Muni fiber: L1 or L2?

Scott Helms khelms at zcorum.com
Thu Feb 7 19:42:42 UTC 2013


On Feb 7, 2013 12:24 PM, "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike at swm.pp.se> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 7 Feb 2013, Scott Helms wrote:
>
>> That has not been demonstrated in the market.  There are lots of people
who say this, generally they're involved in building fiber plants, but in
the US and Canada I've not seen a single report of an actual network where
this was true.  Do you have any documentation to this effect?  I will also
acknowledge that we don't have a large sample size in the US of plants
built this way.
>
>
> I never said there was installed base for this in north america. I have
no knowledge of this. But I guess from your question that you wan to limit
the discussion to what is commercially available today, which is a totally
different question compared to what is best in the long run.

Not at all, but the problem I have with projected numbers are that they
frequently end up being inaccurate in the long term.  If we model off of
real networks then we have a much greater chance of getting the actual
costs correct.


>
> I know the service exists here in Stockholm, Sweden. Here we don't have
Telcos who sue municipality networks for providing L1 and L2 services to
anyone who wants to buy them.

The regulatory comment isn't particularly relevant since there in MOST
places in the US muni's are free to do the same thing.  IIRC, there are
only 5 states that significantly restrict munis from building access
networks, though there are another handful that restrict them from offering
specific services.  For example, in Texas a muni may not offer voice
services.


>
> However, the pricing model can still be worked on. Here it costs
approximately 10 USD per month to rent this fiber from the central plant to
the customer, meaning ISPs who have a lot of customers in a single place
still opt to just rent a single operator fiber and then terminate the
building fiber plant at the curb or in the building, instead of at the
central (CO) plant when they light up multi-tenant buildings.

That $10 price tag is an easy number to toss around and in some builds it
might be accurate, but the costs for the L1 infrastructure vary
tremendously so using it as a guestimation is pretty dangerous.  It may
well be accurate in Stockholm, but its not in much/most of the US.


>
>
> --
> Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se



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