RE: How to choose a transport(terrestrial/subsea)

["Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund () medline com>]

This was a product available from the earliest Bell System days.  You could specify a couple of options.  One is local 
path redundancy or diversity - intended to get you to another central office and not use the same cable as another 
specified circuit.  A second option is called avoidance where you could tell the phone company to avoid a certain area. 
 AT&T would let you order a SONET node which guaranteed two different entrances for fiber ring going through at least 
two different COs, expensive and you pay the install or agree to megalong contract terms for a minimum number of access 
circuits.  


As an example, the US Government ordered command and control circuits and explicitly had them avoid major metro areas 
(that were likely nuclear targets).  The deal in practice though is that these options were rarely ordered since 
whoever orders it pays all the initial construction costs.  If you building wants a connection to other than your home 
CO, you have to pay for all of the plant construction to reach a point where you could catch a cable going that way.

As to who is selling it?  Almost anyone if you pay for that level of custom engineering.  More importantly, can you 
verify it?  The US Government had a deal with AT&T to show them the entire AT&T backhaul network architecture.  Not 
many customers get that level of access.  If anything they are going to show you the "lines between cities" type map 
that we all know has little to do with reality on the ground.

Steven Naslund
Chicago IL

> Who is selling this product? I know SLA compensations on service disruptions is a thing, but there the downside seller 
> is carrying is limited to MRC, that is seller gets higher margin on SLA products than nonSLA, when when outages >are 
> factored in. I don't see the business case for the seller in contractual terms you are proposing. The amendment has to 
> make more money for the seller, otherwise there is no point for them to sell it, unless of course the product >is 
> unmarketable without the amendment.
> I would anticipate if this product is available the seller limits downside in the contracts in such way that it will 
> always be profitable to the seller to sell the insurance to you.
>
> --
>  ++ytti