Comments on: Bandwidth Glut Almost Over?

By: GigaOM » Under Pacific, an optical bubble rises

GigaOM » Under Pacific, an optical bubble rises — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:00:08 +0000

[...] news items that point to a new sub-sea cable being plotted or another old one being upgraded, a trend that could add up to a boom in the optical sub sea [...]

By: Lharbin

Lharbin — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:06:05 +0000

Seeing a bite taken out of that what capacity? What excess capacity? For the US to truly grow technologically, all those oc-48s and oc-192s will be necessary if the rbocs would actually increase the capacity of the individual subscriber line. They always give more download, never upload. This is because of the limited capacity to the major junctions. If Viop, Video and application hosting are all going to be more intrinsic to data services, then all those old technology lines and equipment go away. bell has made billions off of the subscriber lines with very little move forward. Thats why wireless is moving in leaps and bounds…its the last mile, not the back bone. Turn up the last mile and all that dark fiber will need added capacity.

By: malapraxis

malapraxis — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:57:46 +0000

Has anyone been trenching empty conduits in the last 6-8 years. I don't believe so. Back in Nov. 2000, Jim Crowe, CEO of Level 3 wrote:

"Today, we believe that there are only twelve empty nationwide conduits and Level 3 has eleven of them."

Looks like the "massive amounts" of empty conduit space that Dan talks about, all belong to the same company. The other empty conduits are at best a patchwork quilt.

By: skibare

skibare — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 12:35:37 +0000

reading all these comments tells me NOBODY really has a grasp of what truly is going on with ""LIT"" vs Dark Fiber and everyone just ASSUMES you can light up anything you want…capacity of some routes ALREADY MAXED OUT and full…this means CAP EX to light up more lines and nobody has CASH Skibare

By: gabe-san

gabe-san — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 06:52:59 +0000

Ok. Reality check. How much do you think it would cost AT&T to run a new fiber optic cable along the floor of the PACIFIC OCEAN?

Now, how much could they go spend on, oh, nothing fancy, say a DWDM multiplexer from Black Box, and put it at both ends of an existing fiber. Now they have 16/32/64 wavelengths, or 16/32/64x the capacity out of that fiber that is already laid. Now suppose they don't go with Black Box, but go with someone a little more reputable, like Huewei or Ciena?

Play SimCEO with your SimTelco with that scenario and see if this article isn't just FUD. Saying certain Telcos want to add existing capacity is one thing, but saying they want to lay new fibers across the ocean is more of a stock tip than a technical article.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 00:46:59 +0000

daniel,

thanks for pointing out the lighting up additional wavelengths. for some odd reason i had blanked out on this and well, please accept my apologies. hopefully the correction will help clarify.

thanks again.

By: Charlie Sierra

Charlie Sierra — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 23:57:12 +0000

Yes this is all true.

I've even had conversations with some RRs (Norfolk Southern and CSX) who've run out of dark fiber on some links, and (gasp!!!) have had to rent capacity from the RBOCs.

Is Fiber just like the Oil business? ie, it goes from a top to bottom every 5-10 years. Typical game theory as to who makes the big CAPEX bets.

Now the question is, will these guys get their act together and slow investment to keep the prices high?

I mean can the government force a business to make CAPEX purchases?

By: Daniel Golding

Daniel Golding — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 23:26:17 +0000

Many carriers are lighting additional wavelengths on existing long-haul fiber to meet demand. Thats different from lighting currently dark fiber. And its very different from needing more fiber, except, perhaps, on some routes that never had enough capacity like trans-pacific.

It does cost some money to light up waves. Not much, compared to the cost of trenching new fiber, which is extreme. Even when we need more fiber, there is a massive amount of empty conduit space through which fiber can be cheaply blown.

Finally, there have been no major advances in wave division multiplexing technology in 5 years because of a lack of demand for greater wavelength density. When we need more capacity on fiber, the engineers at Lucent, Nortel, Ciena, et al will pull out their plans for higher capacity DWDM gear and start selling it.

By: Juha

Juha — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 22:30:41 +0000

Interestingly enough, the file name of the price graph in this piece is:

bandwidthpricedeclines2006.jpg

Having said that, ISPs in New Zealand tell me that international transit pricing is going up for the first time ever. This is apparently because MCI-Verizon has decided to "dump bandwidth" on the Southern Cross Cable, of which it owns 10 per cent.

By: Patrick Hynes

Patrick Hynes — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 19:21:57 +0000

I see demand for bandwidth continuing to grow with the increase in consumer applications like IPtv. It seems that the capacity is there and now has the potential to be managed efficiently. That makes me even more frustrated with the franchising bottleneck that is holding up consumer access to bandwidth heavy offerings.