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

Leo Bicknell bicknell at ufp.org
Sun Mar 25 15:56:02 UTC 2012


In a message written on Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 11:47:58AM -0400, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> Well, for my part, /most of the poiny/ of muni is The Public Good; if /actual/ bond financed muni fiber is skipping the Hard Parts, it deserves to lose.

I agree.

If a commercial company goes in to serve folks with fiber they
expect a relatively short ROI, 3-5 years typically.  This is why
rural customers aren't "profitable"; they can't get money from a
bank or wall-street for a longer time so they are trying to spread
out the build costs over too short of a recoupment period.

Fiber has a 20-50 year life.  Munis could finance fiber with a 20
year bond at a much lower interest rate than any corporation.  By
spreading out the costs over 20 years these customers become
profitable, often quite so.

While in the CBD you might find more than one fiber provider passing
a building, for 99.999% of residential users there will only ever
be ONE fiber provider to the home.  It's hard enough to make the
first fiber cost effective, there's no way to go into an already
served area incurring all the costs for < 50% of the customers up
front.

In many small towns muni-fiber in a single star topology to a central
switching station where multiple providers can co-locate would bring
competitive services at a very attractive cost for both the end user
and the services (IP, telephony, video) provider.  It's also a topology
and technology that easily has 20-50 years of life.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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