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Comment by oarla | Hacker News Reader

Why is there no mention of the initial cost to lay down fiber? I expect that would be quite significant compared to wireless links and I am not even thinking of the costs that might be associated with maintenance of the fibers once it is laid down and operational.

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The dirty secret of 5G is that they have to run fiber to every street corner anyway just to backhaul the very-short-range base stations.

For a marginal additional cost, you can run it down the street to every house, and consumers aren't forced into a artificial-scarcity "purchase by the gigabyte" scheme run by wireless carriers.

Yes, but with 5G, I now have high speed internet on your block too, and so does everyone else.

Except that my devices don't have 5G or fiber ports. I have WIFI and Ethernet ports.

The fiber line goes to your house then gets converted to Ethernet via a modem; just like cable does now. In fact when i had FIOS, the fiber was converted to coax before it came into may apartment, then went to the modem and cable box. So from a user perspective, it wasn't any different than cable.

Every street corner is still a lot cheaper then running it to every premisis

Rollout costs follow an almost power law[1] when you chart FTTP, FTTB, FTTC, FTTN[0] connection costs

[0] to the premisis, basement, curb and node respectively

[1] best quick cite - https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/l/2017/02/NBNyo.jpg

More like every several blocks in urban areas, and less dense than that in suburban areas. That’s a huge improvement over running fiber to each house, because the fan-out kills you.

When I had fiber installed at my house, it took just half a day to run it about half a mile down the main road to my subdivision. It took another half a day to run it 200 feet down my side road, and another half a day to trench it under my driveway. With a base station you can perform the first step once and cover dozens of houses (even more townhouses or apartments). With fiber, you’d have to do the second step half a dozen more times, and the third step dozens of more times.

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