All-IP, where do I plug in?

In the wake of all the news regarding the OPTA basic OK of KPN’s all-IP migration I was curious about the other side of this story. The news was about the companies that have (DSL) equipment in the KPN local exchanges, locations that KPN tries to get rid of in their move to all-IP (there is a nice schematic near the end of the OPTA doc showing the new network layout).

The other side of this story is of course that this move practically kills LLU. Now that is not such a major landslide as in the Netherlands KPN has been buying alternate DSL providers and their ISP left-right-and-center. Today it is hard to find an ADSL ISP in the Netherlands that is not going over KPN’s infrastructure all the way or even one that is not owned by KPN outright.

I have said it before and I will gladly say it again, a true broadband infrastructure is a practical monopoly. Ok, considering the local situation in the Netherlands it might be a duopoly, with the cable operators also covering almost all the homes. That is, a monopoly for those that will take the investment to go to a true broadband network, as each additional party will have roughly the same investment costs while the available revenue drops. KPN seems to have seen the light and now will run its fiber along that of CityNet when the street is open anyway. UPC is still in denial and trying to filibuster through litigation, and FUD reports by reputable research institutes, knowing they will lose when true broadband is here.

So at some point either KPN or local FTTH initiatives will bring true broadband to every home and company in the Netherlands, and no doubt a similar situation will emerge in other countries. At this point LLU is a thing of the past and these parties will be regulated into offering broadband services to anyone who wishes to burn it.

OK, that being the case, if I am going to run a unified service provider offering a mix of voice, messages, video etc. (a not so hypothetical case) where do I plug in?

Today I can rent space and servers at any of several data centers with plenty of bandwidth to the nearest internet exchange. When this service becomes popular and I want to provide, say, HD multi-party conferencing I will need a lot of bandwidth into the home of that telecommuter. I will need to be able to tell the KPN network that although they are offering a regular 4MB/s Internet connection and some 40MB/s for TV, I do not care, I need KPN to guarantee me 15MB/s with very little loss and delay for as long as the conference lasts between my media servers and that home and charge a reasonable price for it.

The true test of KPNs all-IP plan, and that of the other incumbents, is not if it supports today’s LLU DSL providers they are the past, but will it provide new services of the future.