Outsourced NOC Solutions

Mon Jun 8 21:38:19 UTC 2020

On Mon, Jun 08, 2020 at 08:10:44PM +0000, Mel Beckman wrote:
> 
> I???m not talking about a full-time engineer for the life of the network, just for designing the infrastructure management before first customer light.
> 
> -mel via cell
>

Dude, it's dark fiber.

I for one, do _NOT_ in any shape or form, want my DF provider to put any equipment (monitoring, or otherwise) on strands I lease, period.  I just want
tubes in the ground, end of story.  This is certainly not an airplane and does not need a pilot.  It's passive tubes sitting on right of way and customer
is licensed to pass light thru that passive tube.  Everything else is extra, and I want no active service whatsoever (besides for power capacity at
regen plant colo).

If there is a disturbance event that creates LOS alarm on customer equipment, they will call in and open a ticket to begin troubleshooting.

Name me one dark fiber provider in northeast that (unless you buy their managed dark fiber solution) will monitor your fiber strands and the customer
light for you.  I can tell you, major fiber providers in northeast are all the same:  the customer is the monitoring system.  If fiber is down, customers
call in.  In fact, I can't recount how many times I've had dealing with a large fiber provider here (unnamed to protect the guilty) who also requests
and asks customers to shoot OTDR for them.

Generally speaking, dark fiber providers who also compete with their customers (e.g. fiber provider that sells lit services) have tendency to react
faster to certain fiber cuts on certain routes, if their backbone links are sitting in them.  But for specialty dark fiber providers who only sell dark,
it's not a bad idea to light one of the strands for internal continuity checks; but at worst case scenario, when a customer calls in to report an LOS
alarm and suspects fiber disturbance, that's usually enough information to start sending your crews out and begin taking traces.

James