Re: Muni Fiber and Politics

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

On Jul 22, 2014, at 13:55 , Scott Helms <khelms () zcorum com> wrote:

> Owen,
>
> This specific issue has nothing to do with splitters versus all the fiber in home runs.  If you buy a shelf that can 
> support 16 ports of PON or 96 ports of Ethernet you will pay more per port than if you buy a shelf that supports 160 
> PON ports or 576 ports of Ethernet.  If every ISP has to buy their own layer 2 gear that's what happens.  If that 
> gear has to all be hosted in a central meet point then that room will need much more power, space, and cooling.
>
> "Not really... You buy OLTs on a per N subscribers basis, not on a per N potential
> subscribers, so while you'd have possibly Y additional shelves per area served
> where Y = Number of ISPs competing for that area, I don't see that as a huge
> problem."
>
> There are scenarios where it doesn't matter, mainly where the number of ISPs is very low.  If we only have 4 service 
> providers trying to offer services in city then the extra power and heat isn't that big of an issue and the wasted 
> money in chassis and management cards is only in the 10s of thousands of dollars.  The problem is that you very 
> quickly, as the city, run out of a location that has suitable space, cooling, and power.  Remember that each extra 
> shelf has the same power supply and heat dissipation.

Areas that will attract a high number of ISPs will have sufficient subscriber density to justify larger-capacity 
shelves for each of them. Places where ISPs will buy smaller capacity shelves are places that will have a low number of 
ISPs.

> "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?"
>
> No, what we as consumers want is inexpensive and reliable bandwidth.  How that happens very few consumers actually 
> care about.  What they do care about is the city saying we have to raise $300,000 extra dollars in bond money to 
> build a new facility to house the ISPs who might want to collocate with us.

No, what consumers want is cheap reliable bandwidth that doesn't become slow and antiquated in a few years.

Frankly, I don't care whether it's a municipality or an NGO or a private enterprise. What I want is a law that says "If 
you operate L1, you can't play at L2+. If you operate L1, then you must offer the same product offerings to all L2+ 
providers on the same terms at the same price.". If you've got that, then someone will find a way for everyone who 
wants to compete for L2+ services in a given area to get or create an L1 capability that they can share.

Doesn't seem to me that it would be that hard to justify building a colo and SWC together in most cases. $300,000 
sounds pretty cheap, actually.

Owen