At 10:49 p.m. 28/12/2003 +1300, Tony Wicks wrote:
info-structure. You go try and price up digging a trench (and getting approval for it!) from Auckland to Wellington, then come back and tell us how cheap you think your "kick ass" network will be.
$40million - it used to be $30m but time has made it a little more expensive. Route and technolgy don't influence much, they all work out the same. CHeck what TCL paid for their festoon, its about the same. but don't despair. 2 years ago I went and talked with one of our customers, a financial place, with a BIG national network and said "for $1Mill install and $1mill per year opex, I'll give you a fiber to AKL" - they threw me out. I also needed 19 of their friends but I knew who they were/are. Its NOT hard, I just haven't had time. So a year ago I went back and said "Why ?" And they said "coz we have built all our networks on the assumption you couldn't do it, and no one else will sell it to us." The market is still there and the two major telcos are just holding it back. (Joe can confirm that renting a transcontinental fiber in the US is not unusual) So we talked some more (the $1M is a little steep for them) and I haven't got anywhere yet. But Roger has and I believe he'll give them what they want. I believe we'll see large fiber count cables providing inter-city links within the next 10 years. But you have to think completely differently BIG fiber counts NO regenerators (there are other ways) etc rich