[1st-mile-nm] Mea Culpa and Comment

[Carroll Cagle]

Folks, I have found the dialogue interesting and helpful, and I appreciate
the time and thought given.

 

For now, I would like to add only one observation  -- and that has to do
with Marianne's note below.

 

As far as I understand it, I do believe the so-called ILECs (independent
rural companies) deploy a lot more fiber than the much-bigger Qwest   -- but
what is missing in both cases is fiber-to-the-premise (or darned little, in
any event).

 

That huge omission is particularly relevant to this list-serve  -- 1st-mile
- because, indeed, the "first mile" (from a customer's point of view) is
sadly lacking.   This "weakest link" feature renders, if not null and void,
at least far less important, the fiber elsewhere.

 

What I am ardently working on - along with others on this list --  are ways
to help enable that problem to be addressed, so that many New Mexicans (both
at their residences and places of employment - including schools and
health-care facilities, etc) are able to reap the huge advantages of optical
fiber as a transmission mode.

 

Certainly, having fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP), alone, does not cut it!
Obviously even "first mile" fiber has to then link with neighborhood fiber
and city fiber rings, and thence to inter-city fiber etc.   But if this
state were to be "lighted up" with fiber, then many other beneficial results
would be lighted up as well  --   the right kind of quality-oriented
economic development, distance learning, telemedicine, etc.

 

I particularly liked and resonate with this partial posting earlier today
from Mr. MacCabe:

 

            "Making place irrelevant so that place can matter.

One of the things that defines New Mexico is that people tend to have a
strong (social) connection to place.  However, economic considerations
frequently make it difficult to maintain this connection (economies of scale
tend to favor metropolitan areas).  The goal of connectivity is to reduce
the negative economic impact for rural -- making place irrelevant.
Flattening the cost of connectivity is the first step."

 

Well stated.

 

Last point (for now) --  achieving the virtuous outcome that Mr. MacCabe
refers to can be helped by a comprehensive strategy of tax incentives,
direct appropriations into backbone infrastructure, and enabling
cost-effective "open" (multi-service provider) infrastructures in local
communities (FTTP).

 

Regards,

Carroll Cagle  

 

 

 

 

 

 

  _____  

From: 1st-mile-nm-bounces at mailman.dcn.org
[mailto:1st-mile-nm-bounces at mailman.dcn.org] On Behalf Of Marianne Granoff
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 10:45 AM
To: Arthur Maccabe; peter
Cc: 1st-Mile-NM
Subject: Re: [1st-mile-nm] Mea Culpa and Comment

 

I agree with almost everything that you have said about NLR and I2,
but I have to take exception to this last paragraph.  A great many 
of the rural areas of our state have more than adequate fiber
deployment because the rural phone providers in this state have 
invested in fiber deployment for over 20 years.  For the most part, 
these rural LECs put their customers first.  On the other hand, some 
phone companies with dense population centers in NM put their money 
in 1) other states, 2) paying attorneys to fight regulation, 3) 
paying SEC fines for past bad behavior, 4) paying their high-priced 
executives' defense attorneys in criminal lawsuits, 5) paying for 
expensive media advertising saying how much better they are, 6) paying 
lobbyists to overturn consumer-oriented regulation at the State and 
Federal level, and 7) paying attorneys to fight with their customers.

The challenge is not to "push" network services to the edge.  The 
challenge is to understand that the same services can be had in rural 
areas of NM today, but that such services will cost much more because 
the cost per person is more in rural areas.  I would offer that the 
solutions can be found by inviting the rural LECs to partner in some 
innovative ways instead of paying out-of-state consultants mega-bucks 
to find out what exists. 

I have never had a rural LEC in NM tell me I could not order a T1/DS1
or a T3/DS3 (usually provisioned on fiber).  Our urban phone company 
has responded that they cannot provide even a DS1 on more than one 
occasion, unless I want to pay "construction costs". 

My two cents.

Marianne Granoff
NM Internet Professionals Association

  

At 08:34 AM 2/12/2008 -0700, Arthur Maccabe wrote:




In the end, it's critical that New Mexico move forward in building  
adequate communication infrastructure.  This is far more important in  
New Mexico than in our neighboring states like Arizona or Utah where  
population is much more centralized and they tend to ignore the rural  
parts of the state.  I like to think  of our challenge as the need to  
push (network) services to the edge.  As we go through this process,  
there will be false starts.  We can spend our time complaining about  
the problems that we have run into, or we can try to learn from  
failures and move on -- there's clearly a lot more to do.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www2.dcn.org/pipermail/1st-mile-nm/attachments/20080212/3014e3f5/attachment.html>