Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Here in Maine, after seeing no strong proposals were being put forward by others, we went after American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to address a major lack of middle-mile infrastructure in the state. Verizon had stopped making new investments in Maine for nearly 10 years before pulling out and dumping a very old, very high maintenance copper plant on Fairpoint. It was nearly criminal. Even worse, the Fairpoint business plan was to continue to make large investments in copper ignoring the realities that fiber is the only way to reach areas in a cost effective way with such low population density. So the University of Maine System and Great Works Internet prepared a proposal for a public-private partnership to build out high capacity, diverse, middle-mile infrastructure in Maine; and instead of the University of Maine System or Great Works Internet managing it, we set it up so that a new independent private company would be created to manage the infrastructure and would be regulated as a public utility by the state; very similar to the power company model. The result is that Maine now has a new public utility classification of dark fiber provider, and a company building out that fiber. It's called Maine Fiber Company: http://www.mainefiberco.com/ The way Maine Fiber Company was setup was key. They're forbidden to offer lit services; so they're a dark fiber only provider. They're require to provide open access to the fiber at a fair and published rate to anyone interested. Since the build was subsidized in part by Recovery Act funds, the rates are low enough to encourage new services in the state. One of the big problems in a state like Maine, and probably the majority of the US, is that companies like Fairpoint and Time Warner Cable (the two providers in Maine) end up building out redundant infrastructure at great cost. Not redundant as in diverse, mind you, but literally running fiber on the same utility polls, taking the same path, and both going down when hit by a truck. Because areas of the state are very low population, they often can't justify building a diverse path, so historically, one accident could, and often has, taken out services for entire counties. For the last few years MFC has been working to build out the high capacity fiber rings described, and this summer we're finally at a point where people can begin making use of MFC infrastructure. For us, it means expanding our RE network, MaineREN, to interconnect the public universities in Maine. But for other service providers like Great Works Internet, it means being able to survive as Fairpoint tries to push out their competitors: See the following link for that story Fairpoint Bankruptcy Exacerbates Circuit War: http://www.pressherald.com/archive/fairpoint-bankruptcy-exacerbates-circuit-war_2009-11-12.html I think the model setup in Maine is something really powerful. It will drive down the price of delivering broadband significantly; it will open up and promote competition so that consumers aren't stuck paying premium rates for 20th century services, and it will provide much needed redundancy of services. It also helps the bigger companies like Fairpoint and Time Warner Cable if they're willing to make use of it (to my recollection Fairpoint decided to not even bid for the build out; that's how opposed they were to it) Personally, I think this is a model that might be useful to replicate at a municipal level as well: Dark fiber to the home as a public utility; service provider of your choice to light it up. I think we're a few years away from seeing that kind of effort, though, but after a few years of seeing the effect that Maine Fiber Company will have on the state, there might be people open to the idea. For now, I'm thankful to have the middle-mile taken care of. I know a few other states decided to go after recovery act money for broadband; does anyone know if something like the Maine model is being replicated anywhere else in the US? On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA, bypassing telco fiber in many urban areas such as Los Angeles/Southern California. There are now companies that exist solely to construct E-Rate fiber. Sunesys is one such company. E-Rate builds out fiber to schools and libraries, and the telcos apparently have lobbied to ensure that a lateral to a library, for example, does not become a local fiber hub, but the backbone fiber can be used by anyone, with laterals built to order. I do not work for any of these E-Rate companies, but have discovered their potential use for connecting my network locations together. On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile. In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets: Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint. Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex. I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost. It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least. Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD. This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion). A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly. I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more fair access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure. Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere. Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might
RE: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
-Original Message- From: david peahi [mailto:davidpe...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 1:54 PM To: Jared Mauch Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA Lunch lady Doris has added a fiber splice kit to her collection of hairnets... Chuck
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
It varies from state to state ... In Maine, we've run an E-rate filing consortium for several years that uses E-rate funds and makes up the difference with a state telecommunications tax so schools and libraries don't need to pay for service. Up until a year or two ago, Verizon was always contracted to provide transport services exclusively; this was mainly T1 and ATM circuits. Unfortunately, we were at a point where requests for more bandwidth than 1.5 Mbps were either being ignored, or being delivered via multiple T1 drops (hundreds of locations with dual T1 connections). Of course this was a big cash flow for the ILEC, but our K12 schools being connected at 1.5 or 3 Mbps in 2010 was not acceptable to us (especially when they were still able to bill 500-800 a month per circuit). In response to not being able to get movement on newer transport, we opened up the process to competitive bid and got services from other providers in the state depending on location; this resulted in Fairpoint delivering Ethernet over copper services to remain competitive with Time Warner Cable and others, and ultimately Fairpoint still was awarded the vast majority of contracts; without the competitive process that wouldn't have happened. Most upgrades were modest; 1.5M locations moved up to 10M, and ATM sites moved to a verity of rates between 20 and 100M depending on the size of the location, but an upgrade is an upgrade, and 1.5 Mbps today is unusable for a single person, let alone an entire school. With the build-out of MaineREN, our facilities based RE network, we've picked up a few large schools directly because it's cheaper to do so; instead of schools receiving 100M service, we can deliver 1G for less money, and re-direct funds to increase our transit capacity. Maine Fiber Company and the MaineREN expansion will make that an attractive option for more schools, but only a handful that are directly along the route. To make sure Fairpoint, Time Warner, and others were able to realize ROI, we signed multi-year contracts with them. So in our case, E-rate has actually helped the private sector considerably, and we don't see that really changing. It's not in the interest of a state to compete with commercial providers if they want the state to have a healthy market. It was also the primary driver for us to push for the creation of a new public utility for dark fiber rather than having the University own everything, which is the direction most seem to go. That said, every market is different. The biggest problem I've seen is that as soon as E-rate is mentioned the price inflates because providers start to drool over public funding. Meanwhile everyone wants to pay lower taxes; seems counter-productive. Don't get me started on E-rate consultants, most of them take a % cut of the awarded funds as compensation for filling out federal forms that can be completed in 30 min. Thankfully that's been limited to some extent here by the filing consortium, but I've heard stories from other states about some of these guys pulling in close to 7 digits. On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 1:53 PM, david peahi davidpe...@gmail.com wrote: I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA, bypassing telco fiber in many urban areas such as Los Angeles/Southern California. There are now companies that exist solely to construct E-Rate fiber. Sunesys is one such company. E-Rate builds out fiber to schools and libraries, and the telcos apparently have lobbied to ensure that a lateral to a library, for example, does not become a local fiber hub, but the backbone fiber can be used by anyone, with laterals built to order. I do not work for any of these E-Rate companies, but have discovered their potential use for connecting my network locations together. On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
- Original Message - From: valdis.kletni...@vt.edu To: Michael Painter tvhaw...@shaka.com Cc: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 5:35 PM Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts. ~ Ummhmm. More and more lately, I'm reminded of a saying my old, now deceased, friend used to use when talking about poker in Milwaukee. We knew it was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug marcelp...@gmail.com wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder joseph.sny...@gmail.com wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug marcelp...@gmail.com wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
For those who didn't Google it. http://www.ftthcouncil.org/en/knowledge-center/case-studies/amsterdam-city-fiber-project-analysis -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder joseph.sny...@gmail.com wrote: Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder joseph.sny...@gmail.com wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug marcelp...@gmail.com wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
We've been funding it for years without getting it because of the stupid way in which it has been funded. I suggest you look into USF in more detail. Owen On Mar 24, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Joseph Snyder wrote: Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder joseph.sny...@gmail.com wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug marcelp...@gmail.com wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
USF is more of a free for all get ISPs to build in 80% of the locations that nobody would build in their right mind vs a mini monopoly model for l2 that I equate this with. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Owen DeLong o...@delong.com wrote: We've been funding it for years without getting it because of the stupid way in which it has been funded. I suggest you look into USF in more detail. Owen On Mar 24, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Joseph Snyder wrote: Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder joseph.sny...@gmail.com wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug marcelp...@gmail.com wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
RE: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
There's more than just the cost of fiber -- there's also the cost of locating and taxes. Any maintenance if there's cuts and the costs if you need to move the fiber for a project. I've been many times where you were, frustrated that I didn't know the dark fiber options for a potential opportunity, but you have to remind yourself don't have a *right* to know where *private* fiber is. It's not just the physical property, the lack of documentation is a competitive advantage. Frank -Original Message- From: Luke S. Crawford [mailto:l...@prgmr.com] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:59 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) snip I'm trying to do just that right now, actually. 55 s. market to 250 Stockton in San Jose. I dono if it's five thousand feet, but it's not twice that. The cheapest fiber pair I can rent from someone else I've found is $5K/month; the cheapest build-out I've found is $150K, so even if I'm only using one pair in that, if I can get money at anything like a reasonable interest rate, if I plan on sticking around more than 5 years it makes sense to lay new fiber. Which is weird, as this is probably one of the densest masses of existing fiber in the world, going from a 'center of the universe' data center to a minor data center. snip The big problem here, I think, is that it's quite difficult to figure out who has what fiber where, and even once you know who owns it, to find out who to talk to at a company that might know what 'dark fiber' is, much less know how much they might rent it to you for. I spent several hours last month on the phone with XO and I kept getting redirected to someone trying to sell me a T1. I've got other projects right now, but once I'm done with that, I'm going to be spending a bunch of time pestering the PUC and other people that might know who owns fiber between here and there. snip But from the amount of time it takes to just find someone at those companies that even knows what dark fiber is? I think I might be better off putting in the effort to do whatever regulatory red tape is required to own fiber in the ground. So yeah; really? in my corner of the world, the problem is the same problem you see everywhere else in this industry. Any useful information is guarded jealously. In this case, where does the fiber run? I mean, I have pretty good maps of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network; but the private networks are impossible.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 02:42:36PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote: I've been many times where you were, frustrated that I didn't know the dark fiber options for a potential opportunity, but you have to remind yourself don't have a *right* to know where *private* fiber is. It's not just the physical property, the lack of documentation is a competitive advantage. Considering that nearly all of this fiber runs over public right of ways granted by the government (and sometimes through the use of force by the government) it's not really private in the sense that it would be if you bury fiber on land you own, or on land owned by private individuals that have given you the right to run fiber over or through the land through some voluntary exchange of value. The public right of ways are created by the government as a public good, and as such, I think the people have a right to know what goes on in them. (Actually, I was talking to a far more experienced friend the other day, and he says that I should be able to contact the PUC and get exactly this data, though often this, too, is somewhat difficult, so when I re-start this project in a few months, that's the direction I am going to attack first.) Legal issues aside, treating a lack of documentation as a competitive advantage makes any transaction vastly less efficient when you consider both parties. I don't do business that way, and when I have a choice? I don't do business with companies that do. Yes, it is legal, and I am not suggesting that should change. But it's still an asshole move that (from a perspective that considers both parties) destroys value. I talked to the silicon valley power people (the operators of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network) and they gave me a cost per mile and a very detailed map (down to what side of the street the fiber is on) - they wouldn't let me have a copy of the map that actually documented the 'pull boxes', but still, it was enough information that I could look at a building and tell pretty quickly if I was wasting their time or not by getting a quote. Talking to anyone else? no maps (or ridiculously vague maps) and no cost per mile. I have to pick two endpoints and ask how much. In my case, the endpoints depend almost entirely on how much it costs, this means I waste a whole lot of salesperson time, and my own time. It's a vastly less efficient way to do business.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Yes, I find it quite amusing that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these subsidies going? what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam. Yup. I'm always shocked by how naive people are; the telcos did a fantastic job on this front. So few people realize what's actually happened. http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm This is one of the clearest summaries of how we've been taken for hundreds of billions of dollars by telecom companies that promised to provide the Information Superhighway; while it has some clear bias, it is probably the best summarization of how this all went down, and who, why, and how. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again. - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Randy Bush wrote: what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam. randy Really. This is from the Governor's Hawaii Broadband Initiative speedtest website: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 02:18:26PM -1000, Michael Painter wrote: Really. This is from the Governor's Hawaii Broadband Initiative speedtest website: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. Just one more nail in the coffin of the word average. - Matt -- I seem to have my life in reverse. When I was a wee'un, it seemed perfectly normal that one could pick up the phone and speak to anybody else in the world who also has a phone. Now I'm older and more experienced, I'm amazed that this could possibly work. -- Peter Corlett, in the Monastery
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts. pgpYJFvKcg2Ep.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-open-access-fiber.ars -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said: The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average. That's the national definition of broadband that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute percent of people with access to residential broadband, they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:08:11 -0400, Marcel Plug said: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. Cue somebody denouncing projects like this done for the common good as socialism in 5.. 4.. 3.. :) pgpEIK62jcmiP.pgp Description: PGP signature
last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile. In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets: Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint. Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex. I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost. It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least. Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD. This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion). A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly. I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more fair access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure. Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere. Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it. - Jared
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile. In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets: Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint. Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex. I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost. It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least. Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD. This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion). A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly. I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more fair access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure. Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere. Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it. - Jared I agree that barrier of entry is what is stifling competition. Hardware, cabling, even software is relatively inexpensive. Opening things up to competition is what drives innovation in the field. I think a good example of this is in the datacenter space. You usually have the same group of suspects who provide internet access for the home/business delivering service there at a fraction of what their retail price is. I know some
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:12 PM, chris wrote: Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens? They have used the past decades or century to establish these assets. - Jared
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:12 PM, chris wrote: Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens? They have used the past decades or century to establish these assets. What is there that's worth having that isn't controlled by a big company of some sort?
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot). Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet. That cable has 144 strands. You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost? WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think... - Jared
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
This sharing can be done at a layer-3 or as you say at the time slot level or lambda level. It's no different than what is happening with the copper already. It's not like they have to give it away for free. They just have to offer it to other carriers at cost. This will hopefully provide more of a competitive market. But I don't see Verizon giving into it, nor Comcast or any other provider that has fiber. Verizon campaigned hard to have fiber removed from the equal access legalize so like most of these other large companies, they don't want to share their new toy with the other children. -John Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:24 PM, Keegan Holley wrote: What is there that's worth having that isn't controlled by a big company of some sort? This is done in some places. eg: http://www.allband.org/ Some states place barriers to establishing a cooperative. Call your state PUC, there are good people there who will tell you about the unserved areas of the state. Your universal service fund tax has not made PSTN available to 100% of the US. The Allband service area just got the telephony services the rest of the country has enjoyed for decades. There are also many independent phone companies nationwide. Some are comfortable in their areas, others are pushing to expand. - Jared
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot). Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet. That cable has 144 strands. You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost? I agree, but what if it's not as simple as a bunch of strands in a conduit. What if the plant is part of some sort of multiplexed network or GPON solution. That's alot harder to share with another carrier . But yes if it's simple stands of glass not plugged into anything in particular it can be shared just like copper. Alot of the fiber plant out there isn't used this way though. WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think... This is different than sharing cables. Any long distance carrier is still free to purchase service from any LEC. The term sharing fiber seemed to imply that it's freely transferable from one company to the next. It largely isn't though, which is why I think the FCC hasn't touched it yet.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
If it's done on a box owned by the incumbent then sharing has evolved into giving away free service to competitors. It's different when copper pairs into a house could be latched onto anyone's switch. Once you start requiring a carrier to give away capacity in it's network that's different. Also, diversity/redundancy becomes dodgy at this point. Not that the billions of dollars they are making didn't come into the discussion, but it seems like its more complicated to share fiber access than it was to share copper pairs. 2012/3/22 John Kreno john.kr...@gmail.com This sharing can be done at a layer-3 or as you say at the time slot level or lambda level. It's no different than what is happening with the copper already. It's not like they have to give it away for free. They just have to offer it to other carriers at cost. This will hopefully provide more of a competitive market. But I don't see Verizon giving into it, nor Comcast or any other provider that has fiber. Verizon campaigned hard to have fiber removed from the equal access legalize so like most of these other large companies, they don't want to share their new toy with the other children. -John Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
RE: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
-Original Message- From: Keegan Holley [mailto:keegan.hol...@sungard.com] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:41 PM To: Jared Mauch Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot). Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet. That cable has 144 strands. You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost? I agree, but what if it's not as simple as a bunch of strands in a conduit. What if the plant is part of some sort of multiplexed network or GPON solution. That's alot harder to share with another carrier . But yes if it's simple stands of glass not plugged into anything in particular it can be shared just like copper. Alot of the fiber plant out there isn't used this way though. WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think... This is different than sharing cables. Any long distance carrier is still free to purchase service from any LEC. The term sharing fiber seemed to imply that it's freely transferable from one company to the next. It largely isn't though, which is why I think the FCC hasn't touched it yet. -- Verizon has no problem delivering service via fiber with a DSX-1 or Ethernet handoff. We simply want that service backhauled to us just like all our customers with service over copper with DSX-1 or Ethernet handoff.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. PON (e.g. FIOS) is similar to CWDM. The PO in PON is Passive Optical. As in a glass prism-like device with no electronics. You remember prisms from high school physics, right? Beam of white light into a glass triangle and it splits off into a rainbow of colors. Well, with CWDM the different color sources all being joined by the prism into a beam of white light. And then split back out at the other end. So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the prism sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam. Key is: it's just a piece of glass. A very finely machined piece of glass to be sure, but no electronics. Or, you could share at a different level: ethernet packets. Unbundle the local ethernet service from the Internet service. $X for the local ethernet service to the local concentration point at whatever capacity, $Y for the Internet/tv/phone services connected at the concentration point. Or buy some other service from another vendor at the concentration point. But you don't get to double-dip the billing: $X includes the cost to take the packets off at the concentration point; the service vendor doesn't pay again. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 01:31:47PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote: You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot). Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet. That cable has 144 strands. You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost? WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think... I'm trying to do just that right now, actually. 55 s. market to 250 Stockton in San Jose. I dono if it's five thousand feet, but it's not twice that. The cheapest fiber pair I can rent from someone else I've found is $5K/month; the cheapest build-out I've found is $150K, so even if I'm only using one pair in that, if I can get money at anything like a reasonable interest rate, if I plan on sticking around more than 5 years it makes sense to lay new fiber. Which is weird, as this is probably one of the densest masses of existing fiber in the world, going from a 'center of the universe' data center to a minor data center. Even the $5K/month rate isn't bad. If they asked for a third of that, I'd bite even though I don't need that much capacity quite yet. The big problem here, I think, is that it's quite difficult to figure out who has what fiber where, and even once you know who owns it, to find out who to talk to at a company that might know what 'dark fiber' is, much less know how much they might rent it to you for. I spent several hours last month on the phone with XO and I kept getting redirected to someone trying to sell me a T1. I've got other projects right now, but once I'm done with that, I'm going to be spending a bunch of time pestering the PUC and other people that might know who owns fiber between here and there. As for equipment cost, in my corner of the world, I can get used cisco 15540 systems for what I consider to be not very much money, and 32 10G waves is plenty for what I'm doing. I mean, they eat way more power than is required, and 10G/wave is not great these days, but if I could sell a reasonable number of waves, even at a whole order of magnitude below market, I'd be in good shape. The whole project seems dramatically cheaper than lit services. At quoted prices, 10G waves over the same distance cost about 1/2 what a full pair of dark fiber costs. Now, the big problem with the build out? as far as I can tell, I've gotta be a carrier to actually own fiber in the ground. From what I understand, that's not out of the question for me, but it's definitely a lot of work and red tape. There are, however, companies that will do a build out for you (of course, charging you for it up front) then they will lease you the fiber at a very low yearly rate - right now, that looks like the second-best option, where the best option is hunting down the owners of all the dead bundles of fiber going into the meetme room.(250 Stockton is ex-enron, it's got bundles coming in from MFN, quest, global crossing, MCI, enron broadband xo and others. I'd bet money that if I had the kind of access to the meetme at 55 s. Market that I have at 250 Stockton I could start shining light down empty strands and I'd see some of it come out the other side.) But from the amount of time it takes to just find someone at those companies that even knows what dark fiber is? I think I might be better off putting in the effort to do whatever regulatory red tape is required to own fiber in the ground. So yeah; really? in my corner of the world, the problem is the same problem you see everywhere else in this industry. Any useful information is guarded jealously. In this case, where does the fiber run? I mean, I have pretty good maps of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network; but the private networks are impossible.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 10:12 AM, chris wrote: On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). Yes, I find it quite amusing that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile. Yes, at some point, we need to recognize that LMI (Last Mile Infrastructure) is and likely always will be a natural monopoly in all but the most densely populated areas (and actually even in many of those). THe market simply won't support the costs of deploying duplicate infrastructure installed by multiple providers. Given this fact, the only way to ensure competition in the services arena is to divorce the infrastructure from the services and require an independent operator of the infrastructure to make it available on an equal basis to all service providers. In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets: One reason the fiber plant should be treated differently is that we should learn from the mistakes we made with copper and we shouldn't continue to subsidize corporations to build out infrastructure that extends their ability to block competitors and should, instead insist that subsidized infrastructure is deployed in such a manner as to benefit all and support healthy competition for the services market. It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least. WHile I agree with you, the situation is already somewhat inverted in the US in that the existing USF subsidies have now made it more cost effective to build advanced networks into rural low-density subscriber bases than into moderately populated areas. I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more fair access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure. The mechanism I have described above has been deployed in Sweden for some time now and is working out quite well from what I hear. It's also being tried in Australia now, much to the consternation of Telstra, but, it seems to be going well for the residents and businesses. Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere. +1 I do not understand this aversion to government having other sources of revenue besides direct taxation. If government can earn money from infrastructure it built with taxpayer money by leasing it to corporations or others, so long as it doesn't interfere with the original purpose for which the taxpayers funded its construction, I think this should absolutely be allowed and even encouraged. Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Mar 22, 2012, at 10:17 AM, Jared Mauch wrote: On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:12 PM, chris wrote: Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens? They have used the past decades or century to establish these assets. - Jared 1. Do not mistake a large telco for a communications company or an entity that considers itself in the communications business. They are not and do not. They are very large law firms and lobbying organizations that happen to have significant telecommunications infrastructure. One of the key differentiators of the internet is that it is not dominated as a battleground for lawyers and diplomats, but, rather is worked out between cooperating and competing entities as a (relatively) unregulated business transaction. 2. Because companies are allowed to own infrastructure and sell services over that infrastructure and in many cases without being required to make that (subsidized) infrastructure available to other services providers. 3. Because it is very expensive to build out the infrastructure to a given area and the maximum revenue potential from it is limited to a value unlikely to support 2x or more the infrastructure build-out cost, thus resulting in a sort of natural monopoly because it is cost effective to build out if you have a reasonable chance of capturing ~100% of the revenue, but, much less so if you are faced with the possibility of capturing 50% or less of the revenue.[1] Owen [1] Comparing across topologies is not as valid as the carriers would like you to believe. While the end services being offered share significant similarities in a converged digital world, they still retain unique properties that make certain things more optimal for different purposes. Consider the number of places in the US that have more than one cable provider or more than one DSL provider or more than one PON provider. These are few and far between and usually only reflect the very densest population centers.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:40:27 -0700, Owen DeLong said: Yes, I find it quite amusing that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) pgprqO941xUC3.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 3:11 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote: On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:40:27 -0700, Owen DeLong said: Yes, I find it quite amusing that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these subsidies going? I live in rural BFE where most of my neighbors are still dialing in, and the local providers have no $$ incentive to build out here. Greg
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
2012/3/22 William Herrin b...@herrin.us On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch ja...@puck.nether.net On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote: I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the prism sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam. So who get's the keys the the cabinet it resides in? The LEC? All of the CLECs? The FCC? Who's responsible for maintaining the box given it's now shared. Who takes legal responsibility for outages caused by things done to this magical prism you speak of? In the LD to LEC carrier model you can use whatever you want, but this is different from what the FCC intended when they forced the incumbents to share copper plant. Also PON and WDM are very different actually, but that's beside the point. Once the incumbent has to permit access to their nodes the CLECs become customers. Copper pairs followed a different model because they could be used by anyone at the whim of hte customer. Not all fiber based networks are implemented that way.
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 7:16 PM, Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: 2012/3/22 William Herrin b...@herrin.us On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley keegan.hol...@sungard.com wrote: Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs. So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the prism sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam. So who get's the keys the the cabinet it resides in? The LEC? All of the CLECs? The FCC? Who's responsible for maintaining the box given it's now shared. Who takes legal responsibility for outages caused by things done to this magical prism you speak of? A fiber wavelength in the described PON scenario is operationally identical to a dedicated fiber strand or a dedicated copper pair with respect to management and connection. There's a physical wire coming out at each end which is connected to equipment with lights it. The problem is reduced to the already solved one of how to share copper pairs in a single cable. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin her...@dirtside.com b...@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. .. Web: http://bill.herrin.us/ Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
Yes, I find it quite amusing that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these subsidies going? what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam. randy
