----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Sprunk" <stephen@sprunk.org>
Sure, almost nobody asks for dark fiber today because they know it costs several orders of magnitude more than a T1 or whatever. However, if the price for dark fiber were the same (or lower), latent demand would materialize. Why would I pay through the nose for a T1 when I can light the fiber myself with 10GE for $20/mo?
This was part of my argument, yes. h And it even occurred to me over the weekend that this will reduce the engineering charges to get me onto the already-built backbone loops: They don't need to build to my *CO*, just to a splice at the edge of my city, and *I* can backhaul the uplinks in myself.
What you're missing is that in this model, _every_ connection is L1 from the fiber owner's perspective. Let service providers worry about L2 and above.
In fairness to Scott, he didn't *miss* it, he simply has his "feasible" slider set to a different place than I/we do.
Why would the ISP "have to build and maintain a lot of infrastructure"? All they need is a fiber-capable Ethernet switch in a colo to turn up their first customer. That's a lot simpler than trying to turn up their first customer via an ILEC's DSLAM, for instance.
Well, that means *they have to build out in my city*; I can't aggregate L1 and backhaul it to them.
There's nothing wrong with the muni operating a L2 (or even L3) carrier of last resort, just to ensure that _some_ useful service is available to residents. However, it should (a) be priced high enough to attract competitors and (b) be a distinct entity, treated by the fiber arm as no different from any other L1 customer. None of the shenanigans like the ILECs play, where the wholesale rate to competitors is higher than the retail rate for the ILEC's own service.
That's true at L3, but at L2, my goal is to encourage *much smaller* ISPs (like the one I used to engineer in 1996, Centurion Technologies; we were profitable with about 400 dialup customers into a 40 and a 20 modem dialup bank backhauled by 512kb/s *and I would come to your house and make it work if I had to*. :-). By having the city run L2 over our L1, we can accomplish that; unlike L3, I don't believe it actually needs to be a separate company; I expect most ISP business to be at L2; L1 is mostly an accomodation to potential larger ISPs who want to do it all themselves. Or FiOS. :-)
You're missing the simplicity of dark fiber. The carrier orders a L1 circuit from a customer to their facility. The L1 provider just patches one fiber pair to another fiber pair, which can be done by a trained monkey. Then the carrier connects their own equipment to the fiber at their own facility and at the customer site, everything lights up and the spice^Wdata flows. Again, that can be done by a trained monkey. You don't need a CCIE or even a CCNA to do this. Heck, it's even simpler than what's required today for DSL, cable or satellite installers.
Scott asserts that it's not that easy In The Real World; it remains to be seen whether he's right.
(Note that inside wiring is a completely separate issue, and carriers _will_ have to train techs on how to do that since few are familiar with fiber, but that is an optional service they can charge extra for. The L1 provider's responsibility ends at the NIU on an outside wall, same as an ILEC's, so it's not their problem in the first place.)
The L2 might end there, too, if I decide on outside ONTs, rather than an optical jackblock inside. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274