IIRC, we agreed to disagree at the end of that thread.
Owen
I live in 07874. Out here, only 50 miles from New York City, we have a problem.
You also have another problem, which I'll get to in a moment.
Verizon's network in this area is older than most people who are
subscribed to this list. The copper is literally falling off the
telephone poles, and in conversations with linemen, they are instructed
to effectuate repairs in the cheapest manner possible (band-aid). In
fact, in many cases, they offer to customers to replace their service
with wireless rather than fix the wireline.
That's the problem. Copper plant is clearly not the optimal solution
for data communication, but when you really NEED a voice call to go
through -- say, when a major hurricane moves up the coast, taking out
all kinds of infrastructure as it goes -- it gives you the best chance.
And if that phone call's content is something like "the water is rising,
we need to be evac'd NOW", then you'd probably want that best chance.
Well, if it's as well-maintained as it once was. Say what you want
about the old Ma Bell, but they overengineered the hell out of everything
from CO's to handsets, and that effort saved lives.
Now? Not so much:
Verizon Tells Some Sandy Victims They'll Never Get DSL Back As Company Continues Push Toward Killing Off Copper
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Tells-Some-Sandy-Victims-Theyll-Never-Get-DSL-Back-123612
Verizon Tells More Sandy Victims They'll Never See DSL Repaired
Verizon Uses Storm Cover as Opportunity to Hang Up on Users
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/124166
Sandy Victims Continue to Complain Verizon Hung Up on Them
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/126235
Verizon on Killing DSL: But..But..Sandy Was SAD!
Company Dodges Concerns About Failure in Sandy Regions
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/124486
Public Service Commission Orders Verizon To Cough Up Cost Data On Its New York Copper Lines
Public Service Commission Orders Verizon To Cough Up Cost Data On Its New York Copper Lines | Techdirt
Verizon Responds To Freedom Of Information Request With Hundred Of Fully Redacted Pages
Verizon Responds To Freedom Of Information Request With Hundred Of Fully Redacted Pages | Techdirt
---rsk
goemon@anime.net wrote:
- the anti-muni laws hurt small localities the most, where none of the big players have any intent of deploying anything
This is exacatly why ashland fiber network came to be. Because no provider was willing to step up and provide service. So the city did it.
If there were laws against it there, then ashland would still have no service at all to this day.
Is that Ashland, Oregon? I did some consulting on that project. The way it started was:
- They needed to run a pair of fibers from City Hall to an out-building
- US West (I think) quoted $5k/month/fiber, at which point,
- the Mayor asked the director of the muni electric utility "what would it cost to run some fiber"
- after some head scratching and some research, it came down to $100,000, one time - mostly for the tooling and some training (they had the poles, bucket trucks, linesman who were rated to work near live electric wires who were sitting around waiting for the next storm to hit)
- after that, it was a no-brainer to start expanding the network
The cool thing about the project:
- Ashland has a bunch of places that do Hollywood post-production - they eat up tons of bandwidth shipping stuff around - really great for that segment
Cheers,
Miles
I've seen various communities attempt to hand out free wifi - usually in limited areas, but in some cases community-wide (Brookline, MA comes to mind). The limited ones (e.g., in tourist hotspots) have been city funded, or donated. The community-wide ones, that I've seen, have been public-private partnerships - the City provides space on light poles and such - the private firm provides limited access, in hopes of selling expanded service. I haven't seen it work successfully - 4G cell service beats the heck out of WiFi as a metropolitan area service.
When it comes to municipal fiber and triple-play projects, I've generally seen them capitalized with revenue bonds -- hence, a need for revenue to pay of the financing. Lower cost than commercial services because municipal bonds are low-interest, long-term, and they operate on a cost-recovery basis.
Miles Fidelman
Aaron wrote:
William Herrin wrote:
I'd say your experience is anomalous. I don't know which township you're
in, but I'd suggest you focus on getting a set of more effective local
officials.Sure, 'cause fixing local utility problems at the voting booth has a
long and studied history of success. Who do I vote for? The officials
that allow rate increases and, when the utilities fail to fix the
problems, allow more rate increases? Or the officials who refuse rate
increases so that the utilities can't afford to fix the problems?
So where is it that you live Bill? I sure want to avoid moving there.
As an aside, I used to do policy and consulting work for communities that were looking at telecom. builds - mostly for muni electrics. In general, I found the folks I worked for to be very competent, and focused on public service. Yes, there are incompetent, and corrupt, municipal utilities - but by and large they don't seem to be the ones trying to go into the telecom arena. It's more the folks in communities that have muni electric utilities because, 100 years ago, the big boys weren't interested in their market - so, god damn it, they went out and built themselves their own electric plant (also why there are lots of coops out there, and lots of independent telcos in Iowa). Today, those same folks are saying - if Verizon doesn't want to build it, screw it, we'll do it ourselves. Also, the incompetent and the corrupt, generally aren't interested in the political and legal battles they'd have to go through to get a project off the ground.
Cheers,
Miles Fidelman
Andrew Gallo wrote:
The only exception I see to this would be if localities were constrained to providing point to point and point to multipoint communications infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis. The competition that would foster on the services side might outweigh the damage on the infrastructure side. Like public roads facilitate efficient transportation and freight despite the cost and potholes, though that's an imperfect simile.
While I might not agree with the parts of your email you cut out, I would definitely like to chime in on this part. Muni fiber should be exactly that, muni *fiber*. Point to point fiber optic single mode fiber cabling, aggregating thousands of households per location, preferrably tens of thousands.
It's hard to go wrong in this area, it either works or it doesn't, and in these aggregation nodes people can compete with several different technologies, they can use PON, they can use active ethernet, they can provide corporate 10GE connections if they need to, they can run hybrid/fiber coax, they can run point-to-point 1GE for residential. Anything is possible and the infrastructure is likely to be as viable in 30 years as it is day 1 after installation.
Agree 100%. Layer-1 infrastructure is a high-cost, long term investment with little 'value-add' You don't see too many companies clamoring to put in new water or sewer pipes. Treat fiber the same way.
The money is in content, which is why we're seeing ISP and media consolidation.
One could argue that conduit is probably enough - it's digging up the streets that's the real expense (different story if everything is on poles, of course).
Personally, I generally argue that there are tremendous efficiencies if you provision at layer-2 -- how many college campuses or business parks that run redundant wires through the walls?
My favorite model is Grant County, WA - where the public utility district strung fiber everywhere. They light the fiber at layer 2, but they only sell wholesale virtual nets. They've got lots of competitive telephone, internet, and video providers riding the net. Seems to work for them. I believe they provisioned GigE 10 years ago. (Note that these guys are serious players - they were running a network of hyrdo-electric dams, and power distribution, long before they got into telecom. Now that's REAL operations. 
Miles Fidelman
From: "Rich Kulawiec" <rsk@gsp.org>
That's the problem. Copper plant is clearly not the optimal solution
for data communication, but when you really NEED a voice call to go
through -- say, when a major hurricane moves up the coast, taking out
all kinds of infrastructure as it goes -- it gives you the best chance.
And if that phone call's content is something like "the water is rising,
we need to be evac'd NOW", then you'd probably want that best chance.Well, if it's as well-maintained as it once was. Say what you want
about the old Ma Bell, but they overengineered the hell out of
everything from CO's to handsets, and that effort saved lives.
I have seen footage of a 308 rifle bullet going through the network of a
500 phone... which continued working.
Verizon Tells Some Sandy Victims They'll Never Get DSL Back As Company
Continues Push Toward Killing Off Copper
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Verizon-Tells-Some-Sandy-Victims-Theyll-Never-Get-DSL-Back-123612
Public Service Commission Orders Verizon To Cough Up Cost Data On Its
New York Copper Lines
Public Service Commission Orders Verizon To Cough Up Cost Data On Its New York Copper Lines | TechdirtVerizon Responds To Freedom Of Information Request With Hundred Of
Fully Redacted Pages
Verizon Responds To Freedom Of Information Request With Hundred Of Fully Redacted Pages | Techdirt
There's a messier problem here, that I don't see much coverage of (so
perhaps I heard it wrong):
Is not Verizon trying to replace *regulated* ILEC copper with
*unregulated* FiOS VoF?
Isn't that pulling a pretty fast one?
This came up in the "when we install FiOS, we're physically removing
all your copper demarcs (even if they have active calls on them)" thing,
too, but still not much outrage.
Cheers,
-- jra
There's a messier problem here, that I don't see much coverage of (so
perhaps I heard it wrong):Is not Verizon trying to replace *regulated* ILEC copper with
*unregulated* FiOS VoF?From what I've read in the local Hurricane Sandy coverage (I'm in the NYC
area), I'd have to say 'yes' to that.
Isn't that pulling a pretty fast one?
You sound surprised.
Don't forget the various SLC suburbs with their sub-$100 1000/1000 FTTH service, and choice of eight layer-3 providers. (Sorry.)
Jima
Almost forces a "what planet" question.
Our power comes, some times, from Omaha Public Power District (not a municipal entity). Cutting the necessary slack for the storms we have here, there are still way too many hits, blinks, and occasional hours-long outages that are never explained.
When I was a manager in a data Center in San Jose, California we had to install a 250KVA UPS plant and run the 1100/80 on rotating machines in order to survive the incessant hits, dips, drops, and outages.
Our water here is from a non-municipal Metropolitan Utilities District (who also does natural gas which we don't have). And it is reliable and safe (if drinking water strongly laced with chlorine products can be said to be "safe").
Where we are, the sewer system (a Municipal Utility!) seems to work, but in parts of Omaha if there is any rain to speak of peoples basements fill with sewage.
Several tax-increases and bond sales have been made to fix that, but it appears that the upscale parts of town gets new sidewalks.
Telephone, TV and Internet Service Provision is all Cox Cable (not a Municipal Utility) and it all pretty much works as long as OPPD hasn't gone to lunch.
So I don't think it matters much what "kind" of an operation it is--it matters what kinds of things are demanded-of and provided-for (funded) by the customers and the owners.
I don't think "municipality" is particularly relevant. What is relevant is offering unfunded, un-understood, freebies.
No to mention a wonderful Shakespeare festival, a number of very nice restaurants with good food and a pretty neat downtown to explore.
Need to get back up there... It's been a few years, but it's a lovely place to visit.
Owen
Owen DeLong wrote:
- the anti-muni laws hurt small localities the most, where none of the big players have any intent of deploying anything
This is exacatly why ashland fiber network came to be. Because no provider was willing to step up and provide service. So the city did it.
If there were laws against it there, then ashland would still have no service at all to this day.
Is that Ashland, Oregon? I did some consulting on that project. The way it started was:
- They needed to run a pair of fibers from City Hall to an out-building
- US West (I think) quoted $5k/month/fiber, at which point,
- the Mayor asked the director of the muni electric utility "what would it cost to run some fiber"
- after some head scratching and some research, it came down to $100,000, one time - mostly for the tooling and some training (they had the poles, bucket trucks, linesman who were rated to work near live electric wires who were sitting around waiting for the next storm to hit)
- after that, it was a no-brainer to start expanding the networkThe cool thing about the project:
- Ashland has a bunch of places that do Hollywood post-production - they eat up tons of bandwidth shipping stuff around - really great for that segmentNo to mention a wonderful Shakespeare festival, a number of very nice restaurants with good food and a pretty neat downtown to explore.
And a wonderful park designed by Olmsted!
Need to get back up there... It's been a few years, but it's a lovely place to visit.
Likewise!
Cheers,
Miles
I try to point people to the City of Idaho Falls, Idaho at this point in
the conversation. They supply dark fiber to commercial entities.
I inherited a network built on it during an acquisition a number of
years ago. The city was much more responsive than any telco provider.
Pricing was well within reach of smaller providers.
Cool story, however,
http://www.ashlandfiber.net/productcenter.aspx#residential
... is nothing to brag home about. 5Mbps uploads max? Meh, I get
more with mobile phone, plus my data is actually unlimited.
C.
Qwest had a great DSL product that did just this. They weren't entirely
noncompetitive about it, but there were lots of ISPs in rural parts of
the West that sold L3 access over it. (One smart ISP upstart in Wyoming
even started tying together inter-LATA regions of DSL and built up a
hefty business that has always impressed me.)
When the second largest ILEC in New Mexico was contemplating rolling out
DSL, they would hold town meetings and let residents know that they'd
put in DSLAMS if they could get a minimum of 75 orders. The owner of
the ISP I worked for went to each meeting and offered to pay for the 75
ports until the ILEC had enough orders.
We never had to pay. Their L2 with our L3 was a winner. And we weren't
the only ISP that benefited from the services.
The nail in the coffin for most of the rural ISPs I worked with was when
the ILECs decided they weren't content with the revenues from the L2
network. They started charging less for L2+L3 services than L2 services
at wholesale rates. You can't compete with that.
Dial-up sucked from a bandwidth perspective, but it sure was cool that
you could change your L3 provider by putting a new phone number into the
modem config. Where the barriers to entry are low, it's a lot easier to
vote with your pocketbook.
> I'd say your experience is anomalous. I don't know which township you're
> in, but I'd suggest you focus on getting a set of more effective local
> officials.Sure, 'cause fixing local utility problems at the voting booth has a
long and studied history of success. Who do I vote for? The officials
that allow rate increases and, when the utilities fail to fix the
problems, allow more rate increases? Or the officials who refuse rate
increases so that the utilities can't afford to fix the problems?
Bill, we *GOTTA* get you away from the District. Sounds like you've
spent too long in the loving embrace of the WSSC. Out here in The
Real World(tm) things tend to work better.
In my more cynical moments, I'd suggest that that'd be the only REASON
vendors would put in the enormous time, money and effort required to
install an extensive physical infrastructure - to lock-in that market
segment for their considerably more profitable higher layer services.
In the sort of cutthroat economic milieu wherein we live and work, where
"long term planning" is what, 90 days? 6 months?, how does any company
justify such a level of investment if there isn't going to be a big,
quick payoff for the shareholders?
And consider this one - in states where municipalities are bound by
no-compete legislation, a town or city that is forbidden entry to the
market because it would be "anti-competitive" winds up having to dangle
the lure of a city-backed monopoly to some or other private concern to
get the infrastructure built to meet the demand for service. That
outcome strikes me as being even more "anti-competitive". At least, if
the city provides the physical infrastructure, and a vendor-neutral
meet-me point, then any and all providers can come in and *compete* for
hookups and customers.
So let me throw out a purely hypothetical scenario to the collective:
What do you think the consequences to a municipality would be if they laid fiber to every house in the city and gave away internet access for free? Not the WiFi builds we have today but FTTH at gigabit speeds for free?
Do you think the LECs would come unglued?
Aaron
Well yeah, the LECs would definitely come unglued.
But... first off, what do you mean by "free?" Someone has to pay the capital and operating budgets - so if not from user fees, then from taxes.
So.. it's a nice thought, but not likely to happen. Heck, have you ever seen a water utility that doesn't charge?
Now... having said that -- I could see something like this happen in California:
- California allows (maybe requires) that developers pay "impact fees" when building new houses -- i.e., the cost of a house, in a new development, may include $20,000+ to pay for new infrastructure - roads, waterworks, police and fire substations, schools, you name it - if you buy a new house, you pay for the full cost of the infrastructure behind it (built into the financing of course - first the construction financing, then the bridge financing, then ultimately the mortgage)
- I have seen some California communities at least toy with including conduit and fiber in master plans and requirements placed on developers - after all, it's needed to feed municipal buildings, street light control, and so forth - and better to have common-user conduit and fiber in the ground than have multiple people digging up the streets later - fyi: a street cut typically takes 1 year off pavement lifetime, unless very carefully repaved - practically nobody does a good job of permitting street cuts to avoid this - San Antonio being a really notable exception (I worked for a GIS firm that built their right-of-way management system - they were a real rarity in good right-of-way management practices)
- so I could see building the capital cost of a FTTH network into new housing (the same way water and phone wiring is standard) - but that's not free, and that still begs the question of who lights the fiber
- still, the LECs would come unglued (and have)!
Miles Fidelman
Aaron wrote: