Roll-My-Own Broadband?

[SMurf]

Hello,

Because I think that trying to modulate a high frequency signal some distance down a pair of old copper wires is daft, I currently get my broadband via a 3G dongle, which is fine for my purposes but costs an arm and a leg.

The local infrastructure provider (BT Openreach, which was created in 2002 to separate the infrastructure from BT itself and allow other providers equal access) has two products that would improve things a little: Fibre To The Cabinet, which connects to the box stood at the southernmost point of my estate and modulates a signal over a shorter length of copper to my flat, and Fibre To The Premises, which actually involves shoving a fibre into your property.

As it stands, I can only get FTTC in my particular area. I did think about holding out for FTTP, but that was before I read about the technology behind it, GPON, which amounts to running in half duplex with about 30 other people on your fibre.

Now, I've a talent for crazy ideas (), so in order to be able to enjoy the future now as opposed to whenever the telcos feel like it, I came up with this:-

There is a data centre less than 5 miles away. It is carrier-neutral, so getting an uplink to the Internet should be straightforward. If I could persuade a load of other people on my estate to "trial" a new service, give it a stupid marketing term like "sexyfast broadband", what are the odds of hooking everyone up with multimode 100BaseFX/SX media converters, connecting them to a fibre switch somewhere, and then firing a singlemode pair to a switch in the data centre?

The only problem with this idea is that I haven't a clue where to start with the infra side of things!. The main issues are that I would need somewhere to put the fibres on the estate (I'd probably need to build my own roadside cabinet), and then somehow run a pair for 5 miles. I'm not enthusiastic if I have to dig up roads, but I don't think that I should need to do this, given modern infrastructure.

I could talk to Openreach, but as they are still technically part of BT, I suspect that this idea would attract much stroking of chin and "ooo err you don't wanna do that", culminating in a huge price tag for the work.

It's a pipe dream I suppose, but in the right area I reckon that this could be done.

Thoughts?

[phantomotap]

O_o

This sounds like a costly idea doomed to failure.

Can you cope with that?

Soma

[Yarin]

I'd use Sexyfast Broadband

[phantomotap]

I'd use Sexyfast Broadband

O_o

For which speed would you subscribe? Power Girl or Wonder Woman?

Soma

[PrinceCruise]

I'd go for the milf extra credit plan.

[Elkvis]

This sounds like a costly idea doomed to failure.

that's probably what they said to Jobs and Woz, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, and Canion, Harris, and Murto.

[phantomotap]

O_o

Do you understand the difference between "Don't try." and "Can you cope with failure?"?

Do you want me to list all the times such ideas have failed?

Do you want me to list all the laws that will make life miserable for an individual trying something like this?

[Edit]
Or simpler, do you have any idea what the filing fee for all the permits would be?
[/Edit]

Soma

[Elkvis]

Do you understand the difference between "Don't try." and "Can you cope with failure?"?

I was just trying to counter your somewhat negative response with a little encouragement. Your use of the word "doomed" implies that there is no chance for success. Granted, it's a steep uphill battle, fraught with peril, especially with the ability of the current providers of this sort of service to force any newcomers out with little effort or consequence, but it's not impossible.

[Matticus]

I would argue that a one-off "pet" project of this magnitude would not be worth the time, resources, and trouble for the average individual to implement. This would be different from the examples of people given above in post #6, where they were (I'm assuming) seeking to develop technologies for general, mainstream use, that had potential for eventual return.

I'm certainly not out to discourage, but I'm sure the regulatory hurdles alone required to implement a system like this would vastly outweigh the potential benefit.

[SMurf]

Granted, it's a steep uphill battle, fraught with peril, especially with the ability of the current providers of this sort of service to force any newcomers out with little effort or consequence, but it's not impossible.

I would argue that there aren't any other providers for "real" fibre broadband (two separate channels, up/down speed the same, no PPP encapsulation or anything like that).
Given time to mull, I would say that I couldn't implement it on my estate without buy-in from the council, perhaps spun as a community broadband project. There's a bike shed across the road from me that could feasibly house a switch, but I would have to speak to a long list of people to construct an enclosure, or run fibre. There is also still the matter of BT, who would be speaking to the same list of people advising against it.
However, if someone else is in a less built-up environment, enjoys good relations with their neighbours and can somehow still locate a well-connected data centre within a short distance, this is worth a shot. If nothing else, it should stimulate competition, which will mean that I can put my plans to emigrate to a Scandinavian country (in urban areas, fibre links are more prevalent) on hold.

[phantomotap]

I was just trying to counter your somewhat negative response with a little encouragement.

O_o

The offer of encouragement is all too easy.

The question is, are you willing to throw your money and/or time at the idea?

Are you going to throw some investment at SMurf?

[Edit]
I missed typing a word somehow altering the meaning a little.
[/Edit]

Soma

[MutantJohn]

I missed typing a word somehow altering the meaning a little.

Man, and you're a really good programmer too... How... How could you?

[phantomotap]

Man, and you're a really good programmer too... How... How could you?

O_o

Even "really good" programmers may introduce bugs...

Soma

[Yarin]

Even "really good" programmers may introduce bugs...

My code never has bugs, simply undocumented features.

[MutantJohn]

See phantom? Yarin gets it.