Every square inch is owned by somebody. From what I understand, the townships 
(and, in some cases, the county) have an easement for a road, but that doesn't 
include anyone else for any other use. Electric, phone, and natural gas all 
have their own easements.

The state owns their land. Cities, towns, villages, etc. own their land. 
Usually, the counties own their land, but not always. Over in Ken's area 
(Chicago Rd.), someone built like 30 miles down a county road, then found out a 
large part of it, the county didn't own the underlying land, so they were asked 
to vacate. They must have come to an agreement with the landowner because that 
route is still there. The electric company, however, pulled their newly 
installed poles out. Townships, on the other hand, almost never own the land 
they occupy.




--
Mike Hammett

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Fabien" <ch...@lakenetmi.com>
To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 12:47:16 PM
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD



"Rural side roads in IL are a bitch because the government doesn't own the 
underlying asset, so you still have to get an easement from every landowner 
along the way." 


This seems like insanity to me... how does anything ever get ran underground? 
Back 10 years ago when I thought ROW permitting was hard I tried to get private 
easements for a very small fiber project. It only took me about 6 homeowners to 
get to Mrs. "My daddy was a lawyer and told me never sign an easement" and 
that's where the project stopped until we figured out ROW permitting. 
How is it that the road exists but there's no really a right of way for it to 
be there? I know this situation exists in some states or there are states where 
ROW ownership/width is practically lost to history. It's just impossible to 
wrap my head around coming from a state with a very clear and well defined 
public ROW law. I suppose I am grateful for that! 


On Mon, Mar 24, 2025 at 1:15 PM < ch...@go-mtc.com > wrote: 







OK so frost heave will what? Displace conduits placed 16” below the asphalt, 
but not the gasline at 24”? 





From: AF < af-boun...@af.afmug.com > On Behalf Of Adam Moffett 
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2025 7:51 AM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' < af@af.afmug.com > 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 




It's not generally done around here. There's a common belief that frost heave 
will be an issue. I think you've disagreed with that, but I don't know enough 
to argue either side of it. 












From: AF on behalf of Chuck McCown 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 5:45 PM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 




Microtrenching is much faster and cheaper than HDD. 




From: AF [ mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com ] On Behalf Of Adam Moffett 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 12:57 PM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' < af@af.afmug.com > 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 



$15-20/splice was normal in the past. Volume went way up, and the contractors 
are in high demand. An NY specific issue that compounded the problem was a new 
rule that you have to pay prevailing wage anytime you're doing work in a ROW 
where a permit was required. That drove up even the non-PW work because they'd 
rather do the PW work and there's enough volume that they can be choosy about 
it. 



Check out the numbers below from a contractor. This chart makes me want to buy 
a splice truck and quit this whole "engineer" thing. If you want to send a crew 
to NY we'll put them to work and they'll get rates like these all day long. 



        

        

PW      

        

Non PW 


per location    

ct Splice Loc   

Rate    

ct Splice Loc   

Rate 


OFDC/ Wall Panel        

0       

$72.00  

0       

$45.00 


450B    

0       

$60.00  

0       

$37.50 


450D    

0       

$52.00  

0       

$32.50 


600D    

0       

$48.00  

0       

$30.00 





Underground is a separate nightmare. We do it for make-ready avoidance or in 
neighborhoods without existing aerial. Almost everything needs HDD, and the per 
foot rates would make your eyes water. Or maybe make your mouth water if you 
have a crew that will travel to NY for work. 



We do have internal crews, and they are absolutely less costly than the 
contractors, but scaling requires more hands. We also need to be able to ramp 
up and down, and it's bad optics to hire a bunch of people for construction 
work and then have to lay them off when the projects are finished and you're 
waiting to get your next build areas approved by the board. 



This is the much-vaunted efficiency of corporations. The secret is they're not 
efficient at all -they just have lots of capital to make things happen. Where 
your ROI is 10% theirs might be 5%, but 5% of $100 billion is more than 10% of 
whatever you have. 



-Adam 







From: AF on behalf of Chuck McCown 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 2:07 PM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 



I learned my lesson on make ready years ago, so I am 100% underground now. And 
frankly, I only splice what I need on the large count cables. We splice them 
ourselves so not much cost there. I have never seen $41/burn before. Most of 
the time when we were burning for money we were happy to get $16. BTW, I hate 
splicing ribbon. Seems almost impossible to get 12 perfect splices. 




From: AF [ mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com ] On Behalf Of Adam Moffett 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 11:59 AM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' < af@af.afmug.com > 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 



Yeah, city and county permits aren't usually bad. People mean different things 
when they say "permit", though. The elco technically is licensing us to make an 
attachment to a pole, but people often call it a "pole permit". We have to 
complete all the make ready before we're licensed to attach and make ready is 
usually the killer. Pole attachment application fees have been north of 
$150/pole in NY since about 2015 when the Elco's outsourced the engineering 
work. NYDOT permits need engineer stamped drawings, and the details they 
require are time consuming. RR crossings can be ridiculous. Overall, the cable 
and placement of the cable makes up about 1/3 of the cost. So we do spend twice 
as much on all the crap it takes to get there. 



In that light it's very tempting to say that placing a 288 vs a 96 isn't that 
big of a deal, but it does start to look like a big deal once you add 
everything up. Contractors charge per splice. Butt splicing a 288 is like 
$12,000....more if it's prevailing wage. Your reel length is constrained by the 
size and weight of reel that your equipment can handle. Corning ALTOS 288F 
weighs twice as much as their 96F, so your doing 3x the splices twice as often 
for ultimately 6x the splicing cost. It also means bigger closures everywhere 
you're tapping into that cable. It does all add up. 



-Adam 









From: AF on behalf of Chuck McCown 
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 11:29 AM 
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 



I have not found permitting, engineering or fees to be all the expensive as 
long as you are not dealing with federal lands. Most cities are very 
reasonable. 

-----Original Message----- 
From: AF [ mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com ] On Behalf Of Mark Radabaugh 
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2025 5:54 PM 
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group < af@af.afmug.com > 
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD 

The extra fiber needed to do AE isn’t a big deal when you are building 
centralized split architecture in mid to dense population areas, but it becomes 
pretty cost prohibitive quickly in low density and with NG2-PON on the horizon 
with the capability of delivering 10G/10G over a 40G capacity PON I don’t see 
much need for AE anytime soon. 

Why is is so expensive? Fiber isn’t expensive - it’s the permitting, 
engineering, fees to every government entity, paperwork, etc. that you have to 
pay. 

Mark 

> On Mar 21, 2025, at 4:49 PM, dbernardi < dberna...@zitomedia.net > wrote: 
> 
> 
> 
> But the expensive/important part (fiber) is in place. If the gubment is going 
> to piss away tax dollars for unserved/underserved broadband, fiber 
> construction seems like a decent urinal. 
> 
> XGS-PON can co-exist with GPON on the same fiber so eventual upgrades are 
> fairly easy. Do combo GPON/XGS-PON at the OLT out of the gate so a CPE swap 
> is the only thing require for an upgrade to a shared 10Gb service. When 
> XGS-PON isn't enough bandwidth for the 32 subscribers on a PON, I'd rather 
> replace equipment at either end than deal with another construction project. 
> Or do a 1:16 split. 
> 
> Preparing for AE when doing the construction is probably worthwhile too even 
> if you only light for PON initially, or mix/match. The cost of deploying high 
> count fiber cable isn't that significant in the big picture. 
> 
> And why does fiber construction have to be so (artificially?) expensive. Buy 
> America will certainly make broadband deployments more expensive but that's a 
> good thing if it truly provides jobs and manufacturing investment, but I have 
> my doubts. 
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/21/2025 2:04 PM, Josh Luthman wrote: 
>> Is GPON good enough? That can only do gigabit and each port is 2.5G. Should 
>> these projects require NGPON? Or maybe every location should have AE so they 
>> can do 100G to start with. 
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2025 at 2:01 PM Steve Jones < thatoneguyst...@gmail.com < 
>> mailto:thatoneguyst...@gmail.com >> wrote: 
>> Because in X years they won't be. With fiber they will be upon the 
>> same Infrastructure. 
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2025, 10:59 AM Josh Luthman 
>> < j...@imaginenetworksllc.com < mailto:j...@imaginenetworksllc.com >> 
>> wrote: 
>> But people that currently have fixed wireless of 100x20 are 
>> sufficiently served? How does that make any sense? 
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2025 at 11:44 AM Steve Jones 
>> < thatoneguyst...@gmail.com < mailto:thatoneguyst...@gmail.com >> 
>> wrote: 
>> they should not allow fixed wireless, they never should have 
>> allowed technology with a short shelf life 
>> On Thu, Mar 20, 2025 at 9:17 AM Adam Moffett 
>> < dmmoff...@gmail.com < mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com >> wrote: 
>> Well.... 
>> https://bsky.app/profile/craigsilverman.bsky.social/ 
>> post/3lkiye5n2dk2p < https://bsky.app/profile/ 
>> craigsilverman.bsky.social/post/3lkiye5n2dk2p> 
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/seq3uoU1L5 
>> < https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/seq3uoU1L5 > 
>> The director of BEAD quit. He says the previous rules 
>> interpreted the bill to mean that only FTTH would meet 
>> the performance and future-proofing requirements. He is 
>> claiming that there are proposed rule changes that will 
>> allow Starlink but not allow fixed wireless. I don't 
>> know whether the changes /intentionally/ benefit 
>> Starlink, but this guy is crying foul and felt strongly 
>> enough about it to resign over it. 
>> -Adam 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>> *From:* AF on behalf of Ken Hohhof 
>> *Sent:* Thursday, March 20, 2025 12:19 AM 
>> *To:* 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' 
>> *Subject:* [AFMUG] BEAD 
>> I’m surprised BEAD hasn’t run into problems because the 
>> E stands for Equity and DEI is now banned. 
>> But if they eliminate the E, would it just be BAD? 
>> -- AF mailing list 
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>> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com 
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