broadband strategies handbook.pdf - Khazar University

networks running along grids or railroad tracks. National connectivity canbe enhanced by facilitating telecommunications regulations that allowelectricity providers and railways to act as wholesale bandwidth providers.Kenya Power and Lighting Company Limited, an electrical utility, isleasing dark fiber running along its backbone to service providers. 18 InNorway, the fiber backbone of Ventelo spans the entire railway infrastructure,covering 17,000 kilometers. Ventelo is the second largest wholesaleprovider in Norway, offering dark fiber and collocation services. 19• Ensuring open access. Despite the general benefits of competition, itmay be inefficient in some areas to have competing backbone networks.In such cases, a single network can be built, but protectionsmust be put in place to ensure competition among service providers,including nondiscriminatory access for all downstream providers.Singapore, for example, has imposed structural separation for thedeployment of its next-generation national broadband network (NBN)in an effort to minimize infrastructure duplication, increase wholesaletransparency, and promote retail competition for the benefit of consumers(IDA 2010).Metropolitan ConnectivityBeyond network backbones, connectivity is needed to connect smallertowns and villages to the backbone and provide links in and around metropolitanareas. These links are sometimes called the “middle mile.” Suchlinks can be provided by satellite, microwave, or fiber optic cable, with thelatter becoming increasingly common due to its high capacity. Metropolitanarea networks are often established for high-traffic locations such asmajor cities by routing traffic along high-capacity fiber optic rings. Thispart of the broadband supply chain also includes links used to transporttraffic from distant points, such as a wireless base station, to an aggregationpoint in the network, such as a mobile telephone switching office or othernetwork node (United States, FCC n.d.). This particular function in wirelessnetworks is often referred to as “backhaul” (that is, hauling traffic backto the network).Regional and Metropolitan LinksIn many cases, as governments develop policies to encourage backbonedevelopment or the rollout of local access networks, the metropolitan218 Broadband Strategies Handbook