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This is a shining example of money allocated for a local-level initiative going through its respective local process and coming out with a net positive result. A seemingly rare moment of Actual Good News.

The obvious alternative would have been that AT&T or Comcast wins the bid, though I'm personally less convinced either of those stock market traded giants would match the level of effort this local newcomer is bringing to the table.

Though, I'm almost certain that some behemoth will offer to buy up the market after it's been built up and has a year or so of subscriber history. This guy may do very well to give them the finger and just repeat his process for other counties, using grants to build up a new empire. Or, he could just sell out and take the first batch of big money that flies in his direction - I doubt many people would fault him for that.

> though I'm personally less convinced either of those stock market traded giants would match the level of effort this local newcomer is bringing to the table.

Depends - are you talking about the effort to provide service, or the effort to get government money for doing so?

Because we've already seen the giants go to great lengths for the latter - at least when there's no strict legal requirement that they ever actually do the former.

The problem we have is the amount of Time and Money that goes into making sure that government funds are properly handled and allocated.

This need to make sure that money is properly allocated accounts for a lot of the difficulty in getting government grants, and support. In general giving money to an established company who has a track record in such activities is an easier sales pitch, than some guy trying to do something new. Besides which article would you get more angry at.

Big Telecom company gets money f

Besides which article would you get more angry at. Big Telecom company gets money from the government to put broadband in rural communities fall short in implementation. or This guy get millions for the government to do something that he had never done before and he had failed.

Besides which article would you get more angry at.

Big Telecom company gets money from the government to put broadband in rural communities fall short in implementation. or This guy get millions for the government to do something that he had never done before and he had failed.

Having seen the former literally happen time and again across several decades, I tend to think that some schmo winning a government telecom service expansion contract and failing to deliver is still playing better odds. After all, the behavior of big telecom on this is pretty well known, so we'd be foolish to think they'll suddenly be eager to change the status quo. At least the random person has an unestablished track record... they still have the potential to maybe do something new, different, and excitin

Plus the fact is this guy is local, he lives in the area he is service, he knows face-to-face the people that are getting or planning to get the service from him. The chances of him running off with the cash is probably an order of magnitude less than a mega-corp with no direct ties to the area and the project managers and executives thousands of miles away.

Not to mention that he himself knows what its like to be stuck with no decent internet service.

It's only a crime if the law is enforced...

There's definately an artform to tendering, and it helps to have a lot of experience in it. That's why ex govt employees do so well at consulting , they've already got the contacts and have probably evaluated so many tenders that they know exactly what it takes to win them. And it's a capability a lot of company's will pay very well to acquire

It's not government money. It's taxpayer money.

This is an honest guy trying to do something good for his community. This is very much the exception.

Public-private partnerships necessarily wasteful, and often low-quality, as the 'private' side is motivated to profit from the arrangement as much as possible. You might want to believe that leads to innovation, but it usually leads to cutting-corners, excuses for why project goals were not met, or flat-out lies about what was accomplished.

I'm almost certain that some behemoth will offer to buy up the market after it's been built up

I'm almost certain that some behemoth will offer to buy up the market after it's been built up

An unregulated or under-regulated free market will produce monopolies. That's bad for consumers and bad for progress.    

I am still trying to rationalize out spending $30k for a half mile of fiber to serve one customer. Government waste vs law of averages vs... It seems like a lot without the customer making some financial commitment to it.

I'm happy to hear that for once, the "little guy" wins here, in the sense he was able to take all of this government money and use it for what it's intended for. I mean, we all know this is a situation where the corporate giants in this space just scoop up 99% of those funds to do with as they wish. For them, it's a game of how to technically qualify for the funds while spending the least possible amount of money on meeting that bar, so they can increase profits and compensation for upper management/ownersh

I had to sit threw an long rant about Anti-Government and all the crazy right wing political BS from the very obvious fake news sites that my elderly father considers to be true. Part of this rant on how to not trust the government, he talked about all the problems he had with the VA getting service, until he gave the his state Senator a call complaining about his problems, where in short time he got a call from the VA assigning him a personal coordinator to help navigate the VA.

He is happy thinking that se

There's clearly some crazy stuff out there from fake news sites with far, far Right agendas. That doesn't really change anything about the reality of the government currently in place and operating daily, all around us.

I'm sure most state Senators *do* regularly try to assist people with problems getting government services they're supposed to be entitled to getting. My mom had to get their help once for an issue with my youngest brother, who has Down's Syndrome and isn't very high functioning.

It' s part of our social compact. We help all Americans with the basics, and internet is as necessary today as are roads and electricity. . Rural mail delivery is one example. It certainly costs more to get a letter to rural alaska than to Brooklyn. Its just a shame that those rural voters who benefit form this type of massive taxpayer subsidy then thumb their noses at the federal government

It' s part of our social compact. We help all Americans with the basics, and internet is as necessary today as are roads and electricity. . Rural mail delivery is one example. It certainly costs more to get a letter to rural alaska than to Brooklyn. Its just a shame that those rural voters who benefit form this type of massive taxpayer subsidy then thumb their noses at the federal government

First of all, which social compact are you talking about? Where is it? Is it written down somewhere? Where is it written that "we help Americans with the basics"? What ARE "the basics"? Because some people are more or less including everything in "the basics". As in "the government is responsible for feeding you, clothing you, and housing you". I don't recall the part of our founding documents that stated Uncle Sam was my daddy and responsible for all of my "basics". Can you point it out in the Declaration

You are correct that this is not codified directly but this has come up before in history, especially with FDR and what he described in 1944 as "The Second Bill of Rights" [wikipedia.org]

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.

While it's not "the law" I don't think there is anything preventing us logistically or economically from ensuring all citizens have them in this the wealthiest nation to ever exist in the history of the earth.

... preventing us logistically or economically from ensuring all citizens ...

... preventing us logistically or economically from ensuring all citizens ...

For that purpose, the New Deal declared that government had a responsibility to every citizen, not just a collective outcome. In some ways, he failed since black people, native Americans and women were not directly addressed. (That happened with the Civil Rights Act which caused its own political backlash of "state's rights".) He also failed as corporations branded such responsibilities as 'evil government'. It's why the US government continues to lack universal healthcare or hold telecommunication corp

And the Declaration of Independance says "all men are created equal" but slavery existed for another 100 years, women couldnt vote until the 20th century and white male landowners had all the power.

America has never quite lived up to it's ideals but those still are ideal worth pursuing. Where FDR failed in the 30s we can do better today.

Every right has an equal responsibility. You have a right to a trial with a jury of your peers, but you also have a responsibility to show up for jury duty when requested to do so etc.

> The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The responsibility to show up for work, on-time, displaying a good attitude, with useful and remunerative skills where jobs exist. A fair day's pay for a fair day's work.

> The right to earn enough to provide adequa

Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

You can sing it if it helps you remember.

If you can afford 50k for a driveway (that's the price for half a mile of asphalt), you can afford 30k for some fiber. This region the article is talking about is very rich country with an average income of ~100-120k per person. These people have acres of land to have a half mile driveway with a mansion at the end, yet paying someone to trench a fiber is too complicated?

You're right for the most part, but not everyone living in the townships outside of Ann Arbor is wealthy. There's a lot of people who moved out there a long time ago and are now sitting on land that they probably couldn't afford today. This is probably true of lots of rural parts of America that are being "gentrified."

More on topic, having lived in Ann Arbor, I don't see why 4G/5G connections isn't a better solution than running a $30,000 fiber optic cable to their house. While Ann Arbor has some hills,

More on topic, having lived in Ann Arbor, I don't see why 4G/5G connections isn't a better solution than running a $30,000 fiber optic cable to their house.

More on topic, having lived in Ann Arbor, I don't see why 4G/5G connections isn't a better solution than running a $30,000 fiber optic cable to their house.

Wireless home Internet service has historically had monthly data transfer quotas that are unusable for more than occasional browsing and email. Operating system updates on multiple devices, downloading a long-term-licensed movie or video game, or even SD streaming video could cause the ISP to bill the customer for overages.

I don't know anything about the specific area in which this story takes place, but I can assure you that not everyone with a 1/2 mile driveway is rich. I've lived in Montana my whole life, and while I've always lived in town, I've known plenty of people that live in the country that have very long driveways and were barely middle class. It's often just how it is out there.

I get that is the justification... but there is a point where universal-anything is a bad solution. Today, "universal [utility] electrification" is a waste of money as an example-- there are enough solutions to allow off-grid living with minimal compromise. A half-mile is trivial for plenty of other solutions that pure social-contract funds are squandered by providing the "most expensive" solution.

It all works out in aggregate-- the grant was not to connect two customers to the network for $60k, but ~600

Rural mail delivery is one example. It certainly costs more to get a letter to rural alaska than to Brooklyn.

Rural mail delivery is one example. It certainly costs more to get a letter to rural alaska than to Brooklyn.

It does, but the letter isn't even guaranteed to get to the person's house. In rural areas, USPS often does not offer delivery to an address, but instead to a cluster mailbox, which may be located far from the actual residence. And it's not just in tiny towns; Jackson, WY [jacksonwy.gov], a town of 10k, only has centralized USPS delivery.

There is a balance between providing a common service and the cost of providing it. It's a lot to ask of the taxpayer to foot the bill for someone who decides to live far from infrastructu

Granted, it's not Gigabit, and it's more costly per month... but it takes a lot of months to chew up a $30,000 infrastructure cost difference...

but that fiber run is a much better investment long term, as the max data transmission of the fiber line itself is much higher than the 1gb currently offered, and all that is needed is upgrade it is better fiber transmitters and receivers at each end, as long as the ISP can also handle the increased bandwidth. As the national and global networks improve, so could the existing fiber infrastructure.

If this guy is smart, he's putting in conduit underground so that later cable runs are easy, and he can rent space in them.

If this guy is smart, he's putting in conduit underground so that later cable runs are easy, and he can rent space in them.

I'm glad you consider my plan smart.

but that fiber run is a much better investment long term, as the max data transmission of the fiber line itself is much higher than the 1gb currently offered, and all that is needed is upgrade it is better fiber transmitters and receivers at each end, as long as the ISP can also handle the increased bandwidth. As the national and global networks improve, so could the existing fiber infrastructure.

but that fiber run is a much better investment long term, as the max data transmission of the fiber line itself is much higher than the 1gb currently offered, and all that is needed is upgrade it is better fiber transmitters and receivers at each end, as long as the ISP can also handle the increased bandwidth. As the national and global networks improve, so could the existing fiber infrastructure.

There's also this thing known as a "pole denial" - aka no, you can't attach to that pole, which requires then doing something else, either setting your own pole or doing something alternative as a result. Just like mixing technology or environments (eg: Ubuntu vs Debian, or worse a RPM vs DPKG or Windows vs *BSD) having a mix of construction types can make your life more complex. I'm trying to optimize a lot of variables at once.

If that property is at the end of a half-mile dead-end road, the federal government is already paying a federal employee to drive a mile (round trip) each weekday just to check if the resident might have put a $.45 stamp on an envelope and placed it on the exterior of their mailbox for pickup.

Are you sure? Because I know plenty of people whose mailboxes are not directly on their property. For example, I live at the end of a 1/10th of a mile long road, and I have to walk that 500 feet to the mailbox on the

At current prices, $30k would pay for 22 years of Starlink service, not accounting for interest or reduction in prices over the next decades.

Fiber definitely has its advantages, but beyond a certain distance there is no point in connecting an isolated house.

I'd like to know why he didn't consider a radio link for that half mile. It would have cost him less than $500 bit more if he needed elevation.

At this point it’s infrastructure. Why did the power company bother with this one home a century ago?

You'll be happy to own the fibre when the customer sells their land to a developer.

That does seem hard to justify. As a baseline rough guide I hear StarLink (satellite) is like $100 per month, $30,000 is 25 years of service and that would provide pretty good internet for most people cheaper. Actually why didn't the customer get StarLink or get it subsidized?

I am still trying to rationalize out spending $30k for a half mile of fiber to serve one customer.

I am still trying to rationalize out spending $30k for a half mile of fiber to serve one customer.

I'm trying to rationalise it to, but only because it sounds way too cheap. I've seen numbers like that for closer to the sub 100m runs. Don't underestimate what it takes to lay infrastructure, this isn't the same as your neighbour's half arsed cable burred so shallow in the ground that it not only fails building codes but is likely to get eaten by the local wildlife.

Doing work costs money. Doing it properly costs a LOT of money.

I was following a couple rural ISPs a few years back that were easily able to bury fiber on the roadway ROW for under $100k/mile. It helps that there were almost no other underground utilities, so a chain trencher could run continuously for 24" burial. They would hand dig 10' on either side of existing utilities. If you are parallel with another service it is a totally different story of course.

I was amazed; they could do a little over a mile a week in the field with a single crew of 4-6.

I created my own ISP in 1992 because the university said, the network should be reserved for PHDs and professors ;-).

Anger is an excellent motivator.

In that year my company's internet service was a 14.4K modem to a tiny ISP whose uplink to the "backbone" was a T1 line.

We started with a Zyxel 16K8 link to Hamburg which had a 64k uplink to EUnet who had a T1 link....

At that time, this was more than anyone else in a 50 mile radius had.

Was at a conference in 1993, 3*19k2 uplink for 600 people camping out with their computers in tents.

That was enough. Back then.

It was fun, too. Somehow the fun went away. I always wanted to get into networking but it somehow never happened. Not sure I regret that now.

Blackjack and hookers? Asking for a friend.

When free market capitalism does not work in your favor, get a law passed to "fix the problem." After all, corporations are people too, and you don't wan them to end up homeless.

This was explained excellently a few years ago in a /. comment by someone who works at a telecom. From their point of view their is no "free market capitalism" because this is a highly regulated market already. The big players were required to provide service *everywhere* regardless of profitability whereas some of the smaller players were only serving profitable markets. That made it worse for the big players because they then lost some of their cash-positive customers, putting them in an even worse cas

Yeah, it's not the fact that it's fiber, it's the fact that the homeowner is being subsidized in his decision to live way off the beaten path. I have no problem with people living in the woods, but there are costs and they need to personally bear those costs.

republican controlled and bought off by Comcast and TW

republican controlled and bought off by Comcast and TW

If you look at the list of states [broadbandnow.com] that block local broadband co-ops and services, you'll find states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, and Colorado, and Oregon. Look around and I think you'll find that fellating big telecoms is very much a bi-partisan exercise.

We fought the "superdmca" bill here in Tennessee about 20 years ago, pushed by Comcast. Their sponsors were Curtiss Person (R) in the senate and "Rob Briley (D)" in the house. They're Comcast - they bought both parties.

in 3... 2... 1... "Waaaah! That's not fair! Our profits! Our shareholders! The FCC! We want Ajit Pai back!"

I'm sure their lawyers are drafting appeals and vetting press releases even as I'm writing this. I really hope those fuckers make negative headway in whatever shitty self-serving initiative they're about to launch to protect their oligopoly.

I suspect he wanted to provide service that was less susceptible to weather issues (wind, storms, etc.) and lower maintenance. Ideally, a properly laid fiber line should be able to provide service for decades with little intervention other than ensuring animals haven't set up residence in the last junction box. Microwave antennae require consistent check-ups and the signal has to deal with lots of weather-related interference.

As some one who grew up in a rural area with terrible internet options until I mov

Just a thought: wouldn't it be cheaper, and just as effective, to set those single homes that require a half mile of fiber (for $30000 each) just to serve them, with high-gain parabolic dish antennas and amplfied WiFi to bridge that half mile gap? Theoretically, assuming there's line-of-sight?

Just a thought: wouldn't it be cheaper, and just as effective, to set those single homes that require a half mile of fiber (for $30000 each) just to serve them, with high-gain parabolic dish antennas and amplfied WiFi to bridge that half mile gap? Theoretically, assuming there's line-of-sight?

How much does power, tower (rentals) and people to climb poles when the electronics break or become obsolete cost? Sure you could do a 60ghz or FSO for unobstructed short LOS runs but this is a massive ongoing drag in terms of maintenance, technological evolution and customer satisfaction.

No matter what technology you select it's not fiber. It will never be as reliable, low maintenance, performant or as future proof as fiber.

If you decided to go there and simply deploy a band aid you will win in the shor

The goals of the county gap project and funding was to provide service to these areas. The problem is the tower may be 2-3 miles away and to hit these speeds, it requires more spectrum than is available, even if you use the RF Elements horn based antennas.

If the farm properties along the way are subdivided they can be connected for much lower cost in the future with this.

Free stuff for other people. For you, no soup.

The phone companies were supposed to have wired up these, let me be honest here, not so rural areas, a long time ago. The phone companies welched on their side of the bargain and left taxpayers holding the bag. These communities are just a few miles from Ann Arbor, one of Michigan's major cities. Washtenaw County is sometimes considered to be a part of the Metro Detroit sprawl.

I have a true story to share about Jared. When I was in my late teens (1994-1995) his girlfriend reported to me that Jared did not consider me to be a Linux kernel hacker. By that point I was maintaining two kernel modules and had submitted at least one patch to Linus. I ytalked Linus at Helsinki and he agreed to add me to the CREDITS file with the description "kernel hacker."

I have Jared to thank for reminding me that I belonged in the CREDITS file, even though my contributions were one-millionth the size of David Miller or Ingo Molnar. Every little bit helps!

I prefer to do web services development today, mainly in PHP, and I've been gainfully employed doing Linux work full time since 1999. Contact me if you have an interesting project for a Linux veteran.

Hard to remember things from nearly 30 years ago, but I do apologize for that.

And the values of these homes just jumped 5-10%. Think about 1GB symmetrical fiber for a moment. You could host a small startup in this rural area.

If the govt is providing the money to build out, the govt should own the infrastructure when it's in place it shouldn't be just handed over to a private entity who is free to sell it at a profit.

Not really, there's a few WISPs in the area already, there are logistical issues when it comes to terrain and tree cover that make it impractical.

Don't "travel" to a GOP state then. States with the Highest Murder Rates

Louisiana has the highest murder rate in the U.S. of 14.4 murders per 100,000 residents. Alabama has the second-highest murder rate of 12.9 murders per 100,000 residents. Mississippi has the third-highest murder rate in the United States. Mississippiâ(TM)s murder rate is 12.7 murders per 100,000 residents. Missouri has the fourth-highest murder rate of 11.3 murders per 100,000 residents. Alaska has the fifth-highest murder rate in the U.S. with a rate of 10.6 murders per 100,000 residents.

It's just a thought #BauOfTheFifthColumn

The adult take is "parasitize Game A to fund Game B".

No matter how much you get in spending cuts the Fed will print 1000x in new money.

Don't fight guaranteed losing battles. Those only made sense with sound money.

And we need pervasive Internet to get back to sound money. Since the Farm Bill ensures farmers can't afford their own Internet runs I'm OK with helping them out. It's astonishing that a 180-day watermelon shipped two thousand miles is cheaper than two cartons of eggs.

Lots of (small) farmers have second jobs. Some pay pretty well. So the reason that they drive their F150 to wotk is so they can pick up supplies on the way home.

> So the reason that they drive their F150 to wotk is so they can pick up supplies on the way home.

I assume the use of an F150 is so poorer locals can steal the groceries from the back when you park, enabling them to eat. Less charitable people would buy a van.

Yup and the car nerd would have a diesel swapped 2000s ranger with a manual that gets 45mpg and can actually be affordably drivin.

Trucks are a joke, if you need one you got a 250 or 350. If you dont you get something junk that eats gas and poses, ala 150.

I used to have an F350 (to haul things), now I have a Tesla. In between I had the other 350 - the 350Z. So I can't work out if I'm legit or a poser.

Har-de-har har. Thanks for demonstrating you know nothing whatsoever about farming.

1.There are hardly any "family farms" (a couple friends of mine, in se Indiana, are among them. She has a well-paying professional job non-farm.) 2. There are a limited number of companies they can sell to, thanks to growing monopolies. The corporations, on the other hand, say "here's what we're paying, take it or leave it", and leaving it means you have crop with no sales. 3. What farmers *do* get paid is a small fraction of

2. There are a limited number of companies they can sell to, thanks to growing monopolies. The corporations, on the other hand, say "here's what we're paying, take it or leave it", and leaving it means you have crop with no sales.

Or you join the web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets [reddit.com].

How can anyone be both pro-Trump and also anti-government?

How can anyone be both pro-Trump and also anti-government?

Where the hell have you been? The right has lived that contradiction since Reagan. See, they don't see their own politicians as part of the government, but David taking down Goliath.

This is why the "deep state" nonsense plays so well. There's the cartoon evil shadow government that they've been told to hate, and then there's their own guys. Phew! Contradiction resolved!

Yes, it's stupid, but we're not dealing with smart people here.

David took down Goliath because he was better armed and Goliath had tactical disadvantages. It's not really a Hobbit versus Sauron type of thing, it's more like bringing a gun to a knife fight against a slow opponent. But that doesn't matter, it's a story to inspire working class to start supporting the employer class policies ("less taxes for us means we might give you more money").

"Deep state" is an excuse to explain why they lose sometimes despite claiming to represent the overwhelming majority of voters. It's a stupid conspiracy, and you see that when after having a warrant served at Mar-a-Lago someone is quoted on camera says "I can't believe it's possible that law enforcement can just come in and take something of yours", it's as they don't even know how the the law works or what the fourth amendment is. Yes, unprecedented that they'd serve a warrant on a past president; also unprecedented to have had a president allegedly engage in so many illegal activites before, during, and after office.

But also remember in the days of Rush it was all about "ditto". Repeat what Rush said, don't think about it too hard. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

What should paying a team to do a 1/2 mile of trenching or tunneling and pulling fiber through cost in Michigan?

From what I can quickly google it does seem a bit overprices, most quick estimates I see put trenching at around anywhere from $4-10 per foot or somewhere in the range of $20-30k per mile so maybe he's just generalizing or overestimating or there are some geographical circumstances that make it more difficult. Maybe he needs to collect a couple more bids. If he said $15k would we feel differentl

Permits, Drawings, restoration, meeting the requirements for the right-of-way access and dealing with the glacial deposits of rocks etc, trenching can take over a year to return to the original condition, not accounting for the fact that the soil may not settle back the same way if there's any moisture.

I can tell you that boring is the standard by which you optimize many of these items.

Pole attachment costs can be the same or more than underground/boring if you need to upgrade or replace the poles, and it c

...the pro-Trump, antigovernment, anti-tax crowd.....

That's a contradiction. "While Republicans and conservatives have an eagle eye for certain types of subsidies...they turn a blind eye to the subsidies that benefit their own constituents." [baconsrebellion.com]

To be fair, liberals are also hypocrites. "You cannot say that you are against inequality in America unless you are willing to have affordable housing built in your neighborhood." [youtube.com]

$30,000 to run fiber to one house. And these are probably the pro-Trump, antigovernment, anti-tax crowd.....

$30,000 to run fiber to one house. And these are probably the pro-Trump, antigovernment, anti-tax crowd.....

Meanwhile in your favorite inner city, gangbangers would have dug up the fiber in their neighborhood and trashed it, mistakenly thinking that such an expensive installation would have to contain copper.

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No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.