It amazes me how difficult it seems to get the same in more developed places like US/Canada.
We've had fiber to home for years now in the East. Largely driven i think by governments seeing this was one area where it didn't work.
Almost like we... Live under a system that rewards and encourages that behavior.
But, cronyism is not capitalism. It's actually a subversion of capitalism.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/45/eb/48/45eb48b4c51715abecdf...
Somewhere in the middle is probably a happy medium.
I'm a fan of one touch make ready rules, but when you get to rural areas many of the poles are old, and to get the 18' clearance on a road span requires moving everyone else up, which may mean a new pole.
If you want to see how to build a national broadband network, look across the ditch at what the UFB gets you. AUD$89 for 100mbps, versus NZD$85 for 1 gigabit.
(Orcon in NZ, and TPG used in AU for comparison purposes)
Then the conservative gov opposition ran a campaign (bolstered by incumbent telcos and Rupert Murdoch of Fox fame) that fibre was unnecessary and it'd be much cheaper and quicker to provide a patchwork mix of different modalities, the idea being that fibre would never be necessary.
The reality is that the opposition just needed to run on a campaign that was "not what the Gov wants to do".
Long story short, opposition won government, and ended up buying back (at a premium) a whole bunch of old copper infrastructure from the major telco whom they'd sold the infra to decades earlier. The costs of mismanagement and using such a patchwork mix blew the whole project out and here we are 10 years later with the "quicker cheaper" STILL not finished rolling out.
Where it has been deployed, it's suffering under loads that it can't keep up with - I'm currently getting 1.5 Mbs down 0.72 up.
We would have saved $11 Billion if the original FttP rollout, which had just begun, was allowed to proceed.
The valuations of Murdoch's decrepit coax network and Telstra's ancient copper network have skyrocketed, now that they have been forced back in as the last mile delivery to the home.
I read recently that given better pricing of fibre rollouts nowadays, it would take $7 Billion to rectify this failure for most of Australia, by completing the FttP network that got cancelled.
Political lies and/or gross incompetence resulted in spending 20% more than fibre to the home, and ending up with unreliable much slower copper to the home, and harder to maintain mish mash of complexity via grab bag of mixed technology in use now.
I did get one tiny bit of schadenfreude from the whole thing: I had lengthy debates with a coworker about whether the NBN is worth it or not. He said it's a waste of money. My position was that even if it improved the economy just 1%, it would pay for itself in no time at all.
Now, in the middle of the pandemic where everyone is working from home, I have gigabit NBN fibre-to-the-premises. He's on 2 Mbps ADSL v1 with 10% packet loss.
In theory yes but the 'national broadband network' has been nothing but a giant political mess and used as a tool to misinform and manipulate voters. It has resulted in ridiculous overblown budgets and a subpar below global standard product. I live 7km from Sydney CBD and I still have ADSL2 with 9mb down and 200kb/s up which gets 75% packet loss anytime it rains. The NBN was established/announced in 2009, it’s now 2020 and I am still waiting..
Anyone who is under the impression that the Australian government plans to maintain ownership has their head in the sand. This is a paid for tax payer network infrastructure project which will be packaged and sold off to private business in 5 years time so that private business can reap the rewards for the long term. This is what happened to our previous common network infrastructure provider Telstra.
100% of the blame lies with those two men. Nobody else.
In my city it’s pretty deregulated. But there are downsides. Sloppy techs will cut competitor cables due to pure laziness.
Once it is up, the regulations will work for you. Some day, some other "legit" installer will come by and look at the cable and basically shrug their shoulders at it, and then do their work around it. It would take weeks if not longer to find out nobody knows who owns it. Nobody's going to take the time to trace it back. And I'm guessing nobody is going to just take it down for fear of taking the wrong thing down. Maybe they cut the line and wait around to see who comes to splice it?? It would make for an entertaining story.
I can't pull them up now, but I've seen a number of credible stories on the internet of Comcast and AT&T technicians going to homes to do service and then intentionally cutting lines of the other company that service the building or nearby houses. Obviously this isn't super common or it would be bigger news, but it definitely happens.
It's a big deal to damage someone elses infrastructure, can result in bills and lawsuit to reclaim losses. If the pole owner notices, they may do something (or just ignore it). What you don't want is them tearing down your stuff without notice.
I feel that having fiber in big cities is a given nowadays. I don't think telcos have any plan on supporting those smaller remote towns with fiber. Maybe investment does not pay off in a reasonable amount of time.
Fiber may not be the only option though. Starlink should be becoming available soon in North America. Only time will tell if that will work out though. WiMax, for example, was a failed hard.
The upside is we can still get gigabit service over cable lines through comcast for a fairly reasonable price (although with terrible upload speeds, data caps on the plan, and the need to fight with support every year to prevent your price from going up, as with all comcast plans).
Starlink won't be high a replacement for fiber for a decade if we're being optimistic. These projects have huge ramp ups, tons of expensive launches, especially if they're successful, tons of users means slower speeds for everyone. And that all assumes success.
That prevents new entrants.
Which makes fixing, replacing etc quite expensive and the quality can be suspect.