Norwegian ISP: dig your own fiber trench, save $400 | Hacker News Reader

Norwegian ISP: dig your own fiber trench, save $400

arstechnica.com

51 pointstewks17 comments

The obvious downside is that passionate customers are more likely to complain whenever they see shortcomings in the product.

That is not a downside. It's another upside.

I think the most impressive thing was how they lined up support _before_ deploying the network. That seems like a win for everyone involved, as they don't have to make huge speculative capital outlays... they already know they will have customers. Presumably the customers reap the cost savings in the form of lower bills.

BT did this with the ADSL rollout in the UK. They only upgraded exchanges where the demand from locals went over a threshold.

It actually angered quite a few towns and villages that didn't have sufficient percentage interest to get their exchange upgraded to handle ADSL. They had to do their own local canvasing etc which I guess was a good way to get people to do marketing for free.

what's really interesting about this is how BT are going to be pushing through their ADSL2/fiber upgrade- they need to make it commercially viable so are going to be requiring some strict resale restrictions etc. :(

In Sweden we've used a similar system. The state has provided financial support for creating economic associations (not sure of the term there, but it's what my dictionary tells me) that build and own fibre networks.

It's been very successful in the country side, where the people of e.g. a village formed the association and then built their own network. These networks are then connected for municipality's backbone, and it's done.

Prices per month for Internet access in nets connected to my local backbone, symmetrical: 10Mbps for $24, 30Mbps for $34, 100/10Mbps asym for $35. There's also an additional $10 or so for access to the backbone.

Each member of the association pays something like $5000 for their part of the network, but that's tax deductible to some extent.

In the US, we'd probably call these 'economic associations' co-operatives, or co-ops for short.

There are several municipalities trying to do something like that here. The problem is that the local telephone and cable companies lobby state governments to pass laws making it illegal to do so. It's rather ridiculous.

Burlington Telecom is one of the more successful, from Vermont: http://www.burlingtontelecom.net/

The more common case is that the municipality creates a local monopoly and awards it to whoever greases the right palms.

I know very little about telecom infrastructure, so this might have a really obvious answer - but why does the last stretch HAVE to to be underground? In other words, why isn't a "skip the trench, save $400" model feasible?

I would suggest that:

- fiber is relatively more expensive than simple copper strands; - hanging a cable from a telephone pole to the house is not resilient to weather; - fiber can snap easily, and needs to be wrapped in thick protection: see point 2 - most of it comes underground now so it'd be a waste to break out into the air

and: wifi from cabinets in the street would be weird. :)

But is there any reason I couldn't run it in plastic tubing along the bottom of my fence for instance?

Only thing I can think of is below freezing temps, which you wouldn't get when below the frost line.

AFAIK fiber follows the other utilities whether they are aerial or underground.

Unrelated except for the impression it forms in me: This story reminds me of encountering one of the chief officers of a small/midsize electric power company in Iowa, back in the 1980's. They were actively working with Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, on energy conservation because they recognized that the resultant leveling of peak generation demands made them more profitable. They sold less power, but their margins improved enough to more than compensate. Everyone won.

It's always impressive to find a company willing to think outside of the established "box", and to work with their customers. To my mind, it represents a generalized form of hacking. It's not just about technology, per se, it's about finding a better way -- and, when speaking of commerce, making a business out of it.

Kudos.

God bless Amory Lovins. Every time I hear about something new he has done, I wish the story had been heard instead by someone who wasn't already such a fan.

ideally companies that don't want to work with customers should wither and die. it's generally artificial barriers to entry that keep such crusty behemoths as the telcos entrenched.

This will probably make a lot of Norwegians happy. While the construction and public works in Norway are top-notch, they are not known for their speed of execution ;) hopefully this will let the eager geeks be a little more impatient.

It works in the US too. I lived in a neighborhood served by a small mutual water company (160 houses). When we needed to replace old 4 inch mains by new 6 inch mains, the neighbors did all the in-the-trenches manual labor.

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