Muni Fiber and Politics

Tue Aug 5 16:33:22 UTC 2014

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 2:15 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Eugeniu Patrascu" <eugen at imacandi.net>
>
> > In my neck of the woods, the city hall decided that no more fiber cables
> > running all over the poles in the city and somehow combined with some EU
> > regulations that communication links need to be buried, they created a
> > project whereby a 3rd party company would dig the whole city, put in some
> > tubes in which microfibres would be installed by ISPs that reach every
> > street number and ISP would pay per the kilometer from point A to point B
> > (where point A was either a PoP or ISP HQ or whatever; point B is the
> > customer).
> >
> > To be clear, this is single-mode dark fiber so the ISPs can run it at
> > whatever speeds they like between two points.
> >
> > The only drawback is that the 3rd party company has a monopoly on the
> > prices for the leasing of the tubes, but from my understanding this is
> > kept under control by regulation.
>
> This one is a bad idea cause you have lots of people pushing fiber through
> pipes with active fiber in them... and their incentives not to screw up
> other people's glass are... unclear?  :-)
>

Not really, if one company starts making mistakes, the other will also
mistake their cables. It's like a working mexican standoff :)

>
> Oh, wait: the conduit installer isn't a contractor, they're a monopoly?
>
>
The people pushing fiber through the conduits are contractors. There are a
handful of companies licensed to operate this.

> No, that's even worse.

It's not perfect, but it works.