Re: Muni broadband sucks (was: New minimum speed for US broadband connections)

[Baldur Norddahl <baldur.norddahl () gmail com>]

On Fri, Jun 4, 2021 at 2:53 AM Masataka Ohta <
mohta () necom830 hpcl titech ac jp> wrote:

> Baldur Norddahl wrote:
>
> > Sorry but that claim is completely wrong. Cabling cost scales linearly
> with
> > the number of cores.

My apology to Masataka Ohta for my too strong wording by calling you wrong.
The moderators put me in place. I wanted to say I disagree with the claim.


> Most of cabling cost is cost to lay cables. Backhoe costs.
> Space factor of a fiber cable is negligible if you put a
> cable into utility tunnels which is wide, especially when
> tunnels were used for copper cables of POTS.

It is true that trenching costs are higher than the cables themselves. But
that does not mean the cables are cheap and that it is an
insignificant cost. Cables + duct is about 20% of our cost to lay down the
network. Not having huts with active equipment spread all around is also a
huge cost saving that can not be ignored.

> The cost of 144 is not
>  > double that of 72.  288 is not double the cost of 144.
>
> Yup. When PON was first conceived several tens of years ago, core
> cost a lot. But, today...

I should point out that I probably buy more cable than most. The exact
pricing is of course not public, but lets say a core cost somewhere between
1 to 2 USD cents per meter. Then you simply multiply up to get an
approximate price of the cable. Holds true for cables with more than about
12 cores. This is because with larger cables the cost of the cores dominate
the price of the cable. When you buy as much as we do, you do not really
get a huge rebate for buying more cores in a single cable - we already buy
insane amounts of core - it is just distributed in more cables.

The moderator is right in that we do not seem to progress much here in this
discussion. So lets agree to disagree. But let me get this closing comment
in anyway... the guy that actually builds PON networks says he does so,
because it is significantly cheaper. We have no other motivations as our
network is not open to third parties in any case. Our motivation is to stay
profitable.

Regards,

Baldur