----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Helms" <khelms@zcorum.com>
Yep, that's likely what will happen over the long term anyhow. That's why I asked about a new apartment building in your territory. You decision would be either run additional fiber to support each apartment as an end point, simply provide backhaul to some other provider, or put your own actives somewhere nearby.
In fact, there is *one* large multiunit in my city, and I don't believe that there is space for anymore; my CO location is *right across the street from that*. :-) If someone *does* want to put another in, they will have to pay for me to pull the new fiber to their lot; that's how we do it with other utilities.
Doing things which are not quite cost effective *yet* is pretty much the *hallmark* of government, is it not? Hybrid car tax breaks, Solar PV install tax breaks... these things are all subsidies to the consumer cost of a technology, so as to increase its uptake and push it onto the consumer-cost S-curve; this is a government practice with at least a century long history.
It's pretty much what I'm trying to accomplish here. And thanks for teasing that thought out of my head, so I can make sure it's in my internal sales pitch. :-)
All of those items have some chance of mass deployment. Mass deployment of Layer 1 connectivity in the US is much *much *less likely.
For the about 19th time: *that isn't my goal*. My goal is "not limiting future technology developments of deployment". Homerun fiber merely happens to have "L1 access to providers" as a side benefit.
First, exactly how many and what Layer 2 technologies BESIDES Ethernet do you think you have a market for?
GPON/DOCSIS/RFoG? That's one people are deploying today.
That question was in reference to commercial accounts not service providers.
I'm glad you want to limit the question, but I don't.
Perhaps. But the *current* potential customer base does not merit locking in a limited design in a 50-year plant build.
That's a business call, but like a lot of decisions you're making a ton of assumptions as well. You're assuming for example that the costs of running additional fibers won't go down significantly during that 50 year time span.
Sure I am. Do you really expect that we'll find an appreciably cheaper method than directional-bore-and-blow? More to the point, the "-blow" part of that, since I'll be over-provisioning the conduit.
You're assuming that the cost of DWDM gear won't go down sufficiently that running new fiber is simply not needed to support the new architecture.
Which seems the opposite argument.
You're also assuming that Layer 1 will at some point have a reason for customer adoption when the entire world is working on Layer 3 methods of doing this.
Perhaps. But Juan Moore-Thyme: The extra cost of the plant build is somewhere between delta and epsilon; it *barely* even merits the amount of time we've burned up talking about it. I *can* fake loop with a home-run build, the converse is -- so far as I can see -- not true; loop builds *require* powered active equipment in the field, and I have half a dozen reasons to *really not want that a lot*.
This is the key point. IF someone was able to put together a nationwide or even regional offering to allow inexpensive Layer 1 connectivity things would be different.
How, Scott, would you expect that sort of thing might happen?
By people taking the first step?
Yeah; thought so.
There are more "first steps" that are never followed up than people actually starting a trend. There is a guy in my neighborhood that swears we can all drive around in cars powered by recycled frying oil and he built one to prove it works. I should point out that your idea is not new nor are you the first to try to build something like this.
Good, then there should be lots of examples, successful *by their terms* or not, at which I can look.
My county doesn't have the same first-trencher advantage my city does... but it does have the advantage that *it is nearly 100% built out as well*; we are, I believe, the densest county *in the United States*; maybe Manhattan beats us. Maybe DC; maybe Suffolk County in Mass.
So it's not at all impossible that we might be the first domino to fall; there are a lot of barrier island communities near me that would be similarly easy to fiber, since they're so one-dimensional.
(Geographically; I'm sure their residents are quite nice. :-)
Today there are networks based on this premise in every state I've cared to check.
There are a lot of premises in this conversation; exactly which part did you mean?
Here in Georgia the independent phone companies formed a seperate organization called US Carrier (which was recently sold for much less than they put into it). The muni's formed a partnering (initially) network called MEAG that was later renamed to GA Public Web ( http://www.gapublicweb.net/). When the two were first constructed in the early 2000's they actually had a interconnects and could sell off each other's network, but that fell apart over time.
Another good reference; thanks.
However, that's not going to happen AND we already have good cheap solutions to deal with that. Most commonly VPLS over GRE or VPN whose only real cost beyond the basic home Internet connection, is a ~$350 CPE that supports the protocol.
You're paying $350 for VPN routers?
Could I be one of your vendors?
VPLS and good remote management is well worth $350.
I was quite happy with SnapGear before they got bought, out (still am, actually), and they were about half that.
your IT staff to support?
Accurate, but not germane. They're not my target market.
Owen brought up that example.
Sure, there are lots of target markets. But no specific target market (except perhaps L1 ISPs) is driving my decision. 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