In general, how much does it cost to light a segment of fiber optic cable? For example, if Qwest installed a new segment between San Francisco and LA, how much would it cost to light the fiber once it’s in the ground?
One estimate that I’ve read is $1.5 million per mile, but that seems awfully high.
A lot.
The buildings required on either side (a send and recieve station) are about 10 million dollars each. Its about $100,000 a mile to just lay the fiber.
The company I work for does exactly this. We have from Buffalo, NY through NYC to NJ and up to Toronto.
CandyMan
what do you mean by “light”? Are you asking for the cost of laying the cable?
Yeah, it’s quite expensive. Candyman’s estimates look pretty decent for a rural longhaul run, but once you get into a dense population and area have have to plan distribution and begin adding splices, your costs can skyrocket. Here in Toledo, we’ve nearly completed a 2400 mile HFC (hybrid fiber-coax) build from the ground up. I believe the total tab for this thing is going to be right around 375 million bucks. That works out to a bit more than $150,000/mile.
The “buildings” that Candyman has mentioned are typically called “head-ends” and I really can’t address the cost of those guys except to say it’s considerable. I’m more on the distribution side of it. My work starts at the head-end and ends with the user.
Candyman, I’m currently an engineer with these guys, http://www.teamsigma.com
Hrmm. Ok, so assuming no splices, if I bought a pair of (presumably cheap-o) $1500 single-mode media converters (100Base-TX to 100Base-FX) from blackbox.com, how far could these reliably send a single 100mbit signal?
Single-mode is longhaul, and BlackBox claim up to 60 kms (37 miles) for full-duplex 100 Mbit Ethernet. I see no reason to doubt that figure, Black Box is cheap but usually reliable enough.
S. Norman
Good deal UncleBeer… I am in IT Application Support/New Technologies at http://www.telergy.net
CandyMan