US Broadband Buildout Finds Cost to Connect Some Households as High as $53,000 (msn.com) 119
Internet services has long been slow for the Winnebago Tribe in the state of Nebraska, reports the Wall Street Journal. Now the U.S. government "plans to fix that by crisscrossing the reservation with fiber-optic cable — at an average cost of $53,000 for each household and workplace connected."
While that amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the 658 homes getting hookups — at a cost of $35.2 million — "the tribe is also starting an internet company to run the network, creating jobs and competing with an existing provider known for slow customer service." While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy... The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the "Internet for All" program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas... Providing fiber-optic cable is the industry standard, but alternative options such as satellite service are cheaper, if less reliable. Congress has left it up to state and federal officials implementing the program to decide how much is too much in hard-to-reach areas...
Defenders of the broadband programs say a simple per-location cost doesn't capture their benefits. Once built, rural fiber lines can be used to upgrade cell service or to add more connections to nearby towns...
Some of the differences can be explained by the distinct geographic areas the programs are targeting. While the FCC program included some suburbs and excluded remote locations such as Alaska, the programs run by Commerce and USDA specifically targeted far-flung regions with difficult construction conditions. "These are some of the most challenging locations that there are to reach in America," said Andy Berke, administrator of the USDA's Rural Utilities Service. He cited one project in Alaska that involves a 793-mile undersea fiber cable to reach remote villages.
While that amount exceeds the assessed value of some of the 658 homes getting hookups — at a cost of $35.2 million — "the tribe is also starting an internet company to run the network, creating jobs and competing with an existing provider known for slow customer service." While most connections will cost far less, the expense to reach some remote communities has triggered concerns over the ultimate price tag for ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy... The U.S. has committed more than $60 billion for what the Biden administration calls the "Internet for All" program, the latest in a series of sometimes troubled efforts to bring high-speed internet to rural areas... Providing fiber-optic cable is the industry standard, but alternative options such as satellite service are cheaper, if less reliable. Congress has left it up to state and federal officials implementing the program to decide how much is too much in hard-to-reach areas...
Defenders of the broadband programs say a simple per-location cost doesn't capture their benefits. Once built, rural fiber lines can be used to upgrade cell service or to add more connections to nearby towns...
Some of the differences can be explained by the distinct geographic areas the programs are targeting. While the FCC program included some suburbs and excluded remote locations such as Alaska, the programs run by Commerce and USDA specifically targeted far-flung regions with difficult construction conditions. "These are some of the most challenging locations that there are to reach in America," said Andy Berke, administrator of the USDA's Rural Utilities Service. He cited one project in Alaska that involves a 793-mile undersea fiber cable to reach remote villages.
Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe a few cell towers might be a better idea? A nice one costs around $500,000. A single modern 5G tower can handle 700 simultaneous high-speed connections no problem.
Re:Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe a few cell towers might be a better idea? A nice one costs around $500,000. A single modern 5G tower can handle 700 simultaneous high-speed connections no problem.
Hard to day. It could be that in many of these areas, homes are so spread out each tower would only reach a handful. Being able to handle 700 connections would be overkill. Plus, what to cell towers use for an uplink? Do they need a fiber connection?
In any case, it would be interesting to know why ISPs aren't pursuing lower-cost options. I strongly suspect the program was designed such that you only get the subsidy if you lay a physical connection. Either that or the subsidy for fixed wireless is much, much less than laying fiber.
Re:Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
For Nebraska this might be a solution in Appalachia not so much from experience. All of these things like line of sight to work well.
In hill country line of sight is often tough. Where is the old farm house? Down by the creek of course, where is the creek, down in the notch. Even when the contour of the earth isn't the issue, the trees are.
There are old jokes about the sun only shining a few hours a day in Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, and Western parts of Virginia. They are not totally fictional accounts.
Trying to hit some of these places with any of cellular, point-to-point RF, any even low orbit stuff like Starlink is often painful and needs a lot of repeaters, making it almost as costly as stringing cable and a whole lot less reliable.
Re:Wireless (Score:5, Informative)
My parents visited their hometowns recently, up in the Adirondack mountains. I imagine the problems are much the same as with the Appalachian chain.
Zero coverage in most areas for cellphones. I'd imagine that you could fix that, but you'd need to install more cellular towers, and even with intelligent placement on mountain tops - running infrastructure up to those mountaintops would be expensive. You'd either need to run power up there, in which case dragging a fiber line with it wouldn't be a big deal, or go renewable, with the commiserate extra maintenance and the sheer amount of infrastructure cost - remember, solar panels would need a way to clean themselves of snow, for example. To be reliable you'd need a massive battery bank, which means you might want to have a climate controlled facility to store them in for longevity purposes, and keep in mind that we're looking at high altitude structures pretty far north - which means extreme freezing temperatures.
No matter what you do, it's going to be expensive. Starlink might indeed be the best solution.
Re:Wireless (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in the Mississippi river valley, in "bluff country". Bluffs are 500 foot limestone cliffs on both sides of the river. Lesser rivers have also carved valley in the same limestone formation, but they usually aren't as dramatic.
I live near a town with multiple competing fiber optic internet carriers - two cable companies and one phone company. Less than 10 miles away, there are valleys with no cell phone service. Even police radio reception is poor in those places. They mostly have really shitty DSL for internet access.
There are dozens of places like that in this county, and about two thousand people live in them. Each of them is going to need a multi-million dollar investment to get connected. Wireless is helping a little bit, but is more expensive than most people expect it to be.
I figured that starlink would help too, but I still haven't seen any of their ground terminals deployed out here (other than mine, which I got to test starlink's ability to connect some of my employer's remote facilities).
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What are typical WISP caps now? (Score:2)
When did WISPs stop imposing unusably low monthly data transfer quotas? (I'd look it up myself, but I don't know what street addresses to enter into WISPs' coverage inquiry forms.)
Re: Wireless (Score:1)
This is about if a community is relevant enough to have layer 1/layer 2 infrastructure or a quick fix with layer 3 to end node support consisting of cell towers. Fiber can carry everything the region will ever need for the foreseeable future including cell tower links as the post I'm responding to has mentioned. The quick fix is standard feasibility logic and the same reasoning western nations give for dropping cell networks in the middle of developing regions. I'm thinking it should not apply in this or si
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Maybe a few cell towers might be a better idea? A nice one costs around $500,000. A single modern 5G tower can handle 700 simultaneous high-speed connections no problem.
Hard to day. It could be that in many of these areas, homes are so spread out each tower would only reach a handful. Being able to handle 700 connections would be overkill. Plus, what to cell towers use for an uplink? Do they need a fiber connection?
They nee da backhaul which can be fiber or wireless point to point. Cell towers also require continuous monitoring, meet FAA regs if above a certain height, land leases, technical studies, etc. Towers are generally not owned by the cell provider but a tower company that manages many towers at once and leases antenna space to cell providers. I suspect the ongoing costs of using towers, which may not be subsidized, means the more expensive but subsidized fiber is more attractive financially.
Re:Wireless (Score:4, Insightful)
Any radio system is always going to be inferior simply by the nature of the shared medium that is subject to interference.
Just install fibre once, like we installed copper phone lines to every part of the country. Those lines will be good for many decades, probably centuries, and give everyone reliable and fast broadband.
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Tell us you're utterly unfamiliar with the issues involved in providing services in this kind of terrain without telling us.
That infrastructure would be threatened by fire, flood, landslide... This is not the curated model train set that you see in occupied Europe. e.g. the only part of the UK with population density below the US average is the Pitcairn Islands. And this is literally the most challenging part of the continental US to connect.
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So did they just not have copper phone lines? Or for that matter electricity lines?
Re:Wireless (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of these rural homes in fact have none of that. They have generators, or solar, or hydro, and no grid connection at all. This is arguably the least accessible and connected region in the continental US that is considered to be populated.
Re: Wireless (Score:2)
If you read the article, it mentions a benefit the fibre will provide: upgraded cell service.
Re:Wireless (Score:5, Insightful)
My first reaction was something on the lines of the economic definition of inflation relating to poor resource allocation, but the reality as a country is that we need to link people together and to the broader population.
I'm sure $1 Billion or so will be spent on areas that today are not economically rational to hook up, but the infrastructure is hopefully a 50-year+ investment and the point is universality. Most of this is work that should have been done 20+ years ago.
Now, putting my socialist hat on, I sure hope some of the money that is directly spent on the effort is pushed back into local community jobs-- training in things like splicing fiber and using local resources for doing much of the work. The failure happens when someone builds something that can't be maintained.
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It couldn't possible cost $35 to run a single fiber somewhere to them, and incentivize one of the existing WISPs to service the area, lol.
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Er, $35 million I mean. LOL. No edit Slashdot, yay!
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Yes but that would defeat the purpose. The purpose of programs like this is not to simply get people connected to the internet. The purpose is to enrich politically connected crony contractors, and the politicians who vote for these deals.
Crony contractor puts up a stupidly high priced proposal to get some job done. Their lobbyists press representatives to approve funding for the proposal, strongly implying that the politician will get a little side benefit if they approve, and will pay a price if they don'
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A cell tower might seem easier but it isn't. First the backhaul has to be there - and if the location is that expensive, they may decide to resort to a cheaper but lower bandwidth microwave backhaul instead of a hardware backhaul. This will limit speeds on that tower and trigger overload situations.
Second, there is the optics. If you're talk
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The summary mentions the Winnebago Tribe. Their history indicates that it's their former neighbors who wanted them to be nowhere near, although I'm sure the tribe did more work in the move.
Almost like (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the most expensive to connect places that are still left to connect...
No, that's not the cost, that's the price... (Score:2)
Cost = Materials + Labor
Price = Materials + Labor + Passive Income
Our government is getting ripped off by the private sector and no one believes the cover story anymore. This puff piece is designed to justify price gouging on a public good of great importance.
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Okay, tell us the cost difference then.
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Why even include labor? Shouldn't those guys just work for free?
Guess what, companies have to exist, buy and maintain expensive equipment, manage that labor, keep a lot of insurance for said labor, locate and track all the pre-existing utilities, have insurance to cover hitting them anyway, etc. This isn't some just-exist-to-skim-off-the-top type setup, it's a significant undertaking.
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That all goes onto the "cost" portion of the equation though, what OP is talking about is the "profits" which is what is left after all those things you mentioned.
Re: No, that's not the cost, that's the price... (Score:2)
Why should ISPs be denied a profit?
If you want to have zero-profit, why not have the local municipalities simply roll out their own fiber plant, then the local government can offer the internet services for cost? I'm sure BumFork North Dakota city council will do a bang-up job stringing fiber with a little help for the community. And while we're at it, why don't we have local gov't subsidize those rollouts? Why should I in Florida pay to connect hill people in West Virginia?
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Why should ISPs be denied a profit?
Nobody, at all, said that. However I think what OP is asking, which is a fair question is how much of that $32m is profit. 5%? 10%? 20%? 50%?
If you want to have zero-profit, why not have the local municipalities simply roll out their own fiber plant, then the local government can offer the internet services for cost?
I am greatly in favor of that. That's how water is usually done for towns, why not internet? Water is massively more complex infrastructure.
Why should I in Florida pay to connect hill people in West Virginia?
Because everyone being connected generally will mean greater overall economic growth across the board and also that is inherent with the social contract of America, the country we all live in and support. If you needed internet
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Maybe we set up the wrong goals (Score:5, Insightful)
"ensuring every rural home, business, school and workplace in America has the same internet that city dwellers enjoy"
This is sayin "we want to live with city amenities, without the cost of living in a city"
Don't worry, we do the opposite as well, with urban sprawl, we want to have country style large lots, without moving too far away from the city, causing all kinds of societal issues, primarily high housing prices.
Maybe let cities and rural areas focus on their strengths, and solve the issues in another way? (Wireless / satellite, plus a slow but reliable cable backup)?
Re: Maybe we set up the wrong goals (Score:2)
Access to the internet and broadband is pretty fundamental. I challenge anyone try watching broadcast television for 90 days.....
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Access to the internet and broadband is pretty fundamental. I challenge anyone try watching broadcast television for 90 days.....
Uh, lots of people still watch cable all day. I can't stand it but whatever floats yer boat.
Thing is, and I've made this point a number of times, is the FCC definition of broadband is way, way higher than your average bear needs. I think they're shooting for at least 100/100 service for each home. You don't need that to email, stream Netflix, or even work remote. Assuming reasonable latency, I'm sure I could attend Zoom meetings at around 10-25 Mbps. Maybe you won't get the best gaming experience but I find
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You also agree a modern internet standard requires a good enough video conference experience. Even 10Mbps is not economically attainable if you wire across miles and miles with just copper.
Not really asking for fiber-to-home, but fiber-to-town or fiber-to-village is required for real reliable broadband services.
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I live mostly in Thailand.
Every household who wants a landline internet gets fiber, mostly the fiber is already going along the road.
If not, he is connected for free. Monthly fee for unlimited internet is roughly 600TBH something like $18.
Everyone else has 4G/3G mobile phone. I have 7GB unlimited 4G, and when it is used up unlimited 3G, for 200TBH, roughly $5 per month.
Except in remote forests: you have 3G/4G and partly 5G everywhere.
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Yes, the fibre is often strung up on poles in Thailand and it's extremely messy/unsightly in many places.
Other countries have strict regulations to avoid the cable spam, so it becomes a lot more expensive to install fibre (and ensure it's not visible, which usually means digging up the street to bury it. Digging up the street is expensive, you'll face lots of regulations and resistance.
Then you have countries where copper from telephone lines or cable tv is already present, "good enough" is the worst enemy
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Fiber I think is not deployed to strictly accommodate end to end connectivity, not even mostly. It's a layer 2 medium.
You sure? My impression is there's a big push was to deploy fiber to each home. I know it's reasonably prevalent where I live in suburban San Jose.
Being pedantic, I'm also not sure what you mean by a "layer 2 medium". Sure, but so is cat5 cable and 2.4 Ghz radio. You have to run your layers 3-7 on top of some version of a layers 1 and 2.
The telcos have shown this in the past by overprovisioning parts of the country they "liked" just to get government funding most of which was ripped up or never used. And ironicly most of that was provisioned incorrectly using end user bandwidth needs that never existed in their regions.
Yeah, we could have a long conversation about what networks get pulled where. This comes down to the age old question, which we're not going to answer here, of who's in the
Uploading crop data from your farm (Score:2)
If you run a farm, should the ability to upload a large telemetry file to your crop advisor be a fundamental right? Some people feel a need to drive an hour into town, do an upload, and drive home, pumping carbon into the air each way, just to avoid uploads that take in excess of 12 hours and run a risk of timing out. (See IRL episode 6 "All Access Pass" [irlpodcast.org].)
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From the article: "The tribe lives in Nebraska after being forcibly moved several times in the 19th century."
So that whole attitude of yours can fuck right off. They're there because nobody else wanted that land, it was such shit. They were forced to move there BECAUSE it was far away from anything of real interest.
Re: Maybe we set up the wrong goals (Score:2)
This is an edge case, we are not spending $53K per home to wire just Indian reservations...
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Then let's eminent-domain the land their ancestors lived and died on and give it back to the tribe.
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Internet access is really no more difficult to provision than running water or a connection to the electrical grid. It's just a case of running (pipes|cables) through the ground to every property. Many developed countries already guarantee electricity, water and a copper phone line to every citizen it makes no sense really not to replace the copper phone line with a fibre cable.
If only there was a high-speed satellite network (Score:5, Funny)
If only there was a high-speed satellite network available that you could subscribe to in these rural areas
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If you're talking Starlink, there's only so much sky-junk you can boost into low orbit before you start affecting other missions. Remember that all those LEO terminals have pretty short lifecycles before they get deorbited and need to be replaced. Cell towers, at least, have lifespans measured in decades.
When I was in Costa Rica a few years ago I was amazed at the amount of fiber that was run everywhere, at least from San Jose west to the Pacific coast around Quepos. The speeds weren't great but the connect
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If you're talking Starlink, there's only so much sky-junk you can boost into low orbit before you start affecting other missions. Remember that all those LEO terminals have pretty short lifecycles before they get deorbited and need to be replaced. Cell towers, at least, have lifespans measured in decades.
When I was in Costa Rica a few years ago I was amazed at the amount of fiber that was run everywhere, at least from San Jose west to the Pacific coast around Quepos. The speeds weren't great but the connections were there and seemingly pretty reliable.
Starlink is already in use in rural and remote areas. $600 in equipment and $110/month service. That seems better than $53,000 for the connection.
Sure, fiber might be better but so what? Everything is a cost benefit tradeoff
There are already 4500 in orbit. The satellite lifespan is factored into the service cost.
It's pretty cool tech
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This.
Let Musk worry about his ROI. At the prices he's charging, it seems like a decent solution. And the sky-junk is going up anyway.
Re: If only there was a high-speed satellite netwo (Score:2, Insightful)
The difference is Joe Biden is making your neighbors pay the $53K to wire your house, with Starlink the homeowner pays the $600 equipment cost.
The phrase "cost effective" never came up when drafting this plan/legislation.
Apparently, this somehow "reduces inflation", just another example of "Bidenomics" working to lower the costs for working American families, or something...
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Yeah, I get the waste and pork-barrel aspects of the rural internet initiatives. We have a much older comparison that seems to have worked OK: the Rural Electrification Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not defending the current legislation as our congresscritters have gotten much more creative in their grafting ways. I just note that when done well, some federal-driven projects do pan out.
Satellite-based comms is great for mobile and as a stop-gap for extremely difficult-to-wire applications but th
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Yeah, I get the waste and pork-barrel aspects of the rural internet initiatives. We have a much older comparison that seems to have worked OK: the Rural Electrification Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I'm not defending the current legislation as our congresscritters have gotten much more creative in their grafting ways. I just note that when done well, some federal-driven projects do pan out.
Satellite-based comms is great for mobile and as a stop-gap for extremely difficult-to-wire applications but there are a lot of costs associated with it. However, it's not a viable solution over the lifecycle of an equivalent hard connected service to fixed locations like buildings. If it were, HughesNet, IMARSAT, Iridium, and others would be kings of carriage. I was part of an IT department that managed V-SAT terminals for retail back in the 90s. As TDM, ISDN and DSL got built, we dumped (or used for backup in critical or high-sales-volume locations) those Ka-band systems.
You've got experience in this, what do you think of the Starlink LEO tech? It seems pretty cool.
They've been launching satellites almost every 4 days this year. It's amazing how routine they have made the launch and rocket recovery process.
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Eh, my experience is as a tech staffer working for a commercial customer of a few of the older geo systems. I did play with Iridium way back in the day but it was too expensive for normal commercial use. You may recall that Iridium was used by some press agencies to file video stories from the Middle-East during the war. It was really low quality (using a QCIF-format CODEC, as I recall) but still a breakthrough in reporting back then.
I like the Starlink concept for this type of ephemeral use (backpack-based
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Satellite kinda works with limitations, lots of limitations
Starlink does NOT work in heavily forested areas
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Garbage. Can't conduct business on it. Useless. These people have been suffering with that shit for years. As soon as people do get a good job they have to move to the city BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING SATELITE INTERNET BEING DOG SHIT. Creating many issues, like Trump. Kindly die in a fire while watching Fox Nation.
Which satellite service are you referring to that "people have been suffering with that shit for years"?
Starlink (Score:2)
Why not Starlink? A reason other than Elon Musk is an asshole (he is, no dispute there — he stole Starlink from WorldVu) would be nice.
So? (Score:1)
I'll hear your complaining after the last terminal is hooked up. Cheaters, losers. Woe is you fucking do the job.
The $400 billion broadband scandal (Score:2)
Google that if you're curious how corrupt the federal government is, how married they are to big business, how much money was given to the last century's telecoms, and why the US pays so much for internet access.
Demand equality (Score:2)
Are they also going to ensure that city dwellers enjoy the same amount of land per person that rural dwellers enjoy?
Choice of living location has natural consequences. It shouldn't be up to the taxpayers to eliminate them.
Because the Indian tribes were given such choice.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you did not notice that the story here is about an Indian tribal reservation... funny enough the tribes were not given a whole lot of choice about where their reservation lands are located.
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They are lucky they have and land stop all and we're not simply wiped out as an identifiable culture, like so many other people throughout history.
No low prevents them from moving to a city, getting a job and carrying on like the rest of us.
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I dunno what the fuck is with auto correct these days. That should have read:
They are lucky they have any land at all and were not simply wiped out as an identifiable culture, like so many other people throughout history.
No law prevents them from moving to a city, getting a job and carrying on like the rest of us.
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I dunno what the fuck is with auto correct these days.
Maybe it was trying to stop you from saying stupid shit on the internet.
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Unpopular but accurate. They were just as guilty of war crimes as the settlers. They have some ideological feather on their side by immigrating first and being less effective at shitbaggery *only* because they didn't have the technology and numbers their opponents had.
None of it matters much at this point. They won some independence and they've utterly failed to govern themselves. The last thing we should be doing is propping them up and enabling them to be seperate. It is far past time for them to ask to b
Sit/lie laws (Score:2)
No law prevents them from moving to a city
Sit/lie laws [wikipedia.org] apply between moving to a city and finding a job and between finding a job and collecting enough paychecks to afford three months of rent.
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No law requires you to sit or lie in public spaces while trying to get your shit together.
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Other than the trespassing law.
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Apparently he thinks getting your shit together means laying around and waiting for together shit to just land on you, maybe after dropping off a few applications.
Whereas in real life it involves a bit of hustling and sleeping in your car until you've got enough to take the hit of a hotel that rents by the week, find someone who needs a housesitter, or any number of other options. Mimicking the actions of the homeless is only good for ending up at the same destination, homeless.
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When I was homeless, I slept in a tent the woods on an Air Force Base.
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That's one option. There are federal and state lands all over the place where tent camping is allowed for limited periods of time.
More than enough to bootstrap getting into the system with a bit of ingenuity and effort. Of course a large city is just about the worst place to do this, costs are drastically higher and there is far more competition for resources.
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Right. If you're homeless and jobless in a large city, the best thing to do is pick a direction and start walking until you are no longer in a city.
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Nice try. There are by the week and by the month hotels everywhere with a population over 10k and many below that as well. You can do day labor, scavenge, etc to get enough cash for the first week or you can just hit up any random church and they'll help you out for a day or two while you manage that. Mowing a lawn will buy you ramen to get through a week.
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No but they sure were given a whole hell of a lot more of it than the rest of us. Since they are considered sovereign for most purposes I fail to see why they shouldn't be paying for their own fiber.
It isn't that I don't think these people should enjoy the same benefits and support as everyone else, I just think the condition for that is giving up the benefits and support which is distinct from everyone else. People like to paint native americans as oppressed gentle souls but that isn't accurate; they were
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I guess you did not notice that the story here is about an Indian tribal reservation... funny enough the tribes were not given a whole lot of choice about where their reservation lands are located.
I had a joke about native Americans, but they have reservations.
What tribe always knows where they are, the sat-Navajo.
Sadly, I'll be here all week.
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So I take it you're willing to let city dwellers raise corn and hogs in their back yard instead of keeping that in the country.
This is why Verizon halted FiOS and sold the rest (Score:2)
This is why Verizon halted most FiOS deployments and sold the rest to Frontier.
The cost for fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) is so prohibitive that even Verizon FiOS gave up on it. They're only deploying to locations in Washington DC and New York City because they were sued to not stop deployment there.
Hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC), with fiber to the neighborhood and copper coaxial cable to the home is far more affordable and only slightly slower on upload speeds than fiber with the latest DOCSIS 3.x and 4.x protocol
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Why is FTTH more expensive? Laying a cable is laying a cable, and fiber cables are cheap.
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It isn't. Hybrid makes sense where there is existing coax they can use. It is still an ugly kludge.
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It isn't. Hybrid makes sense where there is existing coax they can use. It is still an ugly kludge.
Oh right, that's what I've got, almost. FTTC then ADSL over copper twisted pair. Gives me 60 down 20 up, so still not at the 100/100 symmetric I had as a student in the late 90s and early 2000s. Still miles better than the 5/0.00000001 I had over ADSL before the upgrade.
An FTTH provider has entered recently, laying some cables, but using the telegraph poles to string fiber (take that, delivery drones!). Other
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Specialized labor to terminate the cables.
Also, the ONT hardware (modem) is very expensive.
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He had pre-terminated cables. You need a clean environment in a truck to terminate the cables or spools of pre-terminated cables.
The cable termination guy was in our neighborhood for a week.
Ridiculous high costs for some rural users? (Score:2)
This is why God invented Starlink. Fiber is more efficient in densely populated places.
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Alternative connection (Score:2)
Internet connectivity is very important (Score:2)
Many people will not consider buying a house without good internet. It's as important as electricity, maybe more
While it's true that some want to live "off the grid", many find lack of internet to be a showstopper
Many years ago, electrification was accomplished, even to remote areas. It's not impossible
The article seems politically motivated and quotes the most expensive installations in an effort to scare readers
Even if installation is expensive, it's a great investment
And no, wireless is NOT the answer
Wir
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Cost doesn't really matter (Score:2)
This is infrastructure. Installation should have already been finished.
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This where the govt should step in (Score:2)
Situations like these are prime examples of where the market has failed thus the government *should* step in.
The population density here is not enough for a private company to come in and profitably run fiber. So the government gets involved. And it appears they're doing the right thing......don't just install the line, but create an environment which will foster the necessary jobs to maintain and expand it. Build this up more, offer the services people today need, and perhaps more members of the tribe w
Re: (Score:2)
It would cost $394,800 to buy a Starlink dish for each person in that community (assuming no bulk discount). The remaining $34.8 *Million* dollars could have paid for 37 years of service for each household, or a hundred more satellites.
So, is this a private-sector market failure, or an example of obscene government waste? I know how it looks to me, and my wallet.
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Starlink itself reports download speeds range between 25 and 220 Mbps with the average being 100 Mpbs. Today that barely qualifies as "broadband". Especially compared to 250 - 1,000 Mbps ranges for fiber.
Don't put a bandaid on the problem. Spend the money now and install infrastructure for the next 50+ years.
Need more LoS and cell-based for rural (Score:2)
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Misleading subject (Score:2)
The subject implies some are as high as $53k to hook up. Actually that is the average, some are far more expensive to hook up than that.
But we have a sprawling interstate and highway system throughout the country. It's time we did the same with fiber, blanket the whole damn country whether something is there or not and put a small access shed at every mile marker which every carrier can access. Any and all government access requires a warrant from a regular court along with other very strong privacy and ope
You call this wise stewardship of our tax dollars? (Score:2)
Next time there's a big fight over the debt ceiling, remember this.
Next time you're wondering why food costs so much, remember this.
Recklessly spending money that doesn't exist is going to r
Re: What a deal! (Score:2)
I suspect they are not running the connection 1/8 mile, I suspect for very good reason the two houses are served by different facilities, they likely have to dig up roadways, restore landscaping, do environmental impact studies, and secure permits from local gov't. They don't just roll a trencher and @go for it!"