A runaway number — $430 billion to wire the US with fiber is WRONG
Hm. Every once in a while the media get a number in their teeth and they run with it -- without checking to see whether it's real. My hero Susan Crawford is pretty excited about the Australian fiber proposal -- you can read about her support for a US version of their plan HERE and HERE. A payday quote -- "simply put, a digital economy requires fiber."
Skeptics have been bashing away on the cost -- and have done some bad arithmetic to arrive at the number, $430 billion. They take the population of Australia, divide it into the population of the US and scale up the Australian number -- TaDahh! $430 billion. A boatload of money and quite the stick to bash away with.
I figure that number a little differently. Verizon says it costs $796 (let's say $800) to pass a house with fiber these days -- read that estimate HERE. And Wik.Answers.com says there are 111,000,000 households in America -- click HERE for that number. So here comes my powerful analysis...
$800 (cost to pass a house, per Verizon) times 111,000,000 (households, per Wiki.Answers) = $88,800,000,000 ($88.8 billion)
So here's my attempt to stop that $430 billion meme before it gets too far. I'm not saying $88 billion is right, I'm just saying that $430 billion is wrong.
Go Susan go!
