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

Fri Mar 23 14:27:57 UTC 2012

On Mar 23, 2012, at 6:21 AM, Masataka Ohta wrote:

> 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.
> 
> Or, CLEC may rent a raw fiber at L1 and operate its
> own PON. However, as CLEC has less customer density
> to share the fiber than ILEC, CLEC's fiber cost per
> customer is higher than that of ILEC, which is why
> PON promotes local monopoly.

It doesn't promote local monopoly if you don't allow the L1 company to provide L2+ services.

If the L1 company is required to be independent of and treat all L2+ services companies equally, then, the ILEC, CLEC, et. all have the same cost per customer.

Owen