[LINK] Keep or sell or ditch, when faced by definite loss of monopoly of resources

[David Boxall]

>
> fibre in an expensive hole in the ground
In the local case, the holes were dug to replace senescent copper. Fibre 
was apparently laid at the same time because fibre's cheap and labour's 
expensive.

> If you can't sell, nor
> justify the cost of ownership, your only choice might be to ditch them.
>  That doesn't seem a sensible way to avoid running costs like end point
> equipment maintenance, land access costs, etc.
Locally, as far as I can tell, there's no end point equipment 
maintenance cost for the fibre because there's no end point equipment on 
it. Running costs of the part of the network in question can all be 
attributed to the copper alongside the fibre, that's actually in use. 
Still there's value in the fibre (as there is in the rest of Telstra's 
network), so it makes sense to at least try to sell it.

> I don't know if it will be possible for the NBN to do deals with willing
> sellers of existing high bandwidth elements
If it isn't, the consequent waste will be shameful. The (highly 
probable) structural separation should facilitate incorporation of 
suitable Telstra assets into the NBN.

-- 
David Boxall                    |  In a hierarchical organization,
                                |  the higher the level,
                                |  the greater the confusion.
                                |                     --Dow's Law.


On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 at 00:00:04 +1000 Phillip Musumeci wrote:
> "Frank O'Connor" <foconnor at ozemail.com.au> replied:
> |
> |>What about other fibre that Telstra's installed over the years (see
> |>entry dated Friday, 30 January 2004 at the same URL and entries dated
> |>from 9 August 2003 in <http://david.boxall.id.au/Phone1.html>)? There's
> |>no commercial incentive for Telstra to donate their asset to a network
> |>it won't control. Unless the government's going to commandeer it.
> |
> |Mmmm ... Telstra might actually have to do something with all that
> |fibre. ''Use it or lose it' ... How sad.
>
> This might make for some interesting business decisions about existing asset
> ownership.
>
> Suppose you have a set of resources that guarantee monopolisitic market
> operations at a wholesale and retail level, and suppose you know that those
> resources are absolutely going to be replicated at the wholesale level
> meaning you lose whatever advantages those resources offered your retail
> efforts.
>
> In addition, for fibre, suppose the available bandwidth of any fibre in an
> expensive hole in the ground is inordinately greater than what the consumers
> can be sold (or there are spare fibres).
>
> Then presumably just before your resources offer no commercial advantage by
> being replicated in the NBN, maybe it makes sense to see if you can sell
> them to the NBN which is 100% going to happen.  If you can't sell, nor
> justify the cost of ownership, your only choice might be to ditch them.
>  That doesn't seem a sensible way to avoid running costs like end point
> equipment maintenance, land access costs, etc.
>
> I don't know if it will be possible for the NBN to do deals with willing
> sellers of existing high bandwidth elements but some owners might be willing
> sellers when faced with a definite NBN.  On the other hand, if the running
> costs of your own fibre links are miniscule, maybe you keep them???