The waiting list is due to the conduit run being done by a different contractor than the actual home install. Aliant used mostly Nova Scotia companies for the work, and it is all contractors including the home installs, while other companies are in house. There are potential legal issues with customers running conduit, my guess is that they wouldn't want to encourage it. If a customer digs and hits something that's an issue, and I also have conduit running onto the road allowance and attached to the pole without explicit permission to do so.
A customer could in theory do it legally -- i.e. call the "Dig" hotline, leap the bureaucracy hoops, sign the correct dotted lines, and get the greenlights, to install conduit for a driveway/backyard security or lighting system -- and use a conduit big enough that more wires can go through it, like future fiber. Bell should be obligated to be able to accelerate the installation of fiber via such legal customer-supplied conduit, or developer-supplied conduit (new subdivisions, etc) without throwing a brick wall at those.
What matters is that it should be possible via multiple legal routes, and favour shorter waiting lists whenever city/customer works to make it easier, fewer brick walls (a form of incentivization that reduces average cost-per-sub without completely preventing them from getting fiber if they don't want to do the work). In addition, beyond this, the
Google Fiber City Checklist is a good template for a city wanting to welcome fiber at lower cost per subscriber.
There's a lot of documents on the Internet teaching customers how to install conduit (simple common PVC pipe, and gentle curved pipe fittings for the angles) -- fiber conduit installation is a project often easier than installing a large mains powered garden lighting system, or a large sprinkler system, or certain kinds of underground wireless dog fences. While fiber providers don't necessarily encourage, fiber-related forums (e.g. dslreports) are full of customers installing conduits for their fiber providers. The locations of the pre-spliced fiber on the poles are sometimes obvious, so customers know where to direct the conduit to. Of course, the "Dig" hotline should be used, and in practice, PVC conduit can be installed shallow along a garden next to existing sprinkler line or similar.
Incentivization of customer to do conduit themselves, is merely simply the longer waiting list for conduit-required installs, unless a conduit already exists -- that automatically reduces costs since the customer accelerates the conduit, eliminating a truck roll. In some juridisctions, this practice appears widespread based on the forum postings in some fiber forums. I would not be surprised that it has already halved the cost of FTTH final-wiring installs in many cases.
When there are ways for city, builder, and customer to simultaneously make it easier for a fiber provider -- and in combination with the new install methodologies like brand new pre-spliced fiber rollout systems, and lower-skilled installers, it no longer
has to cost $2500 per subscriber for the detached house hookup anymore. This isn't the 1950s where phone handsets used to be hardwired to the wall and customers weren't allowed to touch in-house phone wiring...
