A review of broadband Internet transitions and policy from around the world.  It is published by The Berkman  Center for Internet & Society at Haarvarrd University. (Yes, Buffy dear, I purposely spelled Harvard  as “Haarvarrd” for contextual affect.)

Click here to go to the report.

My conclusion:  In America, it’s all about having policy, objectives and economic incentives to deliver fiber optic connectivity to 90% of homes and businesses with remote areas being served by subsidized satellite capabilities that already exist within 10 years.  This approach will stop spending good money after bad, keeping copper loops alive.  And, of course, broadband mobility should be left to the free markets to sort out with the least amount of government “help.”

If you have the fiber optic infrastructure, mobility backhaul for 4G services is a slam dunk.  You need the fiber infrastructure first; otherwise you end up putting the cart before the horse.

The next time telecom infrastructure comes up, just ask a few questions:

1. If the network is an IRU, who owns it?

2. If the network is an IRU, how many strands are left in the sheath? Will you, Mr. Carrier, be able to get to them if need be? Can you prove it? Can you post a bond?

3. If the network gets cut, who fixes it? Where are you in the queue?

4. What is your fiber count in the local network? When will you exhaust your fiber count due to add/drops, splices and db loss budgets? Do you have extra fiber strand when this occurs? Is your local metropolitan fiber point-to-point, or a ring?

5. When you say you are in hundreds of markets, does this mean you pass through it with a long haul network, or IRU? Or do you actually have an appreciable metropolitan footprint outside of the carrier hotel you pass through in each market?

6. Is your network open or closed to competition? If it’s closed, why? Competition is good isn’t it? What are my options?

7. How diverse is your network route? Can you show me your route compared to other carriers or options? I would not want all my traffic running on the same fiber sheath from multiple IRU’d or resale “carriers” thinking that it’s diverse, would I? We need at least two physically different carriers, don’t we?

8. How many buildings or residents do you pass, per route mile, that are within 1,000 feet of all your fiber routes? Metropolitan routes?

9. How many fiber route miles do you own, or is it an IRU? Are they oceanic? Long haul/ regional long haul? Metropolitan back bone? Access? Please break this out-a pie chart would be nice.

10. Do you consider a town, hamlet, or village a “market”? Isn’t wireless more appropriate in these settings with terrestrial fiber backhaul?

And one last comment for America: All carriers “infrastructure” are not created equal, caveat emptor. Do your homework.

Unless you have a fiber pipe in your building or home already, the next time the subject of telecom infrastructure comes up, make sure your politician understands what and where real telecom infrastructure is and where it is needed.

All communications infrastructure is local. That’s the focus.

Any type of communications application, whether data, video, voice, or graphics, always originates and terminates in the local metropolitan and related access networks. You will not find origination or termination of such applications on an oceanic or long haul network. Those are dumb aggregation pipes that add little value.

Trying to keep things simple, optical fiber is lit with a laser. The distance a laser travels has much to do with the type of network, type of fiber, quality of fiber, and the number of service nodes. Lasers are expensive and regenerating their wave lengths after a certain distance is also an expensive proposition. It is much easier and cheaper to light an oceanic or long haul network, as they are strictly aggregation pipes of bits that get their signal regenerated every 60 to 100 miles. For oceanic or long-haul, the fiber is spliced over great distances–miles at a time–to create it’s physical footprint.

Splicing is an important concept to understand–it is taking two fiber strands, on two different cable sheaths, and uniting them as one. Every time you splice fiber (or cut copper as a matter of fact) you introduce a loss of carrying capacity to the signal (electrical or optical), as any splice will have a margin of error. Even the slightest margin of error adversely affects the signal amplitude. More splices in a given cable requires more regeneration over short distances, which is costly.

In industry terms, we call this a “loss budget”. When fiber is installed, the loss budget defines how much bandwidth you can reliably support over a pair of fiber strands as you splice or add nodes. Lots of buildings and homes means a more sensitive loss budget, as well as a need for additional available fiber inventory within the sheath as bandwidth demand grows.

What affects the loss budget of fiber? Location, uninterrupted signal distance and fiber count!

In comparison, for the thousands of buildings and homes in any market, the metropolitan fiber backbone and the access network are subject to hundreds–if not thousands–of splice points or nodes to interconnect users. Unlike an oceanic or long-haul network, it’s loss budget sensitivity is much higher. The physical costs associated with installing a metropolitan network are 10x higher than an oceanic or long-haul network. The add/drops of signals and multiple nodes in a metropolitan access network are complex and costly when compared to oceanic and long-haul networks.

From a traffic engineering perspective, for every mile of aggregated traffic in an oceanic or long-haul network, 10 miles of local metropolitan fiber backbone is required to feed it. For every mile of local metropolitan fiber optic backbone, you need 100 miles of access network to feed it.

The signal engineering in metropolitan settings is monumental and complex. In simple terms, long-haul/oceanic networks require less fiber than local networks to operate–they are simpler and cheaper to build and run. This is why an OC-X or GigaBit Ethernet circuit are cheaper on long-haul routes than metropolitan routes, which are complex and costly. OC-X or GigaBit circuits offer more redundancy and diversity than just two fiber strands between New York City and the beltway serving as a dumb aggregation pipe.

On Wednesday–coaching for Harry Homemaker, the Enterprise CIO, and Financiers…