The Last Mile Problem - US Solution

yellum

Got from Slashdot

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2001/12/06/adcosbust.DTL

At long last, a promising new group of firms with a sound business model might finally be about to crack open local monopoly phone and Internet-access markets to real competition.

Fergus

I think there's a lot of sense in the Phoenix Center report.

Essentially, you can use regulation all you want to get eircom to unbundle local loops to OLOs, but unless there is an alternative local loop provider to migrate to when you get a bit bigger, eircom is always going to be finding ways, underhand or otherwise, to hinder the OLO using it's lines.

The current example is the court case on LLU pricing with the ODTR. The object is to cast uncertainly over the future price and the regulator's abilities. This creates a big risk factor for an OLO thinking of getting involved.. enough to make the business plan unworkable for most outfits.

The underlying problem with LLU is that the wholesaler of your loops is the same company that you are competing with head-on in the retail market. Every customer you get using an unbundled loop is probably one being taken away from your wholesaler's retail business. You can never realistically hope to have the wholesaler play fair given that situation.

Fergus

Why is this being allowed!

Every time a new housing estate is built, you have say 300+ new premises with local loop and cable lines laid. I bet Eircom and NTL are jumping in there right from the start with the developer to ensure they lay it and own it.

With the correct legislation etc, the developer or some other company could own and maintain those lines. Eircom/NTL would then have to buy access on the same terms as anyone else. Or lay their own network in parallel, but the original network would still be there for competitors. No stranglehold either way.

Whatever about taking existing loops out of the hands of the incumbents, I really would like to know whats being done about the new developments.

And another issue: The cable network should be the direct competition to the local loop. The cable licences should be withdrawn from their holders unless they supply PSTN phone services over the cable. And quickly.

dahamsta

[This is a slightly edited post from the committee mailing list, where we've been discussing this. Better it's discussed here anyway.]

Will it work here though? The U.S. is a completely different marketplace - they have dozens of ILEC's and hundreds of CLEC's to manage, PLUS the ISP's; we have one, a few and half-a-dozen respectively. We also have positively cruddy rules and regs WRT to digging up the roads, and the telco's don't have the brains to use robots. On that note, I read an interview with the guy responsible for the robots and the idea a while back, and he's one clever little kiddy, but that was over a year ago. He doesn't seem to be going anywhere fast - in Ireland, what can we genuinely expect?

I'm not at all sure about this. It's kind of like saying to the Regulator, "Well, all your work on the LLU regulations is fantastic, but I think we should put that aside now and think about this." The LLU regulation has taken years to get right, and the Regulator seems to be really pleased with it - they reckon it's nice and tight, they've covered all the bases. Course we still don't know if that's true...

adam

NeilF

Originally posted by Fergus
Whatever about taking existing loops out of the hands of the incumbents, I really would like to know whats being done about the new developments.

I've often thought of that myself. All new phone lines installed in developments should be ISDN and ready for xDSL. Even fibre from a mini-exchange to the door? The cost is laying it rather than the actual product so I would imagine it would be quite cheap to do.

I can forgive Eircom for using DACS boxes when only ten people in Ireland used phone lines for data. Continuing to use them when they restrict your speed and prevent you from upgrading to new technologies which are just around the corner is appalling.

If a new estate of a hundred houses is being built, and Eircom only have fifty lines available in that area or along that road, what happens? Do they rip up the road and install new lines or just DACS everyone?

Fergus

They're called Loop Carrier systems. DACS is a different thing. Think Loop Carrier or DLC. See this thread.


Yeah. It *should* be feasible or made feasible for a small co to run it's own exchange for a few hundred homes and interface with eircom et al through a single trunk