[VoiceOps] FUSF is 26.5% for Q3 2020: Discuss

[Mike Johnston]

If you were to install new facilities to a subscriber in a green field 
deployment, what technology would you use?  Fiber, right? Once that 
fiber is installed, what speed packages are available? All the way to at 
least gigabit, right?

Yes, that means that some very rural areas are able to get gigabit while 
many urban areas can not.  But that is more-so a fault of the facilities 
in the urban areas.  They are often copper based (coax and twisted pair) 
that was installed decades ago. Copper facilities struggle to achieve 
gigabit speeds, at least past a very short distance.  More commonly the 
speeds are in just the double digits.

When ISPs are deciding where to install new fiber, un-served areas, such 
as the rural areas being discussed, are usually prioritized above those 
that are already served by cable and DSL. If you have enough resources 
to install fiber to only so many new subscribers in a given year, would 
you upgrade existing urban customers to fiber, most of which can already 
achieve 50Mbps+, or would you add new rural subscribers, most of which 
currently use satellite or dialup?  The later is a popular choice.  
However, I realize the optics are bad from the perspective of urban 
subscribers.

On 2020-08-24 16:45, Mary Lou Carey wrote:

> Wow.....so it sounds like maybe they are offering services but the 
> donations from the government to fund it certainly don't make it all 
> the way to the customer! My car loan costs less than your Gigabit 
> ethernet! 

That is not a fair comparison.  Very few people currently require 
gigabit Internet.  I bet the cost for 50/50 is less than your car loan.  
Maybe a better comparison would be the cost of gigabit to the monthly 
cost of a loan for a Rolls-Royce?