2011-01-27
Food for thought about fiber to the home ... 9 years ago
Food for thought about fiber to the home projects and their financing: Tale of the trench: what if your subdivision laid its own fiber? - Ars Technica. In the project discussed there is no choice in ISP, and having a house within the project area means you need to pay the monthly ISP fees. And the size of the project is so small that other services (telephony, TV) over the fibre never really took of. I see lots of arguments in favor of the model where the fiber infrastructure is carrier-neutral and several service providers can offer their services. There still is the (big) matter of the initial investment and how to finance it. Digging fiber is expensive. Will the home-owner pay and have very cheap bit transport. Or will the service-providers have to pay to access the home-owners, charging them afterwards which means a lot of interest will have to be payed on the infrastructure.