Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: Dark Fiber Optics Under the All Highways Disclosed ; End of the NTT dominance?
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 08:21:48 -0400
Dark Fiber Optics Under the All Highways Disclosed End of the NTT dominance? Field: Fiber Optics Topics: Competition On August 9, 2001, a METI (The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) official, who is leading METI's IT Industry policies, talked about part of a METI's telecommunications plan to the coming deregulation discussion to Yoshihiro Tanaka, President of FuuUn & Rivals, Ltd. In general it is known that NTT has 80 thousand kilometer fiber optics cables, the 11 electricity companies have 126 thousand kilometer, and 22 railroad companies have around 10 thousand kilometer. It is also known that there are tunnels under highways and main national roads. Several discussions to the NTT dominance issue focused on the opening of the above fiber optics cables and tunnels. Instead, what the METI official said was different from the above discussions. The METI official said, "Actually there exist many hidden fiber optics cables, so-called dark fiber, set under all highways and main national roads. The total length of their network is longer than that of NTT's and moreover the dark fiber can apply the WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology as opposed to NTT's dual mode fiber, which can not utilize WDM." He added, "The former Ministry of Construction (MOC), which was in charge of developing highways and national roads, seemed to obtain more budget than necessary to set fiber optics for the use of telemetry. Instead, the MOC laid real fiber optics cables almost secretly. Because of the regular personnel reshuffling, almost no one in the MOC knew this reality nor anyone in the MPHPT." The reason why this reality did not show up publicly is that if the dark fibers were made public, not only NTT would get seriously damaged, but also the MOC would get punished for their illegal implementation of the national budget. Thus, no matter how this issue is disclosed, there may be many high-ranked officials and politicians, who would be accused of their wrongdoings. Based on our research on the METI's plan, FuuUn analyzes that the METI's objective seems to open the dark fiber network to private companies with almost no charge to be compared with the charge by NTT. But FuuUn is not sure that the METI can utilize their political power to shut off serious resistance from other stakeholders, and attain their objective. (Written by Yoshihiro Tanaka, yoshi_tanaka () fuuun com)
For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/
Current thread:
- IP: Dark Fiber Optics Under the All Highways Disclosed ; End of the NTT dominance? David Farber (Sep 09)