On 28 Dec 2003, at 17:08, Tony Wicks wrote:
I hate to be a stick in the mud, but once you have your Auckland to Wellington fiber, you will then need a second one to back it up for the times that someone dig's it up while putting in a new drain. And then getting across the cook straight etc etc.
A lot of businesses in the US built out their infrastructure on the premise that they could swap fibres on one run for fibres on another. MFN for example acquired almost all its long-haul fibre by swapping inter-city fibre miles for metro fibre miles. As Richard mentioned, it's commonplace in North America and Europe to do these kinds of deals. I sat in an office in the UK earlier this year while someone built a dark fibre path between London and Hungary using only his telephone, swapping access here for favours over there. This only works if there's a rich interconnected mesh of fibre owners who are ready to do deals, however. If there's only two fibre owners, and they won't do deals, then it's not as easy. Incidentally, back in the day, CLEAR didn't own fibre under the cook straight. That didn't stop them building out their network between the two islands, though: they just used someone else's glass. Joe