Jared Mauch wrote:
How about just mandating that it's illegal to build anything but fiber/gpon for services.
I would expand on this and say we should make it illegal for any telecom
carrier to refuse to put their assets into service wherever they may be,
and going forward we should force conditions on all telecom carriers to
sell to all at any technical feasible point to all comers, and further
to require planned points of interconnection for competitors and rules
about how much overbuild is required (minimum fiber counts that should
be reserved for 'the public interest') and so forth. We saw how the
telecoms gamed the 96 telecom act, so now we know and we can do better
and design in indefeasble rules that take away the game playing and
replace it with service that actually gets to people who need it.
I happen to be an operator in a rural area and the realities are that
prices are waaayyyy high (over $100/mbps), where you can get any sort of
bigname telco service at all. At the same time however, there is plenty
of fiber in the ground, on the poles and passing thru regeneration huts
all thru the area that is doing absolutely no good for the local
populations. There are plenty of already existing possible points of
interconnection, but there's no requirement that they be forced to sell
to you at these points. An example in my area is Level3 communications,
who has an international fiber route running thru my county and 2
regeneration huts and at least one of these confirmed as having all
necessary gear to sell ethernet/tdm handoff services. I have a
competitor who was able to get into this one before l3 bought it (former
Wiltel sites) and enjoys $20/mbps but since then although there's been
plenty of discussion the bottom line is l3 simply isn't _interested_ in
selling _us_ service, leaving us (and our county) at the mercy of att
for all connectivity, making att a single point of failure, empowering
att to charge outlandish prices for connectivity services since
everything has to go at least 100 miles away (triggering those 'loop
charges' we're all so fond of, since they won't dare put in opteman or
other advanced distance insensitive options, oh heavens no you need
those old expensive copper tdm services and anything you want to connect
to is gonna be a long, long ways away....)
What really burns me up is that L3 had the odacity to apply for federal
BTOP dollars for creating exactly the problem they are proposing to
resolve. Gee what an original idea - get federal grant money to sell a
service that we're already sellling at a zero cost!
Ok Im don't spewing now, thanks for letting me vent.
