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Comment by makerofspoons | Hacker News Reader

I went to school at the University of Colorado Boulder. Something this article doesn't mention is that the city already has over 100 miles of fiber laid that isn't currently being lit up: http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Boulder-Colo-To-Light-Up-.... There were several groups of students looking to build companies to utilize this existing infrastructure, as well as business interests outside the city, but it just never went anywhere. I hope that it will see use soon, I was very envious of my friends that would commute in from nearby Longmont that could use their awesome municipal ISP.

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In Australia, fiber-to-the-home vs. fiber-to-the-node has been a fairly political issue about which I knew very little, so I looked it up. [1] After reading about parent comment and the miles of unused fiber, I wondered what the difference between fiber near my home vs fiber in my home would be, and found some good info. [2]

[1l http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-13/federal-election-nb...

[2] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-difference-fttc-fttp-car...

There is new tech like g.fast that enables gigabit speeds over copper wire like an existing phone line for short distances.

"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

I wonder what speeds would be achievable over the ancient copper wire in my building.

Depends. If it's 50+ years old it'll be fine, sure, some of the joints might not be, but that's not awful to fix.

Then Copper prices went up massively for a while and thinner guage twister pair went in at best, and Aluminium was used at worst.

The problem is that FTTP/H has a much larger up front cost because of having to clear out potentially blocked ducts if underground, and the labour intensive work that needs to be done at the property.

How is it different from cable? One person can dig a trench and lay cable through a large yard in about two hours. This is essentially how cable tv and internet are hooked up.

Most places already have cable laid, change the equipment at the end is much easier than laying new lines

Yes, but the parent was implying that fiber is somehow has more difficult to lay than regular coax.

100 miles of fiver isn’t really that much is it? Maybe in absolute terms but when you have runs to each house that’s probably less than a couple hundred homes

Boulder isn't very large.

It would depend on where it's laid. If it's 100 miles of residential streets that's not that useful, but if it's 100 miles of major thoroughfares that means it's much easier to build it out across the city.

This is the case in many, many major cities. When discussing this type of rollout, it’s almost always talking about last-mile, which is the most expensive to rollout and maintain.

This is exactly what I was thinking about while reading the article. Funny they didn't mention it.

I'd love to learn more about this. Do you have any more info? Email is ryan [@] shea . cool

Obligatory Sko' Buffs!

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