----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Naslund" <SNaslund@medline.com>
You are right but that is usually how it works with fiber because that last drop to the home is a pretty expensive piece that you don't usually want installed until it is needed. The LECS usually don't even light a building unless there is a service that requires it. I was trying to make the point that $700 - 800 per premise as quoted seems extremely low to me. The cost of the cable, splices, cases, MPOEs, and especially labor make that number unbelievable to me. I am coming at this as someone who was in charge of a similar project that connected every building on US Air Force bases to a fiber backbone. An Air Force base is very similar to a suburb in a lot of respects in terms of density and utilities structure. I was responsible for the design, pricing, procurement, and contractor management on that project. We had 3,000 buildings in approximately a eight square mile area and the total project cost was in excess of $12 million dollars which equates to something like $4000 per building. Granted we were doing 12 strands per building but cable costs have fallen since this project so they should be pretty close.
"Marine, Aviation, Mil-Spec, Aerospace, Man-Rated": The five most expensive adjectives in the English language, in ascending order. (When I need rule-of-thumb multipliers, I use 5, 10, 20, 400, and 5000, resp.) For the record, I don't recall whether $800 was all-in -- inclusive of all the central building equipment and labor -- or not. Time to exhume the thread from the archives. It was quite informative. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://www.bcp38.info 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA BCP38: Ask For It By Name! +1 727 647 1274