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Dark versus lit Fibre

  • 22-03-2002 11:24pm
    #1
    Neville
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6 ✭


    A downbeat article on the state of fibre in the US prompted a slashdot thread with some useful facts and figures on the cost of lighting fibre

    USA Today article

    Slashdot story

    Comments scored >= 3
    Many reports focus on the enormous amount of fiber that's been put in the ground by companies such as Level 3, 360networks and Global Crossing. The building boom created what at first seems like a giant oversupply. Only 2% to 5% of the fibers in the USA are lit, hooked up and carrying traffic. The rest are dark, lying in the ground in anticipation of demand.

    But it's not that simple.

    Dark fiber is not the same as capacity. Even though a fiber is in the ground, it's far from being usable. For every $1 spent to put a fiber in the ground, a company has to spend $20 to attach it to all the equipment, configure it and turn it on.
    At the time, people started with Cisco based fiber routers, because of networkability - these cost $30k on both ends for a T3 line worth of bandwidth.

    fiber is dirt cheap. it costs approx $100.00 for every fusion splice to be made (that is what we pay the contractor.. $100.00 per splice) and it costs $6500.00 to light up 1 (that's ONE) 50km fiber to a paltry 100mbps Full duplex. Bringing up a 1000mbps linx is 5 times that price and bringing up a multiplexed 5000 mbps (that's 5 of the above multiplexed over that one single fiber over a tiny 50 km distance) costs $100,000.00 in all supporting equipment. I know as I just lit one up

    ATM/Sonet/SDH switching equipment is damned expensive. Fully decked out switches can easily cost $250,000 - $1,000,000+ depending on port density and speed (OC3 - OC192).


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