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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (3402)	7/22/2001 12:56:39 AM
From: Frank A. Coluccio	Respond to of 46821

WCOM's network might have taken four hours because they are heavily dependent on digital cross-connects (in addition to discreet ring level restorations), and DCSs take a long time to rebuild routes during major facilities failures. As for coughing up bucks for diverse routes while they are building their primary routes in order to have backups in place, I think that MFN, like the other large fiber barrons, already has fiber swap arrangements in place with Williams and others to do just this. Having the arrangements in place and actually implementing them, however, are two different things. Another problem is this: Many of the routes that one fiber baron has in place often traverse what are known as "cross over points" in buried cable vaults and indeed, along entire lengths of ROWs of other fiber baron's routes, or along a portion of the entire distance of the route in question, such as what occurred during the recent tunnel incident. And very often the "diversity" arrangements that carriers have in place don't meet the due dilly and audit requirements of potential buyers, so they become a moot point, and therefore are not implemented in some instances cases. One of the thorniest issues between buyers and sellers of dark fiber and IRUs today (including lambda IRUs that are obtained from physical fibers that have been wdm'ed) is the accountability - i.e., pinpointing of the exact path - that the actual cable route takes. Buyers (both other carriers and large enterprises) want and need to know this information, and IMO they have a right to know where the fibers that they are spending millions on, are placed. Suppliers, on the other hand, are extremely reluctant to divulge this information, in part becuase of a very simple reason: The fiber or lambda that they might be selling may, or may not, be from their own installed inventory.