Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such...

We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be.

DATA SHOULD BE A UTILITY - just like the sewer, water, etc...

we should stop bitching about FCC this and that - and REQUIRE that construction includes the data plan as well. This will alleviate much of this kvetching.

Please give me your opinion on the above as I respect your perspective.

I think counties are reasonably capable of burying fiber in the ground as they build and repair roads, but that's about all I trust them to do. I live in the DC metro area. Our public sewers dump raw sewage into the Anacostia river every time it rains. The city has an extensive network of old lead pipes that are poisoning kids. The Metro was almost unusable last year because tracks were catching fire. These problems exist all over the country, and are all caused because by prices for services being set too low, because they are set by elected officials and not the market.

Meanwhile, we have had FiOS in MD/VA since 2006-ish. In that time the top speed has gone from 50 mbps to 750 mbps as Verizon upgraded OLTs, backhaul, etc. Yeah, I pay $100 per month for 300/300 service, while my water/sewer bill is so small I don't even know what I pay. But I don't see that as evidence my internet bill should be lower, I see it as evidence that my utility bill is too low.

They exist because the US continues to insist on spreading responsibility out of thousands of local governments instead of having a single set of rules and standards for everyone.

Not everyone wants to live in an apartment building.

- Roads

- Water

- Sewer

- Community heat

- Healthcare

- Education

- Pension

- Internet connectivity

- Banking (including loans for 1 family houses) and card payment

So I guess we'll have the government own or heavily regulate 90% of the economy. Gee, that's historically worked so well in the past... :)

And we need single payer healthcare yesterday.

Perhaps that was your intent?

I'm not saying that work shouldn't be done, but it wouldn't be a case of just throwing down a pipe during normal resurfacing work.

For a real life example, on a recent quote we received, fiber down the west coast from 2001 6th Ave in Seattle to 624 S Grand Ave in Los Angeles was only 1/3rd the cost of going from 624 S Grand Ave out to Malibu.

The issue is not with long haul density, but with last mile due to restrictive municipal regulations and procedures, and lack of collaboration between different metro networks.

But only a small percentage of fiber put on long routes uses single wavelengths. Most fiber going more than 5-10km uses DWDM and that is indeed an important place to put in modern fiber.

However, most of the railway routes in 1998 used fiber that supported 32*40G lambdas, so the problem with most of the fiber laid over the last 20 years is not that it can't handle more than 1gbps. Most of the problem is the equipment, not the type of fiber used.

In other words, 100% internet deployment or municipal wifi or whatever form it takes, literally changes what is allowable to primary instructional material content in public education in the united states.[2]

[1] http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/textedcod60119.asp

[2] IANAL and different states have different laws, what I am speaking about should be considered California specific as that is the only domain of my knowledge

How is that? It applies only to federally funded projects. Most homes and businesses are not on federally funded roads. This bill is not a FTTH driver.

The future of America is not, and never will be, FTTH. The future of America is FTTF/FTTDP (fiber to the frontage/distribution point) to a street/basement cabinet that houses current generation micro-headends and micro-DSLAMs that are setup to handle the last 500-1000 feet, speaking G.fast and DOCIS 3.x as very small greenfield installations.

Current gen G.fast tops out at 1000/1000 in less than 300ft installations, slows to 100/100 at 1500ft (about a third of a mile) using existing installs of standard 80s and 90s era unshielded phone wire, the numbers go up with brand new copper, and next gen G.fast is aiming at increasing these speeds several fold (talk of 10gbit in under 300ft and 1gbit at much further distances).

Current gen DOCIS 3.1 tops out at 1.3gbit down, 245mbit up, and there are already existing gigabit-on-cable customers getting what they paid for on 90s era coax.

I see absolutely no reason to roll out actual FTTH ala FIOS, and I agree with Google Fiber's decision to drop actual FTTH, and they should be aiming for taking over unmaintained networks that can be rebuilt as modern DOCIS 3.x or G.Fast, or deploying micro-towers doing shorter range LTE-A fixed.

Current gen LTE-A maxes out at somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 10gbit per tower/frequency band, and fixed LTE-A "modems" with outside directional antennas can get gigabit connectivity; next gen LTE (LTE-A Pro, aka 4.9G) at least doubles this.

All of this is useless without Congress pushing for more fiber between towns, or inside large metro areas (which means burying more fiber along federal highways and major state roads).

There is literally no reason why, today, we don't have at least 50/10 to every goddamned home in America. Every goddamned home, no matter how far you are out in the sticks. This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal.

Fun fact: I don't even have reliable cell phone connectivity at my house. I'm maybe the only person on HN that bothers to maintain a POTS line and use it as my primary phone number.

Because the country is huge, and building adequate backhaul to sparsely populated areas is very expensive.

> This is a drain on our economy every second we aren't working towards this actually rather easy to achieve goal.

I find this sort of argument to beg the question. How much would it really increase overall GDP to get at least 25/3 (the current FCC standard) to the 10% of the country that lacks it? Especially considering that everyone can get satellite broadband, which covers the core things people need internet for: job applications, access to online educational resources, electronic payment processing, etc.

Remember, we rolled out copper wire to every home with a far smaller GDP, doing the same for fiber is relatively speaking a smaller investment.

Where I live in the Texas Hill Country, I get 300MB in the center of town. Outside the town there are a few companies providing wireless Internet connections, but this is limited by topology - the hills for which the region is named tend to get in the way.

I also have a cabin in upstate New York, in the foothills of the Catskills. I can't even get a cell signal there without hiking to the top of the mountain - and even then, a plain voice connection, non-data, is iffy. And I'm doing OK, I know of people up there who don't even have electricity.