Grouchy Telco Expert Hat Time again, I see...

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

"HOW DARE AT&T NOT GIVE EVERYONE FIBER!!!"

Motherfuckers, while I will gladly spike profiteering shitheads, businesses still do have to make a profit. Non-profits have to make a profit; they just guarantee they reinvest all of it. If you have no profit, you cannot continue to operate.
Clear so far? Great.
Yes, wireless is unreliable, unsafe bullshit, but fiber? You're fucking high.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

"BUT FIB-"
Let's say AT&T runs fiber to every single home in Monroe County, Iowa. This is a nice square county with grid lines, so we'll call it about 325 miles of fiber run.
The average cost per mile of fiber is going to be about $15k-17.5k per mile out there. So that's a $5.6M capex BEFORE ancillaries and maintenance. Which will be extremely high because of distance, how rural it is, frequent damage (weather + tractors.)

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

"But it's only $6M!"
Yeah. It's "only" $6M. Let's say AT&T doubles their prices because of the location, so it's $110 per month for their 300Mbit plan.

If they got 100% uptake (IMPOSSIBLE,) the total population is 7504 people. That's not how many customers. You don't order Internet for each person in your house, you order Internet FOR YOUR HOUSE. These are called RDUs; Residential Dwelling Units.

Monroe County has 3,213 occupied RDUs.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

So again, assuming 100% uptake (which IS IMPOSSIBLE) and doubled prices and everyone can afford it (highly unlikely; over 9% below the poverty line) that translates to revenue of $353,430 a month.

"See? They ma-"
REALISTIC uptake even in fully ILEC monopolized areas is 40% or below. With two options, nobody forecasts over 30% with 10% churn.
That's a VERY different number; $106k per month.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

$106k per month doesn't go far. Because techs don't correlate to customers, they correlate to area - 434 square miles. If we say each AT&T tech has an area of 50 square miles (meaning every job could take 2 hours in travel,) they need at least 12 residential techs for the county.

Those techs will make on average $22/hr (excluding benefits.) So well over $50k per month in personnel costs. And 50sqmi would be a MASSIVE territory to cover for any one tech.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

"But AT&T h-"
Yes. AT&T is a bunch of profiteering fuckheads, of this there is no question nor debate. Certainly not from me.

That's why we're just talking basic numbers. We haven't even turned on customers and more than half our revenue's gone. Because guess what? We need new equipment to maintain and repair fiber too - there goes another million dollars. That $17.5k/mi number? That's DARK STRANDS.

In other words: it's not economically feasible even at minimal profit.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

Municipal broadband can fill in gaps here, certainly, but mostly they do that by *accepting* that they will be unprofitable, reducing costs everywhere they can (whether or not it's smart,) and operating as government rather than business. (AKA "we provide services, not a profit.")

But even then, over a long enough timespan, they have the *same problems* without being propped up through things like taxes or levies. (Both of which are highly unpopular.)

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

Telecom has ALWAYS been a numbers game. Which is why AT&T hastily re-monopolized, and the rural-exclusive ILECs are largely shitholes. It's not simple 'profiteering.'

Unless you can make those costs dirt cheap (copper lines were,) you NEED the high density areas where you've got 200+ RDUs per mile to give you that operating cushion for the areas where you've got 20.

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

You want everybody to have fiber?

1) Embrace the absolute fuckery that is the Death Star monopoly, nationwide

2) Reintroduce slave labor and apply to skilled telecom technicians first

3) In addition to #2, seize all fiber production for several years

4) Drastically change everything, create a nationalized telecom monopoly, and accept that your taxes will go up drastically unless they also nuke MSOs (the TV people) too (hahaha good fucking luck.)

RootWyrm 🇺🇦:progress:

Bear in mind, I'm not arguing for wireless at ALL here. I am more familiar with wireless and VoIP than any sane person should be. (I literally predate the shitshow that is SIP.) Wireless is a fucking joke. (So is E911. And VoIP over your precious fiber. Both are just as unreliable as wireless.)

But fiber for everyone just cannot work fiscally.

mx alex tax1a - 2020 (4)

@rootwyrm tangential we hate SIP so much. "cool, it looks like HTTP, but it really isn't, so there's no actual code reuse possibility between the two protocols". bULL SHIT