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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lml who wrote (2621)	12/18/1998 12:24:00 PM
From: WTC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

lml- How do I think the "excess loop" length issue will be ultimately be resolved? Pretty much as Frank C has predicted: xDSL flavors, from HDSL2 to ADSL to VDSL, homed from a very large number of fiber nodes in the subscriber plant. The fiber component of that architecture makes the network planner virtually indifferent to the total distance back to the serving central office. For the default design, the engineering issues are 1) limiting the length of the copper "last mile" connections, 2) eliminating bridge tap to the extent possible (most VDSL is sensitive to BT close to the subscriber, where it is most likely to remain), and 3) assuring that the paired copper distribution plant that remains in use for a long time is in good condition and will be readily maintainable in that condition. Since ultimately can take a long time, I would also predict that those long copper loops that make many xDSL installs technically and economically problematic today will make these "opportunities" for advanced service installation a very low priority. There is just too much advanced services low hanging fruit to put early attention on the really hard problems, especially where conventional logic suggests that many of those "problems" will take care of themselves as a part of general plant modernization not directly related to or contingent on advanced services penetration. Fiber had been getting out into the subscriber plant for many years because it makes the most sense when there is any kind of plant construction trigger. Growth is one trigger, and really bad maintenance problems and upkeep expense is another trigger. A real push to get more fiber nodes deployed as a part of a xDSL/VDSL topology will at a minimum require more satisfactory vendor products for integrating high volumes of xDSL tails into the fiber mux in the field. A home run with g.lite would help, too. There are always reasons to wait on the sidelines until real tangible demand develops before spending big network dollars. This will probably fit that pattern, but in the short run, a lot of incremental capital will be spent to get the customers who are almost there with serving plant over that last hurdles, so that advanced services can be turned on easily. <How feasible is it for an ILEC to reconfigure the jurisdiction of its COs? For example, while I'm approximately 40,000 ft from the Beverly Hills CO, I'm only 'bout 18,000 ft from the CO in Van Nuys.> It is possible to do it, but there are more economical ways of working the distance issues today than 20 years ago, when the ILECs did this quite often and called it an "area transfer." Area transfers made sense when the outside plant was almost exclusively paired copper, and costs followed a simple (a + bx) formula, with length of loop a primary cost driver. Today, a fiber node remote from the CO is just a few dollars away from the CO in the loop cost calculations, so I can shorten the loops with fiber from their existing CO and achieve a lot of other benefits, too, whenever I finally hit a trigger of some sort. Area transfers traditionally required a directory number change, and that was a big hassle and impediment to doing them. They required 12 months notice to business customers so they could repaint the phone number on the trucks and reprint stationary. That is not necessarily such a problem now with local number portability, but I guess we need to be sure LNP is really here before we declare victory on that point. From the information you provided, I would predict you are not likely to be part of an area transfer in this day and time. Maybe you have some forward movement on cable modems, finally ...