Re: WiMax whats up?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: September 1, 2008 12:14:26 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: wb8foz () panix com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:     WiMax whats up?

At 05:51 AM 9/1/2008, David Lesher wrote:

> But what good is that, unless the WiMax towers are fed with enough
> backhaul to fill that wire with bits?

It isn't just WiMax. Any tower must have a backhaul.

> To feed the {I'd guess} several hundred WiMAX towers in say the DC/ 
> Balt
> market, you'd need 100MB/s backhaul from each to the Big Kuhuna. Is  
> that
> going to come from the Bandwidth Fairy, nightly leaving a bucket of
> packets under the site's pillow?

Our ISP does as much wireless backhaul as it can. But you are correct:
ultimately, there must be a connection to the backbone. And the ILECs
are doing everything they can to cut competitors off from those
connections.

This is the issue known as "special access" (a misnomer, because there
is nothing at all that is "special" about needing a leased line to the
backbone). It has languished both at the FCC and in Congress for many
years, and is another example of failed national broadband policy.
Access to backhaul at reasonable prices is essential to ensure
competition, and must be mandatory. The same is true of access to the
backbone itself -- in general, but especially when the backbone is owned
by an ILEC. Otherwise, there can be no competition.

As I've mentioned before on this list, our own ISP has been faced with
refusal by at least one backbone provider to open its fiber to us (even
though they have opened it to the local cable provider) and rising
backhaul costs as the ILEC seeks to raise competitors' costs to the  
point
where they can no longer compete.

--Brett Glass


--Brett Glass





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