Broadband for Regular Folk
December 3, 2008
This question on “do-it-yourself” broadband, came in on the blog recently, and it’s right up my alley.
Call me crazy if you want, but I want fiber so bad I can taste it. I’m just a middle class guy living on a road with a bunch of other middle class guys in rural upstate New York. I know that it will be a cold day here before Verizon or Time-Warner run fiber down my road. Thus … my desire to run my own fiber. I haven’t asked the first person yet, but I’m pretty darned sure that I can beg a right-of-way through the woods and wetlands at the back of people’s property. In exchange for which, of course, they get to buy a strand (or two, depending on termination equipment). By myself, I would be crazy to afford it, but as a group, it’s reasonable, and it’s the only way we’re going to get broadband.
Why the end of my road? Because it’s a New York State highway (56), because Time-Warner has hardline cable there, because we’re within shooting distance of Verizon’s CO, because both of the above plus DANC have fiber runs down 56, because SLIC (Nicholville Telephone’s ISP) is slowly fibering 56.
I have a gazillion questions about pedestals, fiber (singlemode to go 2.75 miles, obviously, but direct burial, aerial, or conduit?), termination, patch panels, splicing, permitting, trenching or cable plowing (if buried), etc. I’m leaning towards trenching because there’s practically nothing in the ground except rocks. Nobody to worry about amateurs with a ditch witch.
But they all fold down to one question:
Do you know of any user groups or vendors who can help a very small cooperative run a few dozen strands from their neighborhood towards civilization?Haven’t found any users groups, and vendors all seem to be selling to the same ten companies. Don’t even need a website to do that — just send a salesman around to take them out to dinner.
Thank you for the questions, my fellow fiber bigot. I could write a book in response.
Because it sounds like you are rural, I would check with your county permitting authorities to determine if there have been any other fiber builds that have occurred in your area outside of the usual suspects. Sometimes municipalities, private companies or Rural Local Exchange Carriers (RLEC) consortiums have built networks. With RLECs, I would not give you much hope. If they have a consortium, they would sell capacity long before fiber. Bottom line: you need to figure out where actual fiber is today before you go begging private landowners for anything.
More on this very soon — and keep these great ideas coming my way.
Do you have feedback or a question for Dave? Shoot him an email or post a comment below.
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by admin | Filed Under American telecom, Dave's Corner, Fiber bandwidth, Telecom broadband, Trends + telecommunications, Trends in telecommunications
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[…] Get Mad, Get Fiber December 10, 08 by admin In the last post, Broadband for Regular Folk, I admonished our friend who wants broadband to his home to check with county authorities and arm […]