Re: Followup: Small City Municipal Broadband

[Brandon Ross <bross () pobox com>]

On Sat, 2 Feb 2013, Jay Ashworth wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Brandon Ross" <bross () pobox com>
>
> > > 6) And pursuant to 3, perhaps I could even set up the IPTV service and
> > > resell that to the L3 provider to bundle with their IP service, so
> > > they don't have to do it themselves; while it's not a difficult as I
> > > had gathered, it's still harder than them doing VoIP as part of
> > > their own triple-play.
> >
> > So you are going to prohibit the operator of the fiber plant from
> > running layer 3 services, but then turn around and let them offer IPTV? That
> > seems quite inconsistent to me. And just because it's "hard"?
>
> No; I wouldn't offer it retail; I'd offer it to all provider-comers
> wholesale, at cost plus, just like everything else.

It sure seems like just pushing the competition (or lack thereof) up the 
stack.

> > Running a decent layer 3 service is "hard" too. Isn't the whole point to
> > let these service providers compete with each other on the quality and
> > cost of their services?
>
> You could say the same thing about the uplink,

Which uplink is that?  I'm a little confused.

> though; I note you didn't throw a flag at that, or at Akamai; is the 
> IPTV issue different to you?

If you were to open your colo to all comers that have similar models to 
Akamai, that seems fair.  After all, it's not the city selling Akamai 
services to either the ISPs or end-users, the city is just providing a 
convenient way for the providers that are there to interconnect with 
content providers that care to show up.

Now if you were to encourage an IPTV services provider that WASN'T the 
city to co-locate at the facility, that seems reasonable as long as terms 
were even if another one wanted to show up.  I could imagine that some 
might sell service direct retail, others might go wholesale with one of 
the other service providers.  Maybe both?

This whole thing is the highway analogy to me.  The fiber is the road. 
The city MIGHT build a rest stop (layer 2), but shouldn't be allowed to 
either be in the trucking business (layer 3), nor in the 
business of manufacturing the products that get shipped over the road 
(IPTV, VOIP, etc.), and the same should apply to the company that 
maintains the fiber, if it's outsourced.

--
Brandon Ross                                      Yahoo & AIM:  BrandonNRoss
+1-404-635-6667                                                ICQ:  2269442
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