Muni broadband sucks (was: New minimum speed for US broadband connections)

Thu Jun 3 09:22:49 UTC 2021

On Thu, Jun 3, 2021 at 10:44 AM Masataka Ohta <
mohta at necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp> wrote:

> Jim Troutman wrote:
>
> Private fiber operators are strongly motivated to deploy PON
> because PON is designed to make competitions impossible even
> if regulators forces the operators to do so, which is why
> PON is so popular.
>
> Muni fiber operators deploying PON because it is so pupular
> are just dumb stupid.
>

As the founder/owner of a private FTTH operator I can say the above is
wrong. The _only_ reason we use PON is because it is vastly cheaper to
build. It is also more flexible, which might be counter intuitive. I have
watched competitors try P2P but it is always a disaster for them. The PON
network will finish sooner, require considerably less cabling and ducts,
easier to expand with unplanned capacity, can be rerouted when an expected
permit fails to go through, and does not require much footprint for active
equipment. We have a single road side cabinet, using less than a single
square meter, serving an area in excess of 100 square kilometers. In theory
GPON can go all the way to 40 km from switch to customer, which would be
more than 1000 square km served from one point of presence.

Fiberstrands are not free. In a P2P topology you need to have cabinets with
active equipment close to the customers, otherwise you will have huge costs
for all that fiber. Your network would also become vulnerable because a
fiber cut on a duct with thousands of fiberstrands is not something that
gets fixed in a few hours. Huge cables can not easily be rerouted when
other construction works require you to do so.

Regards,

Baldur
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20210603/746f3339/attachment.html>