[9644] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: bill summary: Telecommunications Act
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Sat Jan 15 09:49:18 1994
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 1994 09:48:29 -0500 (EST)
From: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com, adam fast <adamfast@u.washington.edu>
Cc:
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9401142328.H23938-0100000@goren1.u.washington.edu>
Excerpts from internet.com-priv: 14-Jan-94 bill summary: Telecommunica..
by adam fast@u.washington.e
> The Act allows the public to have open access to the information
> highway at Commercial Points of Presence (CPOPs) where seamless
> interconnections between local and interlocal networks are made. Each
> CPOP will serve 10,000 users or less and sites will be identified by the
> Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC) in accordance
> with the Growth Management Act.
It is very unwise in a piece of legislation to set numerical limits like
10,000 users or less. For example, there are numerous telephone Central
Offices that serve up to 50,000 lines from a single building (indeed,
from a single switch). Would you force the telephone company to
subdivide its CO serving area into two smaller areas with all the
rewiring that would entail? Or require that a call from the North side
of the CO to the South side of the CO be an inter-local rather than an
intra-local call?
Indeed, technology suggests that CO serving areas are likely to get even
larger. A typical cable company design has fiber backbones from a
single headend going out to neighborhoods of 500 homes or so where the
optical signal is converted to an electrical signal and sent the rest of
the way on coax. Typically, however, all switching is done at the
headend for a community of up to 100,000 households.
