In late 2007 I wrote an essay [pdf] for FTTH Prism arguing that it makes increasing sense for municipalities and incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) to cooperate in bringing open-access fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service to America’s small towns and rural areas.

As readers of this web site well know, such a cooperative model stands in sharp contrast to the typical reality faced by poorly-served communities wanting to connect their businesses and households to a community-owned fiber network. In virtually all such cases, the ILEC, though refusing to deploy its own FTTH network--or even provide high-speed DSL service to the entire community—will fight tooth and nail to stop construction of a community-owned fiber network.

In my essay I acknowledged that ILECs had yet to show any signs of shifting from their “kill all muni-nets” attitude to one that views open-access municipal FTTH networks as a means to better compete with cable without taking on the substantial capital investment associated with a FTTH upgrade. But I added that:

“it remains to be seen whether these [anti-muni-net] attitudes will withstand the mounting competitive pressures facing ILECs in the large number of markets in which they are not planning to deploy fiber-rich, video-capable networks. In these markets, the combination of cable VoIP and triple-play bundles, wireless replacement, and low-cost web-based services will increasingly turn what were once “high-margin” copper customers into either low-margin copper customers, or negative-margin non-customers.”

Among the trends I cited as pushing ILECs to reconsider their staunch resistance to muni-nets was the fact that, in markets where they don’t deploy their own FTTH networks, they will fall farther and farther behind in terms of broadband speeds, especially as cable operators ramp up their deployment of next-generation DOCSIS 3.0 technology.

In the face of this increasingly threatening competitive trend, I suggested that ILECs seriously consider leveraging their existing customer base and expertise to become retail providers on state-of-the-art muni FTTH networks, which can deliver much faster (and more symmetrical) speeds and better service quality than cable—even after the latter deploys DOCSIS 3....

Ontario County was working on a publicly owned solution to Middle Mile long before the broadband stimulus approach made it popular. And now, before most of the stimulus money has been disbursed, they have completed an expanded version of their initial plan.

To date, Axcess Ontario has signed master agreements with eight telecom and broadband companies, including Verizon Wireless and national broadband provider tw telecom. Axcess Ontario is in continual discussions with other service providers, and is working aggressively on its next goal of luring a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service provider to Ontario County. With the fiber ring complete, businesses and municipalities now have access to faster and less expensive broadband, as well as bandwidth equal to global broadband leaders. Businesses can gain access to the ring simply by contacting any of the eight service providers that work with Axcess Ontario. Residents do not yet have access to faster and less expensive broadband, but they will once a FTTH service provider is secured. Axcess Ontario has been working to lure a FTTH provider for more than a year, including submitting an application on behalf of Ontario County, NY, to Google's "Fiber for Communities" ultrafast broadband project earlier this year. More than 1,100 communities nationwide responded to that project, and Google just announced last week that it was postponing its selection of winning communities to early 2011.

We will be interested to see if they can lure a FTTH provider -- though middle mile can lower the operating costs of providing such a service, the capital costs are not significantly changed. And with the robust middle mile already connecting community anchor institutions, a new FTTH provider cannot count on those high-revenue customers. We have seen this previously in Alberta, Canada. Axcess Ontario is an example of a good public-private partnership - as noted in Telecompetitor:

Axcess Ontario credits much of its $2 million cost savings to a lease agreement with Ontario Telephone Co., an incumbent local carrier.

...

So Comcast and Level 3 are in a peering dispute following the Netflix partnership with Level 3 to distribute their streaming movie service. Studies suggest Netflix movie streaming has become a significant chunk of Internet traffic, particularly at peak times.

A quick primer on peering: the Internet is comprised of a bunch of networks that exchange traffic. Sometimes one has to pay another network for transit and sometimes (commonly with big carriers like Comcast and Level 3) networks have an agreement to exchange traffic without charging (one reason: the costs of monitoring the amount of traffic can be greater than the prices that would be charged). (Update: Read the Ars Technica story for a longer explanation of peering and this conflict.)

Comcast claims that Level 3 is sending Comcast 5x as much traffic as Comcast sends to Level 3 and therefore wants to charge Level 3 for access to Comcast customers. Of course, as Comcast only offers radically asymmetrical services to subscribers, one wonders how Level 3 could be 1:1 with Comcast…

At Public Knowledge, Harold Feld ties the dispute to network neutrality:

On its face, this is the sort of toll booth between residential subscribers and the content of their choice that a Net Neutrality rule is supposed to prohibit.  In addition, this is exactly the sort of anticompetitive harm that opponents of Comcast’s merger with NBC-Universal have warned would happen — that Comcast would leverage its network to harm distribution of competitive video services, while raising prices on its own customers.

Susan Crawford wrote a lengthier piece about Comcast, Netflix, network neutrality, set-top boxes and NBC that is well worth reading (as is just about anything she writes).

However, for the purposes of this post, we will assume the 5x traffic imbalance is true (and unique and...

In Virginia, Danville's open access all-fiber network, nDanville, currently serves only businesses and large clients. In the early summer, Danville Utilities decided to recommend expanding the network to between 2,000 and 3,000 residential homes with a 10 year, $2.5 million loan.

As Danville Utilities operates the network purely on a wholesale basis, it would not provide services directly. From an article leading up to the decision:

Danville Utilities would run the broadband services to the homes, to a box mounted on the house, and the user would pay a monthly service fee of $8.80 on their utility bill for the box. Gamewood would bill customers for the actual services provided, and pay the city 20 percent of those charges as an access fee for the cable.

Gamewood, a company that would have provided IPTV services on the network, had attempted to measure subscriber interest by mailing a postcard to 1000 local residents. The response failed to persuade at least one city council member, who demonstrated a total lack of understanding of the situation.

Luther bluntly said he had “no faith” in the numbers, and said he is convinced “nDanville is not going to fly.”

“If they want to build it, let Gamewood built it,” Luther said.

Of course, a private company is not interested in an investment that takes 5 years to break even. Even if it were, it would have little incentive to open the network to competition as nDanville does.

Ultimately, the City Council neglected to fund the project - perhaps an unsurprising decision in a time of economic woe. However, for a community like Danville, one wonders how it will recover without access to better broadband than last-generation cable and DSL services that are commonly available throughout the region.

The local paper editorialized in favor of the decision, but noted that the public power utility should continue expanding the network for commercial subscribers.