Hello Morgan,
Re: The BEL-MFNX agreement concerning CO-level dark fiber entry,
you ask:
What's in it for Bell Atlantic? More competition? What am I
missing?"
A very appropriate question. I could think of a few plausible reasons, but
I don't know for sure. Allowing a local competitor open access to their
central offices, and permitting dark fiber interconnects, to boot , is not
exactly what one would call an intuitive move by BEL, given their history
in these matters, and their previous posture towards competitors, in
general. Especially competitors who would dare to offer
dark fiber to their local customers.
The practice of offering dark fiber to enterprise customers, and carriers
alike, has been regarded as a major taboo by the incumbent LECs since
the beginning of time. But this agreement has been a long time in
coming, in my opinion.
When George Gilder was writing his Beyond the Fiber Sphere work
back in '92 (which accurately described these parameters in remarkable
detail), even before National Fiber Networks received their first
local franchise, this is exactly what NFN (now MFNX) had in mindto do.
That is, to become a carriers' carrier, primarily providing dark fiber to the
largest service providers like the ILECs, both in the streets and in the
central office cabling vaults. And then right up to the optical cross
connects in the operations areas. When NFN was formed, DWDM was
something that was only discussed in research papers. I feel certain that
this deal will also lead to them putting in DWDM and eventually optical
routing devices in BEL's COs, as well. This kind of agreement has been
ten years in coming, and it looks like MFNX is finally where they've
wanted to be all along.
-------
BEL's motivation is probably multidimensional. They gain
inclusion, since most of the emerging larger carriers like WCG,
LVLT and QWST already are being served by MFNX in one way or
another, or they are also partnering (don't you just love that
word?) with them either through the sale or exchange of dense fiber
routes, or IRU leases, or colocation, or by some other means. Call it
hedging on BEL's part, in the event that the rest of the world suddenly
goes ballistically photonic. BEL doesn't want to be left on the outside
looking in, which is an altogether possible thing when the largest
purveyors of optical routing are all handing off to one another, in large
measure through a least common denominator, being MFNX. This is not
too far fetched. And this is partially due to some of the reasons I list
below.
Beyond these primitive assumptions, there is another aspect at play here,
and that is a pre-existing relationship that was consummated last year
between BEL and MFNX, when the former commissioned the latter to
build a number of fiber routes between NY City and Westchester.
BEL may also be viewing this on some level as a precursor to a form of
future sourcing deal, similar to how they would be looking at the
acquisition of any other network element such as a switch, or a
mainframe, or a SONET Mux. I believe that this accounts for some part
of their strategy, as well.
Taking this a step further, BEL may actually be looking to outsource more
of their future outside plant fiber installation and maintenance work, and
this could be a preliminary step in that direction, as well.
And then there is the most obvious reason which folks pick up on. That is,
the very strong possibility that this move on BEL's part was designed to
demonstrate to the regulators that they are complying with their
obligations under the Act, and under the FCC's fourteen point check
list which was designed to ensure that the RBOCS open their local
markets to competitors. This is something they need to do in order to gain
entry into the long distance market place.
----
As of this point in time, and if we exclude SONET as a consideration,
there are no common carrier-provided optical services to speak of, other
than a few special assembly services (which require tooth extraction to
derive), and some pseudo forms of SONET-encapsulated IEEE
protocols. Where next generation optical services have started to take
form, is where dark fiber has been placed by firms like MFNX and sold
to enterprises for their own discretionary use.
In large measure, in other words, enterprises are still held hostage to the
model that was originally designed around the parameters of the human
ear, and its subsequent heirs, in the way of T1, T3, SONET, ATM, etc.
Introducing the availability of dark fiber on a newly accepted basis will
only serve to accelerate the acceptance of more efficient forms of
networking going forward, including IP, lambda routing, and things still
unheard of.
So, one might ask, "Shouldn't BEL be concerned that the upstarts will
simply leap frog them, if they give away the keys to the central office?"
I'll let others looking in here answer that question. My considered
opinion leads me to conclude that the answer to this question is no.
But I could go on about this topic all night, and I think I'd like to
hear the opinions of others.
Comments and corrections are always welcome.
Regards, Frank Coluccio |
