BOOM! there goes WorldCom

Scott Yoneyama yone at wolfenet.com
Thu Jul 17 16:12:21 UTC 1997


Charles Sprickman wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Scott Landman wrote:
>
> > If fibers being cut is the culprit here, does going with a supplier
> like
> > Qwest make sense because their fibers are running down railroad
> right of
>
> I was under the impression that there was one fiber giant that
> actually
> owns its own fiber, and that its name is AT&T...  Who is Qwest???
>

Last name Qwest.  First name Johnny.  Hangs out with an Arab kid and a
pug!

> Anyone have any stats on how much MCI, Sprint, WCom actually own?

AT&T has the most extensive network, but also the oldest.  They've got a
lot of copper in there.  MCI leases the majority of their backbone, but
does have their own fiber too.  Sprint has a national fiber backbone as
does WCom.  Both are upgrading and closing off their spurrs of which
WCom has more.  Sprint is only upgrading to OC-48 whereas WCom is going
to OC-192.  We also have our own backbone between Seattle and Vancouver,
B.C. for now. (Watch for the press releases).  Qwest is laying a network
that will also serve as the backbones for GTE, Frontier and ICG.  The
Williams Co. (founders of WilTel) is also laying fiber again.  Look for
them.

As to railroad right-of-ways, they will only let you within 30 feet of
the tracks, which is still in the ror. It is safer than anywhere else
because of the difficulty of getting permits to dig in railroad ror (5+
years here in Washington) even for other utilities.  Some idiot with a
backhoe can still be way of target though and get you.  Derailments and
floods are also big problems in rr-ror.  The only real protection you
have is ringed SONET, however, even in that arrangment some carriers do
not have the ability to reroute everything, just the priority stuff.  So
they'll still have outages.  It's all a matter of capacity and what
electronics they use.


--
Scott Yoneyama
Director
Starcom
(206) 448-4034
(206) 448-4485 fax
yone at wolfenet.com

"The only way between Canada and the U.S. and all points along the way"





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