I have often been asked by people what Dark Fiber is, my answer is usually that it is evil fiber. Just kidding. Seriously, dark fiber is quite simply fiber that does not have the usual network equipment attached to it and hence, no lasers are shooting photons through it, thus the term "dark" meaning not being lit by lasers.
The largest cost of laying fiber is not in the fiber itself, the glass itself is relatively cheap in comparison to the cost of obtaining the right of way, the labor and so on. Often municipalities, counties, states or whatever charge a fee for these rights of way if the fiber is underground (the most expensive). If they are attaching aerial fiber to existing poles, the pole owners, often power companies, have also paid for the rights of way and further charge a poll attachment fee. Regardless, all the other cost typically far over shadow the cost of the individual strands.
Typically a carrier will install a larger fiber count cable since the incremental cost of installing a 144 count fiber rather than a 72 count for example, would probably be relatively minor so why not have a few extras. Most carriers have the choice as to whether or not to sell off (typically using an instrument called an Indefeasible Right to Use, which is sort of like a condo but for fiber, usually long term, 20years). Usually they will sell or trade with other carriers to help offset costs, for example carrier A might trade 4 fibers in San Francisco for 4 fibers in LA for particular routes. In that way they are not so directly aiding a competitor but also gaining routes for themselves.
Usually, carriers do not like to sell off DF to customers such as large enterprises because quite simply, those customers would never have to buy anything from them again because they could continuously gain more capacity by placing DWDM equipment on each end (not endlessly of course but for all practical purposes for most customers, endless).
That is why most carriers like Century Link or others (especially ILEC's, Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, i.e. the phone company) do not like selling DF. Typically these carriers have purchased a Franchise agreement with cities or whichever authority. These franchise agreements are not cheap (usually 5% of gross or something like that, basically it is like a tax) that gives them in theory access to all rights of way from the controlling body (cable co's do the same thing).
Because of that they maintain often a de-facto monopoly or a powerful market position that they do not want jeopardized by the availability of DF which would provide extremely cheap bandwidth.
I have often thought that the smart thing for cities to do, if perhaps one were to be able to start from a green field, would be for the city to place telecom conduit up and down every street from the get go and then rent out inner-duct space to carriers. That would make it easier for competitors to access the rights of way without all of the disruptions.
But perhaps new mmwave 5G technology will eliminate such concerns eventually (but I am skeptical).
CPUC is absolutely awful. Every time I see the acronym, my spidey sense tingles like crazy that there's some collusion going on behind the scenes. Those people fold in places that are strategically very convenient for the industries. It very much seems like CPUC is in the business of monopoly-building, and I have never seen any evidence to the contrary. Specifically CPUC makes me wish I ran a watchdog and could dump resources into an investigation.
They were the ones that decided that frontier buying Verizon Fios wouldn't cause any harm to consumers, and what do you think happened... Yeah, lots of complaints about billing mistakes, months of no service, etc.
Yeah, that was one of the most painful acquisitions for me personally. I went from practically no issues with Fios for years, and at least reasonably responsive service if there was an issue, to literally the worst customer service i've ever dealt with in Frontier. The billing issues... oh the billing issues were terrible. They were charging me more than double for three months, each month i'd call and tell them to fix it and fix the prior months, and I wasn't paying until I saw a fixed statement with the correct amount owed. It didn't get fixed until 4 months in I filed a complaint with the BBB.
It was a bad transition, but there was no regulatory reason to block it. If Verizon had been trying to sell to Time Warner or Comcast, which would have reduced ISP choice for many people to one provider, then there is a regulatory role.
You call a "bad transition," but is that just the PR line or has the anti-consumer behavior actually stopped?
>there was no regulatory reason to block it
That's a problem, no? If protecting consumers from harm isn't a reason that empowers them to block it, the commission is broken.
"The CPUC serves the public interest by protecting consumers and ensuring the provision of safe, reliable utility service and infrastructure at just and reasonable rates, with a commitment to environmental enhancement and a healthy California economy." http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/
CPUC can't predict how well a transition like this will happen and they can't ban all telecom sales because service might be temporarily disrupted. You would be worse off long term stuck with Verizon if they were actively trying to get out of the market. They had already killed all new investment in FIOS years ago.
There's that "transition" line again. Still nothing to back up the idea that it's a temporary situation rather than the "new normal." Or more accurately the "new low."
>they can't ban all telecom sales because service might be temporarily disrupted
All? Of course not. But banning ones that create monopolistic / oligopolistic situations in certain markets (the predictable effects of which are higher prices and worse service, including more frequent interruptions of service) is warranted.
In a hypothetical universe where all possible mergers would result in monopolies / oligopolies (and are therefore blocked), that's a feature not a bug.
In this case they could have based on prior frontier acquisitions from Verizon. When they first announced it I googled them (because I thought they were an airline and that made no sense) and the first things that came up were about how bad the transition was elsewhere.
Businesses haven't been sitting on their hands, they've been busy "capturing" regulatory agencies at every level of government via their control of the officials who appoint to them.
Here's the first paragraph. Makes the context and outfall more apparent:
If CenturyLink is allowed to buy Level 3, then California will lose a major source of dark fiber. That’s my reading of a settlement agreement between CenturyLink, Level 3 and three of the organisations that challenged the deal at the California Public Utilities Commission. The fourth challenger, the California Emerging Technology Fund, isn’t part of the agreement.
Backbone data prices have continued to sink, year after year. "Last mile" connectivity prices continue to rise and far outpace the underlying data transmission costs (and particularly, the backbone portion of those costs).
If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last mile segment?
P.S. Take "last mile" figuratively, in the above. I don't know where the line exactly between "local"/lucrative and "long haul"/ever-cheaper.
>"If you have spare backbone capacity, but are also in the very lucrative business of providing end-point / last mile connectivity, why would you lease your excess capacity and open yourself up to competition in the lucrative last mile segment?"
The actual fiber is a sunk cost. It's possibly you might get a better return on that asset by leasing unused capacity even if it introduces some element of competition.
That's not what dark fiber is. Dark fiber is dedicated fiber optic strands that are not in use and available to be leased to a customer providing their own optical equipment.
Enterprises can outsource management of the capital equipment (wavelengths) or the entire network (e.g. Ethernet). The latter is known is lit services and is much more common than dark fiber.
No "unused" does not automatically imply "overbuilt." There are many companies such as Lightower that build a network of "route miles" with the sole intention of leasing fiber. This is not the same thing as selling excess capacity because of a miscalculation.
They could also use it for existing customer traffic, but don't, as a means to control the supply to control the price and win other political objectives.
>"For those unaware, dark fiber refers to fiber in the ground that was overbuilt by the owning company, in this case Level3."
Overbuilding is not the differentiator though. During the original dot com boom of the 90's yes there was a lot of excess capacity due to overbuilding but dark fiber is really any fiber that is currently unlit that is available for lease.
Building capacity can be and often is the business model itself. For example you pull fiber through an urban area and then sell IRUs(indefeasible right of use) on a cable pair, usually for a period of 20 years. As a fiber provider I may not have ever intended to light that fiber myself so it was never overbuilt.
The largest cost of laying fiber is not in the fiber itself, the glass itself is relatively cheap in comparison to the cost of obtaining the right of way, the labor and so on. Often municipalities, counties, states or whatever charge a fee for these rights of way if the fiber is underground (the most expensive). If they are attaching aerial fiber to existing poles, the pole owners, often power companies, have also paid for the rights of way and further charge a poll attachment fee. Regardless, all the other cost typically far over shadow the cost of the individual strands.
Typically a carrier will install a larger fiber count cable since the incremental cost of installing a 144 count fiber rather than a 72 count for example, would probably be relatively minor so why not have a few extras. Most carriers have the choice as to whether or not to sell off (typically using an instrument called an Indefeasible Right to Use, which is sort of like a condo but for fiber, usually long term, 20years). Usually they will sell or trade with other carriers to help offset costs, for example carrier A might trade 4 fibers in San Francisco for 4 fibers in LA for particular routes. In that way they are not so directly aiding a competitor but also gaining routes for themselves.
Usually, carriers do not like to sell off DF to customers such as large enterprises because quite simply, those customers would never have to buy anything from them again because they could continuously gain more capacity by placing DWDM equipment on each end (not endlessly of course but for all practical purposes for most customers, endless).
That is why most carriers like Century Link or others (especially ILEC's, Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, i.e. the phone company) do not like selling DF. Typically these carriers have purchased a Franchise agreement with cities or whichever authority. These franchise agreements are not cheap (usually 5% of gross or something like that, basically it is like a tax) that gives them in theory access to all rights of way from the controlling body (cable co's do the same thing).
Because of that they maintain often a de-facto monopoly or a powerful market position that they do not want jeopardized by the availability of DF which would provide extremely cheap bandwidth.
I have often thought that the smart thing for cities to do, if perhaps one were to be able to start from a green field, would be for the city to place telecom conduit up and down every street from the get go and then rent out inner-duct space to carriers. That would make it easier for competitors to access the rights of way without all of the disruptions.
But perhaps new mmwave 5G technology will eliminate such concerns eventually (but I am skeptical).