On Jan 30, 2013, at 5:11 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

[ One of a batch of replies to today's traffic; I was busy yanking a 750GB drive out of the grave all day. --jra ]

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From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>

[ me: ]

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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?

It doesn't actually matter. You don't necessarily need to be the only wholesale offering, you just need to be open to all service providers. This means that if Road Runner wants to pay for their own infrastructure instead of using yours, then that will increase their costs and likely make it harder for them to compete with ISPs (and other services) that choose to use your infrastructure.

It does actually matter, Owen, for the specific build I'm looking at, since *Road Runner already has the city built*; they can do GHz CATV with all the toys, and at least 25/5 cable modem, if not 50/15.

You don't think some small scrappy provider using muni fiber with good customer service couldn't come in and start collecting customers from Road Runner? I bet they could. Having muni fiber with an open access policy makes it pretty easy to stand up a local ISP without a lot of up-front investment. Having a single incumbent doesn't strike me as being particularly dangerous to the practicality of muni fiber.

That's pretty competitive, and already includes triple play.

Competitive by today's pathetic american standards, sure. You wouldn't be able to find a single taker in SE, KR, or many other parts of the developed world.

What sort of money a build needs to make is of course largely a question of how good a sales job you did to your city commission, but I shouldn't think a small, largely residential, community is gonna make it on *just* businesses and geeks.

No, but most such communities, given a choice, the incumbent wouldn't have too much difficulty losing customers to a competitor. Owen

I am the administrator of a Municipally held ISP that has been providing services to our constituents for 15 years in a competitive environment with Charter. We aren't here to eliminate them, only to offer an alternative. When the Internet craze began back in the late 1990's they made it clear that they would never upgrade the plant to support Internet data in a town this size, until we started the discussion of Bonds. We provide a service that is reasonably priced with local support that is exceptional. We don't play big brother. Both myself and my Director honor peoples privacy. No information without a properly executed search warrant. Having said all that. We are pursuing the feasibility of the model you are discussing. My director believes that we would better serve our community by being the layer 1 or 2 provider rather than the service provider. While I agree in principle. The reality is, from my perspective is that the entities providing the services will fall back to the original position that prompted us to build in the first place. Provide a minimal service for the maximum price. There is currently no other provider in position in our area to provide a competitive service to Charter. Loosely translated, our constituents would lose. IMHO. ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us> To: "Jay Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 9:24:04 AM Subject: Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard? On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

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From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca>

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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.

As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the taxpayers.

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?

Not Road Runner, no. What you've done, if you've done it right, is returned being an ISP to an ease-of-entry business like it was back in the dialup days. That's where *small* business plays, offering customized services where small amounts of high-margin money can be had meeting needs that a high-volume commodity player can't handle. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

That is actually one of the big picture scenarios we are reviewing, with the ISP component being the last to go if there is a fair and competitive market the arises for our constituents. We won't allow the return of the old monopoly play that existed back then. This is too vital for the growth of our business community. We also view it as a quality of life issue for our citizens. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Kristolaitis" <alter3d@alter3d.ca> To: nanog@nanog.org Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 12:53:51 PM Subject: Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard? There isn't any reason that you couldn't offer ALL of those services. Spin off the layer 1 & 2 services as a separate entity as far as finance & legal is concerned, then treat the muni ISP as just another customer of that entity, with the same pricing and service that's offered to everyone else. If there is enough competition with the layer 1 & 2 services, the muni ISP may or may not have that many customers, but it'll still be there as an "ISP of last resort", to borrow a concept from the financial system, ensuring competitive and fair pricing is available. - Pete On 01/30/2013 09:37 AM, Art Plato wrote:

I am the administrator of a Municipally held ISP that has been providing services to our constituents for 15 years in a competitive environment with Charter. We aren't here to eliminate them, only to offer an alternative. When the Internet craze began back in the late 1990's they made it clear that they would never upgrade the plant to support Internet data in a town this size, until we started the discussion of Bonds. We provide a service that is reasonably priced with local support that is exceptional. We don't play big brother. Both myself and my Director honor peoples privacy. No information without a properly executed search warrant. Having said all that. We are pursuing the feasibility of the model you are discussing. My director believes that we would better serve our community by being the layer 1 or 2 provider rather than the service provider. While I agree in principle. The reality is, from my perspective is that the entities providing the services will fall back to the original position that prompted us to build in the first place. Provide a minimal service for the maximum price. There is currently no other provider in position in our area to provide a competitive service to Charter. Loosely translated, our constituents would lose. IMHO.

----- Original Message ----- From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us> To: "Jay Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com> Cc: "NANOG" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 9:24:04 AM Subject: Re: Will wholesale-only muni actually bring the boys to your yard?

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:

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----- Original Message -----

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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. As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the taxpayers.

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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? Not Road Runner, no. What you've done, if you've done it right, is returned being an ISP to an ease-of-entry business like it was back in the dialup days. That's where *small* business plays, offering customized services where small amounts of high-margin money can be had meeting needs that a high-volume commodity player can't handle.

Regards, Bill Herrin

Having worked with lots of other municipalities who do the same thing, I think you're 100% right. The L1/L2 solutions are nice to think of, but I don't think in the end it actually works in the real world. The only time a municipality operating in the L1 space has worked well from my experience is when they were selling fiber to other carriers. Which generally meant the only things that the carriers and the municipality cared about and wanted fiber built to was large enterprises, telco spaces, or as middle-mile pieces of another network. I don't think the residential model could actually be financially feasible for any municipality. On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 8:37 AM, Art Plato <aplato@coldwater.org> wrote:

I am the administrator of a Municipally held ISP that has been providing services to our constituents for 15 years in a competitive environment with Charter. We aren't here to eliminate them, only to offer an alternative. When the Internet craze began back in the late 1990's they made it clear that they would never upgrade the plant to support Internet data in a town this size, until we started the discussion of Bonds. We provide a service that is reasonably priced with local support that is exceptional. We don't play big brother. Both myself and my Director honor peoples privacy. No information without a properly executed search warrant. Having said all that. We are pursuing the feasibility of the model you are discussing. My director believes that we would better serve our community by being the layer 1 or 2 provider rather than the service provider. While I agree in principle. The reality is, from my perspective is that the entities providing the services will fall back to the original position that prompted us to build in the first place. Provide a minimal service for the maximum price. There is currently no other provider in position in our area to provide a competitive service to Charter. Loosely translated, our constituents would lose. IMHO.

In a message written on Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 09:37:24AM -0500, Art Plato wrote:

While I agree in principle. The reality is, from my perspective is that the entities providing the services will fall back to the original position that prompted us to build in the first place. Provide a minimal service for the maximum price. There is currently no other provider in position in our area to provide a competitive service to Charter. Loosely translated, our constituents would lose. IMHO.

I'm not sure what your particular situation is, but I urge you to look at the hurdles faced by a small business trying to use your infrastructure. Back in the day there were a ton of dial up ISP's. Why? Well, all they had to do was order an IP circuit from someone, a bank of phone lines from another person, and a few thousand dollars worth of equipment and boom, instant ISP. Exclude your muni-fiber for the moment, and consider someone who wants to compete with Charter. They have to get permits to dig up streets, place their own cable to each house, be registered with the state PUC as a result, respond to cable locates, obtain land and build pedistals with power and network to them, etc; all before they can think about turning up a customer. The barrier to entry is way too high. Muni-fiber shold be able to move things much closer to the glory days of dial up, rather than the high barrier to entry the incumbant telcos and cablecos enjoy. Look at your deployment, what are the up front costs to use it? Do you require people to have a minimum number of customers, or a high level of equipment just to connect? What's the level of licensing and taxation imposed by your state? Many of the muni-fiber plants I've read about aren't much better. They are often GPON solutions, and require a minimum number of customers to turn up, purchase of a particular amount of colo space to connect, and so on. Just to turn up the first customer is often in the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars; and if that is the case the incombants will in. Some of this is beyond the reach of muni-fiber. State PUC's need to have updated rules to encourage these small players in many cases. I think the CALEA requirements need a bit of an overhaul. If the providers want to offer voice or video services there's an entirely different level of red tape. All of these things need to be moderized with muni-fiber deployments, and sadly in many cases the incumbants are using their muscle to make these ancillary problems worse just to keep out new entrants... -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:

On Jan 30, 2013, at 6:24 AM, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> wrote:

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As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the taxpayers.

Perhaps, but well worth the effort. There are a wide variety of reasons to want more than one L3 provider to be readily available and avoid limiting consumers to a single choice of ISP policies, capabilities, etc.

If the municipal provider offers open, settlement-free peering at the head end then the customer *does* have a choice of L3 provider. Tunnel service over IP has only minor differences from an L2 service in such a scenario. Only one difference truthfully: MTU.

Also, an L1/L2 fiber plant may be usable for other services beyond just packets.

True enough but rapidly dropping in importance. The 20th century held POTS service with a rare need for a dry copper pair. The 21st holds IP packets with a rare need for dark fiber. Besides, I don't propose that a municipality implement fiber but refuse to unbundle it at any reasonable price. That would be Really Bad. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004

----- Original Message -----

From: "William Herrin" <bill@herrin.us>

As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the taxpayers.

That's one problem, yes. My solution there is to tap the Third Local ISP, who are already the competitive provider over Bright House, and have them at the letter of intent stage, at least informally, before I go to the council with a proposal.

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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?

Not Road Runner, no. What you've done, if you've done it right, is returned being an ISP to an ease-of-entry business like it was back in the dialup days. That's where *small* business plays, offering customized services where small amounts of high-margin money can be had meeting needs that a high-volume commodity player can't handle.

And this argument, Bill, plays right into my hands. Thanks. 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