> On the other hand, digging the densely populated European cities to install extensive optical fibre networks terminating either to buildings or local cabinets (with the remaining loop length being under 300 metres) is an extremely costly affair.
In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less profitable areas.
The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that. They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment.
They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not-too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to their connection point. And that in turn enables the same business model as we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me internet.
Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but renting that out is extremely profitable.
In Stockholm, the city-owned company Stokab has been doing exactly this for the past 15 years or so. They started out by laying fibre in the inner city and leasing it to businesses. They've been pretty profitable, and reinvesting all their profits into extending their network, moving to less and less profitable areas.
The last year or so they've started connecting every apartment building in the entire city, suburbs and all, and they'll be done in a year or so with that. They hooked up my building last month, for free. And then it's up to us in the coop to pick an ISP and connect each apartment.
They were also smart enough to put in one fibre per apartment, so in some not-too-distant future, it should be possible to upgrade the building LAN to fibre, which means that every apartment gets an unbroken fibre all the way to their connection point. And that in turn enables the same business model as we have with DSL now, i.e. each apartment can freely choose ISP, and different ISP can then compete for the privilege of lighting up my fibre and give me internet.
Digging up suburbs to lay down fibre is extremely costly as you say, but renting that out is extremely profitable.