One of the more frequent requests I get is for metro fiber map resources along the lines of the various longhaul maps I have already been collecting and updating. With the holidays fast approaching and the news soon to become almost as sparse as August, I am making this one of my winter projects. I have decided this must be approached on a flexible geographical basis. Specifically, I will try to answer the question ‘Where is there metro fiber in the XYZ area?’ where XYZ is a) generally thought of as a region somehow, and b) has enough metro fiber assets to make a list worth collecting, but not so many to make it confusing. That means some areas I select will be small but with lots of competitive metro fiber networks, and others might be large but with fewer distinct assets. It also means some companies who have a national metro presence will show up on many lists, but the links will be to assets in that region only.
Now, to business. First of all, up in the menu bar you will notice that all the Longhaul Maps have a new submenu of their own within the Resource menu – it was getting messy. Below that is a new Metro Maps section, and inside it are my first two metro fiber maps pages for the NYC Metro Area and the Pacific Northwest. Of course, not all companies with known metro fiber in a particular area have public maps but it is still useful to know they are there – interested parties could then follow up on their own under an NDA or something. Therefore, I list such assets as I know of them at the bottom of each table. In the somewhat rare case of an on-net building list, I include a link.
These two regions are a trial to see how the format works and to nail down the style, so if you have any suggestions now would be a good time. A secondary hope of mine is that some of the lesser known fiber assets out there that have still eluded me might find their way onto the lists. While I will first concentrate on US markets because I know them best, I hope to add a few European markets and maybe Hong Kong along the way.
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Categories: Metro fiber
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I’m glad to see you taking this approach. I’ll be looking forward to the new list breakdowns.
If there’s a way to denote lit vs. dark I think it would be helpful. I know this has been an intractable proposition in the past. However, I think we’re now seeing the emergence of some new drivers for dark, e.g., in smart grid applications requiring distributed antenna systems (analog-bearing RF), financial-services low-latency situations, and by purveyors of various persuasions deploying residential FTT_x_ – type technologies, both telco-TDM and MSO-RFOG based, which are now being adopted in commercial office building contexts.
Many fibercos will continue to eschew these as “one-offs”, but it’s my belief that many will instead embrace them as viable opportunities. I could be wrong, of course. Just a few off-the-noggin ideas.
frank@fttx.org