100% Fiber Home in Canada

fiber_optics_blueBell Aliant is running fiber to all 70,000 homes and businesses in Fredericton and Saint John, with the help of a modest subsidy (about 15%) from the government. In return, they have promised “universal service,” with fiber available to everyone. As Simon Avery reports,

“Fredericton and Saint John will have the fastest Internet connections in the country by the middle of next year, following news of a $60-million plan from Bell Aliant Regional Communications Income Fund to run fibre-optic cable into homes and businesses. The investment will mark the first time that a Canadian phone company has deployed fibre-to-the-home for an entire city. ... Bell Aliant has paid close attention to the $20-billion (U.S.) deployment of fibre to the home in the U.S. by Verizon Communications Inc.” Avery included my comment Verizon is “one of the best networks in the world.”

Some people will never forgive me for being so complimentary about a telco, but it's true.
Active Ethernet is better than GPON, but GPON's 200 meg in each direction is good enough for me. Avery's writeup is http://bit.ly/11vlYq. Glen Campbell believes Bell Canada itself may "do FTTP overbuilds on a selective basis, targeting suburban communities with aerial plant. For Bell Canada, roughly one-third of its serving area (concentrated heavily in Quebec) has aerial plant. Management confirmed to us that FTTP is under serious consideration for these markets.

Verizon's commitment last year to New York City for 100% service by 2012 was historic, making my town probably the first large city promised 100% fiber. They recently extended the same to Pittsburgh and other cities. There were a slew of Verizon concessions in the New York franchise agreement but no subsidy.

Universal service is expensive, so SBC/AT&T in particular has been attacking it. In 2002, then-President Bill Daley suggested they would abandon it. He got angry when I wrote he had implied SBC was facing insolvency, claiming he had never said anything of the sort. I replied that states like Illinois would not allow SBC to retreat from universal service unless bankruptcy or similar was imminent; SBC couldn't risk their franchises by backing away from universal service unless finances were desperate. His boss, Ed Whitacre, was around the same time making speeches that unbundling (UNE's) would kill the company and therefore had to be squashed.

Policy people took Ed's claims seriously although they were obvious falsehoods. The chair of the FCC repeated some. Ed was also going to wall street and talking about how well the company was doing and that it would do even better in the future. They raised their dividend every year. You didn't have to be a sophisticated financial analyst to see they were reporting $billions in profits every quarter the same time their CEO was saying the situation was desperate to D.C..

It is standard procedure at most companies to lie to policymakers as well as reporters. I remember listening to Paul Reynolds of BT saying something I was pretty sure was misleading at best. Paul one of the best in the business; if he says something that disagrees with what I believe, I go back and look to see if I'm mistaken. One of his colleagues told me to ignore what Paul had said, “He was speaking for the regulator.”

It's much less common to lie to wall street, which is why Bill Kennard as FCC chair made a point of attending wall street events and listening. It was an important reality check on what the same company was saying in Washington. If a reporter thinks you are lying, so what? But if a top wall street analyst thinks you are lying, they may downgrade the company. I've seen a downgrade pull literally millions off a CEO's options in a single day.Written by FNN contributor Tuesday, 07 July 2009


FREE sample from telCade.com (xDSL filters, Connectors, Cable & Wire harness)


Original Article Here