Teddy, now I see what you're saying. My initial impression was that we were discussing risers in the domestic US buildings.
Sidebar: At one time the ILECs here in the stated (prior to the mid Eighties) had a dominant presence in the risers, too, prior to divestiture, when they owned most of the shaft cabling from the basement to the roof. That was before tenants even had any LANs to speak of, the Internet was still the Internet, and VPN stood for Vice President Nixon... well, not that far back.
This was prior to the advent of fiber as we now know it today, being a tenant location medium. In any event, carriers still own certain fiber counts today in the domestic riser systems, i.e., here in the states, but primarily to facilitate TDM forms of SONET/SDH delivery, and not for ad hoc creation of private enterprise networking needs over dark fiber, or even over IEEE LANs. This is the great opportunity that is being filled by outfits who are contracted by MFNX, Telergy, and even GBLX, to name just three.
There are hundreds of the contracting firms involved in this space now.. probably thousands of them across the country. Some are even public, like FTGX (Fibernet), which is another NY firm whose principal role is (or soon will be, if I'm not mistaken) lighting up buildings with fiber risers and horizontal distribution systems (both fiber and twisted pair). In addition to the pulling of media, they will also be creating SONET Rings and erecting neutral carrier easements in the hubs of large urban campuses. End Sidebar.
If the HK company still maintains a dominant presence in those risers in HK, which sounds like is the case, then this is very likely the explanation for their "owning", and through extension, GBLX having now gained proprietary access to the fiber in those buildings, as you have reported.
As you can see, I didn't get to hear the conference call last night.
Regards, Frank |
