A little Microsoft humor...

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Mon May 21 13:31:52 EDT 2007


On 5/21/07, Fran Fadden <FranFadden+ghlug at pobox.com> wrote:
> I know that, at least in some (business) locations, Verizon was running
> fiber to the basement, and then provisioning the T1 or other service from
> that.

  Right.  The telcos have been doing this for streets or neighborhoods
forever, under the monikers "remote terminals" or "service area
interfaces", or as I call them, "mini COs".  Rather than running still
more copper pairs on crowded polls, they run an optical carrier out to
the "mini CO" in a cabinet.  They put the cabinet on a poll, or beside
the road, or in a manhole.

  More recently (ten years or so), they've started doing it even for
relatively small multi-tenant buildings, if their planning department
thinks there is going to be sufficient future demand at that location
to justify it.  The equipment they install is often quite serious,
with redundant battery packs, rectifiers, etc., so it's not a
box-on-a-wall thing, like the FiOS ONT's are.

> And, no, just because they then had fiber coming into the building did not
> mean that we could then get FiOS.  That is a "different" fiber.

  I'd guess the fiber media itself might actually be the same, but it
wouldn't surprise me if everything else was different.  You're talking
different departments within Verizon, which means both political and
technical barriers to cross.  I'm sure the "mini CO" provisioning is a
different game from the FiOS provisioning.

  It probably means different equipment, too.  I've been told that a
lot of the FiOS gear is based around a passive optical network design.
 The line is split out for and at each customer site.  All subscribers
on a "node" get sprayed with with everything; the CPE has to pick out
the signals addressed to it.  Similar in concept to modern cable
Internet or old coax Ethernet.

  Of course, none of that should prevent them from installing suitable
FiOS "provider end" equipment at the "mini CO".  But the telco
overmind probably won't figure that out for at least another decade.

-- Ben


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