TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Verizon Plans to Offer "Naked DSL" on 4/5 of its Wirelines

Re: Verizon Plans to Offer "Naked DSL" on 4/5 of its Wirelines

Michael D. Sullivan (userid@camsul.example.invalid)
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 06:53:43 GMT

In article <telecom24.66.5@telecom-digest.org>, siegman@stanford.edu
says:

> In article <telecom24.65.6@telecom-digest.org>, Clark W. Griswold,
> Jr. <spamtrap100@comcast.net> wrote:

>> What's a bit more unfortunate is that the telcos have successfully
>> managed to exempt themselves from sharing any new fiber that gets
>> buried. Since the capacity of fiber exceeds that of a copper pair in a
>> bundle with a bunch of other copper pairs by a factor of a million to
>> 1 or more, the long term viability of naked DSL is questionable at
>> best.

> That's not just "a bit more unfortunate" -- it's a massively socially
> undesirable policy.

Except that rolling out fiber costs exactly the same for a telco as
for a non-telco. If the telcos had to allow others to use their fiber
as unbundled network elements (UNEs), priced in accordance with
TELRIC, they wouldn't bother, and there would be no fiber to the home,
and no competition for the cable operators. For installing fiber to
the home, telcos have no "natural monopoly" advantages, so nobody else
is "impaired" without access to that fiber at UNE prices, because they
could install the same fiber at the same cost. Why should a telco
have to lease out that fiber to others at what amounts to a below-cost
rate? If they had to do that, their competitors would automatically
be able to profitably provide broadband service cheaper than the
telco, because they wouldn't have to bear the cost of deployment. It
seems to me that the FCC's decision not to require sharing of FTTH was
the only way to give the telcos an incentive to deploy fiber. That's
a socially desirable policy, while requiring them to offer fiber to
others at UNE prices would be massively socially undesirable.

Michael D. Sullivan
Bethesda, MD, USA
Replace "example.invalid" with ".com".

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