[gaia] Gigabit/fibre networks, worth documenting/comparing experiences and lessons beyond the usual (market)

[Leandro Navarro <[e-mail]>]

Hi everyone, 

In the recent days I’ve seen several initiatives around fibre access infrastructure, 

* Some coming from rural communities such as:
 - this nice video documentary from a community effort in Scotland: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/09/video-documentary-looks-at-balquhidder-community-ftth-build-in-scotland.html
 - The well know B4RN community operator: https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/03/b4rn-helping-expand-1gbps-ftth-broadband-rural-cheshire.html 
 - Several other optical networks: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/five-projects-got-first-ever-european-broadband-award
 - Including guifi.net: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD3HYeD4Lm4
 - First nations such as http://knet.ca/ among others: https://www.internetsociety.org/events/indigenous-connectivity-summit/2017/presentations/ and related aspects of electricity, water, economic development and employment, etc.

* Traditional or new telcos such as https://www.gigaclear.com/ etc.

* Other players such as google fibre: https://fiber.googleblog.com/ In this article they discuss about lessons learned https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-google-fiber-is-high-speed-internets-most-successful-failure

The list is endless.

All seem successful in different ways, with different lessons learned about scale, local investment, infrastructure sharing like ducts and poles, cost reduction from the involvement of volunteers, involvement of content and service providers (googlefiber), etc. In the netcommons.eu project we have looked at different business and organisational models for community networks specifically, but there are other successful models that have socio-economic impact.

Would you find useful to compile a GAIA/IRTF document about good practices, lessons learned, to build high-speed/fibre/gigabit network infrastructures in challenging environments? which means beyond the last frontier of rural, remote, underdeveloped, underserved areas.

By the way, there is this upcoming related event: https://www.internetsociety.org/events/indigenous-connectivity-summit/2018/
The report from the previous edition is a recommended read: https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2018-01-04_ICS-Report-final.pdf

Cheers, 
--
Leandro Navarro
http://people.ac.upc.edu/leandro	 http://dsg.ac.upc.edu