Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

Wed Jan 30 03:01:11 UTC 2013

On Jan 29, 2013, at 4:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog at vaxination.ca>
> 
>> It is in fact important for a government (municipal, state/privince or
>> federal) to stay at a last mile layer 2 service with no retail
>> offering. Wholesale only.
>> 
>> Not only is the last mile competitively neutral because it is not
>> involved in retail, but it them invites competition by allowing many
>> service providers to provide retail services over the last mile
>> network.
> 
> This, Jean-Francois, is the assertion I hear relatively frequently.
> 
> It rings true to me, in general, and I would go that way... but there is
> a sting in that tail: Can I reasonably expect that Road Runner will in fact
> be technically equipped and inclined to meet me to get my residents as 
> subscribers?  Especially if they're already built HFC in much to all of
> my municipality?
> 

It doesn't actually matter. You don't necessarily need to be the only wholesale
offering, you just need to be open to all service providers. This means that
if Road Runner wants to pay for their own infrastructure instead of using yours,
then that will increase their costs and likely make it harder for them to compete
with ISPs (and other services) that choose to use your infrastructure.

Owen