Hacker News Reader

With your knowledge of the subject, how would you suggest they overcome this challenge?

Do they need to run their own fiber - is there a way they could rent fiber space from an existing line? At least for a little while?

Don't be worried that a new player has entered the space; be worried that the existing ones haven't improved the space. The total market space can be increased by creating new connections, and someone has to do it.

View on HN

There are about 10 fiber providers in the city. We've spoken to most of them. It's pretty much impossible for us to lay fiber, so we have to lease it. We'd like to eventually lease a fiber ring across the city so we can cut costs when connecting multiple buildings. If you don't have a ring then you have to pay for the run all the way back to a coloc.

That's a good start to having "your own" network, and then you can choose to have packets traverse your network or the peering networks. You could shift egress points around, based on cost and other factors as well. Each link you add can multiply your routing options.

Get large enough, and you can start carrying other traffic too, and eventually start buying/laying fiber. But you know this, it's probably part of your business plan.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com