On Jan 30, 2013, at 6:24 AM, William Herrin <b...@herrin.us> wrote: > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 7:39 PM, Jay Ashworth <j...@baylink.com> wrote: >> ----- Original Message ----- >>> From: "Jean-Francois Mezei" <jfmezei_na...@vaxination.ca> >> >>> It is in fact important for a government (municipal, state/privince or >>> federal) to stay at a last mile layer 2 service with no retail >>> offering. Wholesale only. >>> >>> Not only is the last mile competitively neutral because it is not >>> involved in retail, but it them invites competition by allowing many >>> service providers to provide retail services over the last mile >>> network. > > As long as they support open peering they can probably operate at > layer 3 without harm. Tough to pitch a muni on spending tax revenue > for something that's not a complete product usable directly by the > taxpayers. >
Perhaps, but well worth the effort. There are a wide variety of reasons to want more than one L3 provider to be readily available and avoid limiting consumers to a single choice of ISP policies, capabilities, etc. Also, an L1/L2 fiber plant may be usable for other services beyond just packets. Owen
