[toomuchtodo]

The hard part doesn’t scale. Takes boots on the ground geographically to assess what’s possible and implement what’s cost effective (copper or fixed wireless, maybe fiber if its greenfield and you have cheap trenching capabilities).

[panabee]

thanks for sharing! out of curiosity, how do people typically trench today? which companies do you consider on the leading edge in terms of trenching price and technology?

[toomuchtodo]

Your local construction or electrical contractors are usually best suited for this work, using something like a ditch witch or trencher. This isn’t cutting edge work, just a trade.

[panabee]

thank you for sharing. just to be clear, you're saying there is no nationwide company/brand for trenching? ISPs like comcast and verizon just use local contractors/companies?

[syedkarim]

We just moved on to a home that was very recently built on agricultural land. Comcast had fiber at the end of our 300-foot driveway, but they wanted $10-$15 per foot to trench in order to start a cable internet (DOCSIS 3.1) service. They were simply subcontracting the work out to a local company. I told them I would trench instead. They then had the company drop off 400-feet of conduit. I rented a trencher ($200) for the day and hand-dug what the machine could not deal with (mud, trees, etc). After I was done, the subcontractor came back to finish the end points. They had a machine and process that was virtually identical to my own.

I'm surprised there are not mini boring bots. Maybe in a few years.

[toomuchtodo]

To my knowledge, yes. Whenever I’ve had Comcast, Verizon, or another provider pull a last mile of fiber, it’s been done by a local contractor (my experience is limited to Illinois, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin) with the upstream provider coordinating the turnup.

[panabee]

thanks, final question if you don't mind. :) do you know how much the average trenching job costs or how long it takes (order of magnitude)? $10K and days, $100K and weeks, or ...?

thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

[rayiner]

Comcast recently pulled fiber down a main road (about half a mile?), then about 150 feet along poles down a residential road, then trenched about 15 feet beside my driveway. It took a couple of months to get permitting to run it along the main road, but maybe half a day to actually run it. It took half a day to run it on poles along the residential road, and 6-7 hours (four guys) to trench 15 feet beside my driveway. Plus another half a day (one guy) to terminate the fiber in my basement, and another half day (one guy) to install the CPE.