COMMUNICA | Issue Four
Just as not all municipalities are well-suited to operate electric utilities or water utilities , not all local authorities need to offer data services . However , all local authorities build and maintain roads , and fibre networks are the roads of our future . Local authorities can confine their roles to simply owning and maintaining the outside ‘ Dark Fibre ’ infrastructure , these being the inert components of the network that comprise the fibre itself , the boxes and enclosures used to make connections and house equipment , and the conduit through which the fibre travels . This is a familiar model in Sweden seen as the ‘ pole star ’ of digital societies where for many years connectivity has been at the centre of policy . While the UK still deploys 30 mbps Sweden have a policy of 98 % of citizens having a min 1000mbps or 1Gig speed up and down both at home and work by 2025 . They will achieve this with a collaboration of a market-driven expansion in harmony with the public sector involvement . It is here that Open Access enables the ideal competitive platform for operators to sell products and services on equal terms irrespective of who owns the underlying fibre . In the early years of telecommunications networks , the infrastructure consisted of copper wires that carried one channel of data ( an analogue sound signal ). Configuring a connection between any two
points on a network required actuating mechanical switches to create a temporary physical circuit . At first , that mechanical switch was a human operator who physically pulled plugs and replaced them to create the circuit ; eventually , that function was automated . To ensure maximum control of the customer service relationship , a service provider had to own and control every last bit of infrastructure down to the telephone at the end of the circuit . In early years this was the local authority who owned and managed all this who later became the telecoms players we know today . As automation gradually replaced each and IP technologies gradually transformed networks , the need for control of the infrastructure to provide services gradually disappeared . Finally we are at a significant milestone where we no longer require the legacy copper wires of the past and that fibre is delivered direct to the home / premesis ( Fibre To The Home ) or business ( Fibre To The Business ). In the 21st Century a service provider can be entirely virtual , riding on someone else ’ s network and using someone else ’ s fibre , yet still provide a high level of customer service . For 21st Century networks , this enables a further partitioning of network services into two levels , both entirely operated by the private sector : 1 . Utility bandwidth services provided by a network operator .
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