The broadband grants that will be allocated by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) appeal to a number of telecom service providers, but perhaps none more so than Global Crossing (GLBC). The carrier, which runs an IP backbone, offers dozens of services, from video and audio conferencing and toll-free VoIP to dedicated Internet access and frame relay. In other words, it’s just the sort of company positioned either to expand its own broadband network thanks to the government subsidies, or help rural counterparts do it.
But Global Crossing remains undecided about its role in this year’s Congressional economic stimulus efforts. That’s because it’s hard to know what to do since the NTIA has yet to decide what types of projects it will fund, as well as criteria for those rollouts. Whatever happens, Global Crossing is adamant about one issue: The government and telecom cannot overlook the importance of subsidizing the middle mile, or the connection between an ISP and the Internet backbone.
Miles in the Middle
The middle mile plays a vital part in the network. For RLECs, the problem with getting broadband to underserved regions, the areas for which the broadband stimulus funds are intended, is not a lack of last-mile resources. Rather, the trouble comes from an inability for existing operators to run their networks at top speeds because of slow middle-mile connections linking their facilities to network access points miles away near urban zones.
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| Global Crossing's Paul Kouroupas |
So, if the government and companies focus just on the last mile, they’ll miss a critical opportunity to advance the nation’s broadband infrastructure. If the middle mile stays the same, data traveling the network will “hit congestion and slow everything down,” said Paul Kouroupas, vice president and senior counsel for Global Crossing. Thus, the answer is to improve the last mile while “matching it with equivalent middle-mile connectivity,” Kouroupas said.
“The two need to work in tandem,” he said. Otherwise, he added, “efforts are wasted.”
That’s where, on an implementation level, Global Crossing comes in. The company has been talking with rural providers and community fixtures such as hospitals and universities – all potential grant applicants – to talk up its middle-mile capabilities. It’s also submitted comments to NTIA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, another agency that will distribute loans for broadband buildouts, asking staff to be sure to consider the function of the middle mile as they nail down funding standards.
These rural incumbents are at the forefront of the middle-mile issue, Kouroupas said. Some haven’t refurbished their last mile as much as they could or would like because the cost of a middle-mile revamp is too great, he said. Considering that some middle miles could run up to 300 miles long, it’s easy to see how the expenditure would add up.
“It’s not cheap,” said Kouroupas.
