Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

Wed Jan 30 21:30:19 UTC 2013

On Jan 30, 2013, at 6:24 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca>
>> 
>>> It is in fact important for a government (municipal, state/privince or
>>> federal) to stay at a last mile layer 2 service with no retail
>>> offering. Wholesale only.
>>> 
>>> Not only is the last mile competitively neutral because it is not
>>> involved in retail, but it them invites competition by allowing many
>>> service providers to provide retail services over the last mile
>>> network.
> 
> As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at
> layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue
> for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the
> taxpayers.
> 

Perhaps, but well worth the effort. There are a wide variety of reasons
to want more than one L3 provider to be readily available and avoid
limiting consumers to a single choice of ISP policies, capabilities, etc.

Also, an L1/L2 fiber plant may be usable for other services beyond just
packets.

Owen