What happened to Citynet? They were supposed to wire the whole of Amsterdam with open access fiber. Did they stop after the Reggefiber/KPN acquisition?
The cost for micro trenching can be upwards of $200k a building in Manhattan. I would assume dealing with sunken homes, collapsed PoE's and NIMBY folks would make it prohibitively expensive.
I think the key difference is that infrastructure is more of a long term investment. We can return 10x’s but it’ll likely take a little longer than a software company would. However, i can make the case that we have a higher guarantee of delivering than a software company can.
"A little longer" == 25 years if your returns are 10% and grow 10% annually.
Other than than all true. Telecoms infrastructure is an utility play, steady long term returns. Something pension funds like, but they on the other hand don't like risky startups, so it's a challenge to get funded until you are established and have a solid track record.
> However, from my understanding, a direct connection to the internet backbone is what gives tier q ISP's their God-like monopolizing power in a given region (like Comcast in most parts of Baltimore city).
No, the reason Comcast and other incumbents dominate is that they built out the last mile infrastructure. The backbone costs are a minor expense.
A Netflix cache appliance isn't dependent on the number of customers, it's on dependent on the amount of traffic from Netflix. You don't need 5000 Netflix customers, you need 5 Gbps of peak traffic to qualify.
However that isn't your only option. You can just peer with Netflix, they have an open peering policy.
The issue with peering with Netflix is that Netflix only peers in certain locations, so you need to buy transport to the exchange where Netflix is present.
Rule #1: Never install new copper in the outside plan.
That being said, there are companies specializing in installing fiber cables into sewers. They use tracked robots to install steel bands inside the pipes that keep the fiber cable in place. It's not cheap, but it is cheaper than ripping open the streets in a city.
There are also techniques to install fiber cable into water pipes.
There was a donation of bandwidth for supernode 1, but the cost of that bandwidth is insignificant relative to other costs. The current model is scalable. Supernode 3 is launching in the next week or so and Supernode 4 will be following it soon.
