Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

Sun Feb 3 16:58:50 UTC 2013

In a message written on Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 12:07:34AM -0500, Jean-Francois Mezei wrote:
> When municipality does the buildout, does it just pass homes, or does it
> actually connect every home ?

I would argue, in a pure dark muni-network, the muni would run the
fiber into the prem to a patch panel, and stop at that point.  I
believe for fiber it should be inside the prem, not outside.  The
same would apply for both residential and commercial.

Basically when the customer (typically the service provider, but
not always) orders a loop to a customer the muni provider would
OTDR shoot it from the handoff point to the service provider to the
prem.  They would be responsible for insuring a reasonable performance
of the fiber between those two end points.

The customer (again, typically the service provider) would then
plug in any CPE, be it an ONT, or ethernet SFP, or WDM mux.

Note I say typically the service provider, because I want to enable
in this model the ability for you and I, if we both have homes in
this area, to pay the same $X/month and get a patch between our two
homes.  No service provider involved.  If we want to stand up GigE
on it because that's cheap, wonderful.  If we want to stand up
16x100GE WDM, excellent as well.

It's very similar to me to the traditional copper model used by the
ILECs.  There is a demark box that terminates the outside plant and
allows the customer to connect the inside plant.  The facilities
provider stops at that box (unless you pay them to do more, of
course).  The provisioning process I'm advocating is substantially
similar to ordering a "dry pair" in the copper world, although perhaps
with a bit more customer service since it would be a service the muni
wants to sell!

> In any event,  you still have to worry about responsability if you allow
> Service Providers to install their on ONT or whatever CPE equipment in
> homes. If they damage the fibre cable when customer unsubscribes, who is
> responsible for the costs of repair ? (consider a case where either
> homeowner or SP just cuts the fibre as it comes out of wall when taking
> the ONT out to be returned to the SP.

The box is the demark.  If they damage something on the customer
side, that's their own issue.  If the damage something on the
facilities provider side, the facilities provider will charge them
to fix it.

There would be no "just coming out of the wall".  There would be a 6-12
SC (FC?) connector patch panel in a small plastic enclosure, with the
outside plant properly secured (conduit, in the wall, etc) and not
exposed.  The homewowner or their service provider would plug into that
patch panel.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 826 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20130203/ff1cc708/attachment.sig>