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The Getnet Plan White Paper On use of Passive Coarse Wave Division
Multiplexing For Promotion of Competition at the
Last Mile January 8,
2009 By Jeffrey Gong Getnet, Inc. 333 E Indian School Rd Phoenix, AZ 85012 (602) 264-7000 Overview Most consumers don't have fiber
optic communications to the home. It is a very expensive and risky investment
for more than one or two providers to install fiber optic communications to all
addresses. Consumers (and the economy as a whole) benefit when there is broader
competition to provide services. A
solution is to allocate responsibility for installation and management of
communications transport to municipalities using Coarse Wave Division
Multiplexing (CWDM) to promote competition between multiple service companies
to the same address. Justification for The Plan Fiber optic cable is the preferred
communications transport. No other transport cable comes close with regards to
capacity, distance, and low costs. At some point in the future, fiber optic
cable will be installed to every business and home. Consumers will eventually
pay for the cost of the network plus a profit for all parties that participate
in its operations. Paradoxically, these cables will be in city right of ways
(ROW) and we, the taxpayers, own the ROW.s. We as consumers want choices and
competition. It makes little sense to have multiple carriers run parallel
cables to the same properties. The same
fiber will work for cable TV, phone and internet because it can carry multiple
services on the same fiber. Fiber optic
cables are nothing more than dumb pipes. A solution that meets the above
criteria can be achieved if fiber optic communications transport are installed,
owned and managed as a city service. Consumers and service providers would be
able to order connections as needed. Cable TV, internet connectivity, and phone
services would all be able to use this common transport service at the same
time. Installations and maintence will be aligned with other high cost
commodity services like roads, water, and sewage. The following are eight reasons to
support this plan. The technology to
implement this plan is available now. All we need is the vision and the will to
execute this plan. Reason 1: Now is the Time
Fiber to the home (FTTH) is not
widespread.but rapidly becoming so--which allows a decision to be made now
avoiding potential regulatory and political issues. Capital expenditure to
create a new fiber network to all homes can be made now without significant
obstacles if a private entity gets to the table first. Traditionally, risk-adverse
municipalities would want a publicly traded business to bear all of this
responsibility. In practice, this could be a potential liability if these
companies fail. In bankruptcy, the shareholders will get wiped out, a new buyer
will assume the assets in the streets, and the consumers will again pay for the
misdeeds of the failing corporation. Separation of these companies from the
physical wire in the ground is a natural way to isolate the risk of competitive
access carriers. By doing this now before the costs have been incurred to
deploy the fiber, our grandchildren will be spared the burden of super normal
profits to the owner of the fiber network. There are twisted pair phone wires
in the ground that have been generating monthly revenues for the phone company
for more than 100 years. In this communications plan, when
a carrier fails, customers could just switch their connection to a new carrier.
All the legal issues associated with ownership of wires in the street are gone.
All issues associated with a company too critical to fail are gone. Any single
service company failure will only affect a portion of the community. Poor
service will no longer be rewarded with rate increases. This plan will isolate
risks associated with poor management of a communications company. The critical
wire infrastructure will no longer be used as leverage to price discriminate. The full cost of installing fiber
to every address has yet to be incurred. It is in the best interest of the
community to take the initiative to put a fiber optic network into place. It should be done so in a manner that
enables competition. Setup in this way, it can be done in a method that gives
ownership to the citizens of the communities it services. It may be managed by
the same organization that manages other fixed cost infrastructure like roads
and water lines. Reason 2: Fiber Optical Cable is
a Vital City Service The use of communications has
evolved from an optional value added service to become a vital service. A
precedent for this recognition may be seen with the Communications Act of 1934
that created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The Universal Service
Fund was founded to advance the availability of low income, rural, insular and
high cost areas at reasonably comparable costs. The Universal Service Fund was
funded internally by the Bell monopoly. These actions clearly recognized the
importance of communications and put it into law. Costs for fiber optical cable,
CWDM multipliers, and single mode transceiver are all inexpensive commodity
products at this time. This is very similar to commodity pricing for the
products that are used to construct roads, water, and sewer services. All of
these services require access to each home, are capital intensive to install,
and have long expected use lifespan. Regardless of the cost of installation, it
is a one-time expense. It may be financed and paid back over time like all
other city capital expenditures. The match is undeniably similar. We as
residents of a city collectively own our roads and water lines. It just makes sense to make the choice to
own our fiber as well before costs are incurred. Investments in fiber optic
infrastructure have the same potential to generate revenues for the new owners
for decades, if not centuries, into the future. It would be in the best
interests of the consumer to let our children own the wires that we will pay to
build. In the past, it made sense to let a monopoly own and run a network to
deploy an application specific network. The past business case did not allow
for alternate uses. Because technology allows multiple generic uses and
competition, it makes sense to change policies to reflect current status of
technology. The precedent for enabling a government
organization to perform a service on behalf the community is seen in the postal
service. Allowing neutral government control of last mile fiber transport is no
different. In a time where legislatures struggle with declining tax revenues
from phone services, it makes sense to shift the focus from regulation of phone
service to regulation of transport on fiber optical cables. We are advocating
modern policies to reflect the current state of technology and current needs of
the community. Reason 3: Alignment of Ownership and Management
Interests
One of the roles that a city
manager will perform is to provide fair use of publicly owned roadways. A
competing goal of all private utilities is to gain access to all locations that
are economically beneficial for their use.
By shifting the responsibility of all communications cabling to the
city, we are aligning the use of the street with management of space in public
streets. The .right to exist. in a roadway
now becomes a new administrative process that needs to be created and managed.
This is another source of administrative overhead that we as taxpayers will
bear as increased operational costs for a city management. If we remove competitive fiber
optic carriers from having access to the streets, we will not have to
repeatedly tear up the street every time a new fiber optic based services
provider wants access to the same road. It makes little sense for city managers
to allow roads to be torn up every few years. It makes expensive well-paved
road look and drive like test tracks. In a system where there are multiple fiber optic network owners competing for the same space on the roadway as other services like water, sewage, electrical power, etc., things will go wrong. It is the duty of management to define how these failures are handled. It goes beyond an accidental cut with a backhoe. It can progress into outright theft of someone else.s conduit. If someone sees an unused conduit and they place services in it, we now have to deal with conflicts and potential litigation. The city owns the streets. They
also own water and sewer line in the roads. It is a natural alignment of
responsibility to have the city own the fiber in the ground. Improving
operational efficiency in city operations and in removing multiple competitive
access carriers installing fiber in the street translates into real operational
cost savings. These savings will be passed onto the consumers. Adopting this plan will align the
interests of fiber ownership with the interests of management of the streets
and management of fiber cable. This plan will have operational efficiency that
will be passed on to consumers. Operational efficiency in this case is
beneficial because savings come from reduced administrative overhead. Reason 4: Passive CWDM
Technology Enables Plan Coarse
wavelength division multiplexing (CWDM) is a means of combining and/or
separating multiple signals of different laser wavelengths into or out of a
fiber optic transmission cable in a near passive network. This is exciting
because it uses no electrical power to operate. The
alternative today is the use of active electronics. This network does the same
job but is significantly more expensive to operate due to its use of power. It
uses rack-mountable pieces of electronic equipment that may cost $50,000 per
node. The current method of deploying critical communications equipment is to
install it with an uninterrupted power supply, air conditioning, and optional
back-up power generation. You also need to keep spares parts or service
contracts and personnel on staff to operate it all. Passive
CWDM requires almost none of the above. CWDM is a prism that does the same job
of combining and splitting different wavelengths onto one fiber. There is no
electrical power to operate it. There is no electronic equipment with
configuration parameters to set and change. That means there is no engineer to
manage it. No need for electricity means there is no need for an uninterrupted
power supply, back-up diesel generators, air conditioning, and service
contracts to keep it powered and running. It is cheap in comparison to the
active alternative. Each wavelength on a fiber optical
cable easily supports current applications. It.s safe to say that the majority
of the fiber that is currently deployed is using only one wavelength, most
likely 1310-nm. A passive CWDM currently costs a few hundred dollars per unit.
I predict that it will get as cheap as a few dollars per unit when they are
widely accepted and produced in volume. Reason 5: Fiber Cable is a Dumb Pipe
Any communications transport
medium, twisted pair wire, coaxial, or fiber optic is defined by the equipment
on both ends. The actual wire has no intelligence. In ideal cases, the
transport requires no power. All of the aforementioned transportation mediums
have limits. If the distance to be covered exceeds the respective limits, it
must have one or more repeaters to boost the signal. This is the most common
need for electrical power. To run data communications over any of the above three
mediums, matching equipment on both ends is needed with correct medium
adaptors. When this is done correctly, a network connection will be
constructed. Because fiber is just a dumb pipe,
it should be treated as such. Since the beginning of communications with wire
technologies, companies have earned a price premium with regards to the cost of
network deployments because there was no alternate use of the wire. Fiber optic
cable is the first transport that can replace all current copper
communications. The expected use may now be expanded to include multiple
carriers doing the same service. Dumb pipe means that the cities
that assume operations of a fiber network will have a limited range of
maintenance requirements. Either the cable will carry a laser or it will fail.
If it fails, the operators would use an alternate pair or find the cable break
and repair it. This is a task that is well defined. It can be managed on a
large scale with government grade employees. There is no magic in the cable.
The magic happens in the equipment on the ends of the pipe. Armed with this
knowledge, we should adopt a system where there is cost effective fair access
to the cable. Reason 6: Enables Competition
Laissez-faire works great in a
system where goods and services are easily exchanged. Near-monopoly control of
systems by telcos and CATV providers does not allow for freer competition. The
United States Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that forced
incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC) to share existing phone lines with
competitors. This act of congress has not created a viable ecosystem of
competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC). A fiber optical communications
network that allows competition will only happen if we design a publicly owned
system to support it. There are currently 17 defined
wavelengths in CWDM with 20nm spacing. Dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM)
uses the same spectrum with 2nm spacing. The actual limit of how thin the
spacing can be sliced is not known. There is a lot of room for growth. By
allowing open market access to these wavelengths to all premises, we will have
effectively created a system of market competition with no regards to what type
of service that may run on a given wavelength. This is analogous to assigning service
providers to different channels on the same fiber. Single Mode Fiber is the preferred
technology to be used in city streets or long haul networks. It has a stated
range of 50km (31 miles). Many cable vendors state a range of 70km (43 miles).
This means that a single wire center can have all the needed connection in a
30-80 mile diameter go to one location with no need for repeaters. Actual fiber
deployments will vary according to specific real estate topography and
political considerations. Networks work best when there is
one administrative body for a given network. By allocation of just transport
responsibility for the local loop to one organization, we will have the best
chance for efficient network deployment, management, and fair competition. Reason 7: Promotes Innovation
Each wavelength currently can
transport 2.5 Gigabits per second for a wavelength. This will yield a 1Gbps
bi-directional connection. Single mode gigabit transceivers sell for about
$500.00 new. The leading edge of technology is 10Gbps for a frequency is
available off the shelf. However, these speeds are not available until FTTH is
deployed. Existing services like cable TV,
telephone, and internet all use much less bandwidth than any single wavelength
can carry. The goal of having one service organization that can provide TV,
phone and Internet is called a triple play. That means there is room for 17
different triple play providers to all homes with fiber. Because the actual wavelength is
mapped from end point to end point, the choice of line protocol is up the
consumer and service provider to choose. This open access to the lowest layer
combined with the large bandwidths will maximize opportunity for innovations
using existing or yet to be invented protocols. Reason 8: Will Keep the USA Globally Competitive
Like a personality, all countries
retain a different global competitive advantage. The USA has been a market leader
in technology. The irony is that a free market economy is at a disadvantage in
network construction and operations. Networks are best run and operated by a
single organization. By supporting this idea of reallocating responsibility of
just the communications transport to neutral party, any nation will become or
remain globally competitive. It is my opinion that the USA must
act on this plan to maintain a competitive posture. There are other countries
that have nationalized fiber infrastructure to all addresses. This means that
the USA is now at a competitive communications disadvantage with these nations.
This is done because we continue allow a handful of companies to use their
monopoly status to earn super normal profits. Closing Remarks
There is a lack of fiber optic
communication to the home, a lack of real competition of services to the home,
and there is significant capital risk for such a project. We have presented a
two-step process for solving all three of these issues. The first step is to
allocate the responsibility to build a fiber network to local cities that
already have experience in exposure to these risk factors. The second step is
to use CWDM to allow multiple competing companies parallel access to the same
address.
Historically proven importance of
communications is impressive. Looking forward, expanded use of communications
may be an alternative to travel. This is important given the current awareness
of personal carbon footprints. Other benefits include creating a communications
system that keeps our country globally competitive. Company Getnet, Inc. is an Internet
Service Provider in Phoenix, Arizona. Its primary services are Co-location of
services, dedicated servers, Virtual Private Servers, Web Hosting, DSL, and T1
Internet connectivity. Getnet, Inc. specializes in custom hosted solutions for
its clients. Examples include custom Dial plans for Voice Solutions, and Hosted
services for FOREX trading. Getnet, Inc. is independently owned and operated.
For more information on Getnet, Inc. please visit our website at www.getnet.com Jeffrey Gong Bio Jeffrey
Gong is currently the owner and operator of Getnet, Inc, www.getnet.net Getnet, Inc. is an Arizona
corporation incorporated in 2000. It was started after the sale of his prior
company, Internet Access Inc. www.neta.com. Prior to that, the Getnet.com,
getnet.net domain names and other assets were purchased from Getnet
International Inc., (Debtor In Possession in 1999). Other Companies and
domain names that have chosen to partner with Jeffrey Gong and his company
include openlines.com, wixnet.com, inficad.com, infinet-is.com, azonline.com,
and azsites.com. Support Instructions To promote
this plan, contact your local city councilman with this information. Tell your
friends about this document. An
alternative method to support this initiative is to make a donation. You may do
so with Paypal to j e f f @ g e t n e t. n e t. Jeffrey
Gong is available for consultation. Notice Copyright by Jeffrey Gong, January 2009 All rights reserved |
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