Bill, concerning the RBOC's local loop assets, of course, the other school of thought
states:
>After all, that's all they really have. <
But is that all they really have? Anyone?
Ten years ago, the answer to that question would have seemed at the time to be an
obvious 'yes.' Today's competing technologies, however, both from within the ILECs
and from outside, may relegate these twisted metallic assets to the status of liability or
excess baggage, in many instances.
The ILECs themselves are planning to replace their extant copper with fiber overbuilds
from the edge out (the FTTx family of architectures) over time, and the remaining
longer metallic loops may just find themselves hot on the block (pun intended).
In some situations where the BOC may lose heart in pursuing this older technology, I
can see how they might want to dress up the facilities for a fire sale and realize an
appreciable pop in their treasuries.
More likely, however, they will go the route of resale vendors, eventually, whether they
are forced to, or because they finally see the business case to support this direction.
Witness ION, competitive forces now presented by T, and the incumbents' inability to
react in time. The latter would lend itself to offering premium services to DSL resale
organizations, since the ILECs are too slow and clumsy to do it themselves in a
meaningful time frame. This is what may happen in Florida (see the upstream Court
Case post concerning Supra and Bell South), where the BOC lost the decision, but
may want to leverage that 'loss' to its own advantage.
Surely, no single assessment will fit all scenarios, but I do believe that sufficient
variance in the business model exists between the different categories of outside plant,
whether because of geographics, terrain, competitive forces, whatever, to support both
schools of thought on an individual case specific basis.
Any thoughts on this, Bill? Anyone?
Regards, Frank C. |
