Muni Fiber (was: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc)

Thu Mar 22 17:51:32 UTC 2012

----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Kreno" <john.kreno at 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.

Oh, it's *much* worse than that, John.

The *right*, long term solution to all of these problems is for 
municipalities to do the fiber build, properly engineered, and even 
subbed out to a contractor to build and possibly operate... 

offering *only* layer 1 service at wholesale.  Any comer can light up
each city's pop, and offer retail service over the FTTH fiber to that 
customer at whatever rate they like, and the city itself doesn't offer 
layer 2 or 3 service at all.

High-speed optical data *is* the next natural monopoly, after power 
and water/sewer delivery, and it's time to just get over it and do it
right.

As you might imagine, this environment -- one where the LEC doesn't own
the physical plant -- scares the ever-lovin' daylights out of Verizon
(among others), so much so that they *have gotten it made illegal* in 
several states, and they're lobbying to expand that footprint.

See, among other sites: http://www.muninetworks.org/

As you might imagine, I am a fairly strong proponent of muni layer 1 --
or even layer 2, where the municipality supplies (matching) ONTs, and
services have to fit over GigE -- fiber delivery of high-speed data
service.

I believe Google agrees with me.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land Rover DII
St Petersburg FL USA      http://photo.imageinc.us             +1 727 647 1274