Podunk Telco

Thu Jul 22 02:46:57 UTC 1999

>OK, interesting question... a friend of mine lives in upstate NY, where he 
>has Citizens Telecom (or whatever they're calling themselves this week). 

My sincere condolences.

>He has mentioned to me, "what if I formed an CLEC/ISP and started leasing 
>dry copper from CitsTel to provide DSL myself?"  at which point he was very 
>much over my head in ability to answer.

No can do, evidently.  A friend runs an ISP in Ithaca NY, and provides
DSL by renting a dry pair from the CO to the customer and a second
very cheap dry pair to an equipment room he's rented next door to the
CO and tying them together at the CO, with no colo'ed stuff.  Bell's
been quite cooperative, even removing bridge taps and the like for
him.  He's had no luck getting Citizens to do anything for him in the
adjacent town.

The size of the telco isn't the problem, by the way, it's just that
some telcos have a bad attitude.  I live on the other side of Ithaca
where I'm served by a truly tiny family owned telco, whose ISP
subsidiary provides my connection.  They don't have DSL, but with a T1
rate of $150/mo, who cares?  (They wrote the T1 tariff for me, since I
was the first customer ever to order a T1 for any reason.  They have
plenty of T1s for internal use, of course.)

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869
johnl at iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail