Re: Alien Waves

[Dave Cohen <craetdave () gmail com>]

There are some single-market/regional providers that I'm aware of currently
offering spectrum, but I believe you'll be hard pressed to find others with
national footprints in the US that will. Zayo and Lumen both did a bit of a
will they/won't they with it for a long time, and my understanding is that
neither of them currently offer it, or at least will tell you that publicly.

On Sun, May 12, 2024 at 9:48 PM Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net> wrote:

> "a limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all."
>
> I know of one (Windstream) that offers it on a portion of their footprint.
> I swore others did, but I couldn't find them. Does anyone know who else in
> the NANOG area who does this?
>
>
>
> -----
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> http://www.ics-il.com
>
> Midwest-IX
> http://www.midwest-ix.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mark Tinka <mark@tinka.africa>
> To: Dave Cohen <craetdave () gmail com>
> Cc: nanog () nanog org, Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net>
> Sent: Sun, 12 May 2024 17:34:19 -0500 (CDT)
> Subject: Re: Alien Waves
>
>
>
> On 5/13/24 00:11, Dave Cohen wrote:
>
> > Mark,
> >
> > Many/all of these points are fair. My experience is purely terrestrial
> and obviously both the capacity and economic calculations are vastly
> different in those situations, which I should have called out.
>
> Actually, terrestrial economics are easier to consider because you have
> the one thing the subsea applications don't have in abundance... power.
>
> Fair point, terrestrial revenues are significantly lower than subsea
> revenues on a per-bit basis, but so are the deployment costs. That evens
> out, somewhat.
>
> > However, I don’t think that the optical vendor is really the challenge -
> I would agree that, generally, spectrum is going to be available through
> larger providers that are using “traditional carrier grade” platforms - but
> rather at the service provider level. When something invariably breaks at 3
> AM and the third shift Tier I NOC tech who hasn’t read the service playbook
> says “I don’t see any errors on your transponder, sorry, it’s not on our
> end” because they’re not aware that they actually don’t have access to the
> transponder and need to start looking elsewhere, that’s the sort of thing
> that creates systemic challenges for users regardless of whether the light
> is being shot across a Ciena 6500 or a Dave’s Box-o’-Lasers 1000.
>
> I think you are contradicting yourself a bit, unless I misunderstand
> your point.
>
> Legacy vendors who have spectrum controllers have made this concern less
> of an issue. But then again, to be fair, adopting spectrum controllers
> along with bandwidth expansions via things like gridless line systems
> and C+L backbone architectures that make spectrum sales a lot more
> viable at scale do come at a hefty $$ premium. So I can understand that
> offering spectrum independent of spectrum controllers is going to be
> more trouble than it is worth.
>
> Ultimately, what I'm saying is that technologically, this is now a
> solved problem, for the most part. That said, I don't think it will be
> the majority of DWDM operators offering spectrum services en masse, for
> at least a few more years. So even if you want to procure managed
> spectrum or spectrum sharing, you are likely to come up against a
> limited set of providers willing to sell it, if at all.
>
> Mark.


-- 
- Dave Cohen
craetdave () gmail com