Muni Fiber and Politics

Sat Aug 2 17:28:09 UTC 2014

That's why I want legislation requiring the operator to be one or the other and not both. 

Most L1 gets built with tax dollars or subsidies anyway. 

Owen

> On Aug 2, 2014, at 0:34, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:
> 
>> On Friday, August 01, 2014 04:44:29 PM Owen DeLong wrote:
>> 
>> Even when mandated to unbundle at a reasonable cost,
>> often other games are played (trouble ticket for service
>> billed by lines provider resolved in a day, trouble
>> ticket for service on unbundled element resolved in 14
>> days, etc.).
>> 
>> IMHO, experience has taught us that the lines provider
>> (or as I prefer to call them, the Layer 1 infrastructure
>> provider) must be prohibited from playing at the higher
>> layers.
> 
> Agree.
> 
> In reality, though, we've seen Layer 1-only providers 
> becoming service providers (even when they previously 
> promised the market it would never happen), due to wanting 
> to stay "relevant".
> 
> I suppose if a Layer 1 provider were a government entity, 
> there is a higher chance they would never enter the Layer 2 
> or 3 space, but even then, there is strong lobbying in 
> politics that this could become a reality.
> 
> I've seen it happen a great deal in south east Asia, 
> Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and now even South Africa, 
> particularly with Layer 1 providers that were government 
> entities built to enable fibre connectivity for management 
> of utility services (power, for example) and were then 
> tasked to offer Layer 1 services with the remaining fibre, 
> but currently find themselves now playing in Layer 2 and 
> above to make extra cash for the government.
> 
> It's hard...
> 
> Mark.