On Friday, August 01, 2014 04:44:29 PM Owen DeLong wrote:
Even when mandated to unbundle at a reasonable cost, often other games are played (trouble ticket for service billed by lines provider resolved in a day, trouble ticket for service on unbundled element resolved in 14 days, etc.).
IMHO, experience has taught us that the lines provider (or as I prefer to call them, the Layer 1 infrastructure provider) must be prohibited from playing at the higher layers.
Agree. In reality, though, we've seen Layer 1-only providers becoming service providers (even when they previously promised the market it would never happen), due to wanting to stay "relevant". I suppose if a Layer 1 provider were a government entity, there is a higher chance they would never enter the Layer 2 or 3 space, but even then, there is strong lobbying in politics that this could become a reality. I've seen it happen a great deal in south east Asia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, and now even South Africa, particularly with Layer 1 providers that were government entities built to enable fibre connectivity for management of utility services (power, for example) and were then tasked to offer Layer 1 services with the remaining fibre, but currently find themselves now playing in Layer 2 and above to make extra cash for the government. It's hard... Mark.