Michigan highspeed internet access
From a recent Farber list message:
Late last month, Senator Inoyue held a hearing on broadband and asked those testifying at least twice how much it would cost to deploy broadband across the entire country. No one had an answer for him.
If we expect to have nationwide broadband, if would be helpful to have an answer. Does anyone on the IP list have a good estimate for the cost of:
— nationwide fiber broadband (reaching 98% of the population or
so) and
— nationwide ultrafast (100 mbps+) wireless?
While we’re waiting for that answer, it would be good to know where we are with highspeed internet access numbers. Try Michigan. I sent out a graduate student recently to find out what the penetration/speed/cost figures were in Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac.
Results? No data. Nothing public out there - other than the concededly weak existing FCC data. We’re continuing to dig, and it may be that students will be able to do a survey that will pull some information together. Let me know if you have better data than the FCC does.
Today’s link, in honor of the VP debate: Five Sites That Will Boost Your Political Awareness.
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The usual figure quoted as a ball park for retrofitting fibre to doorstop is USD 500 per household in urban areas.
The US has over 100 million households, but 100 million will do for the maths.
So cost is roughly a twentieth the amount of money Congress authorized to be used on Friday bailing out the banking sector.
Good enough for planning purposes. I expect the initial costs would be higher per household, but economies of scale would kick in as such projects are undertaken.
The private sector can do this easily if there is demand. You can borrow (assuming anyone has money to loan in the US) the money. 10USD a month is 120USD a year, at 5% interest you can borrow enough to cable up two houses and pay off the build in a few years with the income from the second household. Obviously they’ll be other expenses above cabling to provide high speed broadband, but an extra 10USD a month for REALLY fast Internet access is plausible for many US households. Indeed once the current generation of roll out is paid for, it won’t be 10USD extra, since the current pricing no doubt includes charges for the build of the existing infrastructure. Although the current infrastructure is significantly cheaper than fibre to doorstep.