2012/3/23 Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>:
Jared Mauch wrote:
It is already a monopoly. Most places are served by one of the utilities: power, telephony or cable. He that controls the outside plant controls your fate.
The difference is in how the services can be unbundled.
Power is additive (if in phase) that network topology is irrelevant.
For telephony, unbundling for DSL at L1 is just fine.
So is optical fiber if single star topology is used.
WDM PON can still be unbundled at L1.
However, with time slotted PON, unbundling must be at L2, which is as expensive as L3, which means there effectively is no unbundling.
I strongly disagree. If this were true, there would be no market for MPLS service: folks would simply buy Internet service and run VPNs. If you take my packets off at the first hop and deliver them to a 3rd party provider, I can buy service from that 3rd party with as many IP addresses as I want, I can buy service with BGP routing, I can buy non-Internet services and I can buy bandwidth-hungry services that aren't cost effective when they take a trip through the Internet backbone. Even if the cost for the unbundled L2 circuit was *identical* to the cost of the bundled Internet circuit it would enable a huge range of niche products that aren't practical now. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004