Phasing out of copper

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Currently in the midst of a CRTC policy hearing in Canada on future of
competition in ISPs.

Incumbents claim they have no plans to retire their copper plant after
deploying FTTP/FTTH. (strategically to convince regulator that keeping
ISPs on copper is fine and no need to let them access FTTP).

For my reply I am trying to get more authoritative info to show that
incumbents do have plans to retire the copper plant once enough
customers have migrated to FTTP ( I heard that 80% migration is the
tip-ver where they convert the rest of customers to FTTP to be able to
shutddown the copper).

Anyone have pointers to documents or experiences that would help me
convince the regulator that incumbents deploy FTTP with eventual goal to
be able to shutdown their old copper instead of perpetually maintaining
both systems ?

Also being discussed is removing regulations for access to ULL
(unbundled local loops). In areas being upgraded to FTTP, are there
services that really need copper ULLs and do not have an FTTP equivalent
? (home alarm systems ?).

When an incumbent states for the record that "retiring copper is not in
their current plans", I know that it means that it isn't in their short
term plans. But I need some evidence of what other telcos do to help
show the incumbent is "spinning".

Any help appreciated.

2

Have some of the events around this topic going on in the US been brought up? I'm thinking specifically of things like NY/NJ, post-Sandy plans to just not replace copper and switch people to wireless or fiber instead, letting copper deployments in existing markets degrade and pushing people to FiO...fiber. Those would seem to be examples where there don't need to be an explicit "plans to retire their copper plant" while still effectively retiring them through failure to maintain.

3

Verizon in MA removes copper upon FiOS installation.

My dad cancels his phone service every year when he migrates south for
the winter. Upon returning home a few years ago, he requested
reactivation of his phone line. Verizon refused to activate the
copper, instead switching him to FiOS Voice. I believe they removed
the copper lines at that time.

4

They do, and that's caused problems for some people who had competitive DSL
on their Verizontal copper POTS: They've had FiOS installed, and had the DSL
circuit mysteriously quit, only to find VZN had physically yanked the demarc
off the outside wall and reclaimed the drop.

I think there mighta been some lawsuits...

Cheers,
-- jra

5

This probably isn't exactly what you are looking for, but...
As a CLEC in Oregon we connect to Century Link's ATM network to resell
ADSL service. They have, for a while, maintained both fiber and copper
facilities to these nodes. CL uses the fiber and we access the nodes
through some number of T1s on the legacy ATM network (which usually
provides inadequate bandwidth). They have been removing the ATM access
to the nodes -- giving us about 2 weeks notice to warn and prepare any
customers we have on them. We can resell the new DSL service (under
higher rates), but CL gives us no way of providing access to these
customers from our network now. The rates get even higher with static
IPs (which we always provided at no cost).

--TimH

6

Currently in the midst of a CRTC policy hearing in Canada on future of
competition in ISPs.

Incumbents claim they have no plans to retire their copper plant after
deploying FTTP/FTTH. (strategically to convince regulator that keeping
ISPs on copper is fine and no need to let them access FTTP).

Maintaining copper plant is expensive. It will be retired as soon as
buy-in on FTTH is high enough. Telia Sonera is doing it in Sweden,
so the trend is global. (OTOH, in Sweden, young people moving out from
their parents, if they can find somewhere to rent, usually only get a
fixed connection for Internet access. Telephony is all mobile.)

7

This is pretty common in other countries as well. At a $JOB-1 in Australia all our residential DSL services were provided over ULLs and came with a dial tone provided by us but only a tiny fraction of active lines ever made or received a call.

8

Absolutely: maintaining analog copper last-mile is expensive.

But let us not conflate being ok with telcos replacing analog copper last-mile
with being ok with telcos replacing PCM with VoIP, especially in trunking
applications, and *especially* using non-dedicated backbones, as these are the
directions the RBOCs appear to be going in, and those are much less acceptable
ideas than the former.

Cheers,
-- jra

9

Let's also not conflate audio codecs with L2. "PCM" and "VoIP" are not mutually-exclusive things by any stretch.

10

From: "Nathan Anderson" <nathana@fsr.com>

kbones (was: Phasing out of copper)

> But let us not conflate being ok with telcos replacing analog copper
> last-mile with being ok with telcos replacing PCM with VoIP,
> especially
> in trunking applications, ... [snip]

Let's also not conflate audio codecs with L2. "PCM" and "VoIP" are not
mutually-exclusive things by any stretch.

Oh, sure. But my point is this:

How many Erlangs can you fit through that clear-channel T-3?

There's man-centuries of engineering in the design of the TDM backbone,
and the people making the decisions about abandoning that design weren't
even alive, in some cases, when that work was done, and don't know what
"Notes On The Networks" is.

Cheers,
-- jr 'I can lay hands on my copy in 60 seconds' a

11

Personally I find the use of Erlangs in a packet-switched environment somewhat irrelevant. What has been more useful me in capacity planning and staying out of trouble has been statistical bandwidth peak usage data.

Antonio Querubin
e-mail: tony@lavanauts.org
xmpp: antonioquerubin@gmail.com

12

> From: "Måns Nilsson" <mansaxel@besserwisser.org>

> Maintaining copper plant is expensive. It will be retired as soon as
> buy-in on FTTH is high enough. Telia Sonera is doing it in Sweden,
> so the trend is global. (OTOH, in Sweden, young people moving out from
> their parents, if they can find somewhere to rent, usually only get a
> fixed connection for Internet access. Telephony is all mobile.)

Absolutely: maintaining analog copper last-mile is expensive.

But let us not conflate being ok with telcos replacing analog copper last-mile
with being ok with telcos replacing PCM with VoIP, especially in trunking
applications, and *especially* using non-dedicated backbones, as these are the
directions the RBOCs appear to be going in, and those are much less acceptable
ideas than the former.

Sadly enough, those man-centuries need to be reread in the light of the
fact that today, you can not buy most of those connections anymore. Voice
circuits are almost entirely trunked on IP; and the telcos fight to
decommission the carrier formats.

From 2014-12-31, you can't keep your 128kbit ISDN anymore in Sweden. This
is a big issue for me, since I work with radio broadcasting. There,
128kbit ISDN is a very common way to do remote broadcasting from
sports or similar events. We've been frantically buying and building
a new network to replace these circuits, and have built a quite nice
system on top of IP. The old ISDN codec phones (essentially small pro
mixer + A/D converter + MPEG codec + ISDN terminal) are being replaced
by similar-looking specialised SIP phones sporting much higher sound
quality. If the network permits (and, on those sites where we expect
to do live music, it does permit so) we can do 48KHz 24bit uncompressed
stereo -- which is around 2,6 Mbit without protection by FEC.

Since the voice circuit is mostly being replaced by the Skype/FaceTime
call, this is not only a special observation; it is, I believe, a general
case.

Our challenge thus lies not in preserving circuit-switching,
but instead in building an open, standards-based voice infrastructure
on top of IP. Viewed in that light, Skype and FaceTime are failures. I'm
not certain their owners see it that way.

/Måns, who *really* would like to have STM-64 frames instead of TenGig
       Ethernet for his long lines. Switched Ethernet is herded chaos.

13

Depends on your desired outcome and goals. However…

I would think that rather than trying to convince regulators that you know better than the incumbents what they intend to do, it makes more sense to explain to regulators why maintaining copper once sufficient FTTP adoption is complete is foolhearty and a waste of money. If you can show that doing so creates unnecessary costs for consumers and doesn’t preserve a meaningfully competitive environment (after all, how can your services that are limited to being delivered over copper possibly compete effectively with FTTP?), I would think that should show the regulators that regardless of what the incumbents are saying, copper’s days as a delivery mechanism are numbered and that meaningful competition in the future requires competitive access to FTTP.

Most alarm systems these days simply use a POTS circuit and many are now capable of using IP service via an ethernet port, so the days of requiring a dry copper pair (ULL) for an alarm circuit are numbered. You might be able to make a case (especially in Alberta) for “Farmer Lines” still requiring dry copper pairs, but even that is kind of sketchy these days.

If you’re trying to preserve access to dry copper for some reason, perhaps more information about your real goal and the real reasons behind it might help. If you’re trying to remain competitive, then I think access to unbundled fiber services is really where you should focus your efforts.

Owen

14

Depends on your desired outcome and goals. However…

Context: Canadian incumbents deny to the regulator that they have
intentions to turn off copper. (but to shareholders, openly say they
will shut it donw, howveer, they plan only to shutdown active equipment
and leave copper in the poles. Their fibre is hung off the same steel
support line as copper).

One reason is that by pretending that copper is here to stay and is
competitive, they hope to convicne CRTC that mandating wholesale access
to FTTP is not necessary.

it makes more sense to explain to regulators why maintaining copper once sufficient FTTP adoption
is complete is foolhearty and a waste of money.

Yeah, that is the way I am spinning it. (hey, I learn about spin from
the best - the canadian incumbents :slight_smile:

If you’re trying to preserve access to dry copper for some reason,

I am the only one in the whole proceeding who is advocating for the
earliest possible widthdrawal fo copper. The earlier they can remove
irt, the easier it is for them to justify the investment, and the less
reasons they have for preventing access to FTTP.

The confirmation from someone else in the thread that Comcast stops
selling access to copper once FTTP is up is a good point to make.

I am up on Thursday morning. Am second to last to speak, so hopefully I
can make a good impression. (this is for round two, first round finished
today).

15

Invoke Kushnick's Law
<http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=25868748>

* 'A regulated company will always renege on promises to provide public
benefits tomorrow in exchange for regulatory and financial benefits today.'*

16

In the same breath, Bell says they want the CRTC to deregulate copper, as it is no longer essential.

I know right now, that if ULLs were forborne, we would not have a suitable substitute for our co-locate served customers.

In 5 to 10 years, that might be a different story, but today it is not.

Bell wants the freedom to deploy fibre networks without mandated wholesale but also wants to de-regulate copper loops while still using them for their own purposes as long as is convenient simply because for 99% of the customers today, DSL speeds are what they choose, and copper loops for now are the most cost effective way to provide those speeds or just plain dialtone.

A bit of a have your cake & eat it too attitude, which is exactly what I expect from Bell.