Apparently IT conversations has just made the presentation "Own the Network" that I gave at eComm last March more readily available as I've gotten three emails about it in the past 72 hours and notice that Michael Graves just mentioned my presentation in a blog post about US broadband policy.
IT Conversations summary of the presentation is short and to the point:
Brough Turner says, “Don’t fight for anything above dark fiber.” Changes in telecom tend to happen on a decade's time scale so be careful what you ask for - it will be with you for a long time. His proposal for improving internet communications in the United States is based on the paradigm of owning the dark fiber ourselves or controlling who lights the dark fiber that comes into our homes.
He describes models from Quebec and Sweden of condominium fiber and municipal fiber, and gives Sweden as the example of a successful model because of their dark fiber widely available. Telephony is not a natural monopoly as that is defined. With dark fiber widely available in a condominium or municipal model, independent ISP’s can compete and customers can control who lights their dark fiber.
He describes models from Quebec and Sweden of condominium fiber and municipal fiber, and gives Sweden as the example of a successful model because of their dark fiber widely available. Telephony is not a natural monopoly as that is defined. With dark fiber widely available in a condominium or municipal model, independent ISP’s can compete and customers can control who lights their dark fiber.
The whole talk was 14 minutes (with pre-roll and intro the IT conversations clip is 16 minutes). There were also some slides, most pictures, which complement the audio but are not essential.
Now this is very interesting, impressive and never thought of. In simple words well done for providing creative information.
Posted by: Jeff Paul Internet Millions | March 06, 2009 at 01:00 AM
What was the context around that last guy's shouted question? He seemed somewhat hostile but it was tough to tell why. Great presentation, btw, and have you heard of the current attempt to build something similar in Utah, their open fiber network called UTOPIA? I've suggested to econtalk.org that you would make a great guest to discuss broadband policy, but I don't know if they will contact you. If you're interested, you might want to contact them yourself and pitch your ideas.
Posted by: Ajay | March 19, 2009 at 09:37 PM
Ajay, Yes I'm aware of Utopia and several other projects. It's not completely obvious what policy position works best, but increasingly I've coming to the belief that, if you can't have condominium ownership in the first mile, public ownership and/or regulation should focus on open access at the dark fiber layer. My talk at this years eComm a few weeks ago has my latest data and conclusions:
http://www.slideshare.net/eCommConf/26-brough-turner
Posted by: brough | March 27, 2009 at 10:45 AM