
Fiber Optic Bliss - uptown
http://www.loomcom.com/blog/2015/08/04/fiber-optic-bliss/?hn=repost
======
techsupporter
I'm glad it worked for him but he asks the right question: How can we get this
to work for other people in Washington State? I live in Seattle and have fiber
optic service from CenturyLink. The gigabit is nice, but CenturyLink is
running my fiber drop over a "route of convenience that, if the next door
property owner ever gets snippy, will turn into a battle of lawyers. Why?
Because CL won't use the utility poles in front of my house because they don't
want to coordinate with the transit agency.

The whole infrastructure argument is getting absurd. KPUD can't sell to end
users because Washington law prohibits it. I have service but might not
someday "just because." A city in Washington that owns its own utility agency
_could_ serve but has to do it by selling bonds that require 60% voter
approval. Meanwhile, everybody is left wondering what next.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Who exactly wants those laws in your state? If the answer is "nobody", then
get your neighbors together and fix the problem. And if there _is_ somebody
who wants those laws, at least you'll know who the problem is, and can start
raising public awareness of who is needlessly keeping them from having better
Internet.

~~~
techsupporter
It's a mix. Both of the incumbent providers push heavily to keep the
restrictions on the books. In addition, there is a large contingent of voters
who do not want the restrictions repealed because they are opposed to public
operation and/or financing of a telecommunications system that can serve the
general public.

Much like a lot of things, folks here are generally opposed unless or until it
directly impacts them. There is a group in Seattle that is pushing for a
ballot initiative with accompanying property tax levy to get the city to build
an open-access last mile system. The areas of the city that already have good
service, whether Comcast or CenturyLink fiber, poll at slightly under 50%
support. Areas that are stuck with Wave Broadband or only CenturyLink DSL poll
at well above 70%.

~~~
JoshTriplett
You originally said "CL won't use the utility poles in front of my house
because they don't want to coordinate with the transit agency.". Given that
those poles already exist, if CL was willing to pay for the work to string the
new fiber on those poles, that shouldn't cost the city anything at all.

~~~
snowwindwaves
At the electric utility I worked at we charged bell $10 for each pole of ours
they used per year

~~~
willyk
I'd agree w/that take based on my experience in the field -- key issue is
finding the right person at the utility to help you w/rhe solution.

------
reedlaw
I have fiber optic in China rated at 20mbs but it's really spotty. Downloads
can be really fast but latency can be terrible. I realize that browsing
foreign sites is sharing bandwidth with a pool the size of China but sometimes
even domestic sites time out. I think it's either being oversold or badly
misconfigured by the ISP.

~~~
nitrogen
Why was this downvoted so deeply into the gray?

~~~
wmf
Every story about broadband attracts random, totally unrepresentative
anecdotes that aren't interesting or informative. Such comments may even be
harmful if they trigger various cognitive biases.

~~~
reedlaw
I'm sorry if my comment wasn't interesting or informative. I posted in the
hopes that someone else with similar experience could offer advice. I know
anecdotes are not of general interest but there's usually a long tail of
comments that are useful to _someone_ and can be found by search engines.

------
mikehc
I had a similar situation in Mexico where no provider gave me the bandwith I
need it. The biggest provider (Telmex( refused to sign me up for a better plan
because their infraestructure near my home wouldn't support it, at least they
were honest.

I called my local cable company and contracted their 50 mbps plan. Had a lot
of issues with the installation and never really received the complete
service. They didn't had enough bandwith in the zone so very few times I
received my contracted bandwith.

At the end I contacted a Telcom (EnlaceTPE) which specialize in providing
fiber internet to companies. They did the entire fiber instalation to my home.
I only had to commit to 3 years paying around 70 usd with a 200 mbps service.
From the first call to installation took around 3 months, best decision made
so far.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Curious, what's wages (low and medium) in USD for someone in your area? As an
American reading anecdotes, I like to look at it in terms of cost relative to
income instead of cost in isolation. Helps me get an idea of where the cost
would _start_ here and how much value that company delivers.

~~~
mikehc
I really have no idea. I get paid very well but that is not representative of
the common wages around here.

The service by itself is expensive, considering it's just Internet. The most
common package for internet + phone, on the most popular provider, costs
around 24 USD monthly. If you want cable add another 20 bucks.

According to some websites the median wages in Mexico per home at 2013 was
around 740 USD monthly.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Interesting. I decided to do a comparison using the percentage of monthly
income for the Internet. I decided to use $30,000 a year per household to
represent middle end of working class. I figure it's a fair class to use and
pretty large. I used price of good Internet (50Mbps) in my area. So, here's
the costs:

USA: 2.8% of household income; Mexico: 3.2% with your number

So, they're quite similar. For that, I get 50Mbps down and a fraction up for
$70. You get 200Mbps down and how much up? Either way, you're getting a good
deal as a percentage of income. If you're better than $740/mo, you're getting
a _really_ good deal. I'm envious. :)

------
Havoc
Fibre techies - even residential FTTH - are pretty clued up. I was pleasantly
surprised by the guy that activated my fibre...got a distinct feel of "he is
one of us". Hidden benefit of a cutting edge tech I guess...you get real
techies instead of people following a fkn script.

~~~
willyk
Y, based on my experience, the utilities generally have different teams that
handle the fibre installs.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I thought it was specialization and cost-cutting. I know Comcast out here
contracts their cabling to a company where the few managers make a decent
amount of money while the technicians make little ranging from amateur to
experienced in skill. Keeps them out of Comcast's HR approach and branding,
too. Maybe some blame-shifting potential. Not sure all the reasons but plenty
of possibilities come to mind.

Cost is probably the main one, though. This company has way less overhead and
more flexibility than Comcast.

------
scott_karana
Wow. Kudos to this guy for working through a corporate/bureaucratic nightmare.

Good on KPUD for putting in a solid effort here too: looks like everyone in
the area might benefit from this one.

------
gcb0
<quote>but state law forbids them from retailing directly to consumers, so as
of yet they have no way to do this directly and no residential pricing model.
So we had to be creative.</quote>

isn't having in writing the intent to go against the law (even if creatively)
a very dumb thing to do?

~~~
__david__
No. They aren't going against the law, they're finding creative ways to obey
it.

I hereby announce my intent to pay as little taxes as legally possible.

~~~
gcb0
but if you say how you plan to do something to evade the spirit of the law,
that is pretty much a crime. people got their assets taken by the IRS by
moving to another country and giving up citizenship when it was proved they
did that with the intent to not pay taxes.

~~~
georgerobinson
Wait wait wait.. what!? How can it be illegal to say "I don't like paying your
tax rate, so I'm leaving your country and move to another country with lower
tax rates. Here is my citizenship."

~~~
gcb0
well, IANAL, but it is. there is the famous story of the founder of one of the
big french game studios. forgot which now now. but i'm confident you can
search.

the gist is that he got his series A or B, on a french bank, frozen because
the US IRS told them to, because he gave up his green card (not even a full
citizenship yet!) to go back to his home france and start a company there.

------
chrissnell
I'm curious if the author ever looked into HamWan. [1] They provide non-
commercial internet access for hobbyists who have their amateur radio licenses
(very easy to get) and buy some basic equipment. They cover a number of places
in the Puget Sound region. The author would have to build a tower to get above
the trees but I can't imagine that this would run more than $4-5k (on the high
end).

I am not actually a user of HamWAN--I'm down in Tacoma and my line-of-sight is
impeded by terrain and building a tower in my dense urban neighborhood isn't
an option. Also, I have biz-class Comcast.

[1]
[https://www.hamwan.org/t/Wiki+Home+Page](https://www.hamwan.org/t/Wiki+Home+Page)

~~~
rosser
Can you meaningfully do things like ecommerce over HamWAN, given the
restriction against using encryption on amateur radio bands?

Losing that capability would severely limit the internet for most folks...

------
nickpsecurity
This one is doing a good job. For ideas, I posted on that site and am here
this other project that got good results:

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-
bui...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-building-its-
own-gigabit-fibre-network)

Deploying to rural is quite an uphill battle. But their model seems to be
doing the job. Might be worth copying aspects in deployments like original
post's.

~~~
willyk
Thanks for sharing the Vice article, it was great ... good to see some of
these projects succeeding now that the capex has come down (a decade or so ago
there was a long list of similar ventures that failed).

~~~
nickpsecurity
Yeah I enjoyed it too and it's quite hopeful. I like how the communities are
essentially coming together to get themselves on the Internet's, Fast Lane.

------
icelancer
This person should have been awarded mid five figures from Comcast. I wonder
if any legal team looked into the possibility of suing them and/or the the
municipality?

~~~
BillyParadise
Why do you Americans always think about suing someone?

~~~
oh_sigh
Presumably Canada or wherever you are from has some sort of formal system in
place for situations where, for example, contractual terms are breached

[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/america...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/america-
litigious-society-myth)

------
zatkin
>They do very much want to serve residences too, but state law forbids them
from retailing directly to consumers

Why does the law forbid selling directly to consumers?

~~~
dsr_
Specifically because cable companies don't want competition, so they lobbied
for this.

[http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-
roadblock...](http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/)

~~~
slxh
If they don't want competition, they should at least provide the latest
technology at a reasonable price...

~~~
rayiner
There can't be any meaningful competition between a private company and a
government entity that can tax people to pay off its infrastructure bonds and
take land by eminent domain.

~~~
amazon_not
I see this statement bandied about quite frequently. Would you like to
substantiate the claim and/or provide examples of actual public harm where
such faux competition exists?

~~~
nickpsecurity
It's actually self-evident in the claim. Tell any venture capitalist they'll
be doing the same thing as the competition in a regulated market except the
competition can get exempted from regulations or pull in tons of extra money
in form of tax revenue. Who wants to take that risk in the U.S. system? I
think you could say it's played out in the areas where utilities introduced
cheap broadband. Articles on those usually major players are suffering over
there compared to where they're competing with private companies like their
own.

I do have a specific example, though. My background is high assurance security
& systems. The government once used incentives + good criteria to get market
to create quite a few products their pentesters couldn't break. Then, NSA
started competing with private sector under a new initiative. Market went away
with Boeing guy clear that was largely why. Only a few remain and stay
stagnant because companies won't invest much further in them due to risk posed
by both market demand and government decisions.

[http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-
Looking-B...](http://lukemuehlhauser.com/wp-content/uploads/Bell-Looking-Back-
Addendum.pdf)

~~~
dsr_
I see that you have proven the nonviability of FedEx, UPS and all other
package carriers that compete with government postal services.

I also note that you have proven the nonexistence of private security
companies, since they compete with the police and are much more restricted, by
law, in what they can do.

And there can't be any private shuttle bus services, because there are
municipal bus services.

I think you need to modify your claim.

All of these companies do reasonably well by competing with government-run
services by offering things that the government isn't providing and is
unlikely to provide because it unreasonably benefits a single user: on-demand
pickups and guaranteed delivery times; full-time guards in a particular
location; a bus that runs directly to your campus.

~~~
nickpsecurity
My above claim indicated that there was a lot of risk in competing directly
with government and for about the same thing they're offering. It doesn't
preclude that success is possible. Besides, most of the examples you give are
poor because, as you said, the private firms weren't trying to offer the same
thing.

For instance, much USPS expense comes from the fact that they have to ship
cheap anywhere. The overlap between them and private sector is the closest you
come to a valid example. Private security in most states doesn't have to do
much past issue warnings and call the police, while police can take direction
action. A bus that runs directly to your campus isn't a general purpose bus or
serving most people. So, yeah, it's certainly easier to offer a service that
does less than the government one for fewer people and be successful.

Back to the actual topic at hand: fiber infrastructure. Laying out fiber all
over the place has a high cost with low amount of money coming in. That's for
lowest tiers. The Tier 1's expend 8-9 digits maintaining backbones. So, if
government started competing, you can bet the private market would suffer &
re-consider new fiber investments. The only model making sense at that point
would be offering value-added services on top of connectivity while doing
private investments where government wouldn't go.

------
sergiotapia
These days buying a house without internet is like buying one that has no
running water or not functioning electricity. How can an area in the US not
have any sort of internet coverage? When does the FCC step in and provide this
basic utility to the tax payer?

~~~
rosser
More than a quarter of the US states — most of them very large — have
population densities below 50 people per square mile. Even providing wireless
internet to all those people is a staggeringly expensive undertaking.

I'm not saying people shouldn't have internet access. They absolutely should.
But it's not something you can just _should_ into existence, either.

~~~
amazon_not
I call BS. Finland has less than 48 people per square mile _and_ universal
cell and broadband service. By law the locally dominant service provider has
to deliver a minimim of 1 Mbps to _all_ inhabitants. In practise the delivered
speed is a lot more and the minimim will be raisdd to 10 Mbps shortly. 3G is
almost 100% and 4G covers most areas.

The population density excuse is just that, an excuse not to do cell and
broadband service properly. As such broadband definitrly falls into the
_should_ category.

~~~
rayiner
Rhetoric aside, I'm not sure the broadband situation in Finland is actually
any different: [http://i.i.cbsi.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2014/01/11/OECD-fixed-
bro...](http://i.i.cbsi.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2014/01/11/OECD-fixed-broadband-
type-by-country.png).

The U.S. has a larger percentage of people on fiber, and Finland has a much
larger proportion of people on fixed wireless. The U.S. has way more people on
cable, while Finland has way more people on DSL.

94% of the U.S. has access to at least 4 mbps broadband. 59% has access to at
least 100 mbps, versus 50% for Finland. According to Akamai, average
connection speeds are about the same for the two countries:
[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/report/aka...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/report/akamai-
state-of-the-internet-infographic-q3-2014.pdf).

~~~
amazon_not
I have no idea where you got the idea that people in Finland use fixed
wireless. The OECD graph is few years old anyway. Here are the most recent
statistics from three months ago:

[https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics...](https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics/internetandtelephone/fixed-
linebroadbandsubscriptionsbyconnectiontechnology.html)

The access methods by popularity are: xDSL, cable, Ethernet, FTTH and others,
which might include some obscure fixed wireless operators using Wimax in the
3.5 Ghz band.

~~~
amazon_not
Furthermore, I'd say that the broadband situation in Finland is substantially
different from the US, despite the very low popularion density of Finland.

In Finland everybody that wants broadband can get broadband. In fact everybody
that wants it has it. 92% of Finns have an Internet connection, either fixed
only (22%), mobile broadband only (i.e. 3G or 4G at 28%) or a combination of
both (42%). Source:
[https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics...](https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics/internetandtelephone/take-
upofbroadbandconnections.html)

Fast broadband (100 Mbps or faster) is actively promoted and developed by the
government. All permanent recidences shall be within a mile of an Internet
backbone access point where service is available at 100 Mbps or more. This
means local residents, co-ops or ISPs will easily be able to hook up anybody
at 100 Mbps or more. Since a mile is the maximum distance average loop lenghts
will be much shorter. Source:
[http://www.lvm.fi/pressreleases/4425644/broadband-for-
all-20...](http://www.lvm.fi/pressreleases/4425644/broadband-for-
all-2015-project-gathers-steam)

Funds are actually made available to provide broadband access to not-spots.
The last 5% of a population is always hard to reach with fixed broadband, but
subsidies are provided to hook up areas which aren't commercially viable
otherwise. Source: same as above.

3G/4G mobile broadband is cheap, unlimited and uncapped with three facilities
based operators and a handfull of MVNOs on top of that. 4G is actually faster
and cheaper than a xDSL connection. Mobile broadband is thus actually a viable
fixed broadband substitute.

20% have a fixed broadband connection of 100 Mbps or more. Not as in has
access to, but as actual delivered connections. 46% have 10 Mbps or more and
7% 30 Mbps or more. Source:
[https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics...](https://www.viestintavirasto.fi/en/aboutthesector/statistics/internetandtelephone/fixed-
linebroadbandsubscriptionsbyconnectionspeed.html)

It is left as an excercise for the reader to figure out why Finland does
better at broadband than the US despite a low population density.

Further required reading: Regulatory capture in telecommunications

~~~
rosser
If your point is, "Finland does broadband better than America," then well done
you. It can join the club with just about every other first-world nation on
the planet.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for anything that looks vaguely like a solution
to that problem, and not merely gloating about it.

EDIT: I'm sorry for the tone, but I see no value in pointing out flaws and
failings without offering solutions to them. It's plenty easy in today's world
to hate on the US. Most of it is probably even deserved. But it doesn't make
anything better, so I don't see what it contributes to the discussion, beyond
an opportunity for smugness.

~~~
amazon_not
No worries, mate. I'm not that thin skinned. As to solutions, I've already
pointed out the USF in a sibling comment, but using that would actually
require the political will to, you know, actually do something to solve the
problem.

EDIT: my actual reply to rayiner wasn't made to gloat, but to point out the
substantial differences as a counterpoint to the statement that the US and
Finland are statistically similar. It also contained the core problem, the
lack of a properly constructed regulatory regime, which also points out the
obvious thing to fix i.e. the solution required.

However if political activism isn't your thing then the only other solution is
to build your own network.

------
SethKinast
I'm curious what the monthly cost is for the line (not considering the upfront
cost).

------
transfire
We really know how to paint ourselves into corners don't we. Here we have a
slew of people who want broadband and companies willing and able to provide
it. So what prey tell is the problem? Laws.

~~~
rayiner
> So what prey tell is the problem? Laws.

KPUD isn't a "company." It's a public utility district.[1] It wouldn't exist
without "laws."

[1] With special powers of condemnation and taxation. See 54.16.005 RCW _et
seq_.

------
steeples
Just curious, but what does she need that bandwidth for? I am expecting the
usual replies of running a server, having better upstream capabilities, and
the very typical 'techies gonna have bandwidth', but I would love to hear some
weird unexpected ways to use bandwidth like that.

~~~
bane
I honestly have no idea. I have a 50/50 fiber connection now and even with
multiple people watching HD video streams, torrents and other files I don't
believe I come close to saturating it.

FiOS keeps upgrading it every year or so (it started as a 15/5 I couldn't
saturate), so that's nice. At least I'm basically in "first world" territory
even if I live in the U.S.

I suppose when 4k video becomes more common I'll feel it, but I don't even
have anything that can display 4k right now and Verizon will probably just
upgrade it to 75/75 or 100/100 by that point.

One nice benefit, I have a plex server I can access remotely and it works well
outside of my network. But I'd live with just my netflix account if I had to
"rough it".

~~~
simoncion
> I have a 50/50 fiber connection now and even with multiple people watching
> HD video streams, torrents and other files I don't believe I come close to
> saturating it.

Unless you've throttled your torrents, or you're connected to a really slow
swarm, you have almost certainly saturated your download. I have -er- 100/10
or 100/15 service from Comcast. If I'm downloading anything >= 100MB, and a
member of the household is going to start a new Netflix stream, I need to
pause the download, or else the stream will be degraded for a _long_ time.

Also, unless you're using a decent router, it's very possible that your router
can't route and/or NAT at 50mbit or faster. I know that Apple Airports can and
Ubiquiti EdgeRouters[0] can. I would also expect that an ISP-provided router
would route fast enough.

[0] If you're in the market for a new router and are somewhat network savvy,
or are comfortable with running OpenWRT on your router, I strongly recommend
the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. It routes and firewalls at ~1Gbit/sec (when
offloading is enabled) and costs right around $100. Check out the Newegg
reviews that aren't "It's slower than I expected" or "It's totally broken" for
an idea of what you'll be getting in to. I've had mine for nearly a year and
-other than the eventually dodgy external power supply[1] it shipped with- it
has been rock solid.

[1] The unit I got had been sitting in a box in a warehouse in Florida for
~two years before it arrived on my doorstep. The failing power supply
presented as infrequent spontaneous reboots with nothing unusual in syslog,
which became more and more frequent until the power supply just stopped
providing power entirely. Replaced it with a wall wart that I had on hand and
have had no trouble since.

~~~
mrbill
The ERL-3, ER-X, etc, run a Vyatta fork, not OpenWRT. I love mine.

~~~
simoncion
I didn't intend to imply that the EdgeRouters run OpenWRT. I guess that wasn't
clear. :(

'Tis true that the forked version of Vyatta (Vyatta 6?) that the EdgeRouters
use is rather different than OpenWRT, but if one has figured out how to work
with OpenWRT's UCI configuration system, one can figure out how to work with
Vyatta's configuration system, too. And, both OpenWRT and Vyatta run on top of
Linux, so -if needed- one has a Linux system that one can configure directly.

