So, your conceit is that you're always right, especially when you're wrong. It would be just as likely that you would complain that they don't think far enough in advance, and only put in fiber two years or so ahead of deployment. Would you have preferred they put in copper? Here's how you get the phone company to put that dark fiber into service: you request a service -- Oc-12, perhaps -- at your house that requires the fiber. Methinks that phone companies -- all companies -- should deploy outside plant a bit in advance of need. Perhaps you feel they should do so well after the need is evident? (Phone companies, due to rate-of-return regulation, can deploy fiber a bit more in advance of need, but have to write off stranded (unneed, unusable) plant right away. The conceit of the telephone companies is that they thought they controlled the market and were able to make decisions decadess in advance. Until the Santa Clara valley became Silicon Valley, they were correct. They now have to bring up their decision-making skills up to the par for the latter part of the 20th century. (One could hope for better.) By the way, all the "dark fiber" that my friend complained about in the early 1990's wasn't dark by 1996. There still is "grey fiber" these days, but that is instantly put into use when there's a fiber cut. Also, all the companies that were formed to explot fiber/dark fiber have been melded into one company, which ultilmately went bankrupt. MCI. John Willkie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Craig Birkmaier" <craig@xxxxxxxxx> To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 11:32 AM Subject: [opendtv] Re: SBC Joins the Convergence Crowd > At 10:06 AM -0800 1/5/05, John Willkie wrote: > >Your frame of reference has no relation to that of Southern Bell. They > >think in terms of decades, you don't. By the way, a friend of mine wrote a > >thesis on dark fiber. The definition a decade ago was deployed fiber unused > >for more than three years. > > > >Do you know of the ILEC's plans? How many homes are so situated? What's > >the big picture? > > > >Wanna try again? > > Thanks for confirming my suspicions. > > You said nothing that changes what I wrote in the earlier message. > There are miles and miles of fiber like this in Gainesville. When > Southern Bell will decide to use them to offer advanced services is > anyone guess. In the meantime we are paying for this infrastructure > via our monthly POTS phone bills. > > Its a nice deal if you can get it. > > Regards > Craig > > P.S. Bellsouth just doubled the size of the building where my local > switch resides and these fibers terminate. It seems they have some > kind of plan for the future. > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: > > - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org > > - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.