Public and private ownership in

In a long and interesting essay on standard interfaces, Martin Geddes makes the following comment about broadband, or more generally, fixed telecom networks:

There’s still some important unanswered questions.

• How far up the stack to transition from “municipal” to “for profit”? Brough Turner says “layer 0” at the rights of way. Bob Frankston says “layer 2”, at the IP interface. Me? I think it depends on local conditions, with a pragmatic cost/benefit analysis. In older suburban USA with poles in the air you might get a different answer to central Edinburgh with everything buried under centuries of accumulated crap.
• ...

I don't agree (about dependence on local conditions).  And I don't like framing the choices as "municipal" or "for profit."  I will own up to advocating layer 0 competition and/or public ownership at layer 0 only.

As I've previously discussed, political processes are glacial when compared to Moore's law.  Whether it's community, municipal, state or national ownership or regulation, we are talking about political processes that, once established, focus on the status quo and, at worst, are subject to regulatory capture.

To understand what makes sense, consider evolution rates at each "layer" of a local connection.

• Routers and Switches, i.e. TCP/IP or Ethernet:  Moore's law or faster
• Lighting the fiber:  Moore's law or faster
• Fiber itself:  Slowly improving - 20+ year useful life
• Conduits and poles:  Very slow evolution - 20-50 years useful life (with maintenance)
• Local rights-of-way:  Fixed, limited and already communally owned.

These are not "local conditions."  These evolution rates are global and the answers they suggest are equally global.

Rights-of-way are already publicly or communally owned. Conduits, poles and the like are infrastructure in those rights-of-way and logically owned or regulated by the same bodies. 

Dark fiber could be publicly owned or individually owned (condominium fiber) or run by a regulated utility (can you say structural separation?).  Personally I'd like to buy my own dark fiber connections from a condominium fiber project, but I'd settle for publicly owned dark fiber if I could choose which ISP lights the fiber to my house.

But don't allow a government owned or regulated body to light the fibers!  Whatever electronics they choose today will be completely obsolete in 2-3 years.  (NTT and China Telecom would argue that the electronics Verizon is using to light the Fios network is already obsolete today!).  Personally I'd pay for new electronics every 2-3 years.  My cousin might only upgrade electronics every 5-8 years.

So rather than "municipal" versus "for profit" please allow for the possibility of individually owned fiber (via condominium fiber projects).  Frame the discussion as public versus private ownership or control, and limit the public portion to dark fiber at most.

Comments

[Martin Geddes]

I kind of envision a more "curled up at the edges" approach. A base "metro layer 0" maybe, and as you get closer to the "edge" you get smaller units of purchase like wards, subdivisions, community associations, mutual societies (I'v forgotten the US term, it's 1am here), condo complexes etc. -- and these start to edge up the stack towards layers 1 and 2.