Muni Fiber and Politics

Mon Jul 21 18:58:48 UTC 2014

On Mon, 21 Jul 2014, William Herrin wrote:

> The only exception I see to this would be if localities were constrained 
> to providing point to point and point to multipoint communications 
> infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and 
> non-discriminatory basis. The competition that would foster on the 
> services side might outweigh the damage on the infrastructure side. Like 
> public roads facilitate efficient transportation and freight despite the 
> cost and potholes, though that's an imperfect simile.

While I might not agree with the parts of your email you cut out, I would 
definitely like to chime in on this part. Muni fiber should be exactly 
that, muni *fiber*. Point to point fiber optic single mode fiber cabling, 
aggregating thousands of households per location, preferrably tens of 
thousands.

It's hard to go wrong in this area, it either works or it doesn't, and in 
these aggregation nodes people can compete with several different 
technologies, they can use PON, they can use active ethernet, they can 
provide corporate 10GE connections if they need to, they can run 
hybrid/fiber coax, they can run point-to-point 1GE for residential. 
Anything is possible and the infrastructure is likely to be as viable in 
30 years as it is day 1 after installation.

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