While you're at it . . .: Carrier's carrier strategy helps Canadian utility recover network upgrade costs

Qwest, Williams and Frontier aren't the only service providers expanding their fiber networks to serve other carriers. Canadian utility Hydro Quebec has revealed plans to upgrade its internal communications network, which covers Quebec, to data rates up to OC-48 (622 Mb/s) over the next three years and to commercialize that network.

"In the last year, we've shared building costs with different partners, including CATV companies and telephone companies," said Pierre Bouchard, Hydro Quebec's special adviser. "If anyone asks us for services that make sense, we make a proposal."

The company will provide transport to a major Canadian telco, and in the next six months it will install three OC-48 links between Montreal and Quebec, one of which will be dedicated to a key customer, said Bouchard. The company prefers a wholesale approach, he said, although he did not rule out the possibility of offering frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode services.

Hydro Quebec will use transmission and network management equipment from Alcatel Canada Inc., valued at approximately $50 million, to upgrade much of its network from microwave to fiber optics.

"Hydro Quebec was interested [in] a partnership to combine most of its lightwave and microwave requirements," said Alcatel Canada Vice President Jacques Vignacourt. Alcatel's long-range optics also should help minimize the cost of long spans across the tundra by reducing the need for intermediate sites, he said.

The ubiquity of Hydro Quebec's network may appeal to some of its carrier customers.

"In some corridors there are few [carriers], but we have to be there for our own needs," said Bouchard.