What does it take to run a major ISP? (cable installation, power consumption, etc.)

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to find information about the setup / infrastructure costs for ISPs. I have a bunch of questions that that I would like to ask - questions that I haven’t been able to find consistent, current and reliable answers to yet.

I don’t need anyone to try and answer ALL of my questions on their own. Instead, I think it would be more useful if some of you could just point me to reliable resources that already cover these questions, directly or indirectly. Resources that allow me to research these questions more in depth. But if you would like to provide an answer or two within the thread, I won’t say no :).

And before you ask - No, I am not thinking of starting my own ISP :). Rather, I’m curious about the industry and would be very interested in finding answers to these questions.

So… here’s what has been on my mind:

  • What are all the different types of “cable” that carry internet connections? (Optical, Analog, ???)

  • What are the costs to lay the cable over different terrain and what is the load capacity for each type of cable?

  • Is there any new technology on the horizon such as a new type of high-capacity cable or something that will boost the capacity of current cables?

  • How much power is needed to keep these lines lit up?

  • What kind of costs do ISPs incur after they’ve paid for the installation of the cables? In other words, what is the basic average maintenance (per MegaBIT per day) for bandwidth provided by an ISP? Can such a cost ratio be calculated?

  • Why are North American ISPs only able to provide roughly 5Mbit connections to home users? Do they need to install more/new cable to increase current speeds? Or do they have the ability right now to light up the dark fiber and provide higher bandwidth?

  • If ISPs can provide more bandwidth right now, what is the potential bandwidth maximum that they could provide to most of their customers? What would be the expeced increase in subscription fees?

  • Besides the cables, home modems and routers, what other kinds of equipment is needed to provide basic ISP service? What is sitting “inside of an ISP”?

  • Why do I need an ISP to connect to the internet? Why can’t I be my own ISP so I can access more bandwidth?

Thanks so much to any patient individual who has read the whole post and can help me with these questions :slight_smile:

a.

2

It’s OK, guys. I got an awsome reply to these questions in this post: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15463946

Just thought I would include it for anyone who read the questions and was wondering what the answers were as well.