Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick@zill.net> wrote:

Isn't this really an issue (political) with tariffed T1 prices rather than a technical problem?

I was told that most T1s are provisioned over a DSLAM these days anyways, and that the key difference between T1 and DSL was the SLA (99.99% guarantee vs. "when we get it fixed").

I don't know about anything other than Qwest-land in Arizona, but we are seeing the few T1s that are still in service provisioned as you described: a 2-wire DSL connection, although not out of a local DSLAM. I think it depends on your definition of the box that's being used for connections as a DSLAM. It's certainly not the same traffic engineering as DSL, because DSL circuits are muxed at the DSLAM (at least in Qwest-land) and may or may not be subject to congestion when leaving the neighborhood remote terminal DSLAM. We for sure NEVER see any congestion on the T1s that are being provisioned using DSL technology. Now, whether that's the same chassis with engineering over an uplink, or two separate chassis in the same road-side wart for the two different services, that's a deployment issue. In other words, I think you're right about the technology involved (DSL-ish 2 wire circuits) being used to deliver, but there's more to it than repair time SLA when it comes to selling the same 2 wires as DSL for $39.95 and T1 for $399.95. (again, at least out here in the Wild West) That being said, I think your fundamental point is likely correct, something well known to everyone in this business: the cost to a Telco to provide T1 service is not 10x the cost to provide DSL service at similar speeds, and when there is that much additional marginal revenue being generated, they are going to fight with politics, tariffs, and any other tool at their disposal to keep the additional revenue coming in as long as possible. jms -- Joel M Snyder, 1404 East Lind Road, Tucson, AZ, 85719 Senior Partner, Opus One Phone: +1 520 324 0494 jms@Opus1.COM http://www.opus1.com/jms