Muni Fiber (was: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc)

William Herrin bill at herrin.us
Fri Mar 23 14:20:48 UTC 2012


2012/3/23 Masataka Ohta <mohta at necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>:
> Jared Mauch wrote:
>
>> It is already a monopoly. Most places are served by one of
>> the utilities: power, telephony or cable. He that controls
>> the outside plant controls your fate.
>
> The difference is in how the services can be unbundled.
>
> Power is additive (if in phase) that network topology is
> irrelevant.
>
> For telephony, unbundling for DSL at L1 is just fine.
>
> So is optical fiber if single star topology is used.
>
> WDM PON can still be unbundled at L1.
>
> However, with time slotted PON, unbundling must be
> at L2, which is as expensive as L3, which means
> there effectively is no unbundling.

I strongly disagree. If this were true, there would be no market for
MPLS service: folks would simply buy Internet service and run VPNs.

If you take my packets off at the first hop and deliver them to a 3rd
party provider, I can buy service from that 3rd party with as many IP
addresses as I want, I can buy service with BGP routing, I can buy
non-Internet services and I can buy bandwidth-hungry services that
aren't cost effective when they take a trip through the Internet
backbone.

Even if the cost for the unbundled L2 circuit was *identical* to the
cost of the bundled Internet circuit it would enable a huge range of
niche products that aren't practical now.

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




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