Goodness, how did I miss this one? Thanks, ftth, the person.
Message 15331773
Someone on the Light Reading Forum asked what it would take to bring FTTH to NY City. My response, which is copied below, didn't take into consideration that the city itself, with all of its many franchises, would provide the incentives, like Chicago has. Certainly, NY City has a municipal I-Net (that I had a hand in adapting several years ago to a NASA Internet-access-in-the-schools initiative) like most other locales of any size and some that are much smaller, but thus far I don't recall anything in NY that resembles what Chicago (or Palo Alto and others) are doing in these regards.
I recall reviewing one such franchise a while back, and in return for the four strands per building "donated" to the city by the aspiring service provider (an MSO, in fact), the City agreed not to compete with them except in municipal government applications. That was eight years ago.
My earlier response on LR, which assumed that a startup would be laying the groundwork, as opposed to the city, itself:
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Thread: Khosla: Optical Market's Still Huge
Author: Frank Number: 20
Subject: Re: FTTH in NYCity Date:
2/4/2001 7:34:03 PM
sa-re-ga-ma,
Question 1: “I would like to hear the opinion of people about the possibility of getting Internet Connections in NYC via Optical FTTH? What are the problems that such companies can face in their implementations?”
Question 2: “I would love to hear more about the Companies which are implementing Optical FTTH in USA.”
In response to both questions:
Assuming we could agree on a reference model for FTTH (more on this below) and assuming that an operator has a viable business plan (engineering-, labor- and logistics-wise, as well as financial), the FTTH overbuilder would face the same sorts of problems as those faced by facilities-based CLEC s and Cable operators.
Before the first strand could be placed in NYC a franchise must be awarded by the NY City Department of Information Technologies and Telecommunications (DoITT), based on the merits of the proposed business plan, and must pass the test of public convenience and necessity. Also, before a franchise could be awarded there would need to be an extensive environmental impact assessment done. Most startups who do not have adequate funding and legal counsel could face hardships in satisfying each of the above measures.
Beyond this, the problems are largely logistic, revolving around obtaining pole-, easement- and conduit- rights of way from incumbents, who will not exactly be thrilled with the prospect. There is also the ongoing need for securing permits from the city or borough for street trenches and subsidiary cuts, suitable field equipment housing areas for “remotes,” i.e., optical nodes situated in the targeted neighborhood.
And all throughout, overcoming a number of prejudices and perceptions, fostered by skewed price-performance study results by those whose bread gets buttered by more conventional approaches. Perhaps this last point just mentioned is the largest nut to crack in obtaining initial financing and partners.
There are several flavors of “Fiber to the Home” being deployed throughout the world at this time, with the majority of them found collectively in Sweden, Holland, Japan, Canada and the USA. Most of them simply emulate NTSC a la HFC right now (with the potential for blossoming later on into a more robust role, when technologies mature to exploit the true richness that lies within the strand).
A major difference between these and HFC, however, lies with FTTH’s larger spectrum allocation for higher data rates for Internet access (sometimes only marginally faster, interestingly) than that which could be obtained from Hybrid Fiber Coax being deployed by the cable operators for cable modem service.
Notably, however, the FTTH variant of data might be 10 or 100 Mb/s “symmetrical,” while cable modem and consumer grade DSL services are “asymmetrical.” Beyond these distinctions there are no uniform standards being observed by operators at this time for quality-of-service (QoS) metrics.
In the USA there are several categories of FTTH activity taking place at this time. Off the top of my head I can think of four camps:
ILECS - Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers such as Bell South, who has two residential deep fiber trials going on right now. One of them is appreciable, with native fiber being brought directly to the side of the house.
Developer Partners – Such as Clear Works who go into new residential building developments and lay fiber as part of the underlying infrastructure of entire complex. In preparation for this the developer provides conduits to the street and within each home. I believe Clear Works uses OSI (Optical Solutions Inc.) for their termination gear.
Overbuilders who go into areas already served by other last mile providers, such as WINfirst. WINfirst is targeting numerous markets in the Southwest at this time, mostly. Theirs is a peculiar platform on first take, because they are actually running both an HFC over coax in the last mile, side by side with native fiber to the side of the house.
MDU BLECs - Building Local Exchange Carriers who target multiple dwelling units, such as high rise apartment buildings, campuses, hotels, and the like.
To date, Optical Solutions Inc seems to have had the greatest number of wins in this space, with Marconi coming up strong. While the latter two are capable of emulating HFC, while providing faster speeds for data, there is another camp starting to form that I think will be more effective than either, soon. And that is the Gigabit to the Home operator who extends fiber to the side of the house, supported by field nodes made primarily of Gb/s Ethernet switches, instead of RF amplifiers.
WorldWidePackets is doing a lot in this space at the present time, both in marketing their wares and in participating in Last Mile fora, but IMO it’s only a matter of time before they start to see some company in this space, most likely from Marconi, Nortel and Cisco, first, with others to follow. Actually, much of the gear is already in place to allow an operator to bring gigE to the home.
But like I stated earlier, above, there is no uniform reference model for FTTH yet, much less one that supports GbETTH. Consequently, no one (except for the few I've mentioned and a few others) is really doing very much right now, waiting for a set of standards to be established.
To this end, there is working group who recently formed the First Mile Ethernet Forum that is now under way.
lightreading.com
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The city also does street lamps, emergency pull boxes and traffic signals in every neighborhood, so why should bringing fiber to every block be considered such a novelty? It has to do with the traditional "separations" discussed by the author in your post. |
