Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

Mon Feb 11 21:10:48 UTC 2013

On 11-Feb-13 13:13, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen at sprunk.org>
>> Sure, almost nobody asks for dark fiber today because they know it costs several orders of magnitude more than a T1 or whatever. However, if the price for dark fiber were the same (or lower), latent demand would materialize. Why would I pay through the nose for a T1 when I can light the fiber myself with 10GE for $20/mo?
> This was part of my argument, yes.
> h
> And it even occurred to me over the weekend that this will reduce the engineering charges to get me onto the already-built backbone loops:
>
> They don't need to build to my *CO*, just to a splice at the edge of my city, and *I* can backhaul the uplinks in myself.

Good point.  I missed that since I was applying the same general model
to the (suburban) municipality where I live, which already has no
shortage of fiber _to the CO_.  In the rural case originally described,
reducing the "middle mile" problem helps too.

>> What you're missing is that in this model, _every_ connection is L1 from the fiber owner's perspective. Let service providers worry about L2 and above.
> In fairness to Scott, he didn't *miss* it, he simply has his "feasible" slider set to a different place than I/we do.

I disagree; he is obsessing over how to reduce the amount of fiber,
which is a tiny fraction of the total cost, and that leads him to invite
all sorts of L2 problems into the picture that, for a purely L1
provider, simply would not apply.

>> Why would the ISP "have to build and maintain a lot of
>> infrastructure"?  All they need is a fiber-capable Ethernet switch in a colo to turn up their first customer. That's a lot simpler than trying to turn up their first customer via an ILEC's DSLAM, for instance.
> Well, that means *they have to build out in my city*; I can't aggregate L1 and backhaul it to them.

As the saying goes, you "must be present to win."  If there's _any_
fiber available to the CO, there shouldn't be much trouble getting an
ISP to show up when they have ridiculously cheap access to your customer
base.

>> There's nothing wrong with  the muni operating a L2 (or even L3) carrier of last resort, just to ensure that _some_ useful service is available to residents. However, it should (a) be priced high enough to attract competitors and (b) be a distinct entity, treated by the fiber arm as no different from any other L1 customer. None of the shenanigans like the ILECs play, where the wholesale rate to competitors is higher than the retail rate for the ILEC's own service.
> That's true at L3, but at L2, my goal is to encourage *much smaller* ISPs (like the one I used to engineer in 1996, Centurion Technologies; we were profitable with about 400 dialup customers into a 40 and a 20 modem dialup bank backhauled by 512kb/s *and I would come to your house and make it work if I had to*.  :-).
>
> By having the city run L2 over our L1, we can accomplish that; unlike L3, I don't believe it actually needs to be a separate company; I expect most ISP business to be at L2; L1 is mostly an accomodation to potential larger ISPs who want to do it all themselves.
>
> Or FiOS.  :-)

We have a philosophical disagreement here.  I fully support public
ownership of public ownership of "natural" monopolies, and the fiber
plant itself (L1) certainly qualifies.

However, running L2 (or L3) over that fiber is _not_ a natural monopoly,
so I do _not_ support public ownership.  At most, I could stomach a
"provider of last resort" to guarantee resident access to useful
services, in the IMHO unlikely event that only one (or zero) private
players showed up, or a compelling need to provide some residents (eg.
the elderly or indigent, schools, other public agencies, etc.) with
below-cost services.

>> (Note that inside wiring is a completely separate issue, and carriers _will_ have to train techs on how to do that since few are familiar with fiber, but that is an optional service they can charge extra for. The L1 provider's responsibility ends at the NIU on an outside wall, same as an ILEC's, so it's not their problem in the first place.)
> The L2 might end there, too, if I decide on outside ONTs, rather than an optical jackblock inside.

I think the ILECs got this part right: provide a passive NIU on the
outside wall, which forms a natural demarc that the fiber owner can test
to.  If an L2 operator has active equipment, put it inside--and it would
be part of the customer-purchased (or -leased) equipment when they turn
up service.

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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