What I think you're getting at is if they had 25% of the money to expand their footprint tenfold, then they could have expanded it by 2.5x with their own money, and if they could have done that then they would have already been expanding.
They could have investors who provided the cash for the sake of the BEAD application because a grant makes a return more likely. Or maybe they had access to the money all along and just sat on it to see if they could get four times the value by adding government cheese into the mix. I never got involved in BEAD, so I couldn't speak to other possibilities, but Chuck seems to say the match could have been other assets besides cash. I wonder how creative they allowed people get with that. ________________________________ From: AF <[email protected]> on behalf of Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 11:51 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] PON and UPC Talking about the match. I see BEAD projects that would expand the awardee's footprint more than 10x. No way they could fund even the 25% organically. Or are you saying the 25% match is an illusion because the 75% is actually 200%? On October 6, 2026 10:26:59 AM CDT, "[email protected]" <[email protected]> wrote: BEAD is a grant, not a loan. Match is 25%. And our award is like 2X the cost of construction. How do you default on a grant? ________________________________ From: AF <[email protected]> on behalf of Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 7:08 AM To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] PON and UPC I’ve noticed a lot of medium to large FTTH providers are very heavily leveraged, all their fiber assets are pledged as collateral to get loans to build more. I would guess as BEAD rolls out, the copays are also borrowed money. My gut tells me if revenue fails to meet projections there could be a lot of loan defaults. Which gets me to my question. In the popular fiber architectures, what parts are generic and can easily be used by a new owner? The glass itself would seem to be useful no matter what. But what about ONTs, OLTs, and customer prem equipment like routers? And other headend equipment like routers. What happens if a fiber equipment manufacturer like Calix goes though a bankruptcy or liquidation (thinking about the Cambium situation). Is this stuff all proprietary, closed ecosystem? From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett Sent: Tuesday, October 6, 2026 7:55 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] PON and UPC I've made the same switch myself. PON is definitely easier. Everyone (including me) likes Ethernet when they're new at it because it seems more simple and familiar, but PON is easier to manage. I'd keep Ethernet around for enterprise stuff, but bulk tier3 services are better off on PON. There was also a business case for Ethernet in a rural area where you might have small clusters of potential customers. You could add a 24 port or 48 port Ethernet switch a lot more cheaply than adding an OLT, but in the past decade you could also use Ubiquiti's UFiber in that same scenario. Or use XGS-PON where you can get long reach by adjusting min and differential range and minding your link budget. In that case you can look at it as the cost of adding ports on a central system vs the cost of adding a new point-of-presence. In other words, I think the tech based argument for Ethernet was at least partially wrong from the start, and the most compelling business case for it has evaporated. I also see Ethernet in open access networks where they put each provider in a VLAN and each ISP is just providing a router and customer service. I won't go on that rant today, but that model seems incredibly dumb in my eyes. -Adam On Mon, Oct 5, 2026 at 5:22 PM Nate Burke <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: I don't have any PON in the field, only Active, but I'm curious why you're converting your active network to a PON network? Network Management? Future Scalability with existing fiber? What's driving the switch. I'm genuinely curious. On 10/5/2026 3:53 PM, Jason McKemie wrote: > I have an active optical network that I would like to convert to PON. > Unfortunately, the connectors at the cabinet are all UPC. Am I asking > for a headache if I connect those customers via an APC to UPC cable vs > re-splicing everything at the cabinet? The lengths from the cabinet to > the customer locations are all less than a mile. I'll be splicing on a > new APC connector at the customer locations. > -- AF mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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