I had a couple of interesting discussions over the past week. Wednesday I took a trip to Denver to meet with one of the top executives at Qwest. He met us for lunch, not wanting to take the steps necessary to get us to the top of the Qwest tower in downtown Denver.

After lunch we were walking through the downtown area when the conversation turned to access. This Qwest Executive lives in a rather exclusive neighborhood with limited network access. Cable doesn't get him what he wants and his best dial-up speed is 26,400. I made the statement that I'm a fiber-to-the-home guy, myself. To my surprise, he said, "so am I."

Hmmm. I keep hearing that Qwest isn't interested in providing fiber to their customers. I've been told that there is no incentive, nothing in it for them. It will be a cold day in you know where before Qwest gets fiber to their customers' homes. In truth, one of the big problems with the GeoMax project is that only sites that have fiber right now can participate. That narrows down the possible participants to about 100 or so locations.

But another truth is that no matter where you live/work access is the issue. And we all want high speed access. It's just a matter of availability and how much we are willing to pay. The other questions are (1) who should put in the infrastructure and (2) how should it be billed.

For now I guess there is another set of decisions. There is certainly an argument for limited fiber rings to neighborhoods and unlicensed wireless access points serving the individual customers. For now that could work well and be cost effective. A quick study for Farmington, my home town, reveals that this solution could be implemented within a few months with a total investment well under $750,000 (possibly as low as $550K).

Long term the solution has to be fiber-to-the-home. Anything else is just dancing around the issue.

After my adventure Wednesday with Qwest I found myself in Lake Point, Utah, visiting with Art and Chuck, the top two guys at Beehive Telephone on Thursday. Beehive has a published customer base of 1029 lines. These are spread out over vast parts of western and southern Utah. The topic of fiber-to-the-home came up in the course of our conversation. Art showed me an article he had written over two years ago. The bottom line message was that the answer is fiber. To the home.

Art has a bit of a different take than I do. He feels that all devices that are internet accessible should be taxed. The proceeds should be distributed to the Local Exchange Carriers (LECs). LECs should be given the incentive of building fiber plants. He doesn't want government or pseudo-government agencies building networks. I see his point. And, yes, Beehive is building fiber to those lucky thousand or so customers who live in their service area.

Even so, I wonder what will happen if the LECs build the fiber. Art feels that they (the LECs) would be willing to share the infrastructure as long as the financial incentives are in place. I'm not so sure. And I'm not sure what I'd do if I were responsible for a LEC. On the one hand the incentives now suggest it's best to maximize the use of the current copper plant. On the other hand, if you believe that fiber is inevitable, you should be building a fiber access layer as fast as possible.

In the end, the owner of the fiber will control much of what happens in the emerging world of high speed network access. Of course, Keynes pointed out that in the long run, we're all dead. So ultimately it will be left to those who are wiser and more powerful to determine what happens. Until then I'll sit back and watch. And express my opinion, whether it's wanted or not...........
9:04:13 AM    comment []