits consumers (which this seems like it
does)?

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dbg31415
I think this bill is a great idea. All of my hassles with AT&T and Google
wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was
being built.

Time Warner installed cable when the homes were being built. Then about 10
years ago AT&T went through and installed their "fiber" (their words, not
mine), and tore up everyone's lawn in the process. This last year Google came
in... and just made an enormous mess[1]... but the good news is they did lay
pipe that other services can run cables through.

[1] I've commended on this recently in other posts -- Google isn't supervising
the contractors they hire in Austin and the work is getting done shoddy... and
Google hasn't been doing much of anything to remedy the situation.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13878909)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885886)

[http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z](http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z)

~~~
stronglikedan
> and tore up everyone's lawn in the process

They just did this to mine and a few neighbors, even though they weren't
supposed to. They had a Ditch Witch (DW) Directional Drill [0] that would
tunnel under all the lawns, and only make a little hole every few houses.
However, they didn't count on the coral rock, and the DW broke, so they had to
bring in a bigger one which was going to take a week or two.

Well, they weren't getting paid if they weren't working, so instead of waiting
for the bigger DW, they started digging trenches through the lawns. They did
this to about 5% of them, with mine being the last one before the new DW got
there. They did resod, but it's all dying because they just threw the dirt
back in without putting the soil back on top, and everyone's tree rings and
other landscaping are ruined.

All the neighbors are pissed. I had to explain to a lot of them what fiber
even was. They still don't understand why I'm too excited to be pissed.

[0] [https://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-
drills#content-304](https://www.ditchwitch.com/directional-drills#content-304)

~~~
33W
Or for me, accidentally cut the copper line to the rest of the neighborhood
and had to dig a trench in my front yard to repair it. I'm on the corner and
towards the front of the subdivision, so I had quite a bit of work being done
over the past 6 months.

~~~
dbg31415
And they leave a pile of dirt, plant the wrong grass sod, put the sprinklers
in the wrong place, and then tell you that they are done because it's just
"cosmetic" issues left? Sounds so familiar.

~~~
herpdorplarp
Time to get your hands dirty, then!

------
nvahalik
But who owns the infrastructure? Would the government own it? Would the
municipalities? Is this just one way for the NSA to be able to tap into the
major backbone now by mandating this type of stuff?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, but what are the downsides to this? Where
is that explored?

~~~
zkms
> Is this just one way for the NSA to be able to tap into the major backbone
> now by mandating this type of stuff?

I'm pretty sure NSA manages to get access to backbones just fine without the
benefit of policies that try to expand the role of fibre in the last mile. NSA
has ample access to backbone fibre, both at exchange points and undersea (they
have _submarines_ ). This is an utter red herring.

------
hackuser
It might work out fine, but we need to hear from the people who would carry
the actual the burden under this proposal, such as those in the construction
industry that will have to lay the conduit under 'Dig once', and those who
currently make money from laying cable who will have their business taken
away. We also need to hear from experts in that field about how much it will
cost and how it is best done.

As written it sounds like those IT projects devised by people who have no
knowledge of the field, who imagine that their idea must be easy, who make and
sign off on a plan, and only then get me involved. These are almost
universally poorly conceived, unnecessarily expensive, and produce bad
results. In fact, in those respects it reminds me of another great public
networking idea, public, city-wide WLAN networks (and in that case too, many
IT professionals drank the Kool-Aid without thinking through the details).

Also, when we talk about how easy it is - it is always easy when someone else
has to figure out how to implement it, do the work, and pay the bill.

~~~
korethr
I don't think those who presently are contracted for the cable laying work
will have their work taken away from them. If anything, I think this is likely
to guarantee work for some time.

Say a road construction company wins the bid and gets a contract to work on a
section of federally-funded road. I think it is likely they would already have
some of the work, equipment or supplies sub-contracted out to specialists.
Does it make more sense for them to own the entire supply chain for making
concrete, from mining and refining the minerals, to mixing, delivery and
pouring? Or does it make more sense for them to sub-contact out to a number of
suppliers who they can call and say "I need $foo cubic feet of concrete, with
$bar properties, delivered to $baz location at $quux date/time,"? I think the
latter is more likely as it gives them more flexibility. Owning and operating
the equipment and infrastructure to manufacture concrete has overhead costs
like anything else.

Similarly, if laying fiber becomes a requirement of taking the contract to
build the roads, I think those fiber-laying companies will find themselves
subcontracted those projects.

~~~
hackuser
That sounds reasonable, but my point is that we all (or most of us, myself
included) are ignorant and speculating, and so are the reporter, the article,
and possibly everyone quoted in it.

You wouldn't believe a story about the costs, feasibility, impact, etc. of an
IT project if the reporter only talked to people in the construction industry
and not to any IT professionals.

------
rdl
I'm surprised more large planned developments haven't planned for very high
speed Internet. CondoInternet up in Seattle, WebPass in SF, and others do well
for multi family large buildings, but if I were building out a housing
subsidivision, fiber to each house brought back to a central point seems like
a no brainer.

I'm specifically moving to a place in WA which has its own fiber network in
the neighborhood; hopefully will get involved with the advisory board. I'd
love to experiment with 10G on a wave to my cabinet at the Westin. :)

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eldavido
Isn't all the trouble we have due to last-mile shenanigans? Until we can
address that problem, this seems a bit moot.

Perhaps what we need is something like this, but at the state/local level.

~~~
jmcdiesel
Thats why sidewalks are included... having conduit with all new sidewalks
would definitely ease the last mile

~~~
stevehawk
No, it wouldn't. Because most 'last mile' areas don't have sidewalks. Hell,
the roads don't even names beyond "County Road 31".

~~~
throwaway729
Ease, not completely solve.

By far most last mile areas _do_ have sidewalks, if you consider population
served as opposed to geographic area.

Which is by far the most reasonable metric, because only humans use the
internet...

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beezle
It is a shame that this is just being discussed for use by fiber. If they are
going to dig up the roads, you need to put in multiple types of conduit for
use by telecom, electric, water, etc.

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saycheese
Possible my numbers are wrong, but based on the "1% of the project cost"
appears this will cost 3.5 billion dollars in total; $305 billion total cost
[1] * 1% of total = three billion fifty million for "dig once"

[1] "Congress passed the five-year, $305 billion “Fixing America’s Surface
Transportation (FAST) Act” on Dec. 3, 2015, and President Obama signed the
bill the next day."

~~~
wongarsu
Your math checks out. Seems like a fairly cheap measure.

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guelo
Seems nice but fedarally funded highway projects are not going to affect the
last-mile problem at all.

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Animats
This has already been done on many long-haul routes. Fiber to the home is
tougher. You can lay a tube past all the houses, but connecting to it means
putting in an access box, a tube to the house, and somewhere nearby, a
concentrator.

~~~
jandrese
My grandmother's house got fiber this way in sleepy rural Minnesota. They were
digging up and replacing all of the streets in town and laying fiber
(including the runs to the home) as they went. It seemed really smart to me.

I have to admit I was pretty surprised to go down into her basement for a jar
of homemade pickles and seeing an ONT bolted to the wall. She doesn't even
have a computer or cable TV, it was only providing POTS. It's going to be
quite the perk for whomever moves in after she dies though.

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maerF0x0
Honest question. Is there something better/faster than fibre that they should
be laying instead? Seems like fiber is just enough to catch up, but we'd
rather get ahead.

~~~
jdshaf
Actually, a single fiber strand can support over 1 Terebit per second in real
world applications and even more in a lab setting. Fiber-to-the-Home ISPs
today can easily provide 1 and 10 Gigabit per second connections using low
cost optics on either end of the fiber cables (and some do!). When you see
fiber Internet offerings like Verizon FiOS that has speeds of 50-500 Megabits
per second, you are seeing the result of a business decision (price
discrimination), not a technological or economic hurdle.

~~~
planteen
Just as another data point, CenturyLink in Denver offers gigabit to your home
with fiber. Considering most people don't have 10g NICs at home, I think it is
a pretty good offering.

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HillaryBriss
this makes so much sense they'll never do it

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JumpCrisscross
Who are the swing votes?

