Following article from Teledotcom should be of interest to MFNX longs and others interested in telecom service issues (it's long but meaty):

The Blame Game

Slow bandwidth provisioning is weighing down long-haul and local access network providers. Why are they
pointing fingers at each other?

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo and Brian Washburn

http://www.teledotcom.com/521/features/tdc521_blame.html

The last paragraph of the accompanying sidebar article is quite interesting:

(begin excerpt) Sky-high installation costs have led dozens of MAN providers to Metromedia Fiber Network Inc. (White Plains, N.Y.), a dark fiber giant in metro areas. Metromedia builds out fiber and sells it to providers, which save money in installation costs and manpower in many cases. The final connection from backbone to building is what makes a MAN expensive and precious, and the metro operators know it. "There are thousands of miles of long-distance fiber," says Davnet Ltd. (Melbourne, Australia) chief network architect Isaac Orr, referring to the ready availability of competitive pricing and bandwidth exchanges. "There aren't a lot of companies that are dealing with the last mile to the customer." (end excerpt)