Jean-François Mezei wrote: Jorge Amodio wrote: I belive there are just few major cities in the US that have a comparable or higher concentration of people like other large cities around the world. Does population density still REALLY matter ? Considering that fibre optic cables have a far longer reach than copper, and considering that the utility poles already exist in less densely populated areas, it would seem to me that fibre would be a superior alternative to copper, especially when you consider the costs of setting up remotes all over the place for copper. And I would reckon that laying fibre along existing utility poles to reach 200 homes would cost far less than laying fibre in a concrete high rise appartment building to reach 200 appartments. The way I view it, telco accountants have build *excuses* to not lay fibre instead of finding ways to justify laying it. That brings up another instance of CLEC to ILEC inequality. We have repeatedly tried to ascertain 'pole rights' from local/regional power companies but have been brushed off with "agreements "of 15-20k per pole! We would love to run fiber to our rural remotes and offer triple play services, but at 15k per pole! Currently, the best we can do for very remote locations is to mux a couple of T1's together or if we're lucky get a couple of unbundled loops and run Ethernet over copper. I wanted to chime in earlier when people where mentioning what they paid for what kind of connectivity and this seems as apropos time as any. We charge a FLAT $70 bux for 3m/1m and unlimited local/LD to these remote locations, if served from a CO, that price drops to $50 US and the speed climbs to whatever the line is capable of. The company is based in the southwest US. I suppose I could de-politicize this comment by posing the question, has anybody had luck attaining pole rights in such an instance for a reasonable rate? -chris