Muni Fiber

Tue Mar 27 15:19:46 UTC 2012

> 
> Politically the makings of a similar situation already exist.
> Goverment has swung the USF funds to fuel rual broadband, strongly
> favoring FTTx where it makes sense.  While companies like Verizon
> enjoy not having to share their fiber lines now, these same forces
> will conspire to drive unbundling in fiber, just as it did in copper.
> What they are getting now is simply a first mover advantage.
> 

It's a bigger first mover advantage. They've learned their lesson from the
copper unbundling and they are being allowed to deploy fiber in ways
that will make it hard (impossible) to sell it on an unbundled basis later.

> Government at the end of the day will fund the 20-40% of America
> which is profitable in the long run, but not in commercial time
> scales.  They will also fund the 10% of America which will never
> be profitable, no mater what.  It happened with Electricity and
> Telephone, and I suspect the societal drivers to do the same with
> the Internet will be even stronger.  Companies will have to accept an
> unbundled tail to get access to this 30-50% of the market; and while
> they aren't interested now, they will be very soon.

Maybe, but, if what is happening now is allowed to continue, it will:

1.	Not encourage competition anywhere.
2.	Allow existing monopolies to preserve and extend those monopolies.
3.	Cost even more than it already has.
4.	Continue to lag behind the rest of the world.
5.	Result in an inferior solution.

What is needed is for regulators to step up with a bold vision for the
public good. We need to encourage (or even require) local authorities
to deploy (themselves or by contract) independent L1 infrastructure (yes,
I like the 4-8 strands per residence star topology idea) to every structure
within their jurisdiction and make it available to L2+ service providers
on an equal-cost-per-subscriber basis in each jurisdiction.

Yes, this means that the cost per subscriber will be lower in denser
jurisdictions than it will be in less dense jurisdictions. However, users
in those jurisdictions should expect to pay more for services and the
ability to attract L2+ service providers can be achieved in a variety
of ways.

The important thing is to make sure that if public money is being used
to build infrastructure, it becomes infrastructure that is useful to said
public and not just a subsidy to some corporation for extending its
monopoly in a manner that is often contrary to the public good.

Unfortunately, that is exactly where the money is going today.

Owen