LANDING AND LOCAL LOOP LESSONS BY BRIAN CRAWFORD
hen private investors rushed into the submarine cable industry with billions and billions of dollars around the turn of the century, most of them had little experience with the ownership and operation of international fiber optic cable networks. As a result, they were completely unaware of the Cable Landing Station (CLS) access negotiations that the “club cable” Landing Party (LP) and non-landing Party consortium members were forced into with each other. This was as the industry’s traditional “half-circuit” cable ownership scheme suffered an inconspicuous death around the same time. Neither the experienced network operators, nor the new private cable investors, could see that their bandwidth demand forecasts were unrealistic, and both rushed ahead with their own separate development plans. This caused the 2001 peak in system construction shown below.
Prior to the tumultuous peak in 2001, access inside the CLS to the cable system network interface at both ends of a point-to-point circuit was unnecessary before deregulation. This was because circuits were owned in bilateral partnerships with each partner taking responsibility for arranging connectivity to the “half-circuit” on their own side of the circuit. In those days, if one’s part-
ner proposed an expensive connection price on their end of the circuit, then one could also propose a high connection price on the other end. That effectively removed the cost of connections (Backhaul) from the negotiation (unless one did not own the underlying Backhaul network). Of course, in those days, verbal agreements were binding, and the term “repeater” exactly matched the com-
Total System Cost by RFS Year $9 $8 $7 $6
Billions
W
$5 $4 $3 $2 $1 $0
(Source: STF Analytics) 64