When my wife and I were preparing to build our house a few years ago, solid terrestrial connectivity was one of the top things on my must-have list, because we both work from home the vast majority of the time.

It took some tenacity with the local FTTH provider to determine if they served this area, because we're in a very tiny portion of a ZIP code that's fed from a different wire center than most of the rest of the municipality, but ultimately, I persevered :)

Before I found out they already had fiber in the ground, I went through the exercise of pricing out a fiber build from another provider in the area.  That conversation ended when I found out that the roughly 1 km of lateral build and construction into the new house would cost us $27k.

We were also very fortunate that the builder provided two 2" Schedule 40 conduits from the side of our house out to the utility hand-holes in the right-of-way, in addition to the conduit for the electrical service. It made getting the fiber into the house very easy.

One mile further east, and we would've been stuck with the local cable provider.

Thank you
jms

On Fri, Dec 20, 2024 at 4:02 PM Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> wrote:
On Thu, 19 Dec 2024, Karl Auer wrote:
> A friend was involved in a development project in a regional town. They
> specified conduits everywhere. When the network people showed up at
> some random later date, they mostly just had to pull stuff through
> existing conduits. Not sure of the details beyond that, but he reckoned
> it cost a lot less that doing it all later.

I'm not a real estate developer. I do not understand the reasoning.

Its not a technical problem, its a business problem.  The business
incentives are messed up.  One builder told me their margin on new houses
is about 15%. They try to optimize out any costs not required.  Spending
money, so communication companies can save money later doesn't pay the
developer's bills now.

Some states have "dig once" rules requiring spare conduit or coordinated
scheduling by utlities.  But even "dig once" rules only apply to public
roads, not private residential roads. Meanwhile wireless is free, from
the developer's point of view.

I know, folks outside the United States are shaking their heads.
Other countries have very detailed requirements for public infrastructure
serving new construction, including broadband access.

>> Cable  134.4 million households (82%)
>> DSL    7 million households (4%)
>> Fiber  74.9 million households(46%)
>> Fixed wireless 77.3 million households (47%)
>> Satellite 162.8 million households (99%)
>
> What are the percentages?

Percentage of service addresses in USA ("passed" or "served") by
each type of broadband technology, according to FCC data -- about 163
million address total.

There are about 210 million addresses in the USA (including institutional,
alias and virtual addresses)
US Census count of housing units -- 147 M
USPS count of delivery addresses -- 154 M residential, 12.6 M commercial