You're assuming that this would all be free for the ISP, I think. The ISP would lease the fiber they use AND rack units for equipment (with use justification to prevent squatting). If someone wants to tie up a rack unit for one connection that's their business, but there would be a financial incentive to be efficient. Since revenue is generated for the location; if there is need for expanding capacity then there would be a business interest in the utility responsible for maintaining it to accommodate that. If the power company needs a bigger substation, they don't stop selling power. It might take a few months, but the upgrade does happen ... because there are both business and regulatory reasons to do so. On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 4:55 PM, Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
Owen,
This specific issue has nothing to do with splitters versus all the fiber in home runs. If you buy a shelf that can support 16 ports of PON or 96 ports of Ethernet you will pay more per port than if you buy a shelf that supports 160 PON ports or 576 ports of Ethernet. If every ISP has to buy their own layer 2 gear that's what happens. If that gear has to all be hosted in a central meet point then that room will need much more power, space, and cooling.
"Not really... You buy OLTs on a per N subscribers basis, not on a per N potential subscribers, so while you'd have possibly Y additional shelves per area served where Y = Number of ISPs competing for that area, I don't see that as a huge problem."
There are scenarios where it doesn't matter, mainly where the number of ISPs is very low. If we only have 4 service providers trying to offer services in city then the extra power and heat isn't that big of an issue and the wasted money in chassis and management cards is only in the 10s of thousands of dollars. The problem is that you very quickly, as the city, run out of a location that has suitable space, cooling, and power. Remember that each extra shelf has the same power supply and heat dissipation.
"OTOH, if the municipality provides only L1 concentration (dragging L1 facilities back to centralized locations where access providers can connect to large numbers of customers), then access providers have to compete to deliver what consumers actually want. They can't ignore the need for newer L2 technologies because their competitor(s) will leap frog them and take away their customers. This is what we, as consumers, want, isn't it?"
No, what we as consumers want is inexpensive and reliable bandwidth. How that happens very few consumers actually care about. What they do care about is the city saying we have to raise $300,000 extra dollars in bond money to build a new facility to house the ISPs who might want to collocate with us.
Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
On Jul 22, 2014, at 11:26 , Scott Helms <khelms@zcorum.com> wrote:
One of the main problems with trying to draw the line at layer 1 is that its extremely inefficient in terms of the gear. Now, this is in large part
It's not, actually.
The same GPON gear can be centrally located and has the same loss characteristics as it would if you put the splitters farther out.
a function of how gear is built and if a significant number of locales went in this direction we _might_ see changes, but today each ISP would have to purchase their own OLTs and that leads to many more shelves than the total number of line cards would otherwise dictate. There are certainly many
Not really... You buy OLTs on a per N subscribers basis, not on a per N potential subscribers, so while you'd have possibly Y additional shelves per area served where Y = Number of ISPs competing for that area, I don't see that as a huge problem.
other issues, some of which have been discussed on this list before, but I've done open access networks for several cities and _today_ the cleanest situations by far (that I've seen) had the city handling layer 1 and 2 with the layer 2 hand off being Ethernet regardless of the access technology used.
The problem with this approach is that it is great today, but it's a recipe for exactly the kinds of criticisms that were leveled against Ashland in earlier comments in this thread... The aging L2 setup will not be upgraded nearly as quickly as it should because there's no competitive pressure for that to happen.
OTOH, if the municipality provides only L1 concentration (dragging L1 facilities back to centralized locations where access providers can connect to large numbers of customers), then access providers have to compete to deliver what consumers actually want. They can't ignore the need for newer L2 technologies because their competitor(s) will leap frog them and take away their customers. This is what we, as consumers, want, isn't it?
Owen
Scott Helms Vice President of Technology ZCorum (678) 507-5000 -------------------------------- http://twitter.com/kscotthelms --------------------------------
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 2:13 PM, Ray Soucy <rps@maine.edu> wrote:
IMHO the way to go here is to have the physical fiber plant separate.
FTTH is a big investment. Easy for a municipality to absorb, but not attractive for a commercial ISP to do. A business will want to realize an ROI much faster than the life of the fiber plant, and will need assurance of having a monopoly and dense deployment to achieve that. None of those conditions apply in the majority of the US, so we're stuck with really old infrastructure delivering really slow service.
Municipal FTTH needs to be a regulated public utility (ideally at a state or regional level). It should have an open access policy at published rates and be forbidden from offering lit service on the fiber (conflict of interest). This covers the fiber box in the house to the communications hut to patch in equipment.
Think of it like the power company and the separation between generation and transmission.
That's Step #1.
Step #2 is finding an ISP to make use of the fiber.
Having a single municipal ISP is not really what I think is needed.
Having the infrastructure in place to eliminate the huge investment needed for an ISP to service a community is. Hopefully, enough people jump at the idea and offer service over the fiber, but if they don't, you need to get creative.
The important thing is that the fiber stays open. I'm not a fan of having a town or city be an ISP because I know how the budgets work. I trust a town to make sure my fiber is passing light; I don't trust it to make sure I have the latest and greatest equipment to light the fiber, or bandwidth from the best sources. I certainly don't trust the town to allow competition if it's providing its own service.
This is were the line really needs to be drawn IMHO. Municipal FTTH is about layer 1, not layer 2 or layer 3.
That said, there are communities where just having the fiber plant won't be enough. In these situations, the municipality can do things like create an incentive program to guarantee a minimum income for an ISP to reach the community which get's trimmed back as the ISP gains subscribers.
I don't think a public option is bad on the ISP side of things; as long as the fiber is open and people can choose which ISP they want. The public option might be necessary for very rural communities that can't get service elsewhere or to simply serve as a price-check, but most of us here know that a small community likely won't be able to find the staff to run its own ISP, either.
TL;DR Municipal FTTH should be about fixing the infrastructure issues and promoting innovation and competition, not creating a government-run ISP to oust anyone from the market.
Think about it: If you're an ISP, and you can lease fiber and equipment space (proper hut, secured, with backup power and cooling etc) for a subsidized rate; for cheaper than anything you could afford to build out; how much arm twisting would it take for you to invest in installing a switch or two to deliver service? If you're a smaller ISP, you were likely already doing this in working with telephone companies in the past (until they started trying to oust you).
On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 11:27 AM, Aaron <aaron@wholesaleinternet.net> wrote:
So let me throw out a purely hypothetical scenario to the collective:
What do you think the consequences to a municipality would be if they laid fiber to every house in the city and gave away internet access for free? Not the WiFi builds we have today but FTTH at gigabit speeds for free?
Do you think the LECs would come unglued?
Aaron
On 7/21/2014 8:33 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
I've seen various communities attempt to hand out free wifi - usually in limited areas, but in some cases community-wide (Brookline, MA comes to mind). The limited ones (e.g., in tourist hotspots) have been city
funded,
or donated. The community-wide ones, that I've seen, have been public-private partnerships - the City provides space on light poles and such - the private firm provides limited access, in hopes of selling expanded service. I haven't seen it work successfully - 4G cell service beats the heck out of WiFi as a metropolitan area service.
When it comes to municipal fiber and triple-play projects, I've generally seen them capitalized with revenue bonds -- hence, a need for revenue to pay of the financing. Lower cost than commercial services because municipal bonds are low-interest, long-term, and they operate on a cost-recovery basis.
Miles Fidelman
Aaron wrote: > > Do you have an example of a municipality that gives free internet access > to it's residents? > > > On 7/21/2014 2:26 PM, Matthew Kaufman wrote: >> >> I think the difference is when the municipality starts throwing in free >> or highly subsidized layer 3 connectivity "free with every layer 1 >> connection" >> >> Matthew Kaufman >> >> (Sent from my iPhone) >> >>> On Jul 21, 2014, at 12:08 PM, Blake Dunlap <ikiris@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>> My power is pretty much always on, my water is pretty much always >>> on >>> and safe, my sewer system works, etc etc... >>> >>> Why is layer 1 internet magically different from every other >>> utility? >>> >>> -Blake >>> >>>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 1:38 PM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> Over the last decade, 19 states have made it illegal for >>>>> municipalities >>>>> to own fiber networks >>>> >>>> Hi Jay, >>>> >>>> Everything government does, it does badly. Without exception. >>>> There >>>> are many things government does better than any private >>>> organization >>>> is likely to sustain, but even those things it does slowly and at >>>> an >>>> exorbitant price. >>>> >>>> Muni fiber is a competition killer. You can't beat city hall; >>>> once >>>> built it's not practical to compete, even with better service, so >>>> residents are stuck with only the overpriced (either directly or >>>> via >>>> taxes), usually underpowered and always one-size-fits-all network >>>> access which results. As an ISP I watched something similar >>>> happen in >>>> Altoona PA a decade and a half ago. It was a travesty. >>>> >>>> The only exception I see to this would be if localities were >>>> constrained to providing point to point and point to multipoint >>>> communications infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and >>>> non-discriminatory basis. The competition that would foster on >>>> the >>>> services side might outweigh the damage on the infrastructure >>>> side. >>>> Like public roads facilitate efficient transportation and freight >>>> despite the cost and potholes, though that's an imperfect simile. >>>> >>>> Regards, >>>> Bill Herrin >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com >>>> bill@herrin.us >>>> Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> >>>> Can I solve your unusual networking challenges? > >
-- ================================================================ Aaron Wendel Chief Technical Officer Wholesale Internet, Inc. (AS 32097) (816)550-9030 http://www.wholesaleinternet.com ================================================================
-- Ray Patrick Soucy Network Engineer University of Maine System
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-- Ray Patrick Soucy Network Engineer University of Maine System T: 207-561-3526 F: 207-561-3531 MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network www.maineren.net