Michael Sokolov wrote:
Another possible way to solve the middle mile issue would again be to use the copper plant that's already in the ground. Unlike fiber, the copper plant is *ubiquitous*: I don't know of any place in the 1st or 2nd worlds that doesn't have copper pairs going to it. Also AFAIK T1s are available everywhere too: if you order a T1, they'll deliver it to you regardless of how deep you are in the middle of nowhere, although I suppose there likely are extra surcharges involved.
Pardon me if attribution is screwed up ...
Granted, a T1 at 1.5 Mbps may not be much for backhaul, but what about bonded T1s? Bond 4 of them to get 6 Mbps symmetric - not too bad in my book for a rural community.
And again using SDSL instead of T1 offers a cost reduction opportunity. One could get that 6 Mbps symmetric for much cheaper by bonding 4 SDSL circuits running at 1.5 Mbps each instead of T1s. There is a Covad DSLAM with SDSL capability in virtually every CO in the country, but
Isn't this really an issue (political) with tariffed T1 prices rather than a technical problem? I was told that most T1s are provisioned over a DSLAM these days anyways, and that the key difference between T1 and DSL was the SLA (99.99% guarantee vs. "when we get it fixed"). And T3/DS3 can run over what, 4 copper pairs? Yet how much is the typical tariffed rate for that? --Patrick