Interesting assessment, Rich, thanks. Please clarify why Q would want to lease capacity on L3's network, when the latter is almost identical to its own from a coverage perspective.
"In fact, I think Q will halt most non-metro capex, better for them to just lease the long-haul from LVLT etc for now."
I'm not necessarily challenging your view here, mind you. I'm just wondering about the trade-off of long haul and colo leases versus the depreciation of boxes on their own network, since they have fairly much the same coverage from the standpoint of viewing their national footprints.
In the metro they may be incurring capex expenditures, but even here when given the opportunity to trench their own metro routes they are opting to use dark fiber from others, sometimes to the detriment of one of the primary motivators from a customer's point of view, which is route and POP diversity in addition to redundancy. The latter preference by Q in the metro space is a form of upside-down-flip of your own view of the long haul, but I've found this to be true, nonetheless. In the metro space, btw, Q seems to be captivated by Cisco's Cerent boxes - at least in situations that I've experienced. |
