Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

[Scott Helms <khelms () zcorum com>]

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org> wrote:

> In a message written on Sun, Feb 03, 2013 at 02:39:39PM -0500, Scott Helms
> wrote:
> > > Basically when the customer (typically the service provider, but
> > > not always) orders a loop to a customer the muni provider would
> > > OTDR shoot it from the handoff point to the service provider to the
> > > prem.  They would be responsible for insuring a reasonable performance
> > > of the fiber between those two end points.
> >
> > Been tried multiple times and I've never seen it work in  the US, Canada,
> > Europe, or Latin America. That's not to say it can't work, but there lots
> > of reasons why it doesn't and I don't think anyone has suggested anything
> > here that I haven't already seen fail.
>
> Zayo (nee AboveNet/MFN), Sunesys, Allied Fiber, FiberTech Networks,
> and a dozen smaller dark fiber providers work this way today, with
> nice healthy profitable business.  Granted, none of them are in the
> residential space today, but I don't see any reason why the prem
> being residential would make the model fail.

All of these guys do sell dark fiber AND other services including their own
L3 offerings.  I'm not telling anyone to avoid selling dark fiber.  I'm
telling you that its not what you can, in the vast majority of the cases,
build as your primary offering.  Your examples really support my stance
much more than yours.


> Plenty of small cities sell dark as well, at least until the incumbant
> carriers scare/bribe the legislatures into outlawing it.  I think that's
> evidence it works well, they know they can't compete with a muni
> network, so they are trying to block it with legal and lobbying efforts.

Most of the state legislation (in fact, I can't think of an exception to
this) is specifically aimed at preventing muni networks from offering layer
2 and layer 3 services.  I can't say that there isn't an exception to this,
but in 45+ states there isn't anything on the books on a dark fiber network
owned by a city.


> They all cost a lot more than would make sense for residential, but
> most of that is that they lack the economies of scale that going
> to every residence would bring.  Their current density of customers
> is simply too low.
>
> --
>        Leo Bicknell - bicknell () ufp org - CCIE 3440
>         PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/



-- 
Scott Helms
Vice President of Technology
ZCorum
(678) 507-5000
--------------------------------
http://twitter.com/kscotthelms
--------------------------------