[PLUG] FYI - ROSEBURG , Oregon HAS FIBER IN ~50% OF COUNTY PER Douglas Fast Net (DFN)

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat Feb 2 23:34:51 UTC 2019


On Sat, Feb 02, 2019 at 07:57:07AM -0800, mitch Stanley wrote:
> If Roseburg can do it , Portland should have accomplished this too!    The
> only thing affecting this lack of Fiber in PDX is  entrenched interests -

Literally entrenched - digging up a century of urban
infrastructure and adding optical fiber to that rat's nest
of pipes and cables and sewers and tanks and long-forgotten
buried toxics isn't impossible, but it will be very very
complicated.  Meanwhile, Portland City government has
accumulated its own byzantine network of rules and
sub-organizations and established interests.  Meshing
all of those complexities will be ... complex.

And while it is fashionable to hate the companies that 
provide services now, they accomplish more than 98% of us
sidewalk superintendents do.  For the 2% of us who (like
Russell) actually make some forward progress, the question
is whether they can grow those efforts to citywide scale.
Very few of us have the discipline and commitment for that.

Far more of us spend our time attacking those very few
who devoted their lives and succeeded with such efforts. 
If Portland is fibered 30 years from now, faux-populists
will attack the creators of that network 50 years from now.

Roseburg and Sandy can do fiber because they are small
and relatively young.  A small committed team can get the
whole job done quickly.  Beaverton has fiber, installed by
visionary Verizon NW, but now owned by corrupt and inept
Frontier.  I have fiber and a disabled optical network
terminal in my Beaverton house.  I will turn that back on
when Frontier goes bankrupt and its successors show more
customer savvy than my "new" provider Comcast currently
offers.  Verizon and Comcast reformed themselves; perhaps
Frontier and Centurylink will as well.

The new highrise portions of Portland are fibered already,
supplied by independent non-public-utility companies.  In
the natural course of things, old neighborhoods will be
torn down and rebuilt with highrise fiber as well.  As
a fifties child, I distain highrise living, but that is
vastly "greener" than single-family dwellings.  Stubborn
housegrubbing old hippies like me must die off, too.

I'm not saying that fibering an ENTIRE city as complex as
Portland is impossible, but it will require a hell of a
lot more effort and capability than just demanding "gimme". 

It has been a little more than half a century since Charles
Kao and his team in the UK made the first practical fiber
optics.  Half a century from now, other technologies will
connect young folks living "beyond highrise".  My guess is
orbit-linked bio-smartsuits, no fixed dwelling or permanent
physical possessions.  The "fiber generation" will be the
antiquated old farts in artifact-cluttered high rises.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com



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