Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Networking IT

FTTH Coming To Lincoln, Nebraska 45

andyring writes: Lincoln, Neb., in the heart of silicon prairie is getting gigabit fiber to every home and business in the next four years. It's a wet dream for anyone in the tech world. No install fees, no contracts, no modem rentals, guaranteed minimum of 100 mbit, no throttling, etc. It'll provide phone and TV as well. I've read the entire franchise agreement and it's a very good arrangement for the city. Interestingly enough, it's largely possible because back in the 1970s, a public works guy had the brilliant idea to install conduit to all the city's traffic signals. So there's more than 300 miles of conduit already installed and leasable. A local company, Nelnet, bought a western Nebraska company, Allo Communications, apparently because the top Nelnet guy couldn't get fiber to his home very easily. So he figured, heck, I'll just buy the company and get fiber to the whole city.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FTTH Coming To Lincoln, Nebraska

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward

    When you've got a city laid out like this:

    http://www.streetlookup.com/city/lincoln-map.html

    Just saying.

    • Not so much the layout as the size as well. Phoenix is laid out like this, only the area it covers is vast. We also have conduit everywhere, and even already existing fiber (both dark and otherwise.) Supposedly Tempe already hammered out an agreement for Google to begin deploying fiber here, until Cox sued the city to stop it from happening (I think that lawsuit is still pending.) Probably not coincidentally, Cox has been deploying its own FTTH services all over Tempe (or at least, there's city-placed oran

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by RandomFactor ( 22447 ) on Saturday December 12, 2015 @11:48AM (#51105123)

    Doesn't just work for software apparently. That public works guy sounds like a hero.

    Be nice if the city here would work on things like this instead of putting our lanes on a diet so they can screw up traffic squeezing in bike paths.

    • That public works guy sounds like a hero.

      Indeed. It'll be interesting to see how our anti-government types turn this into something bad. Perhaps the public works guy was "an entrepreneur at heart"?

      • by mi ( 197448 )

        Indeed. It'll be interesting to see how our anti-government types turn this into something bad.

        Relax. Operating street traffic-devices is accepted as the government's responsibility by almost all Libertarians. As long as running a wire to each light made sense for that purpose, over-provisioning a little bit for a proper conduit is fine.

  • Ain't Silicon Prairie the term that was given to North Sioux City, SD - the city that Gateway 2000 was based in? Before that company first moved to San Diego, and later got bought by Acer? I recall that in those days - last millenium - the joke was that that company employed everyone in SD.
  • It's a wet dream for anyone in the tech world.

    Yeah, a technophiliac's wet dream to drown in even more data.

  • do you have to use there router? if so whey can't they just give you an ONT with an Ethernet hand off?

    Also for tv will there be TV box outlet fees?

  • Yeah, It's Nice (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Saturday December 12, 2015 @12:47PM (#51105431) Homepage Journal
    They ran a metric fuck-ton of fiber under Longmont back in the '90's, just before the state passed a law that municipalities couldn't offer communications services. There was a loophole in the law, though. If a majority of voters in the municipality voted that their municipality would be exempt from this, then they could offer communication services. We had the vote a couple years ago and it passed by something like 86%. 600 mbps up to youtube is pretty nice. I usually upload a few boring skydiving videos a week. Pulling games down from steam in a couple of minutes is also pretty nice. The city can also offer a pretty sweet deal to companies wanting to move into the area. My link to the internet now is faster that most companies' private LAN connections.
  • Chattanooga TN already has gigabit capabilities like this. EPB fiber optics can provide gigabit to your home for about 60 bucks a month. They also have phone ans cable service.

  • The Commons (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday December 12, 2015 @02:39PM (#51106077) Journal

    it's largely possible because back in the 1970s, a public works guy had the brilliant idea to install conduit to all the city's traffic signals.

    Thank your government.

  • I recently tripled my DSL speed from 7MB to 20MB. Some downloads ran much faster, but there was no noticeable change in web browsing. This is kind of like raising the speed limit on the LA expressways to 200mph. Traffic is still going to keep you creeping along at 10mpg during rush hour. In this case, the servers you're connecting to aren't going to magically get any faster.
    • by khelms ( 772692 )
      I meant 10mph although 10mpg is probably correct too.
    • by ledow ( 319597 )

      Yes, but you, your kids, your spouse, your visitors, etc. can all do that at the same time without slowing down. As video streaming is taking off, you can all stream in HD without stuttering.

      And, sorry, but every fecking website on the planet - virtually - can easily swamp a 100Mbps connection at the other end, on demand, whenever it's necessary. Most of the time my servers are sitting bog-idle in their datacentre, even with thousands of hits coming in. It's only when I deliberately transfer, say, a 1Gb

      • Yes, but you, your kids, your spouse, your visitors, etc. can all do that at the same time without slowing down. As video streaming is taking off, you can all stream in HD without stuttering.

        But the upload bandwidth is unchanged and so is the latency.
        Every time you load a web page and it makes a billion requests to load images, ads and scripts there's a latency round trip for each element ; at 20Mb/s down, 1Mb/s up the TCP acknowledgment packets become a problem too (if your HD streaming is done in UDP, good)

        I would choose a 10/10 connection with 15 ms latency over a 20/1 with 30 to 40 ms latency any day.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • It's 1000Mbps although with no guarantee you will get it (mmm, guarantee, warranty? why are there two forms of the same word?)

      I guess that many customers will simply connect using a 100BaseT network interface, or use a 100BaseT switch somewhere in the chain. And that's fine.

  • Gigabit FTTH has been available for nearly a decade in the civilized world.

"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai

Working...