[LINK] Telstra ultimatum on fibre

[Stewart Fist]

Chris writes:
> 
> My source suggests that neither is the problem that Telstra would have
> us believe. The existing HFC CATV nodes are connected with fibre
> bundles, most of them still dark. Any new fibre laying would also be of
> fibre bundles. So there would be no techincal impediment to allowing the
> dark fibres to be used by some reasonable number of competing carriers -
> enough to sustain a competitive wholesale market at least.

<snip>
> As for the nodes, it seems that the mux cards are also modestly sized
> and the node box designs my source has seen have room for several of
> them - or the node boxes could be made a little bigger to accommodate a
> few of them as required.

I think your friend is right about being able to share the use of dark
fibres with no real problems (although spare fibres are there for a reason
generally), but the nodes are different

They require racks, cards, electronics and electricity.

The casual remark that "node boxes could be made a little bigger" begs the
question as to who would want to make them bigger, and who would pay for
them to be made bigger.

And when something went wrong, who would be responsible for fixing the
problem.  Would each carrier have his own power supply, power feed, rack,
etc. Would each system of electronics be entirely isolated from the others?

The only system that makes any sense at all -- and this has now been
apparent for twenty years or more -- is for there to be structural
separation between the cables/nodes and the services.

 Anything less than this will just leave a legacy of future problems until
structural separation is finally achieved at much greater social and
financial cost than making the changes today.

It seems to me that there are two ways we can achieve this, if the federal
government (of either colour) isn't prepared to bite the bullet.

Either the State of the Local governments can take control of the ducting
and introduce their own fibre -- or Telstra will divest itself of the
infrastructure as an independent company, which will then be strictly
regulated to produce reasonable profits (as happened in the USA) and with
total prohibition on it providing competitive services.

Any attempt to just share ducting, fibres, nodes, exchanges, etc. just
delays the onset of problems.

The idea of two groups, each building their own network, just duplicates the
problems -- in what is a small-population country which can't afford this
double cost (which, on past experience we know will surely happen), or the
potential for dual standards.

-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458