Re: Muni Fiber

[William Herrin <bill () herrin us>]

On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 12:54 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org> wrote:
> That said, what I'm more baffled about is that FTTH is not standard
> in greenfield housing developments.  Even in FIOS territory many
> developers install copper (as the developer installs it, not Verizon).
> I've seen at least one story of Verizon retrofitting with FIOS a
> neighborhood that hasn't been finished yet, and ripping out copper
> that was never used in the first place!

Hi Leo,

You don't need $20,000 worth of equipment per installer to install
twisted pair cable, nor special training nor sophisticated and time
consuming testing and validation. That's a pretty good reason not to
install fiber in greenfield construction.

If you were clever, you'd install microduct during greenfield
construction from each residence to a community telecom hut. That's
about as easy to do as installing twisted pair. Then the
communications provider blows in fiber strands at need, a cheap and
fast process compared to trenching cable.

For those not in the know, microduct is a bundle of flexible airtight
plastic tubes, each a few millimeters in diameter. Once installed
through all its twists and turns, you blow compressed air down the
tube and "jet" a bundle of 1 to 12 fibers from one end to the other.
Decades later, remove obsolete fiber the same way and jet new.

Unfortunately, few general contractors even know that microduct exists
and to the best of my knowledge there are no standard termination kits
for establishing a residential microduct network.

Maybe that's a product idea for when construction picks back up.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


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William D. Herrin ................ herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
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