Looking for some diversity in Alabama that does not involve ATT Fiber
Hey All, I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town. If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list. Best, Joe
I don't know about AT&T, but Verizon physically removes the copper connections when they install fiber into a building. Oddly, this is legal. Verizon is required to open up their copper to CLECs, but not fiber. The only option at that point is cable or wireless. -----Original Message----- From: Joe Maimon [mailto:jmaimon@ttec.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 11:45 AM To: North American Networking and Offtopic Gripes List Subject: Looking for some diversity in Alabama that does not involve ATT Fiber Hey All, I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town. If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list. Best, Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling" <EWieling@nyigc.com>
I don't know about AT&T, but Verizon physically removes the copper connections when they install fiber into a building. Oddly, this is legal. Verizon is required to open up their copper to CLECs, but not fiber.
The Verizon *regulated ILEC operating company* is required to provide equal access. FiOS comes from an unregulated subsidiary. Whether there might be some illegal collusion in the unreg subsid generating a pull order for a copper service from the regulated LEC is one thing... but why would it otherwise be illegal for the LEC to pull the copper? It *is* their copper... That's an interesting perception, and I'm curious where you came by it. 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
I feel a topic shift coming... 2012/3/21 Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling" <EWieling@nyigc.com>
I don't know about AT&T, but Verizon physically removes the copper connections when they install fiber into a building. Oddly, this is legal. Verizon is required to open up their copper to CLECs, but not fiber.
The Verizon *regulated ILEC operating company* is required to provide equal access. FiOS comes from an unregulated subsidiary.
Whether there might be some illegal collusion in the unreg subsid generating a pull order for a copper service from the regulated LEC is one thing...
but why would it otherwise be illegal for the LEC to pull the copper?
It *is* their copper...
That's an interesting perception, and I'm curious where you came by it.
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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out. We often get customers in buildings lit by Verizon fiber service who want to change carriers. Too bad they can't anymore. Technically they can switch providers. Verizon will remove the fiber, re-install copper, and have the customer down for a week or so. If Verizon was not a wireline monopoly I might not have such an issue with this practice. Full Disclosure: I work for a CLEC. -----Original Message----- From: Jay Ashworth [mailto:jra@baylink.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 12:22 PM To: NANOG Subject: Re: Looking for some diversity in Alabama that does not involve ATT Fiber ----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling" <EWieling@nyigc.com>
I don't know about AT&T, but Verizon physically removes the copper connections when they install fiber into a building. Oddly, this is legal. Verizon is required to open up their copper to CLECs, but not fiber.
The Verizon *regulated ILEC operating company* is required to provide equal access. FiOS comes from an unregulated subsidiary. Whether there might be some illegal collusion in the unreg subsid generating a pull order for a copper service from the regulated LEC is one thing... but why would it otherwise be illegal for the LEC to pull the copper? It *is* their copper... That's an interesting perception, and I'm curious where you came by it. 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling" <EWieling@nyigc.com>
Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out.
TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install? Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
We often get customers in buildings lit by Verizon fiber service who want to change carriers. Too bad they can't anymore. Technically they can switch providers. Verizon will remove the fiber, re-install copper, and have the customer down for a week or so.
See above. 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On 03/21/2012 11:58 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling"<EWieling@nyigc.com> Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out. TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
So if Verizon is on the hook to support the CLEC's, why are they pulling the local loop? I'm sure it isn't free to pull it and certainly not to reinstall it, so what might be their motivation? Mike
On 3/21/2012 12:16 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
On 03/21/2012 11:58 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling"<EWieling@nyigc.com> Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out. TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
So if Verizon is on the hook to support the CLEC's, why are they pulling the local loop? I'm sure it isn't free to pull it and certainly not to reinstall it, so what might be their motivation?
Mike
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS service which ILECs provide, is basically copper service. So once the copper is gone, they are no longer in the heavily regulated POTS business. The result being, they can do whatever they want. --John
On 03/21/2012 12:28 PM, John T. Yocum wrote:
On 3/21/2012 12:16 PM, Michael Thomas wrote:
On 03/21/2012 11:58 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling"<EWieling@nyigc.com> Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out. TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
So if Verizon is on the hook to support the CLEC's, why are they pulling the local loop? I'm sure it isn't free to pull it and certainly not to reinstall it, so what might be their motivation?
Mike
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS service which ILECs provide, is basically copper service. So once the copper is gone, they are no longer in the heavily regulated POTS business. The result being, they can do whatever they want.
I can understand their motivation if what Jay writes is incorrect. My guess is that Jay may be correct technically, but VZ does it anyway because they figure they can get away with it. Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Thomas" <mike@mtcc.com>
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS service which ILECs provide, is basically copper service. So once the copper is gone, they are no longer in the heavily regulated POTS business. The result being, they can do whatever they want.
I can understand their motivation if what Jay writes is incorrect. My guess is that Jay may be correct technically, but VZ does it anyway because they figure they can get away with it.
Someone tells me off list that indeed, if the plant isn't *there*, VZN isn't required to build it. Now, if that's the case, then they can't adminstratively block *someone else* from building it, either... 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:00:32 -0400, Jay Ashworth said:
Someone tells me off list that indeed, if the plant isn't *there*, VZN isn't required to build it.
Now, if that's the case, then they can't adminstratively block *someone else* from building it, either...
Yes, but it's assymetric. VZN isn't required to build the 150 foot of copper plant from building to pole, and they can't stop a competitor from building 12,000 foot of copper plant from PoP to building. ;)
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:28 PM, John T. Yocum <john.yocum@fluidhosting.com> wrote:
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and
As opposed to fiber plant which is indestructible and cheap to maintain? Well, if VZ owns the copper, if it's not being used to provide a service, and the price of copper keeps going up, it's only a matter of time before VZ should want to take their bits of unused cable back. How useful is leaving a dormant loop in place just because someone might theoretically want it someday? Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS
You sure the regulations won't eventually be updated to apply some rules to whatever POTS is being replaced with? Possibly years before they could finish eliminating their copper plant, which doesn't likely happen until the pricing allows POTS customers to get FiOS delivery installed for free as a cheaper alternative to POTS delivery. -- -JH
Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> writes:
Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
To put some numbers with this statement (which I agree with btw): OSP cable is commonly available composed of 19 AWG, 22 AWG, 24 AWG, and 26 AWG pairs. 19 and 26 are outliers; 19 is for low pair count cables going extra long distances and 26 is only good for quite short distances (CO/SLC to customer) but Superior Essex makes a 3000 pair cable in #26 (22 and 24 max out at 900 and 1800 pair, at least on the spec sheet I have handy). Most of the cable out there is 22 or 24. Solid #22 and #24 (uninsulated) copper wire weighs 1.95 and 1.23 pounds per 1000 feet respectively. That's without the insulation, and only one wire, not a pair. I found scrap pricing for "telco" (obviously the contaminant ratios out there are different for different types of copper) at $1.20/pound, which may or may not be current, but if you figure a single pair of #24 is probably around 4 pounds per 1000 feet scrap weight... if an average loop is, say, 5000 feet, you can see where there is substantial incentive to recycle all the 600 pair that you have lying around. -r
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Robert E. Seastrom <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:
Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> writes:
Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
To put some numbers with this statement (which I agree with btw):
OSP cable is commonly available composed of 19 AWG, 22 AWG, 24 AWG, and 26 AWG pairs. 19 and 26 are outliers; 19 is for low pair count cables going extra long distances and 26 is only good for quite short distances (CO/SLC to customer) but Superior Essex makes a 3000 pair cable in #26 (22 and 24 max out at 900 and 1800 pair, at least on the spec sheet I have handy).
Most of the cable out there is 22 or 24. Solid #22 and #24 (uninsulated) copper wire weighs 1.95 and 1.23 pounds per 1000 feet respectively. That's without the insulation, and only one wire, not a pair.
I found scrap pricing for "telco" (obviously the contaminant ratios out there are different for different types of copper) at $1.20/pound, which may or may not be current, but if you figure a single pair of #24 is probably around 4 pounds per 1000 feet scrap weight... if an average loop is, say, 5000 feet, you can see where there is substantial incentive to recycle all the 600 pair that you have lying around.
Hi Robert, That depends on the cost of recovering it. We're not talking about salvage operators pulling cable, we're talking about highly trained [sic] Verizon installers. The last 4 pairs in use on that 3000 count cable will tend to linger a long, long time before you can go remove it. Mostly you'll recover short runs of low-count cable like the fifty-foot two and six pair cables from the street to the house: maybe $3 in scrap. How many dollars worth of time will the installer bill Verizon for recovering it? 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
From: William Herrin [mailto:bill@herrin.us] On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 10:18 AM, Robert E. Seastrom <rs@seastrom.com> wrote:
Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> writes:
Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
To put some numbers with this statement (which I agree with btw):
OSP cable is commonly available composed of 19 AWG, 22 AWG, 24 AWG, and 26 AWG pairs. 19 and 26 are outliers; 19 is for low pair count cables going extra long distances and 26 is only good for quite short distances (CO/SLC to customer) but Superior Essex makes a 3000 pair cable in #26 (22 and 24 max out at 900 and 1800 pair, at least on the spec sheet I have handy).
Most of the cable out there is 22 or 24. Solid #22 and #24 (uninsulated) copper wire weighs 1.95 and 1.23 pounds per 1000 feet respectively. That's without the insulation, and only one wire, not a pair.
I found scrap pricing for "telco" (obviously the contaminant ratios out there are different for different types of copper) at $1.20/pound, which may or may not be current, but if you figure a single pair of #24 is probably around 4 pounds per 1000 feet scrap weight... if an average loop is, say, 5000 feet, you can see where there is substantial incentive to recycle all the 600 pair that you have lying around.
Hi Robert,
That depends on the cost of recovering it. We're not talking about salvage operators pulling cable, we're talking about highly trained [sic] Verizon installers.
The last 4 pairs in use on that 3000 count cable will tend to linger a long, long time before you can go remove it. Mostly you'll recover short runs of low-count cable like the fifty-foot two and six pair cables from the street to the house: maybe $3 in scrap. How many dollars worth of time will the installer bill Verizon for recovering it?
If it means they're shutting down the CLECs in the process? I suspect it's worth quite a bit of installer billable time... Jamie
William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> writes:
That depends on the cost of recovering it. We're not talking about salvage operators pulling cable, we're talking about highly trained [sic] Verizon installers.
The last 4 pairs in use on that 3000 count cable will tend to linger a long, long time before you can go remove it. Mostly you'll recover short runs of low-count cable like the fifty-foot two and six pair cables from the street to the house: maybe $3 in scrap. How many dollars worth of time will the installer bill Verizon for recovering it?
I bet there is some kind of creative accounting that they can use that makes this totally worthwhile window dressing on their 10-Qs. -r
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs@seastrom.com>
I found scrap pricing for "telco" (obviously the contaminant ratios out there are different for different types of copper) at $1.20/pound, which may or may not be current, but if you figure a single pair of #24 is probably around 4 pounds per 1000 feet scrap weight... if an average loop is, say, 5000 feet, you can see where there is substantial incentive to recycle all the 600 pair that you have lying around.
That's relatively current. I recycled about 105 ft of 25pr I pulled out on a cabling job 3 or 4 months ago, and I think I got $130 for it. But remember: much to most telco trunk cable is icky-pic, and direct-burial; both of those change the effectiveness equation *markedly*. 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one. Also, I think Z doesnt see any problem at the moment because they probably make more money with the closed fiber network than they ever would shutting down/recycling copper On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 9:47 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:28 PM, John T. Yocum <john.yocum@fluidhosting.com> wrote:
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and
As opposed to fiber plant which is indestructible and cheap to maintain?
Well, if VZ owns the copper, if it's not being used to provide a service, and the price of copper keeps going up, it's only a matter of time before VZ should want to take their bits of unused cable back. How useful is leaving a dormant loop in place just because someone might theoretically want it someday?
Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS
You sure the regulations won't eventually be updated to apply some rules to whatever POTS is being replaced with? Possibly years before they could finish eliminating their copper plant, which doesn't likely happen until the pricing allows POTS customers to get FiOS delivery installed for free as a cheaper alternative to POTS delivery.
-- -JH
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce). The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile. In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets: Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint. Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex. I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost. It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least. Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD. This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion). A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly. I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure. Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere. Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it. - Jared
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net> wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce).
The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile.
In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets:
Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint.
Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex.
I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost.
It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least.
Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ
Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD.
This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion).
A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly.
I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure.
Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere.
Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it.
- Jared
I agree that barrier of entry is what is stifling competition. Hardware, cabling, even software is relatively inexpensive. Opening things up to competition is what drives innovation in the field. I think a good example of this is in the datacenter space. You usually have the same group of suspects who provide internet access for the home/business delivering service there at a fraction of what their retail price is. I know some people will say its a different scenario and less complexity, but the competition helps significantly. Do you think Verizon can sell ATM circuits with ridiculously long contracts like they're used to? Hell no. If I call up the carriers who service my local datacenter and they know they have competitors who can deliver the same service they will price accordingly. There's a unique sequence of events in each market but its all similar, and all in all Verizon isnt the only one at fault. We need new regulation that puts things back into perspective. Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens?
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:12 PM, chris wrote:
Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens?
They have used the past decades or century to establish these assets.
What is there that's worth having that isn't controlled by a big company
of some sort?
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:24 PM, Keegan Holley wrote:
What is there that's worth having that isn't controlled by a big company of some sort?
This is done in some places. eg: http://www.allband.org/ Some states place barriers to establishing a cooperative. Call your state PUC, there are good people there who will tell you about the unserved areas of the state. Your universal service fund tax has not made PSTN available to 100% of the US. The Allband service area just got the telephony services the rest of the country has enjoyed for decades. There are also many independent phone companies nationwide. Some are comfortable in their areas, others are pushing to expand. - Jared
On Mar 22, 2012, at 10:17 AM, Jared Mauch wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:12 PM, chris wrote:
Why is it that the big companies are controlling what happens?
They have used the past decades or century to establish these assets.
- Jared
1. Do not mistake a large telco for a communications company or an entity that considers itself in the communications business. They are not and do not. They are very large law firms and lobbying organizations that happen to have significant telecommunications infrastructure. One of the key differentiators of the internet is that it is not dominated as a battleground for lawyers and diplomats, but, rather is worked out between cooperating and competing entities as a (relatively) unregulated business transaction. 2. Because companies are allowed to own infrastructure and sell services over that infrastructure and in many cases without being required to make that (subsidized) infrastructure available to other services providers. 3. Because it is very expensive to build out the infrastructure to a given area and the maximum revenue potential from it is limited to a value unlikely to support 2x or more the infrastructure build-out cost, thus resulting in a sort of natural monopoly because it is cost effective to build out if you have a reasonable chance of capturing ~100% of the revenue, but, much less so if you are faced with the possibility of capturing 50% or less of the revenue.[1] Owen [1] Comparing across topologies is not as valid as the carriers would like you to believe. While the end services being offered share significant similarities in a converged digital world, they still retain unique properties that make certain things more optimal for different purposes. Consider the number of places in the US that have more than one cable provider or more than one DSL provider or more than one PON provider. These are few and far between and usually only reflect the very densest population centers.
On Mar 22, 2012, at 10:12 AM, chris wrote:
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net> wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce).
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California.
The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile.
Yes, at some point, we need to recognize that LMI (Last Mile Infrastructure) is and likely always will be a natural monopoly in all but the most densely populated areas (and actually even in many of those). THe market simply won't support the costs of deploying duplicate infrastructure installed by multiple providers. Given this fact, the only way to ensure competition in the services arena is to divorce the infrastructure from the services and require an independent operator of the infrastructure to make it available on an equal basis to all service providers.
In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets:
One reason the fiber plant should be treated differently is that we should learn from the mistakes we made with copper and we shouldn't continue to subsidize corporations to build out infrastructure that extends their ability to block competitors and should, instead insist that subsidized infrastructure is deployed in such a manner as to benefit all and support healthy competition for the services market.
It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least.
WHile I agree with you, the situation is already somewhat inverted in the US in that the existing USF subsidies have now made it more cost effective to build advanced networks into rural low-density subscriber bases than into moderately populated areas.
I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure.
The mechanism I have described above has been deployed in Sweden for some time now and is working out quite well from what I hear. It's also being tried in Australia now, much to the consternation of Telstra, but, it seems to be going well for the residents and businesses.
Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere.
+1 I do not understand this aversion to government having other sources of revenue besides direct taxation. If government can earn money from infrastructure it built with taxpayer money by leasing it to corporations or others, so long as it doesn't interfere with the original purpose for which the taxpayers funded its construction, I think this should absolutely be allowed and even encouraged.
Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it.
There was a project in New Zealand that started out not too far off from what you are describing above and resulted in a fiber run that now stretches from one end to the other of one of their islands IIRC. It was presented at PacNOG in American Samoa a couple of years back. Owen
On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:40:27 -0700, Owen DeLong said:
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California.
That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 3:11 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:40:27 -0700, Owen DeLong said:
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California.
That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :)
So where are these "subsidies" going? I live in rural BFE where most of my neighbors are still dialing in, and the local providers have no $$ incentive to build out here. Greg
On 3/22/2012 3:49 PM, Greg Shepherd wrote:
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 3:11 PM,<Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:40:27 -0700, Owen DeLong said:
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California.
That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :)
So where are these "subsidies" going? I live in rural BFE where most of my neighbors are still dialing in, and the local providers have no $$ incentive to build out here.
Greg
I imagine a lot goes into the general maintenance of rural systems. I recall 12 - 15 years ago, on the local news when it was announced a small town got its first phone line. Cost to GTE at the time was said to be 40K to do it, as the town was 20+ miles from the nearest anything. I've lived in an area where Verizon had to maintain 10 miles of overhead just for 1 SLC that serves 20 homes. Not that the service was any good but, I'm sure the cost was far higher than what the customers were paying. --John
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these "subsidies" going?
what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam. randy
So do a quick research on USF and see who gets paid from it... Please don't read this if you have just eaten.. you might puke .. http://connectedplanetonline.com/commentary/real-story-usf-data-071510/ http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/PDFs/2011usf/Response... If you have more time.. read these for your enjoyment.. http://energycommerce.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=8737 Then one can understand how come folks like Century Tel can gobble up Qwest, Savvis, Sprint, and a few others rather quickly !!! I believe the current USF contribution is about 19% !!! Faisal Imtiaz Snappy Internet& Telecom 7266 SW 48 Street Miami, Fl 33155 Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232 Helpdesk: 305 663 5518 option 2 Email: Support@Snappydsl.net On 3/23/2012 1:37 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these "subsidies" going? what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
randy
It's easy to ridicule the outliers, but the reality is that without USF the majority of rural America that has Internet connectivity today wouldn't be online. Yes, the price-cap carriers didn't do much in rural America, but that's because there was little economic incentive to do so. Rate-of-return carriers had the incentive to invest to earn a return, and they did that. Many of the independents serve small communities and there is an element of local pride in providing good service, and coops seek to serve their members well, and do the same thing. BTW, the FCC in their recent USF/ICC rulings has put a cap on the funding per customer per year to $5K, so you won't see any more of the examples listed in the Connected Planet article. Frank -----Original Message----- From: Faisal Imtiaz [mailto:faisal@snappydsl.net] Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 12:54 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc So do a quick research on USF and see who gets paid from it... Please don't read this if you have just eaten.. you might puke .. http://connectedplanetonline.com/commentary/real-story-usf-data-071510/ http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/PDFs/2011usf/Response toQuestion1.pdf If you have more time.. read these for your enjoyment.. http://energycommerce.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=8737 Then one can understand how come folks like Century Tel can gobble up Qwest, Savvis, Sprint, and a few others rather quickly !!! I believe the current USF contribution is about 19% !!! Faisal Imtiaz Snappy Internet& Telecom 7266 SW 48 Street Miami, Fl 33155 Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232 Helpdesk: 305 663 5518 option 2 Email: Support@Snappydsl.net On 3/23/2012 1:37 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these "subsidies" going? what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
randy
Yes, I find it quite "amusing" that I am paying additional fees on all of my telecommunications services to subsidize high speed PON networks in rural bumf*ck while I can't get anything like it in San Jose, California. That's OK, you're all in the same boat - the subsidized users can't get it either. :) So where are these "subsidies" going?
what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
Yup. I'm always shocked by how naive people are; the telcos did a fantastic job on this front. So few people realize what's actually happened. http://www.newnetworks.com/broadbandscandals.htm This is one of the clearest summaries of how we've been taken for hundreds of billions of dollars by telecom companies that promised to provide the "Information Superhighway"; while it has some clear bias, it is probably the best summarization of how this all went down, and who, why, and how. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
Randy Bush wrote:
what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
randy
Really. This is from the Governor's "Hawaii Broadband Initiative" speedtest website: "The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 02:18:26PM -1000, Michael Painter wrote:
Really. This is from the Governor's "Hawaii Broadband Initiative" speedtest website:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
Just one more nail in the coffin of the word "average". - Matt -- I seem to have my life in reverse. When I was a wee'un, it seemed perfectly normal that one could pick up the phone and speak to anybody else in the world who also has a phone. Now I'm older and more experienced, I'm amazed that this could possibly work. -- Peter Corlett, in the Monastery
On 03/23/2012 02:18 PM, Michael Painter wrote:
Randy Bush wrote:
what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
randy
Really. This is from the Governor's "Hawaii Broadband Initiative" speedtest website:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
To be fair to the initiative at least its goal is for universal access to 1Gbps by 2018, something they term 'ultra-high-speed' (not sure where that definition comes from): http://hawaii.gov/gov/broadband-policy-outline/ Paul
On Mar 23, 2012, at 6:54 PM, Paul Graydon wrote:
On 03/23/2012 02:18 PM, Michael Painter wrote:
Randy Bush wrote:
what a silly question. lining the telcos' pockets. american so called 'broadband' is a joke and a scam.
randy
Really. This is from the Governor's "Hawaii Broadband Initiative" speedtest website:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
To be fair to the initiative at least its goal is for universal access to 1Gbps by 2018, something they term 'ultra-high-speed' (not sure where that definition comes from): http://hawaii.gov/gov/broadband-policy-outline/
Paul
Yep... That's I think the problem... Back when the initiative documents were written, 1Gbps was ulra-high-speed and 768/200k was average broadband. There is no provision for the terms to shift over time, so, the document gets more and more out of date as time goes by. I suspect that by 2018, 1Gbps will probably be above average, but, not by as much as the document probably thinks. Owen
Paul Graydon wrote:
To be fair to the initiative at least its goal is for universal access to 1Gbps by 2018, something they term 'ultra-high-speed' (not sure where that definition comes from): http://hawaii.gov/gov/broadband-policy-outline/
Paul
A lofty goal to be sure, the biggest challenge of which may be to get those bits to/from where folks want them to go. RRDWDM? (Really, really, DWDM)
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-... -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
On Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:08:11 -0400, Marcel Plug said:
This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way..
Cue somebody denouncing projects like this done for the common good as socialism in 5.. 4.. 3.. :)
Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug <marcelplug@gmail.com> wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-... -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder <joseph.snyder@gmail.com> wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug <marcelplug@gmail.com> wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-... -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
For those who didn't Google it. http://www.ftthcouncil.org/en/knowledge-center/case-studies/amsterdam-city-f... -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder <joseph.snyder@gmail.com> wrote: Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Joseph Snyder <joseph.snyder@gmail.com> wrote: Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long. Marcel Plug <marcelplug@gmail.com> wrote: This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way.. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-... -Marcel On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
We've been funding it for years without getting it because of the stupid way in which it has been funded. I suggest you look into USF in more detail. Owen On Mar 24, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Joseph Snyder wrote:
Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Joseph Snyder <joseph.snyder@gmail.com> wrote:
Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long.
Marcel Plug <marcelplug@gmail.com> wrote:
This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way..
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-...
-Marcel
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
USF is more of a free for all get ISPs to build in 80% of the locations that nobody would build in their right mind vs a mini monopoly model for l2 that I equate this with. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote: We've been funding it for years without getting it because of the stupid way in which it has been funded. I suggest you look into USF in more detail. Owen On Mar 24, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Joseph Snyder wrote:
Lol too early in the morning, that much for so few, but if you are going to govt fund copper replacement, it's probably the way to go. Not sure how costly that would be in the US since even in the cities there are a lot of duplexes. -- Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
Joseph Snyder <joseph.snyder@gmail.com> wrote:
Any details on how much this cost, maybe I just missed it in the article. 40k. It sounds interesting but in the US this would only make sense in cities and most people don't live in MDUs. Where I live a lot of peoples driveways are a mile or two long.
Marcel Plug <marcelplug@gmail.com> wrote:
This article from arstechnica is right on topic. Its about how the city of Amsterdam built an open-access fibre network. It seems to me this is the right way to do it, or at least very close to the right way..
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/how-amsterdam-was-wired-for-...
-Marcel
On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 11:35 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:18:26 -1000, Michael Painter said:
"The indication of above average or below average is based on a comparison of the actual test result to the current NTIA definition of broadband which is 768 kbps download and 200 kbps upload. Any test result above the NTIA definition is considered above average, and any result below is considered below average."
That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts.
----- Original Message ----- From: <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu> To: "Michael Painter" <tvhawaii@shaka.com> Cc: <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Friday, March 23, 2012 5:35 PM Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) That's the national definition of "broadband" that we're stuck with. To show how totally cooked the books are, consider that when they compute "percent of people with access to residential broadband", they do it on a per-county basis - and if even *one* subscriber in one corner of the county has broadband, the entire county counts. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ummhmm. More and more lately, I'm reminded of a saying my old, now deceased, friend used to use when talking about poker in Milwaukee. "We knew it was a crooked game, but it was the only game in town."
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote:
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot). Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet. That cable has 144 strands. You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost? WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think... - Jared
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote:
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their
fiber
which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot).
Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet.
That cable has 144 strands.
You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost?
I agree, but what if it's not as simple as a bunch of strands in a conduit. What if the plant is part of some sort of multiplexed network or GPON solution. That's alot harder to share with another carrier . But yes if it's simple stands of glass not plugged into anything in particular it can be shared just like copper. Alot of the fiber plant out there isn't used this way though.
WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think...
This is different than sharing cables. Any long distance carrier is still free to purchase service from any LEC. The term "sharing fiber" seemed to imply that it's freely transferable from one company to the next. It largely isn't though, which is why I think the FCC hasn't touched it yet.
-----Original Message----- From: Keegan Holley [mailto:keegan.holley@sungard.com] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:41 PM To: Jared Mauch Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) 2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley wrote:
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their
which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess
fiber passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot).
Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet.
That cable has 144 strands.
You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost?
I agree, but what if it's not as simple as a bunch of strands in a conduit. What if the plant is part of some sort of multiplexed network or GPON solution. That's alot harder to share with another carrier . But yes if it's simple stands of glass not plugged into anything in particular it can be shared just like copper. Alot of the fiber plant out there isn't used this way though.
WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think...
This is different than sharing cables. Any long distance carrier is still free to purchase service from any LEC. The term "sharing fiber" seemed to imply that it's freely transferable from one company to the next. It largely isn't though, which is why I think the FCC hasn't touched it yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Verizon has no problem delivering service via fiber with a DSX-1 or Ethernet handoff. We simply want that service backhauled to us just like all our customers with service over copper with DSX-1 or Ethernet handoff.
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 01:31:47PM -0400, Jared Mauch wrote:
You agree on a price per distance (e.g.: mile/foot/whatnot).
Lets say the cable costs $25k to install for the distance of 5000 feet.
That cable has 144 strands.
You need access to one strand. If you install it yourself, it will cost you $25k. If you share the pro-rata cost, it comes out around $174 for that strand. Lets say they mark it up 10x (profit, unused strands), would you pay $1740 for access? What does emergency restoration cost?
WDM/DWDM add cost to that strand, but also increase the capacity based on what your overall lit capacity may be on a route. There are various cwdm/dwdm systems that range the usual 10/20/40/80/100km ranges. You obviously need to do the math yourselves on this. You may find the ROI is better than you think...
I'm trying to do just that right now, actually. 55 s. market to 250 Stockton in San Jose. I dono if it's five thousand feet, but it's not twice that. The cheapest fiber pair I can rent from someone else I've found is $5K/month; the cheapest build-out I've found is $150K, so even if I'm only using one pair in that, if I can get money at anything like a reasonable interest rate, if I plan on sticking around more than 5 years it makes sense to lay new fiber. Which is weird, as this is probably one of the densest masses of existing fiber in the world, going from a 'center of the universe' data center to a minor data center. Even the $5K/month rate isn't bad. If they asked for a third of that, I'd bite even though I don't need that much capacity quite yet. The big problem here, I think, is that it's quite difficult to figure out who has what fiber where, and even once you know who owns it, to find out who to talk to at a company that might know what 'dark fiber' is, much less know how much they might rent it to you for. I spent several hours last month on the phone with XO and I kept getting redirected to someone trying to sell me a T1. I've got other projects right now, but once I'm done with that, I'm going to be spending a bunch of time pestering the PUC and other people that might know who owns fiber between here and there. As for equipment cost, in my corner of the world, I can get used cisco 15540 systems for what I consider to be not very much money, and 32 10G waves is plenty for what I'm doing. I mean, they eat way more power than is required, and 10G/wave is not great these days, but if I could sell a reasonable number of waves, even at a whole order of magnitude below market, I'd be in good shape. The whole project seems dramatically cheaper than lit services. At quoted prices, 10G waves over the same distance cost about 1/2 what a full pair of dark fiber costs. Now, the big problem with the build out? as far as I can tell, I've gotta be a carrier to actually own fiber in the ground. From what I understand, that's not out of the question for me, but it's definitely a lot of work and red tape. There are, however, companies that will do a build out for you (of course, charging you for it up front) then they will lease you the fiber at a very low yearly rate - right now, that looks like the second-best option, where the best option is hunting down the owners of all the dead bundles of fiber going into the meetme room. (250 Stockton is ex-enron, it's got bundles coming in from MFN, quest, global crossing, MCI, "enron broadband" xo and others. I'd bet money that if I had the kind of access to the meetme at 55 s. Market that I have at 250 Stockton I could start shining light down empty strands and I'd see some of it come out the other side.) But from the amount of time it takes to just find someone at those companies that even knows what dark fiber is? I think I might be better off putting in the effort to do whatever regulatory red tape is required to own fiber in the ground. So yeah; really? in my corner of the world, the problem is the same problem you see everywhere else in this industry. Any useful information is guarded jealously. In this case, where does the fiber run? I mean, I have pretty good maps of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network; but the private networks are impossible.
There's more than just the cost of fiber -- there's also the cost of locating and taxes. Any maintenance if there's cuts and the costs if you need to move the fiber for a project. I've been many times where you were, frustrated that I didn't know the dark fiber options for a potential opportunity, but you have to remind yourself don't have a *right* to know where *private* fiber is. It's not just the physical property, the lack of documentation is a competitive advantage. Frank -----Original Message----- From: Luke S. Crawford [mailto:lsc@prgmr.com] Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:59 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al) <snip> I'm trying to do just that right now, actually. 55 s. market to 250 Stockton in San Jose. I dono if it's five thousand feet, but it's not twice that. The cheapest fiber pair I can rent from someone else I've found is $5K/month; the cheapest build-out I've found is $150K, so even if I'm only using one pair in that, if I can get money at anything like a reasonable interest rate, if I plan on sticking around more than 5 years it makes sense to lay new fiber. Which is weird, as this is probably one of the densest masses of existing fiber in the world, going from a 'center of the universe' data center to a minor data center. <snip> The big problem here, I think, is that it's quite difficult to figure out who has what fiber where, and even once you know who owns it, to find out who to talk to at a company that might know what 'dark fiber' is, much less know how much they might rent it to you for. I spent several hours last month on the phone with XO and I kept getting redirected to someone trying to sell me a T1. I've got other projects right now, but once I'm done with that, I'm going to be spending a bunch of time pestering the PUC and other people that might know who owns fiber between here and there. <snip> But from the amount of time it takes to just find someone at those companies that even knows what dark fiber is? I think I might be better off putting in the effort to do whatever regulatory red tape is required to own fiber in the ground. So yeah; really? in my corner of the world, the problem is the same problem you see everywhere else in this industry. Any useful information is guarded jealously. In this case, where does the fiber run? I mean, I have pretty good maps of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network; but the private networks are impossible.
On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 02:42:36PM -0500, Frank Bulk wrote:
I've been many times where you were, frustrated that I didn't know the dark fiber options for a potential opportunity, but you have to remind yourself don't have a *right* to know where *private* fiber is. It's not just the physical property, the lack of documentation is a competitive advantage.
Considering that nearly all of this fiber runs over public right of ways granted by the government (and sometimes through the use of force by the government) it's not really private in the sense that it would be if you bury fiber on land you own, or on land owned by private individuals that have given you the right to run fiber over or through the land through some voluntary exchange of value. The public right of ways are created by the government as a public good, and as such, I think the people have a right to know what goes on in them. (Actually, I was talking to a far more experienced friend the other day, and he says that I should be able to contact the PUC and get exactly this data, though often this, too, is somewhat difficult, so when I re-start this project in a few months, that's the direction I am going to attack first.) Legal issues aside, treating a lack of documentation as a competitive advantage makes any transaction vastly less efficient when you consider both parties. I don't do business that way, and when I have a choice? I don't do business with companies that do. Yes, it is legal, and I am not suggesting that should change. But it's still an asshole move that (from a perspective that considers both parties) destroys value. I talked to the silicon valley power people (the operators of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network) and they gave me a cost per mile and a very detailed map (down to what side of the street the fiber is on) - they wouldn't let me have a copy of the map that actually documented the 'pull boxes', but still, it was enough information that I could look at a building and tell pretty quickly if I was wasting their time or not by getting a quote. Talking to anyone else? no maps (or ridiculously vague maps) and no cost per mile. I have to pick two endpoints and ask how much. In my case, the endpoints depend almost entirely on how much it costs, this means I waste a whole lot of salesperson time, and my own time. It's a vastly less efficient way to do business.
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley <keegan.holley@sungard.com> wrote:
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
PON (e.g. FIOS) is similar to CWDM. The PO in PON is Passive Optical. As in a glass prism-like device with no electronics. You remember prisms from high school physics, right? Beam of white light into a glass triangle and it splits off into a rainbow of colors. Well, with CWDM the different color sources all being joined by the prism into a beam of "white" light. And then split back out at the other end. So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the "prism" sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam. Key is: it's just a piece of glass. A very finely machined piece of glass to be sure, but no electronics. Or, you could share at a different level: ethernet packets. Unbundle the local ethernet service from the Internet service. $X for the local ethernet service to the local concentration point at whatever capacity, $Y for the Internet/tv/phone services connected at the concentration point. Or buy some other service from another vendor at the concentration point. But you don't get to double-dip the billing: $X includes the cost to take the packets off at the concentration point; the service vendor doesn't pay again. 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
William Herrin wrote:
PON (e.g. FIOS) is similar to CWDM.
If you are not talking about WDM PON, no, not at all.
The PO in PON is Passive Optical. As in a glass prism-like device with no electronics.
The passive optical device of usual PON is not a prism but a splitter. The entire optics is shared by all the subscribers sharing a fiber. Thus, the problem is collision avoidance of simultaneous transmission, which makes PON time shared with L2 protocols.
So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue).
That's not a usual PON but WDN PON.
Or, you could share at a different level: ethernet packets.
That's where usual PON can be shared. But, it costs a lot, as much as sharing at L3. Masataka Ohta
2012/3/22 Masataka Ohta <mohta@necom830.hpcl.titech.ac.jp>:
William Herrin wrote:
The entire optics is shared by all the subscribers sharing a fiber. Thus, the problem is collision avoidance of simultaneous transmission, which makes PON time shared with L2 protocols.
Hm... i'm thinking one transceiver might malfunction and get stuck/frozen in the "transmitting pulse" state, thus making collision avoidance impossible, kind of like a shorted NIC on a shared bus topology LAN, if just one subscriber's equipment happens to have the right kind of failure, and that's neglecting the possibility of intentional attack. Passive optically-shared fiber networks don't sound so hot in that case.
So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). That's not a usual PON but WDN PON.
-- -JH
Jimmy Hess wrote:
The entire optics is shared by all the subscribers sharing a fiber. Thus, the problem is collision avoidance of simultaneous transmission, which makes PON time shared with L2 protocols.
Hm... i'm thinking one transceiver might malfunction and get stuck/frozen in the "transmitting pulse" state, thus making collision avoidance impossible, kind of like a shorted NIC on a shared bus topology LAN, if just one subscriber's equipment happens to have the right kind of failure, and that's neglecting the possibility of intentional attack.
That is a real problem harming healthy development of broadband Internet.
Passive optically-shared fiber networks don't sound so hot in that case.
Worse, as optical fibers are so cheap these days, SS (single star) costs less than PON, because PON requires more complicated wiring. Even worse, if people are deceived to recognize PON cheaper than SS, it is impossible to have optical Internet in sparsely populated area where optical Internet with SS is possible. It can be said that PON was promoted by ILECs only to keep their monopoly. Masataka Ohta
2012/3/22 Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net>
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley <keegan.holley@sungard.com> wrote: their
competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the "prism" sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam.
So who get's the keys the the cabinet it resides in? The LEC? All of the CLECs? The FCC? Who's responsible for maintaining the box given it's now shared. Who takes legal responsibility for outages caused by things done to this magical prism you speak of? In the LD to LEC carrier model you can use whatever you want, but this is different from what the FCC intended when they forced the incumbents to share copper plant. Also PON and WDM are very different actually, but that's beside the point. Once the incumbent has to permit access to their nodes the CLECs become customers. Copper
2012/3/22 William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> pairs followed a different model because they could be used by anyone at the whim of hte customer. Not all fiber based networks are implemented that way.
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 7:16 PM, Keegan Holley <keegan.holley@sungard.com> wrote:
2012/3/22 William Herrin <bill@herrin.us>
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Keegan Holley <keegan.holley@sungard.com> wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something, but how exactly does one share fiber? Isn't it usually a closed loop between DWDM or Sonet nodes? It doesn't seem fair to force the incumbents to start handing out lambdas and timeslots to their competitors on the business side. I guess passive optical can be shared depending on the details of the network, but that would still be much different than sharing copper pairs.
So, you share fiber by having one guy control one wavelength (color, e.g. red) and another guy control another wavelength (e.g. blue). And when you install it to a home or business, the "prism" sits up on the phone pole and just splits out the one wavelength that is intended for that location. You can't even stray out of your color: if you do, the prism will bend the light in a way that misses the target beam.
So who get's the keys the the cabinet it resides in? The LEC? All of the CLECs? The FCC? Who's responsible for maintaining the box given it's now shared. Who takes legal responsibility for outages caused by things done to this magical prism you speak of?
A fiber wavelength in the described PON scenario is operationally identical to a dedicated fiber strand or a dedicated copper pair with respect to management and connection. There's a physical "wire" coming out at each end which is connected to equipment with "lights" it. The problem is reduced to the already solved one of how to "share" copper pairs in a single cable. 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
Here in Maine, after seeing no strong proposals were being put forward by others, we went after American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to address a major lack of middle-mile infrastructure in the state. Verizon had stopped making new investments in Maine for nearly 10 years before pulling out and dumping a very old, very high maintenance copper plant on Fairpoint. It was nearly criminal. Even worse, the Fairpoint business plan was to continue to make large investments in copper ignoring the realities that fiber is the only way to reach areas in a cost effective way with such low population density. So the University of Maine System and Great Works Internet prepared a proposal for a public-private partnership to build out high capacity, diverse, middle-mile infrastructure in Maine; and instead of the University of Maine System or Great Works Internet managing it, we set it up so that a new independent private company would be created to manage the infrastructure and would be regulated as a public utility by the state; very similar to the power company model. The result is that Maine now has a new public utility classification of "dark fiber provider", and a company building out that fiber. It's called Maine Fiber Company: http://www.mainefiberco.com/ The way Maine Fiber Company was setup was key. They're forbidden to offer lit services; so they're a dark fiber only provider. They're require to provide open access to the fiber at a fair and published rate to anyone interested. Since the build was subsidized in part by Recovery Act funds, the rates are low enough to encourage new services in the state. One of the big problems in a state like Maine, and probably the majority of the US, is that companies like Fairpoint and Time Warner Cable (the two providers in Maine) end up building out redundant infrastructure at great cost. Not redundant as in diverse, mind you, but literally running fiber on the same utility polls, taking the same path, and both going down when hit by a truck. Because areas of the state are very low population, they often can't justify building a diverse path, so historically, one accident could, and often has, taken out services for entire counties. For the last few years MFC has been working to build out the high capacity fiber rings described, and this summer we're finally at a point where people can begin making use of MFC infrastructure. For us, it means expanding our R&E network, MaineREN, to interconnect the public universities in Maine. But for other service providers like Great Works Internet, it means being able to survive as Fairpoint tries to push out their competitors: See the following link for that story "Fairpoint Bankruptcy Exacerbates Circuit War": http://www.pressherald.com/archive/fairpoint-bankruptcy-exacerbates-circuit-... I think the model setup in Maine is something really powerful. It will drive down the price of delivering broadband significantly; it will open up and promote competition so that consumers aren't stuck paying premium rates for 20th century services, and it will provide much needed redundancy of services. It also helps the bigger companies like Fairpoint and Time Warner Cable if they're willing to make use of it (to my recollection Fairpoint decided to not even bid for the build out; that's how opposed they were to it) Personally, I think this is a model that might be useful to replicate at a municipal level as well: Dark fiber to the home as a public utility; service provider of your choice to light it up. I think we're a few years away from seeing that kind of effort, though, but after a few years of seeing the effect that Maine Fiber Company will have on the state, there might be people open to the idea. For now, I'm thankful to have the middle-mile taken care of. I know a few other states decided to go after recovery act money for broadband; does anyone know if something like the Maine model is being replicated anywhere else in the US? On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 12:26 PM, Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net> wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce).
The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile.
In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets:
Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint.
Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex.
I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost.
It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least.
Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ
Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD.
This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion).
A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly.
I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure.
Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere.
Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it.
- Jared
-- Ray Soucy Epic Communications Specialist Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526 Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System http://www.networkmaine.net/
I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA, bypassing telco fiber in many urban areas such as Los Angeles/Southern California. There are now companies that exist solely to construct E-Rate fiber. Sunesys is one such company. E-Rate builds out fiber to schools and libraries, and the telcos apparently have lobbied to ensure that a lateral to a library, for example, does not become a local fiber hub, but the backbone fiber can be used by anyone, with laterals built to order. I do not work for any of these E-Rate companies, but have discovered their potential use for connecting my network locations together. On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net> wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their fiber which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce).
The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile.
In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets:
Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint.
Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex.
I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many people wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost.
It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I think it will be challenging to say the least.
Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ
Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD.
This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion).
A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly.
I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure.
Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere.
Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it.
- Jared
-----Original Message----- From: david peahi [mailto:davidpeahi@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, March 26, 2012 1:54 PM To: Jared Mauch Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)
I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA
Lunch lady Doris has added a fiber splice kit to her collection of hairnets... Chuck
It varies from state to state ... In Maine, we've run an E-rate filing consortium for several years that uses E-rate funds and makes up the difference with a state telecommunications tax so schools and libraries don't need to pay for service. Up until a year or two ago, Verizon was always contracted to provide transport services exclusively; this was mainly T1 and ATM circuits. Unfortunately, we were at a point where requests for more bandwidth than 1.5 Mbps were either being ignored, or being delivered via multiple T1 drops (hundreds of locations with dual T1 connections). Of course this was a big cash flow for the ILEC, but our K12 schools being connected at 1.5 or 3 Mbps in 2010 was not acceptable to us (especially when they were still able to bill 500-800 a month per circuit). In response to not being able to get movement on newer transport, we opened up the process to competitive bid and got services from other providers in the state depending on location; this resulted in Fairpoint delivering Ethernet over copper services to remain competitive with Time Warner Cable and others, and ultimately Fairpoint still was awarded the vast majority of contracts; without the competitive process that wouldn't have happened. Most upgrades were modest; 1.5M locations moved up to 10M, and ATM sites moved to a verity of rates between 20 and 100M depending on the size of the location, but an upgrade is an upgrade, and 1.5 Mbps today is unusable for a single person, let alone an entire school. With the build-out of MaineREN, our facilities based R&E network, we've picked up a few large schools directly because it's cheaper to do so; instead of schools receiving 100M service, we can deliver 1G for less money, and re-direct funds to increase our transit capacity. Maine Fiber Company and the MaineREN expansion will make that an attractive option for more schools, but only a handful that are directly along the route. To make sure Fairpoint, Time Warner, and others were able to realize ROI, we signed multi-year contracts with them. So in our case, E-rate has actually helped the private sector considerably, and we don't see that really changing. It's not in the interest of a state to compete with commercial providers if they want the state to have a healthy market. It was also the primary driver for us to push for the creation of a new public utility for dark fiber rather than having the University own everything, which is the direction most seem to go. That said, every market is different. The biggest problem I've seen is that as soon as "E-rate" is mentioned the price inflates because providers start to drool over public funding. Meanwhile everyone wants to pay lower taxes; seems counter-productive. Don't get me started on "E-rate consultants", most of them take a % cut of the awarded funds as compensation for filling out federal forms that can be completed in 30 min. Thankfully that's been limited to some extent here by the filing consortium, but I've heard stories from other states about some of these guys pulling in close to 7 digits. On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 1:53 PM, david peahi <davidpeahi@gmail.com> wrote:
I have discovered that the Federal School Lunch E-Rate program has built out an entirely parallel fiber optic infrastructure in the USA, bypassing telco fiber in many urban areas such as Los Angeles/Southern California. There are now companies that exist solely to construct E-Rate fiber. Sunesys is one such company. E-Rate builds out fiber to schools and libraries, and the telcos apparently have lobbied to ensure that a lateral to a library, for example, does not become a local fiber hub, but the backbone fiber can be used by anyone, with laterals built to order. I do not work for any of these E-Rate companies, but have discovered their potential use for connecting my network locations together.
On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Jared Mauch <jared@puck.nether.net> wrote:
On Mar 22, 2012, at 11:05 AM, chris wrote:
I'm all for VZ being able to reclaim it as long as they open their
which I don't see happening unless its by force via government. At the end of the day there needs to be the ability to allow competitors in so of course they shouldnt be allowed to rip out the regulated part and replace it with a unregulated one.
I think this partly captures the incentive case here, but there is also a larger one at play. Over the years the copper infrastructure was installed and extended through various incentive programs. You can see the modern-day reflection of that in the RUS (used to manage rural electrification act, part of USDA) and NTIA (Department of Commerce).
The barriers to entry are significant for a new player in the marketplace. The cost is putting the cabling in the ground vs the cost of the cable itself. One can easily pick up hardware for $250 to light a single strand of 9/125 SM fiber @ 10km for a 1Gb/s ethernet link. That's low enough you could likely get a consumer to buy the hardware. The real cost is the installation per strand foot/mile.
In the past this has been subsidized for copper plant. There is no reason in my mind that the fiber plant should be treated differently from this standpoint. I can find fiber optic cabling for $0.25/ft. The problem here is a multi-dimensional one that I've seen play out in a few markets:
Verizon selling assets to Fairpoint (NH, ME, VT). These are high cost areas due to low-density population. For the sale to go through, Fairpoint had to agree to build into these higher cost areas. The result was bankruptcy for Fairpoint.
Verizon sold assets in Michigan (and other states) to Frontier. I've not tracked this one as closely, but I suspect the economics of this are fairly complex.
I've also spoken to some small ISPs and their general cost of building fiber to the home tends to be $2500/subscriber in upfront capital. This covers just the installation cost. Due to years of subsidy and regulation, people are unwilling to pay this amount to install a telecommunications service whereas a new home requiring a connection to the water, sewers, natural gas or electric grid may pay $10k or more to connect. Many
wouldn't think of buying a home without electric service, but without modern telecommunication service? I've seen this play out after the fact with friends asking how to get service. Satellite, Fixed wireless or just cellular data quickly become their fallbacks. The demand is there, the challenge becomes recovering the build cost.
It is my firm belief that without a regulatory regime it will not be feasible to connect many communities robustly to modern communications infrastructure. This could clearly change if the carriers involved see fit to replace this infrastructure, but with their current debt loads, I
fiber people think
it will be challenging to say the least.
Taking a look at Verizon - Their most recent quarterly balance sheet shows:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=VZ
Assets: 230.461 Billion USD Liabilities: 194.491 Billion USD.
This is not a lot of money, considering they have growing liabilities on a quarterly basis as part of their debt load (Long-term debt of $50 Billion).
A large fiber build would easily cost a few billion dollars and have lots of regulatory barriers. In my county it costs $200 to go over or under any public road (just for the permit). This starts to add up quickly.
I do think we need a new last-mile regime in many areas, be it more "fair" access similar to pole attach fees or the removal of local barriers to build this infrastructure.
Some school and other governments here in Michigan would love to sell/lease their excess fiber capacity to the private sector, but are worried about turning a profit when it was built with taxpayer funds and problems associated with that. I'd like to see these barriers removed. If it's there, lets make it of value. If the school system turns a profit on their enterprise, that's fine, it can lower the tax burden elsewhere.
Me? I'd be willing to pay $2500 to have Fiber built to my home. I might even pay more. At this point, my research continues on building the fiber and arranging my own easements for where to place it. I suspect you just need a few geeks that are willing to part with some extra $ for fiber bragging rights and one can build it.
- Jared
-- Ray Soucy Epic Communications Specialist Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526 Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System http://www.networkmaine.net/
Around the 2004 timeframe the RBOCs were having a discussion with the FCC, basically saying that if the FCC did not apply unbundling to their fiber builds they would build fiber, and that if the FCC did apply unbundling rules they would not. The FCC wanted fiber deployed, so they withheld applying unbundling rules. Frank -----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Hess [mailto:mysidia@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 8:47 PM To: John T. Yocum Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Verizon, FiOS, and CLEC/UNE orders (was AT&T diversity) On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:28 PM, John T. Yocum <john.yocum@fluidhosting.com> wrote:
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and
As opposed to fiber plant which is indestructible and cheap to maintain? Well, if VZ owns the copper, if it's not being used to provide a service, and the price of copper keeps going up, it's only a matter of time before VZ should want to take their bits of unused cable back. How useful is leaving a dormant loop in place just because someone might theoretically want it someday? Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS
You sure the regulations won't eventually be updated to apply some rules to whatever POTS is being replaced with? Possibly years before they could finish eliminating their copper plant, which doesn't likely happen until the pricing allows POTS customers to get FiOS delivery installed for free as a cheaper alternative to POTS delivery. -- -JH
Right, but a better approach would have been for the FCC to say "If you don't build fiber, you won't keep getting USF money." The FCC failed to look at the public interest and got rolled by the RBOCs again. Owen On Mar 24, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Frank Bulk wrote:
Around the 2004 timeframe the RBOCs were having a discussion with the FCC, basically saying that if the FCC did not apply unbundling to their fiber builds they would build fiber, and that if the FCC did apply unbundling rules they would not. The FCC wanted fiber deployed, so they withheld applying unbundling rules.
Frank
-----Original Message----- From: Jimmy Hess [mailto:mysidia@gmail.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 8:47 PM To: John T. Yocum Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Verizon, FiOS, and CLEC/UNE orders (was AT&T diversity)
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:28 PM, John T. Yocum <john.yocum@fluidhosting.com> wrote:
VZ wants to get rid of their copper plant. It's expensive to maintain, and
As opposed to fiber plant which is indestructible and cheap to maintain?
Well, if VZ owns the copper, if it's not being used to provide a service, and the price of copper keeps going up, it's only a matter of time before VZ should want to take their bits of unused cable back. How useful is leaving a dormant loop in place just because someone might theoretically want it someday?
Seems like a waste for VZ not to reclaim it so it can be recycled/put to good use.
it requires that they sell service to competitors. Once they've disconnected their customers from it, they can just eliminate the copper plant. POTS
You sure the regulations won't eventually be updated to apply some rules to whatever POTS is being replaced with? Possibly years before they could finish eliminating their copper plant, which doesn't likely happen until the pricing allows POTS customers to get FiOS delivery installed for free as a cheaper alternative to POTS delivery.
-- -JH
Owen DeLong wrote:
Right, but a better approach would have been for the FCC to say "If you don't build fiber, you won't keep getting USF money."
The FCC failed to look at the public interest and got rolled by the RBOCs again.
Owen
Regulatory capture. Nobody is immune. The only effective maintenance treatment is periodic upheaval. Joe
-----Original Message----- From: Michael Thomas [mailto:mike@mtcc.com] Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2012 3:16 PM To: Jay Ashworth Cc: NANOG Subject: Re: Verizon, FiOS, and CLEC/UNE orders (was AT&T diversity) On 03/21/2012 11:58 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
From: "Eric Wieling"<EWieling@nyigc.com> Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out. TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to
----- Original Message ----- that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
So if Verizon is on the hook to support the CLEC's, why are they pulling the local loop? I'm sure it isn't free to pull it and certainly not to reinstall it, so what might be their motivation? Mike ========================================== They are required to reinstall copper in many cases. The problem is that the FIOS is removed before the copper is reinstalled (as far as I can tell this is Policy), leading to several days, often a week or more, of downtime for the customer. They count on the fact no customer in their right mind would consider a week of downtime acceptable.
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out.
TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Hi Jay, They way I heard it, ILECs like Verizon are required to provide unbundled elements of the tariffed services anywhere they accept new orders for service which consumes those unbundled elements. They are not required to deploy new infrastructure solely to satisfy an order for an unbundled element but they may not deliver new element-consuming services without also satisfying the orders for unbundled elements. So, if they build new POTS ports at the CO, they're required to also fill the orders for unbundled POTS ports. And if they lay new copper to connect those ports to customer homes they're required to also fill the orders for unbundled pairs along the same path. Separately, an ILEC like Verizon has a universal service obligation to deliver a POTS line anywhere you order one. Without exception. The hinky part is that the FCC decided that copper pairs are an unbundled element but PONS wavelengths and Coaxial cable frequency channels are not. So, Verizon doesn't have to share access to FIOS and Comcast doesn't have to share access to the coax. As long as they deliver phone service without consuming copper pairs, universal service doesn't compel them to build any copper plant to satisfy your unbundled element order. I pine for the return of structural separation. If the cable plant provider was required to be a separate company from the services provider, we wouldn't have these shenanigans. Different shenanigans but not these. 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@her
The hinky part is that the FCC decided that copper pairs are an unbundled element but PONS wavelengths and Coaxial cable frequency channels are not. So, Verizon doesn't have to share access to FIOS and Comcast doesn't have to share access to the coax.
So why is it, then, that Vision Cable-Bright House-Advance/Newhouse Cable Partnership (which is what the payroll checks have said since about 1979) *is* required to provide competitive cablemodem access on their HFC plant? (I can get RoadRunner, their own brand, or Earthlink, or the local provider Internet Junction...) 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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
On 3/21/2012 1:56 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "William Herrin"<bill@her
The hinky part is that the FCC decided that copper pairs are an unbundled element but PONS wavelengths and Coaxial cable frequency channels are not. So, Verizon doesn't have to share access to FIOS and Comcast doesn't have to share access to the coax.
So why is it, then, that Vision Cable-Bright House-Advance/Newhouse Cable Partnership (which is what the payroll checks have said since about 1979) *is* required to provide competitive cablemodem access on their HFC plant?
(I can get RoadRunner, their own brand, or Earthlink, or the local provider Internet Junction...)
Cheers, -- jra
That's probably a local requirement. It's not a Federal requirement. Though, some cable companies do provide wholesale services even when not required. Look at ATT and others trying to get state-wide franchise agreements. They are trying to avoid having smaller areas tell them what to do, if they want to serve an area. --John
On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 5:00 PM, John T. Yocum <john.yocum@fluidhosting.com> wrote:
That's probably a local requirement. It's not a Federal requirement. Though, some cable companies do provide wholesale services even when not required.
Bingo. On the flip side of the equation, if you want to be an overbuilder (a third communications infrastructure provider beyond the phone and cable companies) the owner of the telephone poles is usually required by the state to sell you an "attachment." An attachment is a connection to a pole at a specific height, reserved for connecting your cables. The power company is usually the owner, so they don't get too bent out of shape about the fact that you're competing with the ILEC. The last I checked, this ran about $5/year per pole. See http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/mdrd/PoleAtt.html There are similar rules for underground conduit on public right-of-ways but I don't know what they are. On private land, underground conduit becomes a fixture of the property. So even though Verizon installed the conduit for their own cable, you as the property owner have a right to use it as you see fit. 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
Bingo.
On the flip side of the equation, if you want to be an overbuilder (a third communications infrastructure provider beyond the phone and cable companies) the owner of the telephone poles is usually required by the state to sell you an "attachment." An attachment is a connection to a pole at a specific height, reserved for connecting your cables. The power company is usually the owner, so they don't get too bent out of shape about the fact that you're competing with the ILEC. The last I checked, this ran about $5/year per pole.
When I worked for a CLEC the way that power pole attachments went, they would sell you the bottom most attachment point on the pole and you were required to move the other attachements further up the pole to make room for your attachment point (at your own expense). In our town the ILEC (GTE which morphed into Verizon) sold the power poles to the local municipality. So if you wanted attachment rights you had to negotiate with the local city manager. So be sure to check with them as well. My personal favorite was driving down the road one day watching them literally snip our fiber off the pole with a pair of cutters (it was a dark overlay we weren't using at the time, thankfully). Apparently the new city manager deemed that our agreement for power pole attachment didn't apply to him since it was negotiated under the previous city manager. He instructed the line workers to cut it down. Lawyers were involved shortly thereafter and the company went insolvent. Good times.
My understanding was that fiber loops were originally included in UNE products available to clecs but several years ago the FCC modified the regulations to remove them. So, if a service can be provisioned over a copper loop, a clec can offer it, but the ilec doesn't have to share fiber loops or services provisioned over fiber loops. I guess that explains the frenzy of fiber-to-the-curb buildout we saw with Pac Bell in the early 2000's. I don't think ATT/PacBell has been ripping out copper, but much of it in the SF Bay area is a rotting mess and ATT hasn't been spending much money to maintain it. Now that the DSL clecs are all but extinct, the pace of fiber buildout to the end-user has slowed down considerably. Joe McGuckin ViaNet Communications joe@via.net 650-207-0372 cell 650-213-1302 office 650-969-2124 fax On Mar 21, 2012, at 11:58 AM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Eric Wieling" <EWieling@nyigc.com>
Verizon, the copper wireline company, is removing service from locations EVERY TIME VZ fiber is installed in a building. This prevents other companies from providing service by leasing Verizon's copper infrastructure. If there was copper at a location then VZ would be required to resell it and nobody would be locked out.
TTBOMK, whether Verizon has copper to a building has *no bearing at all* on whether a CLEC can place an order for wholesale service to that location; VZN is *required* to provide that wholesale service, at the regulated NRC and MRC rates, whether they currently happen to have the physical facilities in place or not -- are you alleging either that I've misunderstood that, or that VZN is refusing such orders *simply* because they've removed facilities to an address where FiOS has done an install?
Cause either of those ought to violate the rules.
We often get customers in buildings lit by Verizon fiber service who want to change carriers. Too bad they can't anymore. Technically they can switch providers. Verizon will remove the fiber, re-install copper, and have the customer down for a week or so.
See above.
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 http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274
How far? There are a lot of fixed wireless solutions in that space. Also building your own fiber an option? That distance comes into play as well... Jared Mauch On Mar 21, 2012, at 11:44 AM, Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com> wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Best,
Joe
On Wed March 21 2012 10:44, Joe Maimon wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Any realistic answers are probably going to require an address or physical location to be able to quote services. Know there are several Fixed wireless providers in AL, you might look at www.wispa.org as I believe they have some information as to which wisps service which areas. -- Larry Smith lesmith@ecsis.net
You can get Satellite service as well. It's really expensive, for the bandwidth, but worth a look if you don't have any other options. On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Joe Maimon <jmaimon@ttec.com> wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Best,
Joe
-- 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
On 3/21/2012 8:44 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Best,
Joe
Depending on location, perhaps Charter. They do offer transport service in some areas they service. --John
Joe, We have a wide variety of both Internet and MPLS (WAN) circuits in Alabama from AT&T and ITC/Deltacom (Now Earthlink Business). They both have a significant footprint in Alabama. Check with Earthlink Business. -Hammer- "I was a normal American nerd" -Jack Herer On 3/21/2012 10:44 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Best,
Joe
.
Someone else to check is USCarrier (http://www.uscarrier.com/), they are a smaller regional fiber transit provider I've had great experiences with in the past. They only have a few POPs in Alabama though. Good luck, -Scott -----Original Message----- From: -Hammer- [mailto:bhmccie@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 9:27 AM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Looking for some diversity in Alabama that does not involve ATT Fiber Joe, We have a wide variety of both Internet and MPLS (WAN) circuits in Alabama from AT&T and ITC/Deltacom (Now Earthlink Business). They both have a significant footprint in Alabama. Check with Earthlink Business. -Hammer- "I was a normal American nerd" -Jack Herer On 3/21/2012 10:44 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:
Hey All,
I have a site in Alabama that could really use some additional diversity, but apparently ATT fiber is the only game in town.
If anybody has any options, such as fixed wireless in the 10-50mbs, please reply to me, off-list.
Best,
Joe
.
participants (36)
-
'Luke S. Crawford' -
-Hammer- -
chris -
Chuck Church -
david peahi -
Eric Wieling -
Faisal Imtiaz -
Frank Bulk -
Greg Shepherd -
Jamie Bowden -
Jared Mauch -
Jay Ashworth -
Jimmy Hess -
Joe Greco -
Joe Maimon -
joe mcguckin -
John T. Yocum -
Joseph Snyder -
Keegan Holley -
Larry Smith -
Luke S. Crawford
-
Marcel Plug -
Masataka Ohta -
Matthew Palmer -
Michael Painter -
Michael Thomas -
Mike Hale -
Owen DeLong -
Paul Graydon -
Randy Bush -
Ray Soucy -
Robert E. Seastrom -
Scott Berkman -
Tom Walsh - EWS -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu -
William Herrin