When Martin spoke to the equipment manufacturers in the TIA address at Supercomm [.doc] [.pdf] on June 3, 2003, he told them that they were vital to the economy, and that the FCC triennial decision had paved the way for more equipment buying in the future.

"Some even estimated that accelerated broadband deployment could provide hundreds of billions of dollars worth of economic benefits through increased efficiencies, as well as through new investment in fiber, switches, software, and processors," he said.

To that end, the FCC had decided that competition in some areas would have to be sacrificed. In its triennial review, the FCC claims that competitive carriers do not need access to lit fiber. Although elsewhere in the review, the FCC admits that competitive carriers are strapped for cash, in the part of the review concerning fiber, it seems to assume that CLECs have more resources than ILECs.

Deploying fiber is easy
The review claims, "Competitive carriers deploying fiber  are  able to accommodate provisioning delays and additional expense at the start of the construction process, mitigating obstacles to self-deploying they may face in gaining access to public and private rights-of-way." The report also says that business customers, unlike residential customers, are "sophisticated" enough to plan for the delays of provisioning fiber. The report further argues that business customers have extra influence over their landlords and can help competitors get access to buildings, citing comments from three competitors: AT&T, Sprint, and WorldCom.

The review even claims that CLECs deploying fiber can make money on each individual building, even though the report acknowledges that it takes 6 to 9 months to connect a building, and that's without the delays caused by city government and landlords.

Rather than address these problems and make it easier to deploy fiber, the commission did nothing for the CLECs.

While competitors may be upset at the FCC review because they will say that fiber is not easy to deploy, the RBOCs will also be upset at some aspects of the ruling.

The FCC has decided, oddly enough, that the equivalent of the low frequency portion of a copper loop (i.e., a 64 Kbps line to each home) must be unbundled and available to competitors wherever fiber is built as a backbone in areas served by ILEC copper. The commission cites Corning (a fiber maker and century-old glass manufacturer) and Verizon as suggesting this odd rule. This should mean that RBOCs will have to deploy additional equipment that would not be necessary without this quirky FCC rule. But, according to Martin, the buying of equipment is that path to universal wealth, so this FCC mandate is a good thing.

The Bells never lie
The FCC also seems justly worried that the Bells will deploy fiber that they do not have to share and retire their copper because they have to share it. Unfortunately, the review says, "we decline to impose a blanket prohibition on the ability of incumbent LECs to retire any copper loops or subloops they have replaced with FTTH loops."

Instead, the FCC naively believes that the Bells will follow the rules. The review merely says, "because the retirement of copper loop plant is a network modification that affects the ability of competitive LECs to provide service, we clarify that incumbent LECs must provide notice of such retirement in accordance with our rules." (Note: let us know whether the LEC you work with has ever modified their network in a way that affected your ability to provide service, and we'll publish your letters. Send a copy of your letter to the FCC as well. See, for example, this letter from Ruby Ranch to the FCC, and this letter to us describing the company's experience with its ILEC.)

The Bells have been promising to deploy fiber for decades, and have used that promise to extact favorable legislation, without keeping their part of the bargain struck with legislators. Soon after the release of the initial triennial decision in February, 2003, Congress reminded the FCC commissioners that they had been taken in by this unfulfilled fiber promise (see this history lesson from Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA)).

The FCC accepted these promises in part because the equipment manufacturers were eager for the FCC to do so. In its analysis of "next generation networks" (the only technology considered here is fiber) the FCC cites only a few sources of information. Corning is cited the most often. Others cited include the High Tech Broadband Coalition (HTBC) which is an association of manufacturers' associations, Alcatel (another fiber equipment maker), and the Fiber to the Home Council (a pro-fiber lobby). Other companies are noted, but only in the section dealing with what happens when an RBOC replaces copper with fiber in its home area. That section, containing competitors' comments, is the only part of the FCC's fiber ruling that may upset the RBOCs.

Why did the FCC listen only to fiber providers when it made fiber rules? Doing so gives the section the appearance of pandering to vested interests while ignoring testimony from actual ISPs providing fiber services.

The FCC ignores actual fiber deployments
It's too bad the FCC did not investigate any actual deployments, because the final irony of its new rules is that the RBOCs are not deploying and have not deployed fiber, and the FCC will not be able to get them to do so (and spend money on the equipment makers who lobbied so hard for this section of the ruling).

In a comment buried in footnote 809, the FCC acknowledges, "Corning estimates that competitive LECs have deployed FTTH loops to 44,890 homes, that small incumbent LECs have deployed FTTH loops to 3,600 homes, that the BOCs have deployed FTTH loops to some 400 homes, and that municipalities have deployed FTTH loops to about 18,100 homes."

Commissioner Martin believes that the fiber rules will usher in a new age of Bell spending. He concluded his speech at Supercomm by saying that he's pround of encouraging the Bells to standardize their networks and deploy similar products:

Just last week, BellSouth, SBC, and Verizon announced an agreement to standardize the construction of fiber-optic networks. These companies have agreed upon a common technological standard for fiber-builds so that manufacturers can more easily develop equipment for the network as a whole, and the Bells can then deploy this new infrastructure more quickly and less expensively.

These announcements are great news for the network. They are great news for your industry and the economy. And they are great news for consumers. This is the type of commitment that we hoped for in completing the Triennial proceeding. And, I hope we will continue to see these type of commitments in the months to come.

Martin's vision of a single standard network sounds eerily like the old Ma Bell. While Martin was busy building a uniform nationwide monopoly network by giving everything to the Bells, he did nothing for those really deploying fiber: CLECs and municipal governments. He also did nothing to combat the real problems obstructing fiber deployments, such as unpredictable local rules and unpredictable landlords.