Hi Richard,
I never said that protected LAN PHY 10 GigE was more expensive than
two diversely routed waves.
Strange, the e-mail from you that I quoted specifically said:
Bottom line is that it will cost more than two diversely routed 10 gig
waves.
But at any rate...
However, Hibernia's engineers have advised that route protected LAN
PHY 10 GigE will tolerate a relatively high BER before switching. I
stand by that statement.
I said that protected STM64 service was more expensive and that is
true. Not only do you need two diversely STM64 waves, but you need
protection as well.
Modern DWDM systems don't care about they content of the payload, they
use a system called OTN (optical transport networks) as a generic
digital wrapper around the payload, and then they deal entirely with the
OTN frame. This makes features like optical protection protocol
agnostic, and remove any kind of cost difference based on the type of
service.
I think you're confusing the old style system of implementing a
SONET/SDH based ring as a method of delivering protected services, with
the modern techniques of delivering 10G or other subrate services as LAN
PHY or SONET/SDH or some other protocol. These are completely different
things.
I have sold almost 30 ten gig waves (leases) and I have only received
one request (global bank) for protected service. When I priced at the
twice the price of an unprotected service plus a 10% premium, that
request was downsized to a protected STM16.
Well, I DID point out some compelling reasons why one might want to do
2x (or more) diversely routed unprotected wavelengths rather than a
protected service. There are many other reasons, such as statistically
multiplexed oversubscribtion on multiple unprotected circuits during the
normal non-failure state.
At any rate, I'm not in a position to explain the logic or motivations
of the people who buy waves from you, all I can tell you is how the
technology works and what it costs to deploy it. As such, my previous
explanation was correct. 
Customers in general are simply not willing to pay for protection.
Indeed, most of them prefer to load balance among diversely routed 10
gig waves or buy waves on several network or cable systems.
All perfectly legitimate reasons why one might want to do multiple
diverse unprotected wavelengths, but this is still orthogonal to the
assertions that protected wavelengths are not possible, not reliable, or
cost more to implement than 2x unprotected waves.
Also, keep in mind that the availability of > 2-degree protection on
modern DWDM platforms could *easily* result in optically protected
wavelengths which are much cheaper to deliver than diversely routed
unprotected paths. For example, lets consider the scenerio you
previously gave of a 10G wavelength from Chicago to Frankfurt. Using an
optical switching protection system, a provider could survive a fiber
cut between Chicago and Cleveland in Detroit by wrapping the wavelengths
via Chicago Indianapolis Cincinatti Cleveland, before continuing on its
way to Frankfurt. This eliminates the need to provision capacity on two
completely diverse paths, which may not even exist or which may have
extremely poor latency choices, and reduces the cost to deliver the
service. As always, the benefits of such a system depend on both the
carrier's and the customers' footprints. I suspect you'll start to see
more of this in the future, as Level3 seems to be adopting it.
