A New Neutral, Long-Haul Fiber Network 129
techclicker sends word on the ambitious plans of Allied Fiber to disrupt the long-haul business in the US. The company is embarking on the first phase of a planned six-phase build-out of dark fiber, towers, and co-lo facilities ringing the US. The first three phases are budgeted at $670M; the last three are not yet laid out in detail (announcement, PDF). Phase 1 is scheduled for completion in 2010. Allied's business model of selling wholesale bandwidth to all comers is in sharp contrast to that of incumbents such as AT&T, who won't sell backhaul to potential competitors. "Allied is deploying a 432-count, long-haul cable coupled with the 216-count, short-haul cable that will be a composite of Single-Mode and Non-Zero Dispersion Shifted fibers. Allied Fiber has implemented a new, multi-duct design for intermediate access to the long-haul fiber duct through a parallel short-haul fiber duct all along the route. This enables all points between the major cities, including wireless towers and rural networks, to gain access to the dark fiber. In addition, the Allied Fiber neutral colocation facilities, located approximately every 60 miles along the route, accommodate and encourage a multi-tenant interconnection environment integrated with fiber that does not yet exist in the United States on this scale."
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:3, Informative)
Or it could be that their phase 4 is last mile service. That leaves phase 5 unknown, while phase 6 is obviously PROFIT!
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:5, Informative)
in canada, (where the extremely moderate costs for peering are reasonable) we've got hundreds of small WISP's popping up all the time. they provide 756Kb/256Kb wireless connections to most of rural Canada.
most ISP's here won't run a line until there are 1K+ customers willing to sign one year SA's, so the WISP's provide for thousands of people, by peering from canada's (I know. our backbones are still SMALL) backbones.
Hurricane Electric for example, has and maintains hundreds of peer points. it's nothing these days to get a hold of a pair of 3845's for under $15K each, and take a peer point with failover. (it's hard to get a lawyer to ok your contract guaranteeing five nines though, with only one peer
now if you mean the cost associated with installing and maintaining the peer point in the first place, I completely agree. even a CRS1 is WAY out of my price range, and that would only cover a fraction of these fibers bandwidth requirements.
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:3, Informative)
The incumbents are almost universally public utilities. They are granted a local monopoly as having more than one company digging up the streets to lay cable/phone/fiber would be insanity.
Incumbents are not granted monopolies. They may have a de facto monopoly, but it is not the result of ongoing government restriction of competition.
See:
47 U.S.C. 253(a) (dealing with telephone operators): "No State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service."
47 U.S.C. 541(a)(1) (dealing with cable operators): "A franchising authority may award, in accordance with the provisions of this title, 1 or more franchises within its jurisdiction; except that a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise."
Re:Queue lawsuits in three, two... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Heard it all before (Score:2, Informative)
Well, the first phase of this project is supposed to connect New York to Chicago and Ashburn, VA. Level 3's headquarters in in Ashburn, VA. So, you might be on to something.
Level 3 is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The locations (NYC, Chicago, and the Dulles Technology Corridor) are three out of the eight or nine metros where North American internet giants interconnect with each other. Others include Atlanta, Dallas, LA and the Bay Area.
Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... (Score:3, Informative)
Ideally, it would allow new ISPs to enter the market and compete with the current conglomerates.
The problem isn't long-haul bandwidth. Reasonably priced OC48+ is already common pretty much everywhere in the US. Reselling it isn't the issue. The "Last Mile" is the issue and has ALWAYS been the issue. The ONLY "resellable" last mile option is telco copper, and the problem with it (in all too many cases) is loop length, and quality of the loop. In my area, the wires are long and old, meaning that 1.5M/384K is the absolute max I can get, and it has lots of dropouts (and I get nasty static on my POTS line.) I've been trying to get it fixed for 5 YEARS! Letters to the PUC have yielded absolutely nothing. So my ONLY other option now is cable. And to be honest, the speed for $$$ on my business line (15M/2M, 5 IP's, no caps) is so far beyond what the phone company or ANY third party DSL ISP can offer, it's a no-brainer. All I could ask for is better reliability (I've had a number of outages where I have never had an outage with my phone service.)
My situation, unfortunately, is not all that unusual. There are areas of San Jose, CA, that STILL can't get DSL due to loop length.
So... Back to the original topic. This will do NOTHING for your local home / small business internet service. It will make it a little less expensive for large businesses to have or upgrade their private networks. That's it.
The solution for the last mile is an independent "fiber utility" that offers / supports the physical fiber, and to allow multiple companies to connect to it and offer services over it at a neutral facility. I don't need 15 different companies stringing cable, but I would like 15 different companies competing to offer me TV, internet, and phone over that common fiber.