Last Mile Design

Sun Feb 10 15:46:42 UTC 2019

Hello

There are of course regions where monopoly has created even higher 
prices. But it should be fair to compare the Skåne region of Sweden 
directly with the greater Copenhagen area of Denmark, as those are 
separated by just a bridge.

In Denmark the government choose to regulate access to the fiber 
infrastructure owned by the incumbent operator TDC. The cheapest access 
is to "raw fiber" meaning the "alternate operator" gets access to an 
uninterrupted stretch of fiber between a POP and the end user. We can 
then connect our own equipment in both ends. My company started out by 
doing exactly that. We were the first to implement GPON technology on 
the TDC owned fiber. TDC was at the time using active ethernet, but have 
since started migrating everything to GPON as well. Maybe they got inspired.

The regulated prices are found here:

https://erhvervsstyrelsen.dk/sites/default/files/media/endelig_prisafgoerelse_lraic_fastnet_2019.pdf

Sorry, that document is in danish. Maybe the swedish guys can understand 
some of it.

There are multiple prices, but the price we pay for most of our users is 
(1584-577)/12 = DKK 83.92 / month (USD 12.76 / EUR 11.24).

As you get access to the fiber itself, nobody will care what speeds or 
even what technology you use on that fiber.

It is also possible to rent access to so called "bit stream access". In 
this case TDC will provide a VPN connection to the end user and the 
operator will just have to provide the IP service. To compare with that 
250 Mbit/s swedish offering, we can lookup the price for 250 Mbit/s BSA 
service in the DONG area (this means mostly anything near Copenhagen): 
(2170-625.7)/12 = DKK 128.69 / month (USD 19.56 / EUR 17.24).

How much do you really need to add on top of that, if all you need to do 
is buy that $0.12/Mbps transit from HE.net and let TDC take care of 
everything else?

In any case, we are now building out our own fiber to cover the gaps 
left by TDC. Here the end user has to pay DKK 12,000 (USD 1,824 / EUR 
1,608) one time fee and with that he gets everything including 5 years 
of free internet. This works out at DKK 200 / month including 25% VAT 
tax (USD 30 / EUR 27).

I guarantee that it is not possible to build at this price without using 
PON technology. The network is fully funded by the users themselves and 
we have a paid off network after just 5 years.

Regards,

Baldur