I do not have numbers, but based on what I have read. municipal
deployments have occured in cases where incumbents were not interested
in providing modern internet access.
What may happen is that once they see the minucipality building FTTH,
they may suddently develop an interest in that city and deploy HFC and
or DSL and then sue the city for reason X.
The normal behaviour should be: "we'll gladly connect to the municipal
system".
A good layer 2 deployment can support DHCP or PPPoE and thus be
compatible with incumbents infrastructure. However, a good layer2
deployment won't have "RFoG" support and will prefer IPTV over the data
channel (the australian model supports multicast). So cable companies
without IPTV services may be at a disadvantage.
In Canada, Rogers (cableco) has announced that they plan to go all IPTV
instead of conventional TV channels.
From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca>
> It rings true to me, in general, and I would go that way... but
> there is
> a sting in that tail: Can I reasonably expect that Road Runner will
> in fact
> be technically equipped and inclined to meet me to get my residents
> as
> subscribers? Especially if they're already built HFC in much to all
> of
> my municipality?
I do not have numbers, but based on what I have read. municipal
deployments have occured in cases where incumbents were not interested
in providing modern internet access.
What may happen is that once they see the minucipality building FTTH,
they may suddently develop an interest in that city and deploy HFC and
or DSL and then sue the city for reason X.
Well, this is a place where Road Runner already *being* built in HFC
is a *feature* to me; I'm not going to yank their franchise agreement.
The normal behaviour should be: "we'll gladly connect to the municipal
system".
Are there any US examples of that actually happening?
A good layer 2 deployment can support DHCP or PPPoE and thus be
compatible with incumbents infrastructure. However, a good layer2
deployment won't have "RFoG" support and will prefer IPTV over the data
channel (the australian model supports multicast). So cable companies
without IPTV services may be at a disadvantage.
I think this depends on what handoffs my TE can provide at the customer
prem.
In Canada, Rogers (cableco) has announced that they plan to go all
IPTV instead of conventional TV channels.
Well, the MythTV people will be happy to hear that.
Or they would, if the content people would quit holding a gun to the
heads of the transport people.
Cheers,
-- jra
What's missing in this dialogue is the video component of an offering. Many customers like a triple (or quad) play because the price points are reasonable comparable to getting unbundled pricing from more than one provider, and they have just throat to choke and bill to pay.
But few IP TV providers will claim good profitability. And I don't believe any vendor has ActiveE and RFoG going down one strand.
Frank
Management has asked us why we can't do RF overlay on our AE system. 
We've had to explain a few times why that would be too expensive even if it
were available because of the high cost of the amps/splitters/combiners to
insert 1550nm onto every AE fiber.
IIRC, there is some issue with bleedover of either the forward or return
(optically modulated) RF wavelength with the data wavelength. Perhaps with
better lasers this could be overcome in the future.
Frank
For us, it would be the economics of the whole thing. When a 16x19.5 EDFA
runs around $20k, it's much more cost effective to combine 1550nm onto 16
PON's than onto 16 AE runs. Unless the equipment costs were to fall
drastically, there's no way it would ever fly.
Not an issue I'd missed. The suggestion of, I believe it was Owen, to run
GPON over the home-run fiber, with the splitters at the headend, solves that
problem rather nicely, though; the L3+ provider can do whatever they like;
if they need GPON to deliver, they (or we) can provision the splitters, and
patch through them, back to whatever OLT eqiuvalent they deliver from.
In fact, I need to find out the pricing class of the GPON splitters;
given what I gather the port count difference is between the line cards
on, say, the Calix E7, I might do my own L2 service that way, since the
Calix ONTs will take either.
I'm working up a what, how and why writeup on this, given my personal
set of tradeoffs; I hope to get it up by morning, so no one feels left
out on the last Whacky Weekend before the conference (which, dammital,
I can't attend, even though it's in Florida for the first time in a
decade...).
Cheers,
-- jra
I must be missing something here. Why would a triple play using IPTV and VOIP be unachievable in this model?
Available Providers.
The City, remember, won't be doing L3, so we'd need to find someone who
was doing that. You know how big a job it is to be a cable company?
Cheers,
-- jra
I would think in this model that the city would be prohibited from providing those services.
Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.
If rural telco in Alabama or Mississippi can deliver triple play, surely a larger provider somewhere like NYC can do as well, no?
From: "Brandon Ross" <bross@pobox.com>
> Available Providers.
>
> The City, remember, won't be doing L3, so we'd need to find someone
> who was doing that. You know how big a job it is to be a cable company?
I would think in this model that the city would be prohibited from
providing those services.
That is what I just said, yes, Brandon: the City would offer L1 optical
home-run connectivity and optional L2 transport and aggregation with
Ethernet provider hand-off, and nothing at any higher layers.
Perhaps I live in a different world, but just about all of the small to
midsize service providers I work with offer triple play today, and nearly
all of them are migrating their triple play services to IP.
Really. Citations? I'd love to see it play that way, myself.
If rural telco in Alabama or Mississippi can deliver triple play, surely a
larger provider somewhere like NYC can do as well, no?
Well, I ain't no NYC, but... 
Cheers,
-- jra
The L0 (ROW, poles & conduits) provider, and
in option #1 L1 connectivity provider, and
in option #2 L2 transport and aggregation provider,
aka "City"
is also a consumer of "City 2 City" service above L2, and
is also a consumer of "City 2 Subscriber" services above L2.
Creating the better platform for competitive access to the City's
L(option(s)) infrastructure must not prelude "City" as a provider.
Eric
The City will be it's own customer for L1 ptp between our facilities,
yes. We will also be a customer of the L1 service to provide the L2
service, and that MRC cost-recovery will be included in the L2 cost.
While I realize that we could in turn be a competing L3 provider as a
customer of the L1/2 provider, I'm loathe to go there if I'm not actually
forced to; even moreso than the L2 bump, that's a *big* increase in
labor and hence costs, in addition to which I've been convinced here
that potential L3 providers will be less likely not to assume The Fix
Is In in that case; the City's L3 provider getting an unfair break.
If I can't get an LOI as suggested in the posting I just put up, then
we may need to be the provider-of-last-resort, at a higher cost to continue
to make coming in and competing as a provider.
Cheers,
-- jra
Okay:
South Central Rural Telephone
Glasgow, KY
http://www.scrtc.com/
Left side of page, "Digital TV service". See this news article:
http://www.wcluradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15567:capacity-crowd-hears-good-report-at-scrtc-annuan-mee
"He also reported that SCRTC is continuing to upgrade our services, converting customers to the new IPTV service and trying to get as much fiber optic cable built as possible."
Camellia Communications
Greenville, AL
http://camelliacom.com/services/ctv-dvr.html
Note the models of set-top boxes they are using are IP based
Griswold Cooperative Telephone
Griswold, IA
http://www.griswoldtelco.com/griswold-coop-iptv-video
Farmer's Mutual Coopeative Telephone
Moulton, IA
http://farmersmutualcoop.com/
Citizens
Floyd, VA
http://www.citizens.coop/
How about a Canadian example you say?
CoopTel
Valcourt, QB
http://www.cooptel.qc.ca/en-residentiel-tele-guidesusager.php
Check out the models of set-top boxes here too.
Oh, also, have you heard of ATT U-Verse?
http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=26580
"AT&T U-verse TV is the only 100 percent Internet Protocol-based television (IPTV) service offered by a national service provider"
So even the likes of AT&T, in this scheme, could buy fiber paths to their subs and provide TV service. I'm pretty sure AT&T knows how to deliver voice services over IP as well.
Do you want more examples? I bet I can come up with 50 small/regional telecom companies that are providing TV services over IP in North America if I put my mind to it.
Yes, but IP TV is not profitable on stand-alone basis -- it's just a
necessary part of the triple play. A lot of the discussion has been about
Internet and network design, but not much about the other two "plays".
Frank
Yes, but IP TV is not profitable on stand-alone basis -- it's just a
necessary part of the triple play. A lot of the discussion has been about
Internet and network design, but not much about the other two "plays".
I don't know if that's true or not, but so what?
The concern was that providers would be unable to provide television services across this muni fiber infrastructure and that customers would demand triple play. I showed that they absolutely can provide this service by doing it across IP.
If a provider can't make money at it, then they don't have to provide it.
This whole exercise, I thought, was about removing the tyranny of the monopoly of the last mine so that these other innovations could take place in an open market.
And as far as the "other" triple play, it's even more well established that delivery of voice over IP can be done economically. Or do you need me to send you URLs of companies that do it to prove it?
Yeah; I'm not sure what Frank was worried about on this one, either.
Your citations were just what I needed, Brandon.
Why did you think there was a problem, here, Frank?
Cheers,
-- jra
Brandon:
My apologies, I didn't mean to suggest that providers would be unable to
provide video services across the muni fiber infrastructure. I was just
pointing out that many customers want a triple play, so that should be a
factor that Jay considers when considering a GPON-only or ActiveE design, as
an RF-overlay on a GPON network is likely more profitable than an IP TV
service on top of GPON or ActiveE. And Jay wants to attract multiple
providers, so he wants a fiber design that's as attractive to as many
parties as reasonably possible.
Frank
Frank,
One thing to keep in mind is that I don't believe its possible to get a
contract with the bulk of the content owners in a wholesale scenario. This
would be a different kind of situation than I've seen attempted in the past
but in general the content guys get very picky about how video delivery is
done. I'd certainly not claim to be authoritative on this, but I've never
seen it done and I have seen the content guys strike down shared head end
systems in almost all cases.
Also, apologies for the rash of emails since this is the first time I've
been able to get back to this thread.
You do really need to read the thread before you post.
I already pointed out that there are several companies that will handle or aggregate programming for you.
See here:
http://www.itvdictionary.com/tv_content_aggregators.html
And this company here:
http://www.telechannel.tv/overview.php
I'm no expert in this space, but as I've pointed out multiple times, there are probably 50-100 small service providers in the US that provide video programming to their communities. I guarantee you at least most of them don't negotiate with all of the content providers themselves, on an individual basis.