flyerguy - 11:48 am on Jan 18, 2005 (gmt 0)

I worked for fibre companies for several years as a network planner, and let me tell you the notion that it's a great concept to 'build a highway and set up toll booths and let the money roll in' is far away from the reality of building backbones.

Major inter-city backbones cannot be bought in a regular sense. Fibres can only be rented. This is the one solid asset that the telcos have and if they started selling them off you'd see even more than the normal 2 companies a month going under.

So then you are left with the intermediate metro spans which are astronomically high to build, as you gotta have building permits, construction crews in the streets stopping traffic, and all the other factors associated with urban construction. Not to mention these urban backbones are typically built with specific customers in mind, i.e., a new business complex was built west of the city so let's build to it.

In effect, regardless of how much cash you wanna wave at the telcos, you can't waltz in and procure substantial fibre, dark or not, without being regulated as a telco yourself.

Granted, in my hometown of Vancouver, some guys started a company called Metronet literally in their basement, which eventually got bought up and became AT&T canada. That being said, there's been a couple 're-structurings' and bankruptcy-type affairs since then.

It's difficult business and trying to buy up bulk amounts and play connect the dots with datacenters sounds like they should switch to decaf in the designer espresso machines at G HQ.