”Fiber in the ground does not a reliable...
"Fiber in the ground does not a reliable broadband service make,” said Hank Hultquist, AT&T vice president-regulatory affairs, in a blog post Friday contemplating the FCC’s E-rate expansion (http://bit.ly/1bGa8T9). Dark fiber may look promising, but it’s not as cost-effective as…
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it may first appear, he said. Who would set up and manage the ongoing operation of a sophisticated fiber network? he asked. “Asking a school to become a telecom provider makes about as much sense as asking a telecom provider to open an elementary school.” Schools and libraries that build and operate a high-capacity network with dark fiber “risk becoming islands of connectivity in a sea of inadequate broadband,” he said. “If E-rate is to be used to deploy networks, then it will only be cost effective for the country if the funds are used by telecom providers to build publicly available networks in communities that lack adequate broadband today. ... Let’s make sure we do not modernize E-rate in a vacuum.”