
Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt - crunchlibrarian
http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_31941127/public-support-high-boulder-moves-fund-citywide-fiber?source=mostpopular
======
makerofspoons
I went to school at the University of Colorado Boulder. Something this article
doesn't mention is that the city already has over 100 miles of fiber laid that
isn't currently being lit up: [http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Boulder-
Colo-To-Light-Up-...](http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Boulder-Colo-To-
Light-Up-Fiber-Optic-Network.html). There were several groups of students
looking to build companies to utilize this existing infrastructure, as well as
business interests outside the city, but it just never went anywhere. I hope
that it will see use soon, I was very envious of my friends that would commute
in from nearby Longmont that could use their awesome municipal ISP.

~~~
amorphid
In Australia, fiber-to-the-home vs. fiber-to-the-node has been a fairly
political issue about which I knew very little, so I looked it up. [1] After
reading about parent comment and the miles of unused fiber, I wondered what
the difference between fiber near my home vs fiber in my home would be, and
found some good info. [2]

[1l [http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-13/federal-election-
nb...](http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-13/federal-election-nbn-promises-
past-and-present/7506714)

[2] [https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-difference-fttc-fttp-
car...](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-difference-fttc-fttp-care/)

~~~
gnopgnip
There is new tech like g.fast that enables gigabit speeds over copper wire
like an existing phone line for short distances.

~~~
amorphid
I wonder what speeds would be achievable over the ancient copper wire in my
building.

~~~
philjohn
Depends. If it's 50+ years old it'll be fine, sure, some of the joints might
not be, but that's not awful to fix.

Then Copper prices went up massively for a while and thinner guage twister
pair went in at best, and Aluminium was used at worst.

------
rayiner
Some back of the napkin math. $140 million for 40,000 households in Boulder =
$3,500 per household. If 50% of people subscribe (typical for municipal
broadband), that's $7,000 per subscribing household, or higher than Charter's
market cap per subscriber.

A quarter of the population of the city is below the poverty line. If the
intent is to offer them subsidized broadband, let's assume we get no capital
recovery from those households. That brings the cost to $4,666 per household,
or $9,300 per subscribing household.

This is high, but not out of the ballpark. Verizon spent about $3,500 on
average for each paying subscriber for FiOS. Chattanooga's system was about
$5,500 per household.

~~~
gonzo
$1.1m/year payback (20 years)

$1,100,000/year, 40,000 households, so $27.50/year mean income per household
to service the debt.

If only 50% of households (you said people) subscribe, then $55/year mean
income per household to service the debt. If, again, as you state, no capital
contribution from households below the poverty line, then, using your math
(which, btw, double counts these), we're talking $110/year, or $9.16/sub/month
to service the debt.

Here in Austin, there are three providers of 1gbps/1gbps FTTH internet, and
all are priced just under $60/mo.

I think someone can probably figure out how to build a similar service in
Boulder, paying the City of Boulder $10/mo per subscriber household, and still
make fat rolls of cash.

~~~
rayiner
That $1.1 million is just for the $15 million initial phase, not the $140
million full buildout.

------
kyrra
Longmont (which is ~12 miles north of Boulder) got municiple broadband a while
back. [https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-
e-m...](https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/longmont-
power-communications/broadband-service)

This also follows Fort Collins from 7 months ago:
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-
ca...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-cable-lobby-
misinformation-campaign-against-muni-broadband/)

Note that Longmont took a couple attempts I believe to get it passed (it
failed in 2009 and 2011, then passed in 2013)

~~~
awful_waffle
Former Longmont resident/NextLight customer here. I can't understate how
fantastic the broadband service is out there.

Usually my speeds clocked in around the 700-900mbps range (both up/down), and
at its slowest, maybe 300mbps. No port blocking, so I could host my own
web/game servers. The one time they performed maintenance, they notified
customers a week in advance and scheduled the 15-minute down time to be around
3am. Since I was a 'charter' customer, my bill was a flat $50/mo, though I'm
pretty certain that new customers don't pay much more than that.

I truly believe if more people understood what _good_ internet is like, there
would be a MUCH stronger push for communal broadband services.

~~~
driverdan
It doesn't have to be communal. I had Google Fiber. It cost more but was also
great.

------
tschellenbach
I moved from Amsterdam to Boulder, CO. The tech ecosystem is amazing here.
It's crazy how many tech companies are in a tiny city with ~100k people. You
just walk down the street and it's Nest, Google, Github, JumpCloud, SolidFire,
Logrhythm, VictorOps and hundreds of smaller startups. Great ecosystem. People
are friendly and welcoming. It's amazing, except the internet. It's expensive,
unreliable, and slowwwww.

~~~
almiron10
Calling it a tiny city is a bit of a stretch considering the sprawl along the
entire front range (South Denver to Fort Collins). You're suddenly at 3+
million.

~~~
planteen
Yep. Having worked in Boulder for 4 years, my observation is that the number
of people who actually live in town are the minority. In-college interns or
new college grads tend to live in town. There is a smattering of more senior
engineers in Boulder as well. But it seems most people commute in from
Longmont, Erie, Louisville, Superior, Lafayette, Broomfield, Denver, or Ft.
Collins. I worked with a guy who commuted from Colorado Springs (!) daily. I
have no idea how he stayed sane.

~~~
leesalminen
I thought the person I worked with that commuted from Fort Collins to Boulder
was nuts, but the Springs?!? Hopefully it was a really fulfilling job.

~~~
jdwithit
I used to live in Fort Collins, and had to commute from there to
Englewood/Tech Center area once every couple of weeks. Even that infrequently,
it made me want to die. Usually the morning drive was tolerable, a bit over an
hour if there wasn't an accident. But in the evenings it could take 2-3 hours,
again without an accident. And there is ALWAYS an accident on I-25. I'd end up
just staying in the office til 7PM or later because I'd get home at the same
time whether I left at 5 or 7 anyway. I cannot imagine doing a commute like
that daily for any reason. I'd get home in such a bad mood I that didn't want
to see my family, just pour a drink.

Thankfully I was able to work remote 90% of the time in that role.

------
JumpCrisscross
Boulder has a population of about 110,000 people [1]. Given "the estimated
cost of the entire network is around $140 million" [2], the per-capita cost of
this network comes to $1,300.

I pay $80 a month for my 300 / 20 service. In 16 months, I would be able to
pay for my share of this network.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado)

[2]
[http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_31941127/public-s...](http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_31941127/public-
support-high-boulder-moves-fund-citywide-fiber?source=mostpopular)

~~~
rayiner
The math is bleaker than that (see my other post, calculating $7,000 per
subscribing household).

Also, out of the $80 you pay, most of it gets eaten up by operational costs.
Charter's EBITDA is about 35% of revenues. So even if the city pays no taxes.,
it'll take 250 months to pay back your share of the network.

~~~
ttul
This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

~~~
tptacek
That's twenty years. There is a decent chance that mainstream high speed
Internet will be wireless in 20 years.

~~~
StillBored
Wireless has been perpetually behind star topology wired networks despite the
fact that it tends to be much easier to upgrade a few antenna's and radios
around a city then make people buy new modems every couple years. Worse,
wireless is really spotty, I can barely get a data connection where I work and
at my house with my carrier, much less a few Mbit/sec. Like WiFi, the
advertised peek rates tend to be far in excess of what your likely to get most
of the time.

Optical communication is the same way, there is massive bandwidth that isn't
being used, so while it might roll out at 1Gbit, it wouldn't' surprise me that
in 20 years a x8 stranded fiber network would be well into the Tbit/sec rate.

~~~
tptacek
I think you are significantly underestimating just how long a timespan we're
talking about here. _Twenty years is a very long time._ Twenty years back
predates 802.11b. In 1998, our houses and apartments were all wired up with
cat5. In San Francisco, at the time, we were thrilled to have Ricochet modems
that asymptotically approached ISDN BRI speeds (for that matter, we were
generally pretty thrilled to get ISDN BRI speeds to our apartments to begin
with).

You don't have to expect breakthroughs to think digging new trenches might be
a mistake; all you have to believe is that wireless network performance will
continue roughly along the trends it's already been following.

~~~
StillBored
But wired speeds are getting faster too, you need only compare your ISDN
modem, with what is possible with DOCSIS 3.1. I used CDPD (early cell phone
data service) in the late '90's and that was 19.2 kbit/s which was actually at
least in the same ballpark as the POTs modems. So its not like wireless is
getting massivly faster and copper has hit a wall. It seems that faster DSP's
also help wired communications mechanisms..

~~~
tptacek
There is a clear and obvious point of diminishing returns, which you can see
from the fact that to a pretty good first approximation nobody uses wired
connections to connect their computers to the Internet; everyone uses 802.11.
Yes: wired connections will be faster. But past a threshold, it doesn't
matter, and the ease and lower cost of deployment will win out.

------
d--b
The bigger picture is Boulder is attracting startups.

Having fiber broadband is a plus to that attraction. So a better broadband
means a better economy: more activity, more jobs, more people, more taxes...
The cost of that infrastructure makes total sense.

~~~
yahyaheee
yeah I think they are less concerned with the cost/practicality and more
focused on image. With Google increasing its presence this is just another
move to paint us as a startup hub. I'm all about it

------
exabrial
I works really like one of these projects to trial a 'practical' last mile,
like something like cat6 for the last 100m.

In KC, I live in a 4 story apt, and frequently stopped to talk to the
installers when Google fiber was pulling everything into the building. It
really is Fiber to a jack in your unit, but the last 5ft is _still_ copper
Ethernet. I figure they could have saved themselves a bundle of $ if they ran
copper inside the building. The consumer wouldn't notice and it's a lot more
practical.

~~~
briffle
For all but the smallest apartment buildings, this is not a good idea.
Ethernet has a 100m limit. By the time you go up a wall, back down it, zig and
zag around things in the ceiling, etc, you can quickly hit that limit. Then
you can start getting errors such as packet loss, crosstalk, etc.

Yes, it depends on the size and layout of your building (maybe your building
has a comms cabinet on each floor, or wing, etc) but its better to have one
set of training for all your installers, rather than have every one be
different.

~~~
planteen
I did technician work as a side job during college. It seemed like most dorms
had data closets every floor/every other floor. Some buildings only had them
in the attic and basement, but they were also usually limited to 4 levels. Are
most large apartment buildings similar?

~~~
kiallmacinnes
Does it really matter if there are comms closets nearby though?

It wouldn't surprise me if fiber optic cable was cheaper than cat6 to buy in
bulk (Copper is expensive, and the process to manufacture the copper cables is
more complex), and if you're doing fiber to the building anyway, you still end
up with a media converter - so there is likely no significant cost saving
there either.

It may actually be higher cost to have a centralised (within the building)
media converter - ports need to be provisioned for the max possible customers
up front. The class of hardware will likely be different too - matching
enterprise style datacenter hardware, instead of the cheap and easy to replace
stuff they send to customers...

~~~
planteen
This was 10 years ago, but the data closets had SFPs on the switches for the
fiber. So the cost of the "media converter" was really low - just needed a
few. There was existing CAT5 in the walls, all of the runs would be well less
than 100 m which is why I brought up the comm closets. For a new builds, I
have no idea for the cost difference. But for the insane number of buildings
wired with CAT5/CAT5e/CAT6, this solution works well. Trying to pull fiber to
replace CAT5 (as in without removing the drywall) would be very expensive and
likely to damage the fiber.

------
thelastidiot
Once in a while a story about another city getting fiber, while it's fantastic
(without knowing much about the cost), progress is slow and even in the heart
of the Bay Area, we are pathetically lagging.
[https://fiber.google.com/newcities/](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/) is
looking sparse and honestly worrisome. It's amazing how much the US is behind
implementing another solution they invented.

~~~
rb808
That's bad, but also interesting that you can have the world's main tech
region without much fiber to home. Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

~~~
volkk
> Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

My gut feeling is that it _is_ , but the current monopolies providing
alternatives just haven't ruined the experience enough for this to be pursued
heavily by people with deep pockets

~~~
adventured
What did Japan do with their vast broadband lead (which has now eroded
entirely)? How did that dramatically benefit their economy? It didn't
revolutionize their tech output, it didn't jump start their moribund economy.

Finland has been among the ten fastest nations in regards to broadband speeds
for a long time. That didn't do much for their economy as it languished in a
near ten year recession. It didn't spur an epic tech buildout, it didn't help
them keep pace with what Sweden has accomplished for example, with the two
nations having similar broadband speeds.

France has lagged extremely far behind in broadband, for two decades. They're
among the worst in Europe at it. Does that mean their economy is doomed?
They're well below Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, and Russia in Europe regarding
broadband. And yet there's Bulgaria, with a GDP per capita 1/6th that of
France, and an economy that hasn't net expanded in ten years (off that much
smaller per capita economic base, with far better broadband, you'd expect to
see dramatic growth results, and yet there are none).

I think some healthy skepticism is warranted on the top end value proposition.
Perhaps if you're down toward the bottom as in the case of France (in Europe),
you do indeed suffer a meaningful penalty. Much of Latin America for example
has very slow average Internet access speeds, I think that sort of outcome
does harm their development potential. While common access to something like
50-100mbps cable may accomplish everything that 1gbps fiber does at this
juncture for consumers and general economic development.

 _Maybe_ that will change soon, such that FTTH becomes invaluable to get ahead
economically, there's practically no evidence that it matters currently or has
mattered much the last ten years. I like the idea of muni fiber programs, more
competition, and universal access to 1gbps to the home; and yet I've never
seen any evidence that the high cost of rapidly building that out is justified
(vs gradually over time).

~~~
phil21
Of course it doesn't matter economically - when only a tiny fraction of a
potential userbase has anything approaching gige to the home there is going to
be zero application development based on those requirements.

You may be entirely correct that "150mbps is good enough for anyone" \- but
based on watching capabilities grow with data speeds the past 35 years I'd bet
heavily in the opposite direction. If 50% of Internet users in the US had
uncapped gige I think you'd see some rather interesting tech start using it
once they can rely on it.

~~~
sigstoat
> If 50% of Internet users in the US had uncapped gige I think you'd see some
> rather interesting tech start using it once they can rely on it.

and yet nobody ever has the faintest idea what would be done with it, despite
the fact that every office building has been internally wired for gigabit
ethernet (or faster!) for >10 years. what is anyone doing at work with it?
what is anyone doing across large corporate campuses like google's or
facebook's with all their internal bandwidth?

------
yawz
I work in downtown Boulder in a tech startup. The tech and startup scene is
amazing for a city the size of Boulder. After Longmont and Fort Collins,
finally Boulder will be getting the municipal broadband as well. Nice!!!

~~~
fetus8
I'd just like to point out that Fort Collins voted in municipal fiber, but it
has yet to be implemented as Comcast and I assume other telecoms have been
pushing back and delaying the roll out. We had to re-vote on it last year to
approve more money for the project.

~~~
cschneid
I live in Fort Collins - bonds are being sold, and everything is going
forward. In theory, the first customers should be on Mid to late next year.

------
leesalminen
Neighboring Longmont has had municipal internet for years with success.
Everyone I know is pretty happy with it. Glad to see Boulder is joining the
party.

Although I don’t live in Boulder (anymore), my office is there. I’ll be glad
to stop paying Comcast for terrible quality service.

------
keeganjw
I have municipal telecom where I live in Vermont and it waaaaay faster and
cheaper than the competition. It makes Comcast look like a joke. Hopefully,
Boulder will have a similar outcome.

~~~
Liquix
Burlington Telecom for the win!

------
JustSomeNobody
What type of software engineering jobs are available in that area?

~~~
crikli
Pretty much anything you can imagine from front-end web to embedded circuits.
Thing to keep in mind with Boulder is that it suffers from the same building
restriction effects as SF, combined with explosive population growth, so
you're going to pay out the nose for every square foot of living space. As
long as you build that fact into your salary negotations Boulder is going to
be awesome with a quality of life eons better than the coasts IMO.

I live in Colorado Springs for family reasons but would happily live in
Boulder if things were a bit different.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Good to know. I literally do everything from HW comms to web UI to push all
that data to the cloud. HW comms and protocols are where I'm best. Happy where
I'm at but always looking just in case.

Been to Colorado Springs. It is a nice area.

~~~
daguu
Qualcomm has about 300 people in north Boulder.

------
zer0faith
Considering all the mergers that are going down I hope that eventually more
cities follow this model.

------
therealdrag0
I've had Verizon FiOS fiber and it was just as bad as when I had terrible
Comcast. Now I have Comcast in a different neighborhood and it's great.

Personally, availability/stability is WAY more important than bandwidth. I
don't know what I'd do with over 200mbps. But in some of the places I lived,
during peak hours, the internet would just stop working. That was very
frustrating.

------
bagacrap
The article mentions that ~5% of residences don't have internet, but I would
wager the majority of those do have smartphones and can easily access the
internet via cell data, coffee shops, public outdoor wifi, etc. Is it really
that much of a travesty if it's hard to stream movies on your couch?

------
adultSwim
Municipal control of infrastructure +1

~~~
orthecreedence
Agreed, and not just for fast internet. This is the path to true, competition-
enforced net neutrality. It would be so much better to have municipal
infrastructure than to have digital rights ping-ponging in the federal
government forever.

------
tunap
I sure hope they don't need to open up roads(lane closures) to pull the fiber.
Traffic is already agonizing, closures would make the commuting nightmare even
worse for cars, buses & bikes alike.

~~~
kinsomo
Hopefully they're laying conduit with new road construction. I read somewhere
that there are proposals to mandate that (can't remember if it was state or
federal level).

Edit: seems like it's both:

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/03/natio...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/03/nationwide-fiber-proposed-law-could-add-broadband-to-road-
projects/)

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/10/fed-u...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2014/10/fed-up-us-cities-try-to-build-better-broadband/)

[https://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/cs41_1.aspx](https://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/cs41_1.aspx)

[https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1402s.htm](https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1402s.htm)

~~~
namibj
AFAIK in Germany you are required to allow others to lay stuff in the hole if
you dig the street up. So if fiber is not placed in there, that means no one
is willing to pay for just the fiber, which is only a little part of the cost
of doing full FTTH. Oh well, if the distance was more than the 5 or so meters
recently in the neighborhood, I might have considered just placing an empty
pipe with fan-out/splice boxes at the ends into the hole. But for just 5m it's
hardly worth the effort.

------
bwb
I am in boulder and can't wait, comcast fucking sucks, they just raised my
rates from $79 to ~$120 with no warning, i hate them so much...

~~~
therealdrag0
It wasn't because you started on a promotion deal and the deal ran out?

------
therealtomsmith
Now all your information can go through government-ran hubs!

