I am about to inherit 26 miles of dark fiber. What do I do with it?

Mon Nov 10 12:40:30 UTC 2014

Gah!

Municipal fiber networks can be total failures or the best investment a
community can make. It all depends on the implementation.

There are eight steps one needs to get right: 1) public policy goals, 2)
technical goals meet the public policy goals, 3) survey community
demographics and existing network assets, 4) build community consensus, 5)
select the right business plan and obtain funding, 6) technical design of
OSP and operating structure, 7) RFI/RFP, 8)select EPC vendors and
fanatically oversee construction.

Steps 1-5 are the most important and the level of success will depend on
the quality of their implementation. If a half-assed job is done at any
step, the outcome will not be good.  This discussion has been focused on
step 6: technical design. It is impossible to do a good technical design if
you don't understand the problem you are trying to solve.

There are vast differences between different municipalities public policy
goals and business plans. It doesn't make sense to copy Chattanooga's
implementation because their situation is different than yours (you have an
existing fiber network, which is always a warning sign. They are serving
all residents and businesses and you imply you are focused on businesses.)

Focus on developing a deep understanding of what problem the city leaders
are trying to solve, then figure out how to hire a competent OSP design
person and make them do a good job. This is a hard task in and of itself.

The failure of one municipal broadband system reflects badly on all
municipal broadband systems. Good luck.

On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 11:22 PM, ITechGeek <itg at itechgeek.com> wrote:

> I would say the OP is starting out right by reaching out to people who can
> give advice and point him in the right direction.  I would say the first
> place to start would be budget.
>
> I don't think calling this is a trainwreck before it even leaves paper
> isn't very helpful.
>
> One option might be to start in phases, if his POPs can provide decent
> coverage, maybe start out w/ a wireless solution to start getting customers
> on the system and start getting revenue coming in (or if this is a
> city/town backed venture, get voters to see how useful this can be to maybe
> get more budget for future rollout).
>
> Also talk to business customers to see if you extend fiber to them, what
> kind of services will they want.  If you can get large customers to say
> "Yes, I will or would like to purchase a gig of bandwidth between two
> office or a gig of Internet access", that should help w/ either city or
> private finance backing to show there will be demand.
>
> You might even be able to get help from some companies (If you contact
> corporate or gov't sales for Cisco/Nortel/etc., they can probably have some
> techs bring in some equipment for small scale shows).
>
> If this is a city trying to do this, reach out to places like Chattanooga,
> TN or Lafayette, LA or any number of other cities (mostly in foreign
> countries) that have successfully done this.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUSFiber
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPB
>
> On a final note, the Stockholm model I've always thought was the best idea
> (even before I heard Stockholm invested in it) - Stockholm owns the
> infrastructure and private companies provide the actual customer services
> across the city owned infrastructure (let true competition happen instead
> of the monopoly and duopoly in most cities and if it doesn't work out, you
> can always start selling services later if true competition doesn't work).
>
> http://cis471.blogspot.com/2009/04/why-is-connectivty-in-stockholm-so-much.html
> (This was the most up to date page I could find in English doing a
> comparison).
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
> On Sun, Nov 9, 2014 at 10:25 PM, Faisal Imtiaz <faisal at snappytelecom.net>
> wrote:
>
> > I would suggest that you do some rapid field deployment education in
> > regards to fiber networks.
> >
> > You might consider joining  WISPA and or FISPA (two industry
> > associations), where you have folks building out fiber networks, who are
> > very willing to share their experience and tell you what is working and
> > what is not working.
> >
> > Working with Dark fiber can be as simple as you like, or as complicated
> as
> > you want it to be. However this is one area that it is not un-common to
> > make things appear a lot more expensive and complicated then what they
> have
> > to be...
> >
> > Depending on what you are inheriting, and what you have to be responsible
> > for, I would suggest that you spend some time on the web, local library,
> > and some of the OSP related publications to get a good understanding of
> > what is done and why....before just falling for industry jargon.
> >
> > I should be fun... :)
> >
> > Faisal Imtiaz
> > Snappy Internet & Telecom
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "Lorell Hathcock" <lorell at hathcock.org>
> > > To: nanog at nanog.org
> > > Sent: Sunday, November 9, 2014 9:18:15 PM
> > > Subject: I am about to inherit 26 miles of dark fiber. What do I do
> with
> > it?
> > >
> > > All:
> > >
> > > A job opportunity just came my way to work with 26 miles of dark fiber
> > in and
> > > around a city in Texas.
> > >
> > > The intent is for me to deliver internet and private network services
> to
> > > business customers in this area.
> > >
> > > I relish the thought of starting from scratch to build a network right
> > from
> > > the start instead of inheriting and fixing someone else's mess.
> > >
> > > That being said, what suggestions does the group have for building a
> new
> > > network using existing dark fiber?
> > >
> > > MPLS backbone?  Like all businesses these days, I will likely have to
> > build
> > > the lit backbone as I add customers. So how would you recommend scaling
> > the
> > > network?
> > >
> > > I have six strands of SMF that connect within municipal facilities.
> Each
> > new
> > > customer will be a new build out from the nearest point. Because of
> > having
> > > only six strands, I don't anticipate selling dark fiber. I believe I
> > need to
> > > conserve fibers so that it would be lit services that I offer to
> > customers.
> > >
> > > I would like to offer speeds up to 10 GB.
> > >
> > > Thoughts are appreciated!
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > >
> > > Lorell Hathcock
> >
>

-- 
Fletcher Kittredge
GWI
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