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<font size=3>I agree with almost everything that you have said about NLR
and I2,<br>
but I have to take exception to this last paragraph. A great many
<br>
of the rural areas of our state have more than adequate fiber<br>
deployment because the rural phone providers in this state have <br>
invested in fiber deployment for over 20 years. For the most part,
<br>
these rural LECs put their customers first. On the other hand, some
<br>
phone companies with dense population centers in NM put their money
<br>
in 1) other states, 2) paying attorneys to fight regulation, 3) <br>
paying SEC fines for past bad behavior, 4) paying their high-priced
<br>
executives' defense attorneys in criminal lawsuits, 5) paying for <br>
expensive media advertising saying how much better they are, 6) paying
<br>
lobbyists to overturn consumer-oriented regulation at the State and
<br>
Federal level, and 7) paying attorneys to fight with their
customers.<br><br>
The challenge is not to "push" network services to the
edge. The <br>
challenge is to understand that the same services can be had in rural
<br>
areas of NM today, but that such services will cost much more because
<br>
the cost per person is more in rural areas. I would offer that the
<br>
solutions can be found by inviting the rural LECs to partner in some
<br>
innovative ways instead of paying out-of-state consultants mega-bucks
<br>
to find out what exists. <br><br>
I have never had a rural LEC in NM tell me I could not order a
T1/DS1<br>
or a T3/DS3 (usually provisioned on fiber). Our urban phone company
<br>
has responded that they cannot provide even a DS1 on more than one <br>
occasion, unless I want to pay "construction costs". <br><br>
My two cents.<br><br>
Marianne Granoff<br>
NM Internet Professionals Association<br><br>
<br><br>
At 08:34 AM 2/12/2008 -0700, Arthur Maccabe wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">In the end, it's critical that
New Mexico move forward in building <br>
adequate communication infrastructure. This is far more important
in <br>
New Mexico than in our neighboring states like Arizona or Utah
where <br>
population is much more centralized and they tend to ignore the
rural <br>
parts of the state. I like to think of our challenge as the
need to <br>
push (network) services to the edge. As we go through this
process, <br>
there will be false starts. We can spend our time complaining
about <br>
the problems that we have run into, or we can try to learn from
<br>
failures and move on -- there's clearly a lot more to
do.</font></blockquote></body>
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