[173774] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Muni Fiber and Politics
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Mon Aug 4 22:09:30 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALgc3C5qbe2d9P8aOgLniUnuUmVhTgcg9vGC5Ek2F2AVkSOsOw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2014 19:04:10 -0700
To: Eugeniu Patrascu <eugen@imacandi.net>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Aug 4, 2014, at 3:01 PM, Eugeniu Patrascu <eugen@imacandi.net> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 11:05 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
>=20
> OTOH, if the municipality provides only L1 concentration (dragging L1 =
facilities
> back to centralized locations where access providers can connect to =
large
> numbers of customers), then access providers have to compete to =
deliver
> what consumers actually want. They can't ignore the need for newer L2
> technologies because their competitor(s) will leap frog them and take =
away
> their customers. This is what we, as consumers, want, isn't it?
>=20
> In my neck of the woods, the city hall decided that no more fiber =
cables running all over the poles in the city and somehow combined with =
some EU regulations that communication links need to be buried, they =
created a project whereby a 3rd party company would dig the whole city, =
put in some tubes in which microfibres would be installed by ISPs that =
reach every street number and ISP would pay per the kilometer from point =
A to point B (where point A was either a PoP or ISP HQ or whatever; =
point B is the customer).
>=20
> To be clear, this is single-mode dark fiber so the ISPs can run it at =
whatever speeds they like between two points.
>=20
> The only drawback is that the 3rd party company has a monopoly on the =
prices for the leasing of the tubes, but from my understanding this is =
kept under control by regulation.
As long as the price is regulated at a reasonable level and is available =
on equal footing to all comers, that=92s about as good as it will get =
whether run by private enterprise or by the city itself.
Owen
