
California consumer groups allow CenturyLink to end dark fiber leasing - iokevins
http://www.tellusventure.com/blog/california-consumer-groups-allow-centurylink-to-end-dark-fiber-leasing/
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zw123456
I have often been asked by people what Dark Fiber is, my answer is usually
that it is evil fiber. Just kidding. Seriously, dark fiber is quite simply
fiber that does not have the usual network equipment attached to it and hence,
no lasers are shooting photons through it, thus the term "dark" meaning not
being lit by lasers.

The largest cost of laying fiber is not in the fiber itself, the glass itself
is relatively cheap in comparison to the cost of obtaining the right of way,
the labor and so on. Often municipalities, counties, states or whatever charge
a fee for these rights of way if the fiber is underground (the most
expensive). If they are attaching aerial fiber to existing poles, the pole
owners, often power companies, have also paid for the rights of way and
further charge a poll attachment fee. Regardless, all the other cost typically
far over shadow the cost of the individual strands.

Typically a carrier will install a larger fiber count cable since the
incremental cost of installing a 144 count fiber rather than a 72 count for
example, would probably be relatively minor so why not have a few extras. Most
carriers have the choice as to whether or not to sell off (typically using an
instrument called an Indefeasible Right to Use, which is sort of like a condo
but for fiber, usually long term, 20years). Usually they will sell or trade
with other carriers to help offset costs, for example carrier A might trade 4
fibers in San Francisco for 4 fibers in LA for particular routes. In that way
they are not so directly aiding a competitor but also gaining routes for
themselves.

Usually, carriers do not like to sell off DF to customers such as large
enterprises because quite simply, those customers would never have to buy
anything from them again because they could continuously gain more capacity by
placing DWDM equipment on each end (not endlessly of course but for all
practical purposes for most customers, endless).

That is why most carriers like Century Link or others (especially ILEC's,
Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, i.e. the phone company) do not like selling
DF. Typically these carriers have purchased a Franchise agreement with cities
or whichever authority. These franchise agreements are not cheap (usually 5%
of gross or something like that, basically it is like a tax) that gives them
in theory access to all rights of way from the controlling body (cable co's do
the same thing).

Because of that they maintain often a de-facto monopoly or a powerful market
position that they do not want jeopardized by the availability of DF which
would provide extremely cheap bandwidth.

I have often thought that the smart thing for cities to do, if perhaps one
were to be able to start from a green field, would be for the city to place
telecom conduit up and down every street from the get go and then rent out
inner-duct space to carriers. That would make it easier for competitors to
access the rights of way without all of the disruptions.

But perhaps new mmwave 5G technology will eliminate such concerns eventually
(but I am skeptical).

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fapjacks
CPUC is absolutely awful. Every time I see the acronym, my spidey sense
tingles like _crazy_ that there's some collusion going on behind the scenes.
Those people fold in places that are strategically very convenient for the
industries. It very much seems like CPUC is in the business of monopoly-
building, and I have never seen any evidence to the contrary. Specifically
CPUC makes me wish I ran a watchdog and could dump resources into an
investigation.

~~~
dawnerd
They were the ones that decided that frontier buying Verizon Fios wouldn't
cause any harm to consumers, and what do you think happened... Yeah, lots of
complaints about billing mistakes, months of no service, etc.

~~~
Tostino
Yeah, that was one of the most painful acquisitions for me personally. I went
from practically no issues with Fios for years, and at least reasonably
responsive service if there was an issue, to literally the worst customer
service i've ever dealt with in Frontier. The billing issues... oh the billing
issues were terrible. They were charging me more than double for three months,
each month i'd call and tell them to fix it and fix the prior months, and I
wasn't paying until I saw a fixed statement with the correct amount owed. It
didn't get fixed until 4 months in I filed a complaint with the BBB.

~~~
Applejinx
…which themselves are sketchy, so it stands to reason that any scamsters would
be extremely aware of 'em.

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pasbesoin
Here's the first paragraph. Makes the context and outfall more apparent:

 _If CenturyLink is allowed to buy Level 3, then California will lose a major
source of dark fiber. That’s my reading of a settlement agreement between
CenturyLink, Level 3 and three of the organisations that challenged the deal
at the California Public Utilities Commission. The fourth challenger, the
California Emerging Technology Fund, isn’t part of the agreement._

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bluejekyll
For those unaware, dark fiber refers to fiber in the ground that was overbuilt
by the owning company, in this case Level3.

What I don't get is _why_ would someone not want to lease this unused
capacity? Is it to squash competition and push up consumer costs?

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pasbesoin
Speculuation:

Backbone data prices have continued to sink, year after year. "Last mile"
connectivity prices continue to rise and far outpace the underlying data
transmission costs (and particularly, the backbone portion of those costs).

If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative
business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease
your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last
mile segment?

P.S. Take "last mile" figuratively, in the above. I don't know where the line
exactly between "local"/lucrative and "long haul"/ever-cheaper.

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bogomipz
>"If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative
business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease
your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last
mile segment?"

The actual fiber is a sunk cost. It's possibly you might get a better return
on that asset by leasing unused capacity even if it introduces some element of
competition.

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vfclists
Looks like a classic case of controlled opposition.

