Techy, you're absolutely correct. No one else offers dark fiber for sale to the same scale that MFNX does in the markets they serve. Most local and regional service providers protect their bandwidth like mother hens looking over their eggs. This is in line with the old school of traditional bandwidth unit pricing practices. These practices still dominate to this day, but the effects of the 'net [and all that that implies] and newer resource sharing technologies are beginning to impact on the incumbents in some not-so-obvious ways.
MFNX, on the other hand, virtually stumbled upon the new order of fiber-based economics [the new economy] before it was ever popularized. A great vision, perhaps, but the consequences were still widely unknown then... back in the earlier part of the decade, and the late Eighties when WDM, much less DWDM, was still a laboratory buzz word. The time frame I'm speaking of points to the origins of National Fiber Networks, or NFN, the predecessor of MFN, who first received their franchise in NY City in 1993.
Their original motivation was more aligned to brute force factors than anything Gilderian, but the same effects have evolved, nonetheless, as though they had known it all along. I speak from some very close hand experience on this one. They made the right moves, and more power to them.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
