On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Petach" <mpetach@netflight.com>
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 9:05 AM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> wrote:
True, but I think it means we've bound the problem. It appears to take $1400-$4500 to deploy fiber to the home in urban and suburban areas, depending on all the fun local factors that effect costs.
*sigh*
I'd gladly pay $5000 NRC to get fiber to my house. I only wish it were that simple. :( Heck, if they wanted longer-term ROI, I'd pay $5000 NRC and $200 MRC for a fiber connection to my house, if only there were someone who could provide it. I suspect the real costs are much higher, and that's why there's nobody willing to do it for that cheap.
No, Matt; in a sufficiently dense deployment, it appears you can actually get it done for that money, based on actual deployment results.
If my project pans out, I'll give it to you for less than that. :-)
I think the problem with your model is that the same one Google faced; you don't divide your cost based on the number of homes connected, you divide by the number of people forking out money for it. Building infrastructure to 10,000 homes doesn't work if 9,999 of them say "no thanks, I'm happy with my current cable TV"; that last person's gonna have a heck of a bill, or you're going to go bankrupt subsidizing them. Google Fiber's "sign up, and if we get enough signups, then we'll build" model seems to be the only sane way to ensure that you won't be left holding the bag if not enough subscribers opt in to the service to fund it. Now, if only we had a system for signing up to show our support for a build like that here in the bay area... ^_^; Matt