Comment by turnsout
6 hours ago
In locations where fiber is not available (like my place), cable is the next best option, and cable has a lot more unexpected downtime. I could see this being a good backup, especially for small businesses like retail shops that couldn't afford to have their POS go down for half a day.
Around here, it’s Starlink >> Fiber >> Cable because our lines are above ground and outages are frequent.
Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than starlink, in fairness.
Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it’s not really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway).
I’m considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I wish they’d just buried the lines.
I see telephone trucks repairing downed lines we’d rely on many dozens of times a year. Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.
> Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.
I know some people running independent community fiber ISPs. Digging trenches can be a nightmare depending on the neighbourhood. You can have property ownership issues, other utilities being present, permit nightmares, different ground/soil types, etc. That ignores the fact that when somebody else digs they can hit your lines and repairing that is a pain.
Digging is better, though. But it’s not necessarily as easy as one may think.
Definitely a nightmare.
Where I work just acquired new property and are deploying a new site. It took 9 months, from date of first contact, before the ISP could come out, bore under the road, and run fiber to our building from two poles away. And that's just a short ~500 feet underground run.
I couldn't imagine the amount of permitting and logistics involved in trying to bury an entire run across town.
Agreed retail is a good customer for this tech. But even after getting fiber personally, it gets cut a lot by landscaping crews. Most of the time it’s a residential line that takes a day to fix. But a few times it’s been a main line and it takes 3-4 days. Maybe I’m unusual but that’s been my experience
Why are landscaping crews cutting wires on poles in the sky?
Poles are common, but so are existing buried conduits and vaults which are often used if they exist.
I would normally love this device, except I already have 2.5gbit fiber AND cable. They work for load balancing and failover.
Now I can't decide if I need a 3rd WAN.....