Re: New home builders without wires

[Justin Streiner <streinerj () gmail com>]

When my wife and I were preparing to build our house a few years ago, solid
terrestrial connectivity was one of the top things on my must-have list,
because we both work from home the vast majority of the time.

It took some tenacity with the local FTTH provider to determine if they
served this area, because we're in a very tiny portion of a ZIP code that's
fed from a different wire center than most of the rest of the municipality,
but ultimately, I persevered :)

Before I found out they already had fiber in the ground, I went through the
exercise of pricing out a fiber build from another provider in the area.
That conversation ended when I found out that the roughly 1 km of lateral
build and construction into the new house would cost us $27k.

We were also very fortunate that the builder provided two 2" Schedule 40
conduits from the side of our house out to the utility hand-holes in the
right-of-way, in addition to the conduit for the electrical service. It
made getting the fiber into the house very easy.

One mile further east, and we would've been stuck with the local cable
provider.

Thank you
jms

On Fri, Dec 20, 2024 at 4:02 PM Sean Donelan <sean () donelan com> wrote:

> On Thu, 19 Dec 2024, Karl Auer wrote:
> > A friend was involved in a development project in a regional town. They
> > specified conduits everywhere. When the network people showed up at
> > some random later date, they mostly just had to pull stuff through
> > existing conduits. Not sure of the details beyond that, but he reckoned
> > it cost a lot less that doing it all later.
>
> I'm not a real estate developer. I do not understand the reasoning.
>
> Its not a technical problem, its a business problem.  The business
> incentives are messed up.  One builder told me their margin on new houses
> is about 15%. They try to optimize out any costs not required.  Spending
> money, so communication companies can save money later doesn't pay the
> developer's bills now.
>
> Some states have "dig once" rules requiring spare conduit or coordinated
> scheduling by utlities.  But even "dig once" rules only apply to public
> roads, not private residential roads. Meanwhile wireless is free, from
> the developer's point of view.
>
> I know, folks outside the United States are shaking their heads.
> Other countries have very detailed requirements for public infrastructure
> serving new construction, including broadband access.
>
> > > Cable  134.4 million households (82%)
> > > DSL    7 million households (4%)
> > > Fiber  74.9 million households(46%)
> > > Fixed wireless 77.3 million households (47%)
> > > Satellite 162.8 million households (99%)
> >
> > What are the percentages?
>
> Percentage of service addresses in USA ("passed" or "served") by
> each type of broadband technology, according to FCC data -- about 163
> million address total.
>
> There are about 210 million addresses in the USA (including institutional,
> alias and virtual addresses)
> US Census count of housing units -- 147 M
> USPS count of delivery addresses -- 154 M residential, 12.6 M commercial