Fiber vs Copper from the Telcom

Not to sound argumentative but aren't bandwidth and run length considered to be features?

Oh well, thanks for your input.

Features of the physical line yes. I meant features of the circuit itself such as QOS and whether it supports voice etc...

Fiber is also not affected by things like EMI unlike copper. And from a security standpoint someone can tap into copper cable to snoop on the traffic, you can't do that with fiber.

QoS and CoS are implemented at layer 2/ layer 3 and therefore, physical transport really has no bearing on whether those features may or may not be offered. That is more up to the carrier providing the service and the CP (Customer Premise) / PE (Provider Edge) equipment deployed. Almost every LEC and (facilities-based) CLEC will offer some kind of QoS offering these days - but part of the question is whether you will need to purchase it from them or not.

Let's break it down to facilites and then Carrier offerings:  

Nowadays, in most areas, pretty much anything over DS1 will be delivered over fiber (including metro ethernet, DS3, or, of course, OC-x facilities), facilities permitting. It may come down to the building and what may or may not already be installed there...

Let me ask a couple questions:

1. Are you moving into a new facility or an existing facility? How old?
2. Is it multi-tenant or single tenant (just your company)?
3. Who is the ILEC (the incumbent local carrier - If you are in Indy, I will guess SBC/Ameritech)
4. Does the ILEC (LEC) or any competitor (CLEC - examples are TWTC, XO, Level3, MCI (via MFS), plus many local & regional carriers) you may be considering already have the building ""lit" with fiber services? How to find out? Simple - call the carrier's sales rep and give them the address and they can usually tell you within a day.

We happen to use the LEC and one CLEC that both have their own diverse-path fiber into our facility (but we own our own building and we are the only tenant). What you are asking for, if I understand correctly, is whether the transport to the facility will be over fiber or copper. These days, if there is fiber in the ground outside the facility, and the building doesn't already have it, the carrier will usually bring it inside for you - but who pays for the cost of doing that is variable. They have to look at what they will make off what you are ordering, and whether any other tenant (in a multi-tenant building) will ever order any services from them. If it looks like they may severly impact their margin on your contract because they have to eat the install costs, then they can and usually will charge you what is called "excess construction" to get the fiber into the building. If it is already into the building, it's typically a much easier (and potentially affordable) proposition.

As far as QoS - this depends a lot on what type of circuit you want to run it over. I (my employer) use QoS - to one extent or another - over everything from DSL Internet circuits (actually on VPN over this type of circuit) to OC-12 and almost everything in between (Private line T1, FR, MPLS, Metro Ethernet, DS3). In some cases (MPLS), the carrier is aware of my QoS tagging and adheres to it end to end, and in other cases (Private Line T1, Metro Ethernet), the carrier doesn't know or care what I run over it, but because it is essentially *dedicated* bandwidth, I tell my routers what and how to QoS the available bandwidth (which really never varies), and it works wonderfully. Some carriers will offer to carry and observe QoS tagging on Metro Ethernet services, depending on how they offer such services - "shared" bandwidth or "dedicated" bandwidth. Dedicated bandwidth, as the name implies, gives you exactly what you purchased at all times, and doesn't really require the carrier to deal with QoS tagging - as long as you are dealing with somewhat limited distances (again, as the name implies, "metro" distances). At least in practice, it shouldn't, if the carrier's network is engineered decently - the only variable that might be of concern under dedicated Metro Ethernet is jitter, and in my experience with VoIP over Metro Ethernet circuits (5 to 50 miles typically), I have never had a serious jitter issue that could be attributed to the carrier. This same thing applies to Private line T1 or T3 circuits - if you buy a dedicated pipe, you get the whole thing, all the time. Most carriers don't offer a QoS-aware private line T1 or T3 serivice - mostly because it isn't necessary. Private line is nice in its simplicity, but it is typically the most expensive as far as $$ / MBit.

Last hint: if your chosen facility is not already lit with fiber, and your carrier will bring it in, budget plenty of time for this construction (as much as 4 to 5 months). Good Luck!

1.  New facility (currently being built.  Est completion mid to late December.
2.  It will be single tenant.
3.  It appears that we will be going with Time Warner as they are willing to run pure fiber into our building.

We will be running a 2MB channel for a PRI into an older Panasonic 576HD PBX.
We will be running a 4MB channel for internet connection.
We will be running a 10MB Metro Ethernet connection to a co-lo at Time Warner.

PRI Channel will term into a Cisco Router supplied by TW and and off to us to plug into the phone system.
QoS and CoS are backed by a good SLA (I think I have the terminology right here).

We have yet to sign anything but we are hoping that they are true to their word in getting done in 6 weeks.