Re: FTTP Advice, Michigan and other areas

[Jared Mauch <jared () puck nether net>]

> On Sep 1, 2015, at 5:38 PM, William Herrin <bill () herrin us> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Jared Mauch <jared () puck nether net> wrote:
> > I’m looking for some advice/input from people either public or private
> > about woes building fiber to reach people outside the footprints of the
> > existing incumbents.
>
> I worked on one such project, indirectly, years ago. Fiber in a small
> town. My three takeaways were:
>
> At the time it cost about $5 per year per pole to rent attachments on
> the phone pole. An attachment is a particular distance up the pole
> where you are allowed to attach your cables. Rights of way from pole
> to pole included in the deal. The power company usually owns the poles
> and is usually required by regulators to rent attachments.

I’ve heard that auditing the bills is quite important as they often don’t
know who is attached to the poles.  Labeling requirements are stricter
as well and I can often pick out the yellow comcast labels here, the blue
university/merit labels and others without slowing down.

> "Help" the local schools with a "partnership" to bring them fiber
> interconnects. Your part of the partnership is interconnecting the
> underfunded schools well below your cost. Their part is clearing the
> bureaucratic hurdles to stringing your fiber all over town. 'Cause
> tech is a source of tax revenue... unless it's all about the kids.

We have this place called Merit around here that some people may know
that tries to cover the schools.  They also got either NTIA or RUS
monies (i don’t recall which) and are controlled by various state
universities.  I’ve not yet met their new president but recall having
many conversations with people there off and on for ~20 years.


> Resist the urge to be a cable and phone operator at the same time.
> Yes, there's a temptingly large bucket of money over there, but it's
> not for you. The incumbents aren't going to take your entry in to the
> market sitting down. If you would beat them, you need the folks who
> would battle the incumbents for the buckets of "content" money to all
> be pulling for your success.

The incumbents aren’t battling for these areas, they either have only
cellular data or no service.  I am served by a fixed wireless customer 
myself and even with Michigan Bell/Ameritech/SBC/AT&T fiber 1200 feet away
there is no broadband here except fixed wireless, dial or cellular data.

Content is clearly the largest data source and IMHO the easiest to solve,
most of the content people are willing to either place equipment in a network
permise or something else.

The wireless ISP wants to expand with fiber, mostly burial.  The local
cooperative wants to just build fiber on these mostly rural routes and
have someone like the WISP expand into the FTTP business and lease the
strands back.  The incumbents are unlikely to buy fiber from this model
in my mind, but I’m willing to accept counter data points.  I recall
some of the traditional bell company people being upset using cable
fiber due to the perceived poor quality to recover their networks post
Katrina, likely because they had more splices and lower OTDR results.

- jared