FTTH is just another highway

America's Network, April 1, 2004 by Doug Alder

In your "A utopian challenge" article (AN Feb. 1, Editor's Note) you state that opponents to government fiber networks "make two good points."

I'm not so certain there is much validity to those points, particularly today. Since the telecom crash there are thousands of unemployed/underemployed well trained, highly qualified fiber network engineers looking to exercise their skills in an appropriate venue.

Additionally with all the downsizing that's happened, there are a lot of qualified managers for every level of such an operation. The government itself does not need to know the nuts-and-bolts of such an operation. It only needs to see the need for such a network and hire the appropriate people to manage it.

We all know that the ILECs will not do FTTH until their backs are up against the wall, so to speak, or it becomes a means of locking competitors out of their network. They have far too much capital tied up in copper infrastructure and rapidly dated first generation fiber networks that have not been fully depreciated.

Open access, community or government owned, networks hold the greatest potential for consumers. I think the Utah government is taking the right approach. Lay the fiber, make the network open access and let all the carriers and other service providers compete on a level playing field (the open access network) for the consumer's business. Then it will be customer service and QoS that will determine the winners, and that is how it should be.

FTTH should be looked at by governments just as they looked at highways, as a necessary economic driver. If we treated roads the same way we treated fiber, every trucking company would have to build their own highway or work at a competitive disadvantage. Separate network from services. It's the only way forward, or to paraphrase David Isenberg, build stupid networks not intelligent ones.

Doug Alder

Rackforce Hosting Inc.

Rossland, BC, Canada