Nils,
Two things, if I may... one on MFNX and the other on the cheap and plentiful bandwidth supply.
MFNX had its roots in a franchise that was awarded in '93 by the Dept of Info Technologies and Telecom (DoITT) in NY City, when it was predominantly (and still is, to a great extent, today) one of the few dark fiber providers to other carriers and private enterprises. As National Fiber Networks, the then NFN was, and again, to a great extent, still is, considered a carrier's carrier in the NY City Metro Area, where the resale of unlit fiber was their mainstay. Today they have been merged/acquired by Metromedia and renamed, a process which has resulted in a major face lift. Their contracts and agreements span the Atlantic into the UK, and westward into the Chicago area, with the most notable arrangement, IMO, being their transatlantic rights and the ties with Racal in the UK. Their fiber routes are almost exclusively 3 gross dense, i.e., 432 Singlemode strands to a bundle/sheathe, and that ain't hay. In addition to dark fiber builds, they have a growing number of SONET/SDH route systems that they sell, lease or whatever the individual account requirements are, which are "lit" and maintained by them. See the thread here in SI under MFNX.
On the subject of cheap and plentiful bandwidth, sure there exists plentiful bandwidth today in the numbers that approach the surreal. But "access" to it is still elusive and expensive, as carriers are now struck with digital cross-connect system (DCS) port shortages, as they mine their reserves to find plug-in cards to feed the masses. I suspect that there may be some room here for supply control, don't know that for certain, but nonetheless, a shortage. The distinction that I am making is this: WDM/DWDM and UDWDM will foster huge, but untappable, reserves of bandwidth, until the provisions are put in place in the end offices to get that bandwidth to users.
FWIW, and the beat goes on...
Regards,
Frank Coluccio |
