|
Indefeasible right of use (IRU) is a contractual agreement between the operators of a communications cable, such as submarine communications cable or a fiber optic network and a client. ==Definition of IRU== The IRU "shall mean the exclusive, unrestricted, and indefeasible right to use the relevant capacity (including equipment, fibers or capacity) for any legal purpose."〔http://contracts.corporate.findlaw.com/agreements/athome/att.iru.1998.12.19.html〕 It refers to the bandwidth purchased after the submarine cable system has sealed the construction and maintenance agreement (C&MA) among the owners or after the system comes into service and where the unowned capacity is available. An IRU may also be purchased from the existing owner. The right of use is indefeasible, so as the capacity purchased is also unreturnable and maintenance costs incurred becomes payable and irrefusable. An "IRU user" can unconditionally and exclusively use the relevant capacity of the "IRU grantor’s" fibre network for the specified time period. In plainer English, the purchase of an IRU gives the purchaser the right to use some capacity on a telecommunications cable system, including the right to lease that capacity to someone else. However, with that right comes an obligation to pay a portion of the operating costs and a similar proportion of the costs of maintaining the cable, including any costs incurred repairing the cable after mishaps. Smaller companies that buy a leased line between, say, London and New York do not buy an IRU – they lease capacity from a telecommunications company that themselves may lease a larger amount of capacity from another company (and so on), until at the end of the chain of contracts there is a company that has an IRU, or wholly owns a cable system. ''(extract from WSJ)'' Pioneered decades ago by AT&T, IRUs allowed competitors to gain access to the costly undersea cables that only AT&T could afford to build. There remains some controversy over booking IRUs as assets in an asset-swap transaction between companies. Since IRU's are technically rights to a physical part of an underground cable, they can be considered as an asset, which means their cost isn't part of the company's operating results, but shows up under PPE. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Indefeasible rights of use」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|