Are people still building SONET networks from scratch?

[will at loopfree.net (Will Orton)]

We've run into an issue with a customer that has been confounding us for a few 
months as we try to design what they need.

The customer has a location in the relative middle of nowhere that they are 
trying to build a protected OC3 to. Ultimately, their traffic on it will be 
packet data (IP/ethernet, not channelized/voice). But they seem to be 
absolutely 100% set on the idea that they build with Cisco ONS boxes and that 
they run and control the D1-D12 bytes in order to manage protection switching 
on the OC3 (and have their DCC channel for management).

Since this is the middle of nowhere, we are having to piece it together from a 
few runs of dark fiber here and there and lit services from about 3 other 
providers to get from the desired point A to the desired point B. The issues 
we seem to be hitting are:

-We seem to be unable to find anyone who sells lit OC3 with D1-D12 
transparency for the client. Sometimes we can get D1-D3, but that's it.

-lit OC3/12/48 is ridiculously expensive comapred to 1g ethernet waves or 10g 
waves (choice LAN/WAN ethernet or OC192)

10g waves are cheap enough that we have entertained the idea of buying them and 
putting OC-192/muxponders on the ends to provide the OC-3, but even then I'm 
having trouble finding boxes that will do D1-D12 transparency for client OC-3. 
Building the whole thing on dark fiber so that we could specify the exact 
equipment on every hop isn't going to happen, as the "protect" path is about 
1000 miles and the geography is such that we don't really have a market for all 
the other wasted capacity there would be on that path.

Having much more experience with ethernet/packet/MPLS setups, we are trying to 
get the client to admit that 1g/10g waves running ethernet with QoS would be as 
good as or better in terms of latency, jitter, and loss for their packet data. 
So far they will barely listen to the arguments. And then going the next leap 
and showing them that we could work towards <50ms protection switching with 
MPLS/BFD/etc packet-based protocols is another stretch.


Am I missing something here that my customer isn't, or is it the other way 
around? 

-Will