RE: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

["Frank Bulk" <frnkblk () iname com>]

Scott:

While we less than ten thousand FTTH subs, our OSP operational costs are
much less with fiber than copper.  

Our maintenance costs, in order of greatest to least, have been locating,
cable moves (i.e. bridge project), monitoring digs, and damage to fiber
(rodents and vehicles that hit peds).  We have had many more ONT issues than
fiber issues, and most fiber issues can be resolved by cleaning both sides
of the fiber (customer and head end).  And we've had to replace the 50'
patch cable between the OLTG and optical splitter a two of three times.

While finger-pointing is always a risk when multiple players are involved in
delivering any service, I don't perceive that as being as much of a problem
as you think it will be.  With the right fiber testing gear, any suspected
problems can pretty quickly be identified.  

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Helms [mailto:khelms () zcorum com] 
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2013 2:55 PM
To: Jay Ashworth
Cc: NANOG
Subject: Re: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

On Sun, Feb 3, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra () baylink com> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Scott Helms" <khelms () zcorum com>
>
> > > 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.
>
> So let me be clear, here, because I'm semi-married to this idea...
>
> You're asserting that it is not practical to offer L1 optical per-sub
> handoffs to L2/3 ISPs, because

I'm saying you can't build a working business model off of layer 1
connections as your primary offering in almost all cases for a muni
network.  I am hedging my bet here because I don't know your city's
topology, density, growth, goals or a hundred other factors that might make
you the 1 exception to the rule.


> a) the circuits can't be built reliably,
> b) the circuits won't run reliably over the long run,
> c) if something *does break*, it's hard or expensive to determine where,
or
> d) each side will say it's the other side's fault, and things won't get
> fixed?
>
> Let me see if I can explain it, since clearly I'm not getting my thoughts
down in my emails well enough.

a) You WILL have physical layer issues.  Some of these issues will be
related to the initial construction of the fiber.

b) Other problems will because of changes that occur over time.  These
could be weather related (especially for aerial cable), but also vehicle
hits to fiber cabinets, and occasionally fires.  Depending on your location
earthquakes, flooding, and other extreme "weather" may also be a factor.

c)  No, WHEN something breaks it is hard and expensive to figure out where.
 This is true even if you're the layer 2 provider but it gets you out of
the problem of it works $A_provider_gear but not $B_provider_gear.  You're
going to drive yourself nuts troubleshooting connections IF you do sign up
several partners especially if they choose different technologies.

d)  No, it will always be your fault until you can prove its not.  If you
don't know how to troubleshoot the technology your L2 partners are using
how can you ever do anything but accept their word that they have
everything set up correctly?


> I can't see any difference between building it for their L2 access box and
> my own.  I simply don't believe (b).  (c) seems questionable as well, so
> I assume you have to mean (d).

There are lots of differences, especially related to troubleshooting.
 Remember, all of these devices are doing phase modulation (QAM, QPSK, etc)
so a simple OTDR test (which is similar to checking SNR on a RF system)
doesn't show many of the problems that prevent data connectivity on high
speed connections.

> > Dry pairs are impossible to order these days for a reason.
>
> Certainly: because you have to get them from incumbents, who don't want
> you to use a cheap service to provide yourself something they could
> charge you a lot more money for.
>
> You assert a technical reason?

Most of this is because the ILECs have gotten the regulations changed but
they successfully used some legitimate technical reasons (and other less
legitimate arguments) to get those rules changed.


> Cheers,
> -- jra
> --
> Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink
> jra () baylink com
> Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC
> 2100
> Ashworth & Associates     http://baylink.pitas.com         2000 Land
> Rover DII
> St Petersburg FL USA               #natog                      +1 727 647
> 1274


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