On Jan 29, 2013, at 7:23 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org> wrote:
In a message written on Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 07:11:56PM -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
I believe they should be allowed to optionally provide L2 enabled services of various forms.
Could you expand on why you think this is necessary? I know you've given this some thought, and I'd like to understand.
The way I see it, for $100 in equipment (2x$50 optics) anyone can light 1Gbps over the fiber. The only way the muni has significantly cheaper port costs than a provider with a switch and a port per customer is to do something like GPON which allows one port to service a number of customers, but obviously imposes a huge set of limitions (bandwiths, protocols you can run over it, etc).
But it's not $100 in equipment. It's $100 in optics + $350 in line cards + technician time to install… OTOH, if the muni operates L2 services and provides a pre-joined group of subscribers as a handoff to a single GPON optical port provided by the ISP or is allowed to provide pre-mused DWDM from a group of subscribers to a single-fiber hand-off to the ISP or whatever, then you increase the number and variety of competition and reduce certain barriers to that competition. I'm not saying it always makes sense in all situations. I'm saying that the muni should not necessarily be precluded from doing so where it does make sense.
I also think the "ONT" adds unnecesary cost. They are used today primarily for a handoff test point, and to protect shared networks (like GPON) from a bad actor. With a dedicated fiber pair per customer I think they are unnecessary. I can see a future where the home gateway at the local big box has an SFP port (or even fixed 1000baseLX optics) and plugs directly into the fiber pair.
You're going to need a handoff test point of some form for any residential service. If you think otherwise, then I would argue you simply don't have enough experience dealing with residential installations (from a provider perspective). Bad actor isolation is important on GPON, but it's not nearly as critical for point-to-point. However, you do still need the test point at the demarc. You want active equipment of some form at the CP that you own. You want everything past that active equipment to be the customer's problem.
No ONT cost, no ONT limitations, no need to power it (UPS battery replacement, etc). It's a value subtract, not a value add.
It really isn't. You'd be surprised how many uncompensated truck rolls are eliminated every day by being able to talk to the ONT from the help desk and tell the subscriber "Well, I can manage your ONT and it's pretty clear the problem is inside your house. Would you like to pay us $150/hour to come out and troubleshoot it for you?" Owen