[NANOG] L3's plan was: Level3 not honoring Broadwing contracts?
Deepak Jain
deepak at ai.net
Tue Apr 29 19:21:19 UTC 2008
>
> They will then focus on the "NFL cities" for colocation and only provide
> bandwidth/transport/other network services to everyone else.
>
Can we discuss how ridiculous the "NFL cities" model is? Yes, I get it.
NFL cities meet a certain size criteria in terms of business,
population, talent, etc. [feel free to replace NFL cities by: Tier "1"
Cities/Metros, Major passenger or cargo airports, historic Train
locations, Blockbuster Locations, Fedex depots, etc]
But when you compare your business plan to *every* other
National/International player that has the EXACT same plan and city
map... um... where is your differentiation? (Even if one calls its NFL
cities and one calls it "Major Airports")
The ridiculous part of the plan is that a) it does not obviate the need
for in-between depots of connectivity [for regens, ROADMs, etc] and b)
each city has a different specific mix of data/colo/IP/voice/what have
you based on local demographics (and incumbents)... and there is no
planning of right-sizing capex and revenue.
Oh well, I think I'll be concerned when a company actually has a real
business plan rather than something recycled from the bottom of a box of
Cracker Jack's.
Operational Content: While there are significant opex costs to removed
by making places like WDC, SFO, JFK/LGA, LAX and others great hubs of
interconnectivity there is a) an over-concentration of SPOFs and
vulnerability to localized infrastructure threats, and b) hyper
competition in some markets and gross under competition in others. The
profits many of these carriers seek may come from running a few colos in
"2nd tier" cities at much higher prices than they can charge in the "1st
tier" cities.
But then again -- if these guys had to show profits, they wouldn't be
the guys they are today... They might even have executives with a proper
business pedigree (you know MBAs or better from places that don't
advertise on billboards and at professional sporting events) and not
need to piss away billions in revenues to meet their use guidelines.
Does Level3 have a stadium yet? I think they need one to brand so they
can finally file for that BK that's been hanging around their neck for
years.
Deepak Jain
AiNET
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