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

Thu Mar 22 23:41:14 UTC 2012

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 7:16 PM, Keegan Holley
<keegan.holley at sungard.com> wrote:
> 2012/3/22 William Herrin <bill at herrin.us>
>> On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley
>> <keegan.holley at sungard.com> wrote:
>> > 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.
>>
>>
>> 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.
>>
> So who get's the keys the the cabinet it resides in?  The LEC?  All of the
> CLECs?  The FCC?  Who's responsible for maintaining the box given it's now
> shared.  Who takes legal responsibility for outages caused by things done to
> this magical prism you speak of?

A fiber wavelength in the described PON scenario is operationally
identical to a dedicated fiber strand or a dedicated copper pair with
respect to management and connection. There's a physical "wire" coming
out at each end which is connected to equipment with "lights" it. The
problem is reduced to the already solved one of how to "share" copper
pairs in a single cable.

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