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Comment by radicaldreamer | Hacker News Reader

In San Francisco, everyone along streets with underground utilities are denied fiber due to Public Works disallowing microtrenching.

Additionally, AT&T has not upgraded their lines in these areas, so we're stuck with Comcast or DSL...

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Also the NIMBYs and ridiculous permitting requirements, such as needing environmental studies to add distribution boxes.

How do NIMBYs play into this?

NIMBYs put laws in place that makes it harder to install fiber.

They've fought the installation of CEVs (controlled environment vaults) which are used to put in network/telecom gear to extend broadband services.

One town decided they didn't like this beige box on a main street so they painted over it with a color that fit better. Turns out, that paint was important for cooling it: within a few days gear overheated and hundreds were out of service.

To be fair, microtrenching sucks. It’s extremely difficult to dig around lines that have even micro trenched without damaging them. Our “micro trenches” are still 16” deep, but we stopped doing that. Our new stuff is a minimum of 24”, generally 36” deep. I know people who were doing it between 4-8” and I think that’s just plain stupid.

I agree microtrenching isn’t ideal. Neither is a plethora of service providers tearing up streets to install proper conduit and lines, however.

Texas has shared transmission lines and a choice of electrical suppliers. It’s high past time we applied the same model to data.

If you can get it, monkeybrains is pretty good

What speeds are you getting with them?

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