Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

Sun Feb 10 20:18:22 UTC 2013

On 03-Feb-13 14:33, Scott Helms wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 2:53 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> Is it more expensive to home-run every home than to put splitters in the neighborhood? Yes. Is it enough more expensive that the tradeoffs cannot be overcome? I remain unconvinced.
> This completely depends on the area and the goals of the network.  In most cases for muni networks back hauling everything is more expensive.

Slightly more expensive in the short term, yes.  In the long term, no,
especially if you consider the opportunity costs of _not_ being able to
deploy new technologies in the future--something only home run dark
fiber can guarantee.

> Handing out connections at layer 1 is both more expensive and less efficient.  Its also extremely wasteful (which is why its more expensive) since your lowest unit you can sell is a fiber strand whether the end customer wants a 3 mbps connection or a gig its the same to the city.

So what?  How any particular fiber happens to be lit is irrelevant to
the muni--and it doesn't change their cost structure one iota.  Dark
fiber is dark fiber.

> I'm not saying you shouldn't sell dark fiber, I'm saying that in 99% of the cities you can't build a business model around doing just that unless your city doesn't want to break even on the build and maintenance.

As a private operator, no, you probably can't build a business model
around that.  A muni has different economics, though.  At the cost
levels being thrown around here, it doesn't seem like there would be
_any_ difficulty in breaking even, which is all a muni needs to do.

S

-- 
Stephen Sprunk         "God does not play dice."  --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723         "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS        dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking

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