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The Internet Government United States

NY County Plans Publicly-Owned 500-Mile Internet Backbone (buffalonews.com) 37

Posted by EditorDavid from the start-spreading-the-news dept.
Nearly a million people live in Erie County, New York. Slashdot reader McGruber brings news that their legislature just approved a new public corporation to bring the county a 500-mile high-speed fiber-optic internet network, making them one of the largest municipalities in America operating this kind of backbone.

The Buffalo News reports: The vision remains to provide high-speed, cutting-edge connectivity throughout the county, not just in the wealthier suburbs. The goal is a new network that could level the economic development playing field by offering super-fast speeds to poorer cities and to rural towns to the south and east that currently suffer from a distinct connectivity disadvantage....

Business and design planning was delayed by Covid-19. Business planning has now restarted, though detailed network mapping is still months away. Major work is now expected to move forward, thanks to a second windfall of American Rescue Plan money that Erie County will receive this year. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has pledged to use that $34 million in federal funds to get ErieNet jump-started again, with hopes of starting to lay fiber-optic cable before year's end.

The current ErieNet plan is for a more ambitious network than first proposed. Initially, Poloncarz said the county would lay roughly 360 miles of fiber-optic lines that would then be leased to public and private entities. But that was before federal stimulus aid was available. Now, county leaders are talking about an even larger network involving the laying of 400 to 500 miles of fiber.
The article notes one legislator's observation that for most high-speed internet users in Buffalo, the only option is Spectrum. "We need competition," he said.
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NY County Plans Publicly-Owned 500-Mile Internet Backbone More

NY County Plans Publicly-Owned 500-Mile Internet Backbone

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  • Just like Rural Electrification started in 1936 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "On May 11, 1935, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 7037, which created the Rural Electrification Administration. In 1936, the Congress endorsed Roosevelt's action by passing the Rural Electrification Act. At the time the Rural Electrification Act was passed, electricity was commonplace in cities but largely unavailable in farms, ranches, and other rural places. ... ...in 1959 ninety percent of farm homes in the U.S. were electrified, compared to three percent in the early 1930s. ... REA crews trav
    • There is a key difference. That legislation only gave financial incentives to private electric companies. A municipality is an entirely different sort of animal. Railroad is probably the closest example of internet data traffic. Ironically most fiber utilizes railroad right of way for its longhaul. The R in SPRINT stood for railroad, btw.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by _merlin ( 160982 )

        Ah, the old Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications company - selling excess capacity on Southern Pacific's sigalling and dispatch network.

      • There's another major difference. In 1935, nobody cared what you did with the electricity. I'll bet some facet of the bureaucracy is going to care what you do on the "public" backbone because, you see, the backbone belongs to "the people" and the bureaucracy gets to decide what "the people" think is appropriate use of a "public" resource.

  • why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by white5moke ( 9028929 ) on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:21AM (#62138175)
    We could have built this everywhere in the world by now 10 times over. Instead we'd rather enable war-mongers for 20+ years, because war is so productive and innovative. We may not think of ourselves as stupid, but the we are all defined by the results we have with the time we have on this planet. So be smart! This is not a novel idea, it's just we've decided that our own infrastructures should take a backseat to right-wing (primarily in the US) war mongers who are stealing our taxes to kill us off, not giving us prosperity, useful information, and world that is not a complete shithole.

  • This is news? (Score:4, Informative)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday January 03, 2022 @09:36AM (#62138213) Journal

    Lots of counties have done this, here's our local one:

    https://carverlink.com/ [carverlink.com]

    CarverLink, an entity of the Carver County Public Services Division, is a publicly owned broadband fiber optics network installed in Carver County, MN that became operational in the fall of 2013. The approximately $8 million one-time construction costs for the CarverLink Network, which during construction was known as the Carver County Open Fiber Initiative (C.C.O.F.I), were 80% funded through an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (A.R.R.A.) Federal Grant with the remaining 20% contributed by Carver County.

    The CarverLink Network originally consisted of approximately 89 miles of base ring fiber with 33 miles of lateral fiber and has both diversity and redundancy in its electronics and physical plant architecture. Since inception the CarverLink Network has been expanding both transport capacity as well as physical infrastructure miles and as of 2021 has transport capacity of approximately 600 plus miles throughout Carver County and surrounding local area.

  • Redundant -- ? (Score:3)

    by evil_aaronm ( 671521 ) on Monday January 03, 2022 @11:09AM (#62138505)
    Didn't we, the taxpayers, already pay the big telcos - AT&T, Verizon - billions of dollars to string our communities with Internet capital? I keep seeing comments elsewhere about taxpayer money going toward this, but the telcos just taking it and largely not doing the work. If so, why is this action necessary?

    • Didn't we, the taxpayers, already pay the big telcos - AT&T, Verizon - billions of dollars to string our communities with Internet capital? I keep seeing comments elsewhere about taxpayer money going toward this, but the telcos just taking it and largely not doing the work. If so, why is this action necessary?

      This is why tax payers should be taking the attitude that the government will build out the infrastructure and the telcos are free to lease the lines. Heck it may even create a platform for some reasonable competition.

      The only thing is that the government needs to define the upgrade schedule into the layout and how curb to the building is dealt with. They government operator also needs to be subject to the FCC targets like anyone else, otherwise why bother?

  • The future is 5G. You will have no fiber or wires. And you will be happy. Erie County will look pretty stupid when the only buyer for that fiber bandwidth are the incumbent telecoms. To feed their towers. And they will eventually buy that from you for pennies on the dollar.

    • Actually 5G is driven by fiber to most service location with very little backhaul done microwave links. One backhaul at 10G/s is wasted of RF bands that could be used to deliver services to end users. Most of the rural cell locations (excluding the mountaintops) already have a fiber backhaul investment made, the US dragged substansial fiber mesh along the major roads of eastern and western US over the last 20 years.

      You might have missed 5G is a last 1-3 mile solution for urban locations and last 1-15

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        One backhaul at 10G/s is wasted of RF bands that could be used to deliver services to end users.

        Microwave backhaul has much lower latency than fiber. For certain users, that's very valuable*, not 'wasted'. And as those users already hold licenses for the spectrum, why should they switch?

        *Not just high frequency stock trading. Some electrical transmission protection schemes require low latency and even more critically, predictable latency to work. Dedicated fiber works in some cases. But having some autistic gamer scream whenever their FPS scores suffer because the power company tried to control power

  • and I would hop 500 more
    just to be the man who hops a thousand routers
    to just get wifi at my door

  • Major work is now expected to move forward, thanks to a second windfall of American Rescue Plan money that Erie County will receive this year. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz has pledged to use that $34 million in federal funds to get ErieNet jump-started again, with hopes of starting to lay fiber-optic cable before year's end.

    With $34M in 'free' federal money. How nice that they are funding this with money from every American taxpayer, only to lower the bills/increase speed for the residents of just one county.

  • "We need competition," he said.

    Sure, just stop blocking private companies from doing it [wired.com]. But that's not good enough, is it? Because private companies are harder to control — whereas the government "corporation" provides a lot of cushy jobs for kids, nieces, and cronies [nypost.com], does not it [nj.com]?

    Especially, when the funding comes from Washington [muninetworks.org] — so most of the people taxed for it aren't represented in your local government and have no control over how it is spent.

    • Here is the thing: over many years/decades since cable and later high speed internet was introduced once company or another have basically had a monopoly in this area. No one wants to invest the money into building out another network in the city as much of the city is quite old and stringing up new infrastructure is expensive. Also some parts of the city can be low income so no company wants to invest somewhere that has competition and low income. Same for the rural parts of the county, people tend to b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mi ( 197448 )

        No one wants to invest the money into building out another network in the city

        Not only are you not offering any evidence to this claim, I have evidence to the contrary — this is a lie. Google Fiber wanted to do just that — and failed [cnet.com]. The Wired-article I linked to earlier offers clues as to why.

        Since there is no economic forces that will drive the change to high speed internet access the area wants

        This is self-contradicting bullshit. The only plausible meaning of "the area wants" is: "residents

  • Hmm correct me if I'm wrong here, but for some reason I have the feeling that backbones are not that much of an issue in 2022 ( in most places), rather it's the sonewhat pitiful last mile ( limitid compitition in metro areas, and little to no availability ouside metro)?. Am I wrong in asking why they invest in backbone instead of last mile?
    • The amount of money they have to spend isn't nearly enough to push fiber to the last mile. They think that if they install a new backbone then a bunch of ISPs will swoop in to provide the high speed last mile access so they can take credit for it. Just another waste of taxpayer money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        Oh sorry i was misstaken, here i though it was about geting broadband to people ( maybe even som competition) and not heap political points, sigh when will I ever learn. Thanks for taking the time to correct me, and happy new year

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