If you ain't got fiber, you ain't got nothing!

As your firm opens a new office or expands into new territories, is "fiber-accessible" on your list of demands? It should be. Access to fiber is more important that those extra parking spaces you're probably insisting on.

The rate of innovation in photonics and optics is almost as rapid as the rate of obsolescence in today's network equipment. These optical innovations will change the way we buy communications services, which services we buy and the way we pay for them.

The cost to lay fiber in the U.S. averages a hefty $75,000 per mile, but the cost of laying an incremental fiber (the next fiber on the path) is plunging to as little as 20 cents per mile. And with dense wave division multiplexing, we can cram as many as 80 separate wavelengths down a single fiber strand!

Most of the improvements in optics involve increased densities of wavelengths on a single fiber. Otherwise they're about the consolidation into a single device of functions that previously were segregated, such as adding/dropping multiplexers, wavelength division multiplexing, cross connection and even routing.

There are nearly 100,000 buildings in the U.S. that are already fiber-enabled, with more being added daily. The rest of us are fiber-challenged and may be at a significant disadvantage.

How big a disadvantage? The fiber "haves" may be able to purchase an OC-3 of local bandwidth for what the "have nots" pay for a copper-based fractional T-1. "No way," you say? Companies such as FiberNet and Allied Riser, among many others, are taking huge chunks of fiber to individual floors in multitenant buildings. They have no customer base to protect, no fat layer of middle management to feed and no 100-year history of process and procedure to slowly automate and streamline. They have only a need to get your business, get it fast and generate a return on their invested millions.

In the long-haul network, the cost of transmission is less than 20% of operating cost, and dropping. So why do we have private-line pricing based on mileage? Why are phone calls still sensitive to call duration? And if we can now put 80 wavelengths across a single fiber, why is there still such a big difference in pricing between 64K bit/sec and 45M bit/sec?

The answers are simple: convention, inefficiency and greed. The established service providers don't want to take a big chunk out of their revenue base by passing along the savings they reap from hardware innovation. And their own innovation in process management, automation and operational efficiency has not kept pace with the innovations of their equipment suppliers.

If you are on fiber, you'll be able to deploy network-hosted applications to reduce costs; implement high-quality desktop conferencing; upgrade the extranet with high-speed links and multimedia for competitive advantage; or create the baddest electronic commerce site on the 'Net to boost revenue. And if you're not? You'll be at a competitive disadvantage, stagnating in the copper backwaters.

Briere is president and Heckart is vice president of TeleChoice, a consultancy in Boston. They can be reached at dbriere@ telechoice.com and checkart@ telechoice.com.

What do you think? Jump into nwfusion.talk and start a thread.

More WAN Monitor columns