The Australian NBN plan evolved because, when the Australian government put out the original RFP, the incumbent telcos wanted anti-competitive commitments in exchange for their build-out efforts (sound familiar here in the USA?). The Australian government deemed the original telco RFP replies as "non-responsive", and withdrew the RFP, deciding that only the Australian government could build out a national network with broadband local loops to every residence and business. The Australian wholesale model opens the NBN to competitive market forces, as the wholesaled bandwidth costs are the same for all ISPs. So the plan is to make the ISPs compete on customer service features, let the marketplace decide as it were, as they would all have the same wholesale bandwidth charges. For those that argue that a national government plan would never work in the USA, the interstate highway system, and the modern commercial Internet itself refute that argument. The modern Internet was created by the Federal High Speed Computing and Communications Act of 1991, and the original build-out was directed by the National Science Foundation under the management of the White House Office of Technology. Once the commercial Internet was established, it was turned over to the telcos in 1993. The Australian NBN also has plans to possibly turn the network over to private hands once the build-out is established. And the muni build-out model, where a hodge podge of local networks are somehow coordinated such that all residences and businesses are connected, nationwide, at the same price and speed, just will not work. Building from the bottom up is not how today's commercial Internet backbone was created. David On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 4:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca>
It is in fact important for a government (municipal, state/privince or federal) to stay at a last mile layer 2 service with no retail offering. Wholesale only.
Not only is the last mile competitively neutral because it is not involved in retail, but it them invites competition by allowing many service providers to provide retail services over the last mile network.
This, Jean-Francois, is the assertion I hear relatively frequently.
It rings true to me, in general, and I would go that way... but there is a sting in that tail: Can I reasonably expect that Road Runner will in fact be technically equipped and inclined to meet me to get my residents as subscribers? Especially if they're already built HFC in much to all of my municipality?
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