Additional strands do not significantly increase the cost. The IRU usually can be considered as a physical asset which can be capitalized, re-sold, traded and used as collateral. As such, the cost of an IRU can be amortized over its 20 year lifetime which results in a monthly cost substantially below that of traditional telecommunication services. Return to Top 10. Customer owned dark fiber can be more reliable than traditional telecommunication services particularly if the customer deploys a diverse or redundant dark fiber route.
Dark fiber is a very simple technology.
It is often referred to as being technologically neutral. Sections of dark fiber can be fused together so that one continuous strand exists between the customer and the ultimate destination. As such the big advantage of customer owned dark fiber is that there may be instances when no active devices are necessary in the fiber path. Since there may be no active devices customer owned dark fiber in many cases can be more reliable than a traditional managed service. Each one of these devices is susceptible to failure and that is why traditional carriers have to deploy complex networks and back-up systems to insure reliability and redundancy.