Buongiorno nexiani, executive summary: «When Metrics Are Set Appropriately High, The Government Has Saved Money» ...ovvero pensare a infrastrutture di rete che durino più di 30 anni senza perdere in prestazioni... pare da visionari eh?!? https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/why-slow-networks-really-cost-more-fib... --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- [...] So if you chose now, in 2020, to finance a broadband network delivering the federal standard of 25/3 as its top speed, you have already built an obsolete network that can not even keep up with normal usage of the Internet today. How many households could you get to recoup that $500 investment? The answer is zero, unless you have a monopoly. In places that have at least two choices for broadband Internet, market analysts are demonstrating that eventually no one will subscribe to DSL or advanced DSL networks, because they are not keeping up with consumption. That leaves the only real choices in broadband today as high-speed cable and fiber-to-the-home, for download purposes. The choices narrow even more if you’re prioritizing upload-based uses, like video conferencing. Only fiber-to-the-home works for this, until cable systems can be upgraded to be symmetrical. In essence, if you build a $500 connection giving a basic slow speed, no one would willfully pay for its use unless given no other choices. Furthermore, the network will eventually become so slow that it can’t even make use of the Internet—much like dialup today. In the end, you’ve spent $500 per household, with potentially no willing buyers. That’s a total loss. Now, take the same scenario and apply the $5,000 fiber investment. If you are patient with the pace the infrastructure investment has to be recovered, you can space out how many years you are willing to wait to recover that $5,000. If you can wait ten years, it is around $42 per month plus interest. If you can wait twenty years, it is a little past $20 per month plus interest. The more years you add, the lower that monthly payment can be stretched—and you get to use the network at the same time. And you have a network that can not only service the needs of today, but also handle the level of demand needed for tomorrow and the distant future, with very little additional money needed to upgrade. It can also be utilized to simultaneously deliver 5G and a whole ecosystem of wireless companies as follow on users to help cover your costs. When data consumption starts requiring 10 gigabit/10 gigabit connections, your same $5,000 investment remains useful, and in fact had that capacity ready five years ago. When average data consumption reaches 100 gigabit symmetrical or terabit symmetrical well into the future, your exact same network remains useful and ready for the challenge. You will still have willing buyers for its capacity because it remains relevant. And, given that broadband is an essential service that people will need their entire life, you will have a dedicated funding source. Even if it takes you 30 years to recover your costs, that still makes financial sense because fiber is expected to be useful for decades past those 30 years. That $5,000 cost can also be seen as a $10 per month for less than half of the asset’s usefulness, whereas a $500 cost in a slower speed will end being a $500 loss, and leaves you with a network that needs to be replaced by fiber anyway. When Metrics Are Set Appropriately High, The Government Has Saved Money North Dakota’s experience should be instructive for other state and federal policy makers. 60 percent of its households and businesses already have access to fiber to the home. An analysis by the consulting firm Conexon, which specializes in rural fiber by rural cooperatives, has found that while states across the country that received tens of millions of dollars from the federal government for broadband, almost all lack dense fiber networks—with the exception of a state like North Dakota. Blue areas represent high-speed. Source: Broadband map based off Conexon analysis of government spending in broadband found at https://nationalunbroadbandmap.com/ How did that happen? How did nearly identical amounts of public investments in broadband yield such massive discrepancies? It boils down to the decisions the local governments and small private ISPs in North Dakota made with that government money. The federal government had extremely low expectations on how the subsidies should be spent, sometimes approving of projects as slow as 10 mbps/1 mbps. Companies like AT&T and Frontier spent those dollars to slightly improve services in their legacy copper networks on the cheap to reach those low numbers, rather than take it to discount a transition to fiber. Frontier ignored profitably opportunities to deploy fiber for so long that it is now undergoing bankruptcy due to its neglect. Meanwhile, in North Dakota, the local government and small private ISPs made the decision to invest those federal government dollars, and their own local investments to match, into building out fiber networks. Now those networks are being paid off in the long run. And the local, state, and federal governments no longer need to come back and spend money to replace anything there. Those fiber networks will be able to offer symmetrical 10 gigabit services, 100 gigabit services, and terabit services well into the 21st century. And they will able to do so without government subsidies, but rather financed by typical monthly payments from users. Meanwhile, we’re going to have to spend another estimated $80 billion on the rest of the country that lacks fiber-to-the-home because we didn’t require fiber in the first place. [...] --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- Saluti, Giovanni -- Giovanni Biscuolo