I see that as it struggles to avoid bankruptcy William Communications continues to announce a lot of deals for delivering TV programming over its long haul fiber network. They carried the Super Bowl, The Oscars, and now many Arizona Diamondbacks baseball games. They never announce terms like revenue or profit so it is difficult to tell if they are making any money or not on these deals. So I wanted to question you fiber experts as to pros and cons of Fiber vs. Satellite for this use. And if you see any possibility that video over fiber will soak up any of the fiber glut anytime soon.

Assuming the network is already built and the satellite is already up: does either method have a significant cost advantage? How about transmission time, I consider anything over 3 seconds too long for “live” sports coverage. Would say a game in Boston transmit back to Arizona in under 3 seconds (best guess) over fiber? I assume that fiber would transmit better in bad weather, and be more secure than even a scrambled satellite signal, right? But do any operators care enough about those factors to pick fiber over Satellite?

Separate question, does anybody think that with network assets selling at 5 to 15 cents on the dollar, a long haul network would make a good fit with a big ISP like AOL or MSN?
Thanks in advance for any insights.

http://www.williamscommunications.com/index.html