Frank, I certainly agree that fiber plant is in general easier than copper plant to maintain. My main concern is that in this case Jay is considering allowing not only different vendors but different technologies on the same fiber plant. That, in a small system without a ton of technical experience, is a very difficult scenario mainly because the city will almost invariably under price their wholesale (layer 1, 2, or 3) rates and the ISPs that operate in these situations are also usually quite shallow in terms or technical skill set. Its not a matter of it being impossible, but its much more difficult to just break even in this scenario. I'd personally advocate taking the approach that San Diego took when they built their network (which IIRC they don't offer access to) several years back. The buried all their fiber plant but in trenches that allow easy (relatively) access and they lease space in those runs so if private operators want to pull their own fiber to some or all of the places the city reaches they can without having to worry about supporting unfamiliar technology on their plant. Our maintenance costs, in order of greatest to least, have been locating,
cable moves (i.e. bridge project), monitoring digs, and damage to fiber (rodents and vehicles that hit peds). We have had many more ONT issues than fiber issues, and most fiber issues can be resolved by cleaning both sides of the fiber (customer and head end). And we've had to replace the 50' patch cable between the OLTG and optical splitter a two of three times.
While finger-pointing is always a risk when multiple players are involved in delivering any service, I don't perceive that as being as much of a problem as you think it will be. With the right fiber testing gear, any suspected problems can pretty quickly be identified.
Frank
Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------