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Economic Inefficiency 101: How Not to Wire a Building |
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This was the right decision (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 29 @ 14:22:43 EST | "One must question, however, why are our telecommunications regulations are so out of date. Wiring for cable should be as standard as electrical conduit and plumbing. Does it really make any sense to wire a building with several coax cables?"
First a direct & practicial answer to this question: yes, it makes a whole bunch of sense to wire a building with serveal sets of coax. With coax, it's not like there's two ends to the cable and you just unplug from one service and switch to the other; it's a shared system. There is actually maintainence that must take place to keep the signals sane in that pipe. And pipe is a good illustration for coax. It's not like you can just unscrew something in the basement to switch just your suite to a new water pressure provider; it's a shared system. Same with coax. But let's say you could, and you do switch, and now you have a problem. Is the problem in the walls or in the source in the basement? How do you know and do you really want the burden of proof put on you when there is an issue. If you had dsl issues, you'll know how real this issue is.
It's fine to question this stuff, but this is the sensable decision. I used to work for a large ISP designing and installing networks in large commercial buildings. I am and expert in all of these issues. As well, I understand and agree with many of the view points expresed on this site. However, this was a highly sensable decision and is in line with as if it were electricial service or plumbing. I will add the cavet that I don't really have the time to really do the full research of this issue and that I am basing my opinion solely on the face of the arguement as stated in the summary. I would really have to know more about why the phrase "will have to rewire the building" is employed and what that really means in this context.
What I sense the poster is driving at is that there should be some sort of situation akin to what happened with local telcos (ILECs) being forced to lease their lines to CLECs. We all know how beautifully that is working out (and how evil the ILECs are). However, this is a very different situation within buildings. There has been no public subsidy to install that infrastructure. There are quite a few people that would LOVE to get into those closets and riser runs. Riser managerment for properties is a big business, with lots of {ahem} networking and under the table deals. For examble, if you are installing riser runs in NYC, you HAVE to use union labor. All the building engineers are union, and they will tell you to use union laborers b/c they carry better insurance against lines getting cut - Mr. Capone (I'm not making this up) suggested this saying the union runs never have this problem, where as scabs doing the work frequently run into these issues. Yes, union costs much more. None the less, there is a limited space available and property management only allows their favorites in there. So there are no techicial issues that would prevent an extra cable service going into the building, it's quite easy and doesn't take long for a competitor to recoup their costs. However, as you can imagine, with an artificial monopoly created by the property management, the politics are quite high, and lead to the court room.
Concerning the ILEC rewiring to offer competion: I've seen how bad the riser wiring has been done in old buildings in NYC. I assume that in this case, I assume the CLECs can not take advantage of existing telcom wiring in the building, which is typicially owned by the building. Some of these buildings, what was done is that the point of demarkation is not in the basement, but on the floor in the closet. Since the risers and closets are full and standard practices of MPOE dmarkation will not work, therefore the ILEC must pull back and rewire to make competition possible. In other words, it would make sense to me if in this case, rewiring means changing the ancient wiring to bring it up to code, which would facilitate compet
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