I am not sure if what I am going to propose is possible, but …
I live on a drive, it ends at the top of a small hill at my house. The road my drive T’s into has a fiber optic ‘main’, or ‘backbone’, I am not sure the proper name. This was laid years ago for schools and hospitals, for www2 I believe the workers called it, but it was supposed to be accessible to the community after a few years.
I would like to build a server if possible to access the main, without an ISP, since none offer in my area. There are a couple new neighborhoods that have it for a few homes, but nothing significant and nothing near me.
Is such a setup possible? Can I build/purchase&upgrade an older, but functional server that can connect me?
Thank you
Is this technically possible, probably, is it something you can actually do, probably not.
So fiber is point to point, meaning that they either would need to splice in your gear, or create a node at your location.
If there is dark fiber in that line, it may be available to lease but you will need to find out who exactly owns the fibers and see if they want to create a place you can tie into.
Thank you. I will look into that.
My only other option is to pay for it to be run from the att routing building about 8 blocks away. I am not sure how much it costs to lay, but I am guessing more then I want to spend.
Chances are good that is also the less expensive option vs trying to connect to backbone/dark fiber.
should be fun educating myself at least 
regardless of where it runs, you can only make connections at vaults. they may be buried with only the lid findable. or they may be above ground, or if it is Ariel they may be on a pole. BUT, if you can find one of those you should be able to get the owner info from it and contact them.
a lot of smaller communities did a ‘shared path’ fiber infrastructure. so there may be multiple owners, but the info in the box will be for the owner that is able to do repairs.
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@tyrecies i was wondering what did you find out about fiber access. How much did ATT want to charge you for fiber and where you able to connect to the dark fiber.
Not yet. They will not speak about it over any phone number, including business. I do live in California and SB 378 says I have the right to say micro trench a line to the ATT routing center for my area, which is about 4 blocks and only have to pay reasonable fees.
My current plan is to get my permits from the city for the project and then go knocking on the Routing centers door and speak to one of the Techs and hopefully get a meeting with their site manager.
tyrecies
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Keep us posteded. My ISP just added symmetrical internet, and their consumer plans start at 400 megabits and go all the way to 2000 megabits. If you are willing to pay for it, you can get 6,000 megabit services, but I imagine that would cost a lot.
Frontier fiber optic service to the home in my area is $109.99 / month for 2gb up and 2gb down. This is residential service and it’s to the home and not to a node then copper the rest of the way. I know they were offering 5gb at one point.
As far as I know once they get the fiber to the premise then it’s just a matter of tuning / equipment to get the faster speeds plus paying them more for it!
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