Muni Fiber and Politics

Sun Aug 3 02:16:07 UTC 2014

But in the cases of small rural communities it¹s perfectly reasonable to
just setup wifi to cover the town and backhaul a DS3 back to a more
connected location. There¹s plenty of small wireless companies out there
trying to serve these folks.

On 8/2/14, 3:15 PM, "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:

>
>There are plenty of cities with zero ISP's interested in serving them
>today, I can't argue
>that point.  However I believe the single largest reason why that is true
>is that the ISP
>today has to bear the capital cost of building out the physical plant to
>serve the customers.
>15-20 year ROI's don't work for small businesses or wall street.
>
>But if those cities were to build a municipal fiber network like we've
>described, and pay
>for it with 15-20 year municipal bonds the ISP's wouldn't have to bear
>those costs.  They
>could come in drop one box in a central location and start offering
>service.
>
>Which is why I said, if municipalities did this, I am very skeptical
>there would be more than
>a handful without a L3 operator.  You can imagine a city of 50 people in
>North Dakota
>or the Northern Territories might have this issue because the long haul
>cost to reach the
>town is so high, but it's going to be a rare case.  I firmly believe the
>municipal fiber networks
>presence would bring L3 operators to 90-95% of cities.
>
>On Aug 2, 2014, at 2:04 PM, Scott Helms <khelms at zcorum.com> wrote:
>
>> Happens all the time, which is why I asked Leo about that scenario.
>>There are large swarths of the US and even more in Canada where that's
>>the norm.
>> 
>> On Aug 2, 2014 1:29 PM, "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com> wrote:
>> Such a case is unlikely.
>> 
>> On Aug 1, 2014, at 13:32, Scott Helms <khelms at zcorum.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I can never see a case where letting them play at Layer 3 or above
>>>helps.
>>> That¹s bad news, stay away.  But I think some well crafted L2 services
>>> could actually _expand_ consumer choice.  I mean running a dark fiber
>>> GigE to supply voice only makes no sense, but a 10M channel on a GPON
>>> serving a VoIP box mayŠ
>>> 
>>> Even in those cases where there isn't a layer 3 operator nor a chance
>>>for a viable resale of layer 1/2 services.
>>> 
>
>
>-- 
>       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
>        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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