last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)

[frnkblk at iname.com (Frank Bulk)]

There's more than just the cost of fiber -- there's also the cost of
locating and taxes.  Any maintenance if there's cuts and the costs if you
need to move the fiber for a project.

I've been many times where you were, frustrated that I didn't know the dark
fiber options for a potential opportunity, but you have to remind yourself
don't have a *right* to know where *private* fiber is.  It's not just the
physical property, the lack of documentation is a competitive advantage.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: Luke S. Crawford [mailto:lsc at prgmr.com] 
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 1:59 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Re: last mile, regulatory incentives, etc (was: att fiber, et al)

<snip>

I'm trying to do just that right now, actually.   55 s. market to
250 Stockton in San Jose.  I dono if it's five thousand feet, but 
it's not twice that.  The cheapest fiber pair I can rent from
someone else I've found is $5K/month; the cheapest build-out 
I've found is $150K, so even if I'm only using one pair in 
that, if I can get money at anything like a reasonable interest 
rate, if I plan on sticking around more than 5 years it makes 
sense to lay new fiber.   Which is weird, as this is probably 
one of the densest masses of existing fiber in the world, going 
from a 'center of the universe' data center to a minor data center.

<snip>

The big problem here, I think, is that it's quite difficult to 
figure out who has what fiber where, and even once you know who
owns it, to find out who to talk to at a company that might know
what 'dark fiber' is, much less know how much they might rent
it to you for.   I spent several hours last month on the phone
with XO and I kept getting redirected to someone trying to sell me 
a T1. 

I've got other projects right now, but once I'm done with that,
I'm going to be spending a bunch of time pestering the PUC and 
other people that might know who owns fiber between here and there.

<snip>

But from the amount of time
it takes to just find someone at those companies that even knows
what dark fiber is?  I think I might be better off putting in
the effort to do whatever regulatory red tape is required to 
own fiber in the ground.

So yeah;  really?  in my corner of the world, the problem is the
same problem you see everywhere else in this industry.   
Any useful information is guarded jealously.  In this
case, where does the fiber run?   I mean, I have pretty good
maps of the Santa Clara municipal fiber network;  but the private
networks are impossible.