I visited Net'99 in Quebec City and once again I was impressed how the province of Quebec is leading the world in advanced networking particularly in providing dark fiber to schools, universities and other institutions.
Quebec will soon have over 1000 schools connected by dark fiber and by the end of next year it is expected about 40% of Quebec's schools will be connected by dark fiber. Most of these dark fiber deals are being financed through the simple cost savings of eliminating traditional managed bandwidth services from the carriers.
The school boards and regional networks use a mixture of Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and low speed ATM to provide the actual connectivity. However, almost all the schools plan to move Gigabit Ethernet in the next couple of years as traffic demands warrant.
The schools also hope to make additional cost savings by moving most of their telephone traffic to Voice over IP (VOIP) running on these networks. Most telephone traffic at the schools is local calls. Most schools are desperate to obtain additional lines, but cannot afford the additional per line charges. By moving all their voice circuits to IP, the schools can dramatically increase the number of local telephone circuits and significantly reduce their overall telephone costs. With VOIP schools can now have a telephone in every classroom which allows for a greater degree of interaction between student, teacher and parent. A VOIP gateway is installed at the school board's central offices to permit long distance calls and to connect to the public telephone network.
I have talked to many school boards, regional networks and universities who are frustrated as they are unable to get similar dark fiber deals in their jurisdiction. The problem is that traditional carriers and cable companies don't see a business case in offering such a service. So when these school boards or regional networks issue RFPs the prices they are quoted for dark fiber are either outrageous or the carriers refuse to bid at all.
The secret to negotiating dark fiber is to retain the services of a dark fiber broker. Dark fiber brokers still are a rare breed and are hard to find and this is usually the hardest part in obtaining dark fiber. But once you have found such a broker they can be indispensable in negotiating and arranging dark fiber deals.
A dark fiber broker's job is to put together dark fiber deals between a number of interested parties. Individually there may not be a business case to obtain dark fiber, but collectively a dark fiber broker can usually put together a package, using a combination of fiber swaps, financing packages, leasing deals and IRUs that makes business sense for all the parties including the CLEC or cable company who will actually be doing the fiber installation. A regional network or fiber broker may also put together an amortization deal such that school board does not have to pay the capital charges up front. However, in many cases, for budgetary reasons, it is sometimes easier for a school board to pay the up front capital costs and thereby significantly reduce the monthly telecommunication charges which come out of another budget.
Only licensed carriers and cable companies have the rights to string fiber cable on public utility poles or get access to right of ways across roads and rivers. A fiber broker, for example, may negotiate a package to extend a cable company's fiber infrastructure several miles to a distant school where the school board only pays for the fibers that they use in the bundle as well as the annual maintenance costs and pole rental. If the cable company or CLEC then manages at a latter date to connect up a commercial customer the maintenance and pole charges are waived. The fiber broker may also negotiate fiber swaps with other CLECs or cable companies so that the cost of the fiber cable can be shared amongst a larger number of parties. Other types of deals that a fiber broker can arrange is to sell dark fibers in the same bundle to large companies who want to extend their enterprise networks to factories or mines in rural or remote locations.
It is this intimate "on the ground" knowledge of the local fiber market that makes a fiber broker essential for arranging for low cost fiber deals.
The costs of fiber is surprisingly inexpensive particularly if it is installed on poles. This type of infrastructure may not meet the reliability requirements of a carrier who must carry mission critical traffic. Underground may be less prone to outages. But, for schools, libraries, ISPs and enterprise networks it may be the ideal low cost solution where reliability is not as critical.
These exciting fiber builds in Quebec also support our vision that by building an infrastructure for schools and libraries it will be very easy and inexpensive to extend that same infrastructure to the home. Recent reports from Canberra Australia indicate that the cost of fiber to the curb and VDSL can cost at little as $520 per home ( one time). Compared with the cost of DSL or cable modems Gigabit Internet to the Home may be a lot closer to reality than we realize.
