It certainly is busy. In one spot, we have water, sanitary sewer, storm sewer, Frontier copper, Frontier fiber, Comcast coax, Comcast fiber, Metronet, DFO\Syndeo, and us all underground in the same ROW\easement. The city thinks they're entitled to a 5' buffer on each side of their infrastructure, so the space gets narrow pretty quickly.
MetroNet, Comcast, and Frontier contractors hit each other all of the time because A) they're not quality contractors in the first place and B) they're all trying to be like 6" or less under the ground, so conflicts happen. Some areas have moved to common duct systems, but it's very, very rare. The city, in those areas, just flat out refuses any telecom permit because the common duct system exists. I had a space where natural gas occupied all of the ROW that wasn't pavement. The only way to go in that like 500' stretch was all hydro-vac. We decided on a different route. For Meta, Zayo built from West Chicago along Fabyan Parkway, Randall Rd., Keslinger Rd, Peck Rd., IL 38, Peace Rd., and Gurler Rd. to Meta. Then they built along Afton Rd., Keslinger Rd., IL 23, IL 30, then ended up in Aurora somewhere. Frontier built just down Gurler Rd. Mediacom built along IL 38 to Peace Rd. to Gurler Rd. Lumen built from an existing hut in Rock Falls along US 30 to the UP - Troy Grove subdivision, then up to their existing hut on Harvestore Dr., they then built a lateral over to Meta. They also then built down IL 23 to US 34, then over to existing routes down in the Plainfield\Bolingbrook\Romeoville area. 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. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Hohhof" <khoh...@kwom.com> To: "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com> Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 10:52:34 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] BEAD As I see various crews trench and bore sometimes multiple times per year in the same ROW, I wonder at what point is there just no room left for more duct? Is it like space junk, the number of outages keeps increasing because the ROW is so crowded that despite best efforts a boring crew cuts existing fiber? Same with aerial, I assume there is a limit to how many cables can be attached to the poles. Long haul fiber and FTTH competing for space in the ROW, plus they all need vaults and handholes. Much of the competition seems to be along major highways, and some of the fiber is private. Meta built a datacenter near here and put in an amazing amount of fiber just for their own use, routes heading east to Indiana and west to Iowa. They could start looking at side roads, but that's not as attractive as a state or US route that runs continuously for miles and miles between cities, with bridges over rivers and railroad tracks and stuff. We may look back and wish there had been a rule requiring duct that can be shared by multiple providers, at least it it's subsidized with government money. Or that dark fiber be wholesaled to competitors, although that philosophy kind of failed with the Telecom Act of 1996 and copper unbundled network elements. -----Original Message----- From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2025 10:30 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <af@af.afmug.com> 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 >> AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >> <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> >> -- AF mailing list >> AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >> <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> >> -- AF mailing list >> AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com <http:// >> af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> >> -- AF mailing list >> AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com <http:// >> af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> > > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
