Building your own optical fiber ISP, even rural, is not hard if you use the right tech [1], but most use the wrong technologies [2] and are more expensive to get of the ground.
I would be thrilled to set one up for you (remotely).
You need 1000 customers per employee and starting capital of $100K to be profitable. You use Starlink as backup to your main backbone.
Can this be done for smaller areas by sharing a full time employee? For example, our community has a shared well and reservoir with a part time water manager that administers/maintains our system along with many others in the area.
Seems like you missed the part where large ISPs have successfully forced states to ban municipalities from building their own networks.
It doesn't matter how hard or easy something is if it's illegal, even if the laws that make it illegal are themselves extremely obvious examples of regulatory corruption.
The rural county I grew up in got tired of empty promises and with cash from the Obama administration has started rolling out fiber county wide. You can get gigabit fiber for a reasonable cost 10 miles from the nearest town and down semi maintained dirt roads. Any place the electrical lines go.
It works (and is the best option bar-none) until the big few lobby the state to outright ban municipal ISPs as happened in my state (NC). So frustrating.
It baffles me that people are in support of that kind of thing. I doubt the majority of voters are, but the fact that anybody would say "yeah we should have our utilities privately managed for profit" is absurd
While simultaneously saying broadband is available in your area because one house in the entire census track has it. We challenged the agreement with the town and they told us that we techmically had fiber service but it would cost 50k to activate it since they had to run fiber from their pop. Coupled with informing us that once we did so, our neighbors could then hook up for 49 bucks.
Any electricity customer in EPB's jurisdiction can get 20gbps (synchronus) fiber to their door — this includes dead-end dirt roads beyond multiple one-lane bridges (i.e. "out in the sticks"). 300mbps is only $59 (including all fees).
More publicly-owned utilities should exist, similar to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee.
Massachusetts created a program to provide middle-mile connectivity in the rural western part of the state and then towns hooked up the last mile. A lot of them already had municipal electric companies who did it or they partnered with a small company for the last mile stuff. It's not cheap, but it's definitely reasonably priced. It's $75/mo for gigabit with a 2Gbps backhaul to the wider internet serving around 500-600 homes in my friend's town. And that's not some intro rate where it skyrockets once the promo expires so it's actually reasonable.
The town has a much higher broadband adoption rate than the US as a whole despite being sparsely populated (under 100 people per square mile). It's also not a rich area with per-capita income under $32k. In the US, 71% of households have wired broadband, 89% in Massachusetts, and 93% in his town. So I'd say it's a pretty great success.
Since the article talks about South Carolina, I'll note that SC is the 7th lowest for households with broadband at 83% (that includes wired, wireless, and satellite). AL, WV, LA, AR, NM, MS round out the bottom 7 (MS being bottom). Massachusetts is the 9th highest with the top 8 being WA, CO, UT, CA, NJ, NH, OR, MD (WA highest).
An interesting quote from the article I found personally relevant "adding broadband increases the value of a property by about the same as adding a bedroom".
From my personal experience living in a rural community, I would say that is a very conservative estimate.
Not really. Starlink wiped out the value of shitty DSL lines and microwave links to rural spots. It’s not a substitute for fiber though.
When my friend was looking at places in the middle of nowhere along the coast of Oregon to move to now that his kids are off to college, Starlink completely changed the calculus so he didn’t have to worry about connectivity at all.
In Oregon we have “community” telcos that have been installing high speed internet in rural areas for decades, and continue to do so[1]. The service/tech provided by these companies is far better and cheaper than the national/large ones. This works well enough that I’ve seriously considered starting one to serve the ~100 homes in my areas that are an ignored island in a sea of fiber around us.
I think WISP/point-to-point wireless over the last mile, with fiber only in the core town areas, is much more promising than pulling fiber long distances to every rural residence. This technology has come a long way and is super affordable now. That's what the government should be subsidizing. But more importantly, the feds should be preventing local governments from outlawing municipal ISPs (https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...).
I don't think we are. Starlink is better than pretty much all of the alternatives if you can't get good wired broadband. (And can be a real game-changer in rural areas.) But it's mostly worse than good wired alternatives.
The ways to make it available involve stringing hundreds of miles of line. Of course it's possible, it's just prohibitively expensive because of the extremely low density.
It doesn't have to be better than fiber. 100 megabits is more than enough bandwidth for almost anyone, especially people accustomed to having no bandwidth.
Talking about what people deserve is a fun way to avoid the actual question of who will pay for it. You can buy a starlink satellite for $600 today, then get broadband service for $120 per month.
Same as fibre? No. Same as broadband generically? Pretty much. I've used it and it pretty much lets most people do what they consider normal internet stuff (including streaming video, video calls, etc.) I'm not a gamer so can't speak to stringent latency demands.
Note that Starlink is LEO satellites so different from geosynchronous satellites in terms of latency.
$120 per month is well within the range of most monthly internet plans. The article doesn't say how much monthly service for this county-driven initiative will cost. Yes, there's an upfront cost (though cable providers typically have a hookup too) but it's not huge in comparison to monthly fees.
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I would be thrilled to set one up for you (remotely).
You need 1000 customers per employee and starting capital of $100K to be profitable. You use Starlink as backup to your main backbone.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merik-Voswinkel/publica...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXYaAd5ubok&t=173s
You are also totally overselling the capabilities of your Fiberhood router.
P.S. Your website in the paper is defunct and the whitepaper on the site in your profile is non-existent.
The process of signing up enough members of the community is a bit more work, but can still be done part time.
An optical fiber ISP will cost between $200 and $1000 per house to build, $10 per month fees are possible.
It doesn't matter how hard or easy something is if it's illegal, even if the laws that make it illegal are themselves extremely obvious examples of regulatory corruption.
More publicly-owned utilities should exist, similar to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee.
The town has a much higher broadband adoption rate than the US as a whole despite being sparsely populated (under 100 people per square mile). It's also not a rich area with per-capita income under $32k. In the US, 71% of households have wired broadband, 89% in Massachusetts, and 93% in his town. So I'd say it's a pretty great success.
Since the article talks about South Carolina, I'll note that SC is the 7th lowest for households with broadband at 83% (that includes wired, wireless, and satellite). AL, WV, LA, AR, NM, MS round out the bottom 7 (MS being bottom). Massachusetts is the 9th highest with the top 8 being WA, CO, UT, CA, NJ, NH, OR, MD (WA highest).
That sounds rather oversubscribed.
From my personal experience living in a rural community, I would say that is a very conservative estimate.
When my friend was looking at places in the middle of nowhere along the coast of Oregon to move to now that his kids are off to college, Starlink completely changed the calculus so he didn’t have to worry about connectivity at all.
[1] https://www.telecompetitor.com/blue-mountain-lights-up-fiber...
Contrast that to fiber, you install it once and use it for decades.
Government should only be subsidizing permanent infrastructure.
There are ways to make fibre broadband available, even in rural communities.
Fibre is always going to beat Starlink.
It is better than DSL, but it sure as hell isn’t better than fiber — by a long shot.
Talking about what people deserve is a fun way to avoid the actual question of who will pay for it. You can buy a starlink satellite for $600 today, then get broadband service for $120 per month.
Note that Starlink is LEO satellites so different from geosynchronous satellites in terms of latency.
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