Monday, June 16, 2008

How Muni Fiber Should Work

In a profile about LUS, the Lafayette muni fiber project that Bell and cable fought long and hard, Telephony mag writes about the way it is working:

in Lafayette, La., [the plan] involves a municipal fiber network, a wholesale services provider and a computing platform company offering a service dubbed "IT on demand". ... The service provider is Abacus Data Exchange, which is a wholesale provider buying bandwidth on the Lafayette Utilities System fiber network. The computing platform company is Liquid Computing, which offers a modular converged computing and communications resource that can be turned up or turned down as needed to provide what is essentially a very scalable data center environment with a very small footprint. [telephony]

Can this work with the fiber plant in your area? Maybe. It's about offering the client what he needs without his having to worry about it or any of the parts.

In related news, ISP's have had to be tech support for more than the broadband for a while. ISP's and to some extent HDTV providers have to add a Geek Squad to insure that the install goes smoothly and the client stays happy. Acquisition costs are huge, but so is tech support and customer care. No one can avoid Acquisition costs, but as cited by so many consumers, VZ seems to avoid the support costs. What's your cutomer report card look like?

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