last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)

Thu Mar 22 18:08:52 UTC 2012

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley
<keegan.holley at sungard.com> wrote:
> 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared at puck.nether.net>
>> On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
>> > I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber
>> > which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the
>> end
>> > of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of
>> > course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace
>> > it with a unregulated one.
>
> Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber?  Isn't
> it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes?  It doesn't seem fair
> to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their
> competitors on the business side.  I guess passive optical can be shared
> depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much
> different than sharing copper pairs.

PON (e.g. FIOS) is similar to CWDM. The PO in PON is Passive Optical.
As in a glass prism-like device with no electronics.  You remember
prisms from high school physics, right? Beam of white light into a
glass triangle and it splits off into a rainbow of colors. Well, with
CWDM the different color sources all being joined by the prism into a
beam of "white" light. And then split back out at the other end.

So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color,
e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And
when you install it to a home or business, the "prism" sits up on the
phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for
that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the
prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam.

Key is: it's just a piece of glass. A very finely machined piece of
glass to be sure, but no electronics.

Or, you could share at a different level: ethernet packets. Unbundle
the local ethernet service from the Internet service. $X for the local
ethernet service to the local concentration point at whatever
capacity, $Y for the Internet/tv/phone services connected at the
concentration point. Or buy some other service from another vendor at
the concentration point. But you don't get to double-dip the billing:
$X includes the cost to take the packets off at the concentration
point; the service vendor doesn't pay again.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004