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Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

The Delta is what government officials refer to as a “high-cost area,” a remote spot with a sparse population, high poverty rate, and topography that makes everything complicated.

I support more broadband options and in general I like TFA, but this is the sort of thing that undermines the argument. There is no easier "topography" in which to bury lines or over which to beam LOS than completely flat alluvial plain. The lines can be simply plowed into the ground and the antennas only have to clear the treetops.

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Back when the telecom companies were running cross-country cabling in the 80's 90's in Canada, there's a large part of the country starting about central Canada going east-wards that's called the Canadian Shield. It's made of _EXTREMELY_ dense rock. Cable companies had to literally make a series of controlled explosions to run cables underground or to even set communications poles in the ground.

There's a lot of factors that go into running underground cable, heck even above-ground can be problematic too!

I believe Telus buries their cross-country fiber cables at least 18 feet underground, far below anybody even coming close to excavating it, due to the sheer amount of financial damage that could be caused by a fiber cut.

Is this a job for The Boring Company? Dig a straight hole through bedrock that can be “tapped” from the surface with a precisely positioned narrow drill, but is wide enough for human technicians to traverse in electric golf carts.

You'd be looking at billions of dollars to dry and drill through that rock. It's incredibly dense.

But yeah, it would be pretty cool to see done.

There's already a much easier path if you are going to drill coast to coast by simply going south.

Plus that reuses existing infrastructure.

> Cable companies had to literally make a series of controlled explosions to run cables underground or to even set communications poles in the ground.

Trench blasting can be expensive at times, but its not an unknown quantity for infrastructure projects[1]. That expense of installation can be weighed against, as you mention, service cuts of more vulnerable surface lines.

[1]See the first video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZc2gAMxFzg

The rivers that make up a delta deposit a lot of sediment and rapidly switch channels, so I imagine that could actually be a very difficult environment to bury wires in.

This exaggerates the range over which the rivers in question move. They aren't regularly destroying houses and other buildings that need broadband. Rather, they take various paths through low land that is already devoted to the passage of rivers. Rivers on alluvial plains are more movable than rivers in mountain gorges, but they pose no greater threat to cables than they do to other permanent facilities like roads, buildings, power lines, etc.

Even in the rare cases when a section of cable must be replaced, it's still just plow it into deep soil rather than bore through rock the whole way.

According to the article it's $50,000 a mile to run fiber.

According to Wikipedia:

    The Delta has some of the lowest population densities in the 
    American South, sometimes fewer than 1 person per square mile.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Delta#Today

That’s surprisingly high. Surely locals who already have tractors and experience digging trenches would take the job for less?

It’s not like unrolling a spool of fiber is rocket science either.

I’m with you. I suspect this is in places where you need to be careful. If you go “we provide service to this node - last mile is your problem” and sell wholesale fiber optic I’m sure you could make it cheaper. Let the guy run his own repeaters and cable. You just provide the link to the closest node.

I wonder if there are consumer laws that make that infeasible.

Also from the Wikipedia article:

    Urbanization and the shift to mechanization of farm technology during 
    the past 60 years has sharply reduced jobs in the Delta. People have 
    followed jobs out of the region, leading to a declining tax base. This 
    hampers efforts to support education, infrastructure development, 
    community health and other vital aspects of growth. The region's
    remaining people suffer from unemployment, extreme poverty, and 
    illiteracy.

Sounds about right. They wanted me to pay $180k for 10mb fiber to my place. It was a 12 mile pull for them with plenty of people along the way for them to sell to though.

Yeah, I think the author got the delta mixed up for Arkansas in general.

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