Re: FCCs RFC for the Definition of Broadband

[Dorn Hetzel <dhetzel () gmail com>]

Perhaps the most practical service for both broadband and ALWAYS-on voice
service is one pair of copper (POTS) and one pair of fiber everything-else
per house.

Does anyone have a ballpark guess on the incremental cost of a strand-mile
(assuming the ditch is going to be dug and the cable put in it, how much
does the per-mile cost of the cable go up for each additional strand in it)
?

If the fiber pair goes all the way from some reasonably concentrated
location to the house, then excessive locations with batteries should not be
required.

-Dorn

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Jack Bates <jbates () brightok net> wrote:

> Robert E. Seastrom wrote:
>
> > The problem is that if you break down the costs, you'll find out that
> > it almost doesn't matter what you put in as a cost of the total build;
> > the big costs are the engineering and the labor to install, not the
> > "cost of the NID" or anything like that.  Nobody cares whether you
> > saved a million bucks on a 2 billion dollar project.
> Errr, I've yet to meet a rural ILEC that doesn't take the cost of the NID
> splitter vs inline splitters into account. ILECs will argue over a single
> $1/customer, and rightfully so. The cost of the FTTH NID adds considerably
> to the price per customer. In addition, it generates additional maintenance
> costs maintaining batteries. I've yet to hear an ILEC suggest that they not
> have batteries in the NID to support the voice in power outages. Batteries
> have shelf lives, and maintaining one per household is definitely more
> costly than maintaining the batteries to power the remotes.
>
> Getting rid of costs, FTTH uses more power, and most of the people I've
> talked to said we can't feed it from the remotes even via copper mixed with
> the fiber. This creates issues when we need to provide service. Everyone
> always badmouth's the whole emergency phone thing, but we take it seriously
> in the rural areas where power outages are not uncommon, natural disasters
> are expected, and we are the ONLY utility that continues to function.
>
>
> Jack
>
>
>  One of the cool things about the infrastructure that is now in place
> > (copper pairs) is that it turned out to be relatively future-proof -
> > lots of 50 and 70 year old OSP still in use.  In order to get
> > similarly long life out of newly installed fiber assets, the only real
> > solution is home runs to either existing or newly constructed
> > concentration points (not just a box at the side of the road, that's
> > not what I'm talking about here).  Distributed splitter designs force
> > forklift upgrades when the Next Big Thing comes along, rather than
> > upgrading the service only for folks who are willing to pay for it.
> > The Next Big Thing is always coming, and 2.4 Gbit/sec down per port
> > GPON is gonna look awfully slow 10 years hence when everyone's
> > demanding gigabit ethernet to the desktop, not to mention 20 years
> > from now with IPv6 multicast of 2000 channels of 4320p pr0n.
> >
> > I used to believe in the FTTC (fiber to the curb) model too - it's the
> > "obvious" solution.  That was before I started cranking the numbers
> > myself, playing with some of the new splicing solutions that are out
> > there that require *far* less finesse than the cam-splice stuff I was
> > using 10 years ago.  Now I believe in the "other" FTTC (fiber to the
> > couch).
> > Get it as far out into the field as you possibly can, right up to,
> > or even inside, the house.
> >
> > -r
> >
> > Jack Bates <jbates () brightok net> writes:
> >
> >  heh. I've seen 3 different plans for FTTH in 3 different telco's;
> > > different engineering firms. All 3 had active devices in the
> > > OSP. Apparently they couldn't justify putting more fiber in all the
> > > way back to the office.
> > >
> > > Don't get me wrong. I've heard wonderful drawn out arguments
> > > concerning vendors that failed to properly handle Oklahoma summers or
> > > draw too much power.
> > >
> > > Brings up new PRO: active devices in the OSP providing longhaul
> > > redundancy on fiber rings
> > >
> > > Another PRO: simple, inexpensive NID
> > >
> > > Jack
> > >
> > > Robert Enger - NANOG wrote:
> > >
> > > > CON:  active devices in the OSP.
> > > > On 8/26/2009 12:06 PM, Jack Bates wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > jim deleskie wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > I agree we should all be telling the FCC that broadband is fiber to
> > > > > > the home.  If we spend all kinds of $$ to build a 1.5M/s connection to
> > > > > > homes, it's outdated before we even finish.
> > > > > I disagree. I much prefer fiber to the curb with copper to the
> > > > > home. Of course, I haven't had a need for 100mb/s to the house
> > > > > which I can do on copper, much less need for gigabit.
> > > > >
> > > > > Pro's for copper from curb:
> > > > >
> > > > > 1) power over copper for POTS
> > > > > 2) Majority of cuts occur on customer drops and copper is more
> > > > > resilient to splicing by any monkey.
> > > > >
> > > > > Jack