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Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

That, or maybe $140M is a gross over estimate, or is referring to more than what’s discussed in the article? I’m tending toward that; it can’t possibly cost anywhere near $10k per subscriber to build out fiber normally, even in small cities, can it? Seems like if it was normally that expensive, there wouldn’t be fiber anywhere. What’s so different in Boulder? I’d speculate that CenturyLink paid less than $1k to run fiber to my house, even if I include my share of their neighborhood & citywide costs.

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Fort Collins is in the midst of this right now, they proposed borrowing "up to 150 million" to roll their municipal fiber out. The cost break down is here, page 5.

https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/Broadband_Executive_Summ...

I got a survey from Larimer County about having municipal internet. Of course, it doesn’t seem like it will make it to my place outside of Estes Park. I’m stuck with a 5mbps WISP :/.

> it can’t possibly cost anywhere near $10k per subscriber to build out fiber normally, even in small cities, can it?

I don't know, because I don't possess any expertise in the matter. What I do have is a history of watching public works projects budgets balloon completely out of control. It seems far more likely, given history, that this estimate is low.

> It seems far more likely, given history, that this estimate is low.

Which history do you mean? A lot of people have fiber to their house, that’s part of history.

If the cost has ballooned out of control, why? Costs don’t have to do that, and they haven’t always done that historically.

Costs in Boulder are quite a bit higher than other cities because we have very little to no topsoil in areas, you hit bedrock (which is often granite) immediately, and you need to drill or blast that out for most underground construction.

At least that was the line Google fed us when we got rejected for their fiber, who knows.

That could explain it. My fiber comes in from an above-ground wire strung on poles. They’re proposing to bury the lines, at high cost?

poles are uncommon in residential areas here, everything is buried. and digging is expensive.

It seems dumb that poles are uncommon in an area with little topsoil over a granite substrate? Why so fancy? Incidentally this could mean that the trailer parks are cheaper to serve than swankier neighborhoods; there are lots of poles in trailer parks.

It's Boulder, houses are getting close to California levels. The cheapest starter homes are around $700k.

there are at least 3 trailer parks in boulder, maybe more. i wonder how prices in them have changed over the years? :)

A single wide is about $300k, but there's a five year waiting list.

FWIW, the market appears to have cooled down a bit this spring. It remains to be seen whether that's a blip or a trend.

winter storms and strong winds. i've never lost power in the boulder area, except when a substation failed, regardless of the weather. when i lived in areas with overhead lines, power loss was a regular event, occurring during winds that would be considered mild in boulder.

Regularly trimming trees around the power line seems less expensive than boring through granite? The frequency of storm-related outages is a good proxy for how much the power company is spending on vegetation removal.

It's quite a battle as we also get gale force winds coming off of the mountains so often that it's not news, just a normal Tuesday.

> Regularly trimming trees around the power line seems less expensive than boring through granite?

That's not going to do anything to stop ice from forming on the lines, which is a far bigger problem in the winter than tree falls.

The front range gets 100mph+ chinook winds, and late spring storms dump feet of heavy snow leading to what we affectionately call "treemageddon", during which town will be filled with the thunder of trees crashing down for hours and hours. It's not an ideal environment for lines on poles.

at least in newer developments, my understanding is most underground channels (think sewers) generally provide some facility for running new lines/equipment in them, to reduce the number of times that city streets need to be dug up to lay x,y or z.

I heard on the grapevine that the real reason was that city council tried to hold the new campus hostage as a bargaining chip (nice campus you have there, it'd be a shame if the property was re-assessed and greatly increased your tax burden) but Google was having none of it and pulled the plug then and there.

I have not studied the whole Boulder area in detail, but as a PhD Geologist and having visited friends in Boulder that have added a basement to their house, I'd say you might have been fed some misinformation. Maybe little topsoil but lots of glacial till. They might be right about digging being expense though. Glacial till can be full of huge boulders that are hard to trench.

I live on glacial till, can confirm it's a huge pain to dig through, just in my own backyard. Drilling holes for anchors, I spend more time prying fist sized rocks than drilling. Which is incredibly difficult in a four foot deep, ten inch wide hole.

There are a couple areas where there is tons of topsoil sure, like in South Boulder I think many houses have basements, but as soon as you get out west or north you'll see all granite. Being a geologist I'm guessing you know the wide range of formations and different geologic timeframes we have across the span of like two miles.

I work for an ISP, typical cost for just labor + materials for fiber is $10k per mi., labor being the majority of the cost. I live in the midwest and fiber techs start getting paid around $25 per hour and it can take a crew of 2-3 guys for a few hours per household which if you have in-house guys isn't as much but if you're contracting it out can inflate cost 2-3x. That's if you don't have to make the run down the street and live close to a node.

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