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A New Neutral, Long-Haul Fiber Network

Posted by kdawson on from the shaking-up-the-neighborhood dept.

techclicker sends word on the ambitious plans of Allied Fiber to disrupt the long-haul business in the US. The company is embarking on the first phase of a planned six-phase build-out of dark fiber, towers, and co-lo facilities ringing the US. The first three phases are budgeted at $670M; the last three are not yet laid out in detail (announcement, PDF). Phase 1 is scheduled for completion in 2010. Allied's business model of selling wholesale bandwidth to all comers is in sharp contrast to that of incumbents such as AT&T, who won't sell backhaul to potential competitors. "Allied is deploying a 432-count, long-haul cable coupled with the 216-count, short-haul cable that will be a composite of Single-Mode and Non-Zero Dispersion Shifted fibers. Allied Fiber has implemented a new, multi-duct design for intermediate access to the long-haul fiber duct through a parallel short-haul fiber duct all along the route. This enables all points between the major cities, including wireless towers and rural networks, to gain access to the dark fiber. In addition, the Allied Fiber neutral colocation facilities, located approximately every 60 miles along the route, accommodate and encourage a multi-tenant interconnection environment integrated with fiber that does not yet exist in the United States on this scale."

33 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Queue lawsuits in three, two... by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I fully expect the cartels to lodge complain of some kind (no matter how absurd) any day now...

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:Queue lawsuits in three, two... by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why would do that when they can just buy up all the access to the new bandwidth?

      --
      Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
    2. Re:Queue lawsuits in three, two... by symbolset · · Score: 3, Informative

      Because then Allied would have a bunch of profit over and above what it cost them to build it out. Having won good profits that way, don't you think they'd do it again?

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    3. Re:Queue lawsuits in three, two... by forkazoo · · Score: 2

      Why would do that when they can just buy up all the access to the new bandwidth?

      If the bandwidth is cheaper than a Senator, they'll do exactly that.

    4. Re:Queue lawsuits in three, two... by grcumb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I doubt Allied cares who leases the bandwidth. And I would be surprised if they managed to build more than the combined purchasing power of the incumbents can afford to lease.

      All true, of course, but here's the cool part:

      If the incumbents were to buy out Allied's entire capacity, they'd effectively be funding it to build more.

      Given that capitalisation is the hardest part of the roll-out process, having your competitors effectively subsidising the growth of your network as part of a plan to make you fail... surely, that would provide at least a few moments of delightful schadenfreude.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
  2. Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by Immostlyharmless · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What this might mean to me as a cable user? Anything at all? Will I be able to buy access to this? or?

    1. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      At the least, more backhaul bandwidth. Ideally, it would allow new ISPs to enter the market and compete with the current conglomerates. However, I suspect the incumbents to buy up all the access to the new bandwidth.

      --
      Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
    2. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by muridae · · Score: 2, Informative

      As a cable user, no. Someone will have to provide you the 'last mile' and since you get that through cable you will not be able to use this as is. If they offer last mile service, either as fiber or anything else, then you can use that. You might even find that a local phone company will be able to use their service, and offer DSL or some other connection.

      Or it could be that their phase 4 is last mile service. That leaves phase 5 unknown, while phase 6 is obviously PROFIT!

    3. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by adolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As a cable user, no. Someone will have to provide you the 'last mile' and since you get that through cable you will not be able to use this as is. If they offer last mile service, either as fiber or anything else, then you can use that. You might even find that a local phone company will be able to use their service, and offer DSL or some other connection.

      As a cable user, yes. Someone will have to provide the 'backhaul' and since it's traditionally very expensive to [lease|build|maintain] long distance links, it's likely that cable ISPs will jump all over this. Since Allied doesn't offer last mile service, either as fiber or anything else, then the cable company won't be helping their competitors. You might even find that a regional or national phone company will be able to use their service, and offer reduced rates or more bandwidth with DSL or some other connection.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    4. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by phantomcircuit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The incumbents are almost universally public utilities. They are granted a local monopoly as having more than one company digging up the streets to lay cable/phone/fiber would be insanity.

      This will have absolutely no effect at all on the consumers situation.

    5. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Will I be able to buy access to this?

      Absolutely not.

      or?

      What it means is that there will be a new powerful player in a game that has seemed to be heading for a huge win for the big telecoms and cable companies and a huge loss for consumers. The consumers will still almost certainly be the big losers, but there will be a more interesting contest for first place.

      The shame of it is that "The first three phases are budgeted at $670M; the last three are not yet laid out in detail" which means that for less than a billion dollars the government could have laid the groundwork for insuring a level of true net "neutrality" for decades to come that would have given the broader US economy and probably the entire world economy an excellent shot in the arm while forcing AT&T and company to start working for their customers again instead of the other way around.

      By building the internet, and then giving it away, the US government created the widest and deepest increase in worldwide wealth (WWW) that we've seen since WWII. Instead of renewing this legacy with a relatively modest investment, they've allowed to a cartel to seize one of the most important inventions of the 21st century and turn it into another tool with which to funnel wealth from the lower 95% of the population to the top 5%.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    6. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by phyrexianshaw.ca · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why the hell not? you can buy a SA for as little as 10Mbps, and if you're willing to handle the subscription deals with end users, you can put up a small WISP on a 100Mb for under 500K: equipment, small central office (likely home based) and all legal fees in.

      in canada, (where the extremely moderate costs for peering are reasonable) we've got hundreds of small WISP's popping up all the time. they provide 756Kb/256Kb wireless connections to most of rural Canada.

      most ISP's here won't run a line until there are 1K+ customers willing to sign one year SA's, so the WISP's provide for thousands of people, by peering from canada's (I know. our backbones are still SMALL) backbones.

      Hurricane Electric for example, has and maintains hundreds of peer points. it's nothing these days to get a hold of a pair of 3845's for under $15K each, and take a peer point with failover. (it's hard to get a lawyer to ok your contract guaranteeing five nines though, with only one peer :P)

      now if you mean the cost associated with installing and maintaining the peer point in the first place, I completely agree. even a CRS1 is WAY out of my price range, and that would only cover a fraction of these fibers bandwidth requirements.

    7. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by dAzED1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      except that the interconnect between the municipalities will be faster. And the consumers have jobs at companies that get high-speed network between offices, and they send their kids to schools that get high-speed interconnect between campuses. And then there's just the raising the bar part.

      But other than those things yeah, I suspect no one would notice at all.

    8. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the way it works. We could've had proper single payer universal healthcare coverage, but we're paying for two pointless wars instead. We could have proper banking reform, but probably won't since ZOMG teh Soshulists. And we can't have this because a large part of American stubbornly refuses that corporatists don't care about their interests. Even though the ones that are hurt the worse by this are the same rural voters that refuse to recognize what their politicians are doing to the country.

    9. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by UnderCoverPenguin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In my area, the cable and telephone cables are strung on the electric utility's poles. Several years ago, within a month of the one cable operator's exclusive franchise expiring, the 2nd cable operator extended its cables into my neighborhood. As for getting another ISP, the county, in its most recent news letter, claims it is still soliciting bids, but there have been no submissions.

      (Not that having 2 (3 including the phone company) ISPs has actually provided competition. The internet (and TV) service rates from both companies (as well as the phone company) are the same - as well as the yearly rate increase. And the switch-over discount is now only for the 1st 3 months - assuming I make a 12 month commitment. The utility board just says there is no hard evidence of collusion.)

      --
      Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
    10. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by Kirijini · · Score: 2, Informative

      The incumbents are almost universally public utilities. They are granted a local monopoly as having more than one company digging up the streets to lay cable/phone/fiber would be insanity.

      Incumbents are not granted monopolies. They may have a de facto monopoly, but it is not the result of ongoing government restriction of competition.

      See:
      47 U.S.C. 253(a) (dealing with telephone operators): "No State or local statute or regulation, or other State or local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service."

      47 U.S.C. 541(a)(1) (dealing with cable operators): "A franchising authority may award, in accordance with the provisions of this title, 1 or more franchises within its jurisdiction; except that a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise."

    11. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's just a little glassy-eyed to imply that the government built the internet.

      Do you think, for one second, that the "free market" would have created anything like the free and exuberant place we call the internet?

      If it hadn't been for the basic R&D by the DoD and then passing it off to mainly publicly funded universities, there would never, ever have been anything like the openness, the opportunities, the sheer explosion of ideas and energy that became the internet. No "world wide web" for sure. You forget that there were attempts by "private industry" to create something like the internet, and it turned out to be AOL. And if there was anything at all good about AOL, it was because they were trying their best to live up to expectations that the Internet created. Without government, the Internet would be cable television. Do you remember how "interactive" cable television was going to become in the 1980s and 90s?

      There's been a lot of noise from know-nothing politicians about how "big government" kills the private sector and takes all the innovation out of it. It's the kind of conventional "wisdom" you read a lot here, and certain segments of the political spectrum have come to take it as gospel. But the Internet is just one example where every single one of us reading Slashdot today can experience the opposite, the fact that government can be the private sector's best friend and not by "getting out of the way" either.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    12. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by jon3k · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's a little shortsighted, don't you think? It will not have any DIRECT effect (as in consumers won't access these fibers directly) but it will most definitely have an indirect effect. More fiber in the ground means more competition and more available bandwidth which means cheaper and more plentiful transport for ISPs which could increase last mile speeds, reduce prices or both.

    13. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by Penguinshit · · Score: 2, Informative

      Do you routinely kill flies with a shotgun? Mid-priced consumer grade equipment is _more_ than adequate given the network is properly wired/configured.

      --

      I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...

    14. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by Belial6 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, what is insanity is allowing businesses to dig up the streets at all to run data cables. A sane municipality would dig up their streets once to lay pipe in the same manner as their sewer system, and then their residents could have 40 different data lines running into their house and every time a new one showed up, the only disruption to the streets would be pulling up a manhole cover and putting it back down after the cables were run.

      I currently have 3 separate conduits run into my house, and one more is out at the street. The one in the street and two of the three running into my house are owned and maintained by the City. Municipalities are very experienced with building and maintaining pipes that reach from central stations to each and every home.

      "Natural Monopoly" is only the answer to describe the last mile for data if the wrong question is asked.

    15. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by phyrexianshaw.ca · · Score: 2, Interesting

      to what, ONE computer? that's not a network. that's barely even "networking". that an extension cable. :P

      I was stupidly going to mention that it's silly that people still run 100MbE in homes.. but if you've only got an extension going to a 10Mb internet connection: why bother, right?

      every customer of mine get's an ESXi server with some horsepower, a FXS/FXO, a 15/2Mb shaw pipe, a pair of GbE lines run to each room of the house, a used cisco 3725, a Linksys SRW-2024 (unless they have more than 11 rooms), and each jack finished. (I even hand out a few free hand made and GbE cert'ed patch cables.)

      but then again, most of them USE the equipment. it's been a while since I DIDN'T help somebody with the setup afterwards.

      people often then bring in a virtual asterisk instance, with an IP trunk and a DID, and I run the pair out to the house phone bix, and teach the basics of how to replace hard drives in the box incase they go.

      but I am a nerd. and I guess I hang out with nerds. :P

    16. Re:Hmmmm....Can someone explain...... by walt-sjc · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ideally, it would allow new ISPs to enter the market and compete with the current conglomerates.

      The problem isn't long-haul bandwidth. Reasonably priced OC48+ is already common pretty much everywhere in the US. Reselling it isn't the issue. The "Last Mile" is the issue and has ALWAYS been the issue. The ONLY "resellable" last mile option is telco copper, and the problem with it (in all too many cases) is loop length, and quality of the loop. In my area, the wires are long and old, meaning that 1.5M/384K is the absolute max I can get, and it has lots of dropouts (and I get nasty static on my POTS line.) I've been trying to get it fixed for 5 YEARS! Letters to the PUC have yielded absolutely nothing. So my ONLY other option now is cable. And to be honest, the speed for $$$ on my business line (15M/2M, 5 IP's, no caps) is so far beyond what the phone company or ANY third party DSL ISP can offer, it's a no-brainer. All I could ask for is better reliability (I've had a number of outages where I have never had an outage with my phone service.)

      My situation, unfortunately, is not all that unusual. There are areas of San Jose, CA, that STILL can't get DSL due to loop length.

      So... Back to the original topic. This will do NOTHING for your local home / small business internet service. It will make it a little less expensive for large businesses to have or upgrade their private networks. That's it.

      The solution for the last mile is an independent "fiber utility" that offers / supports the physical fiber, and to allow multiple companies to connect to it and offer services over it at a neutral facility. I don't need 15 different companies stringing cable, but I would like 15 different companies competing to offer me TV, internet, and phone over that common fiber.

  3. Re:Is this a joke? by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Funny

    You're being generous. His form-name is Newby, Hunter...

    --
    Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  4. 100Mb/s for pennies by viking80 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The single mode, Non-Zero Dispersion Shifted fibers is of course optimized for DWDM. That means that a buyer can put at least 128 colors in the fiber, each with 10Gb/s. With 423 fibers in the bundle, that adds up to 0.5Pb/s.

    With 10x oversubscription, this will supply 541 million homes with 100Mb/s broadband each.

    That should cover all of the americas with 100 million is USA, 46 million in Brazil, and 12 million in Canada.

    The cost for each household should be pennies.

    --
    don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
    1. Re:100Mb/s for pennies by mysidia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Except you still need a cable to bring each consumer to the aggregation points where the fiber is, and those are expensive....

      Also, what happens when a big carrier like AT&T just buys out all the dark fiber between two places to hold onto it, and doesn't use WDM?

  5. Heard it all before by mschuyler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember Level 3? There's a whole lot of dark fiber already in the ground that is obsolete and will never be lit up. Level 3 has conduit and fiber in place all over the globe. Before "The Fall" it was trading near $100 per share. Now it's $1.25. So no, I wouldn't buy stock in this venture.

    --
    How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
    1. Re:Heard it all before by chill · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, the first phase of this project is supposed to connect New York to Chicago and Ashburn, VA. Level 3's headquarters in in Ashburn, VA. So, you might be on to something.

      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    2. Re:Heard it all before by Skal+Tura · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They still do have to peer with someone for rest of the internet access. Fiber in itself has absolutely no use and value, unless you connect it to hundreds of millions to other devices.

      --
      Pulsed Media Seedboxes
    3. Re:Heard it all before by Tim+the+Gecko · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well, the first phase of this project is supposed to connect New York to Chicago and Ashburn, VA. Level 3's headquarters in in Ashburn, VA. So, you might be on to something.

      Level 3 is headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. The locations (NYC, Chicago, and the Dulles Technology Corridor) are three out of the eight or nine metros where North American internet giants interconnect with each other. Others include Atlanta, Dallas, LA and the Bay Area.

  6. I was thinking the same thing. by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Actually Level 3 is doing OK now (despite the low stock price) but it sure seems like Level3 is already doing what these guys plan to, and in fact I'd be really surprised if new conduits are being laid or if it's just running fiber through Level3 conduits... Level3 even has I think the access points along the cable routes they were describing, since they have to repeat the signal every so often anyway.

    Also 675 million sounds REALLY low to put in a nationwide fiber network, I think Level3 spent more like ten billion...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  7. I would buy into them by mikeiver1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Here is the logic. If they are able to roll out as they plan then there will be allot of companies buying back haul from them rather than one of the incumbents. If the CoLo prices are reasonable then even more so. On the other side you would have companies like AT&T looking at them as a target for acquisition since they would be cutting into their high profit customer base and potential future revenue streams as well. They would almost have to or fall under their own weight. Either way the investors will win.

  8. Good for Allied! by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This could go a long way toward reducing costs and improving performance. The FCC or Congress should long ago have required mandatory "open access" leasing of backhaul. In other countries, open access has been directly correlated with lower prices and better performance.

  9. Good by hargrand · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More competition is always good for the consumer.