How hard would it be to get unlimited national bandwith?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › How hard would it be to get unlimited national bandwith?

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b0untypure1

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#442588 22-Feb-2011 22:06

freitasm: TelstraClear doesn't have an unlimited plan... And they don't "manage" any traffic.

Actrix offers an unlimited plan, if you are willing to pay $500+/month for it.

true that, damn link was to a non nz provider :)

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PenultimateHop

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#442598 22-Feb-2011 22:43

freitasm: Peering is all good if the traffic is symmetrical. Otherwise we just go back to the same discussion as MTR (Mobile Termination Rates).

That's very telco-think. Most non-telco ISPs do not care whether peering traffic is symmetrical, as long as it is beneficial.

Beccara: I believe the argument Telecom used was based around "Why should we pay to carrier data from Southland to Auckland and hand it over to another party for free when we get nothing from them"

Yes, that argument was used. And it almost makes sense. But back to the "as long as it's beneficial" comment, I'll carry the bits on my network when received via peering.

Beccara: What content? Telecom has CDN nodes from the major CDN's. Thats the point they made, Peering was mostly a one-way street for them, Telecom serving out alot of traffic and getting little in return.

Actually, it was very much the reverse. Telecom was unhappy at receiving many bits from peers. Ratios of 10:1 (to:from) Telecom were not uncommon.

An ultimate irony was many of those bits being sent from ISPs to Telecom were actually for the ISPs customers behind the former FastIP Direct service.

Ragnor

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#442608 22-Feb-2011 23:01

Saw in one of the NZNOG 2011 videos that Telecom are going to offer cross connects between non Telecom providers in their 19 peering points.

Very interesting, though only useful for ISP's that have deployed LLU, seems like an olive branch to put a lid on talk of regulation to mandate peering.

TwoSeven

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#442643 23-Feb-2011 09:31

I think defining the terminolgy would be a start.

Unlimited to me means fixed rate monthly billing (eg $25/month) like a land line phone rather than per megabyte (usage based) billing.

Is there a fixed speed requirement or not?

Is national traffic on-net or off-net (NZ carriers only).

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freitasm

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#442647 23-Feb-2011 09:41

TwoSeven: I think defining the terminolgy would be a start.

Unlimited to me means fixed rate monthly billing (eg $25/month) like a land line phone rather than per megabyte (usage based) billing.

Is there a fixed speed requirement or not?

Is national traffic on-net or off-net (NZ carriers only).

I think there's some mixed concepts there... You want "flat fee" for "unlimited" use.

"Unlimited" could be "Use your Internet service during a month period, without any slow downs or service interruption due to excess usage. There's no minimum or maximum cap.".

If this is the definition of "unlimited" then the next point would be "how much would you pay for that?

And what speed you want?

A too low flat fee (your suggestion is NZ$25) is obviously not a realistic price due to the costs of distribution, support and maintenance of this technology.

Also bandwidth (the pipe capacity at any time) is limited. This limit comes due to equipments (terabit routers cost more than gigabit routers, and you need more than one to allow redundancy and scalability), access costs (ISPs pay their own providers and so on).

As I said before, you can get "unlimited" now, if you are prepared to pay for it. You can get "unlimited" dial-up right now for cheap. Or you can pay over NZ$500/month for unlimited broadband.

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TwoSeven

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#442798 23-Feb-2011 15:54

freitasm:
TwoSeven: I think defining the terminolgy would be a start.

Unlimited to me means fixed rate monthly billing (eg $25/month) like a land line phone rather than per megabyte (usage based) billing.

Is there a fixed speed requirement or not?

Is national traffic on-net or off-net (NZ carriers only).

I think there's some mixed concepts there... You want "flat fee" for "unlimited" use.

"Unlimited" could be "Use your Internet service during a month period, without any slow downs or service interruption due to excess usage. There's no minimum or maximum cap.".

If this is the definition of "unlimited" then the next point would be "how much would you pay for that?

And what speed you want?

A too low flat fee (your suggestion is NZ$25) is obviously not a realistic price due to the costs of distribution, support and maintenance of this technology.

Also bandwidth (the pipe capacity at any time) is limited. This limit comes due to equipments (terabit routers cost more than gigabit routers, and you need more than one to allow redundancy and scalability), access costs (ISPs pay their own providers and so on).

As I said before, you can get "unlimited" now, if you are prepared to pay for it. You can get "unlimited" dial-up right now for cheap. Or you can pay over NZ$500/month for unlimited broadband.

I am not sure the costs would be that high.

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zombiewan

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#442861 23-Feb-2011 18:48

I think you'd be really surprised..

nickb800

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#442901 23-Feb-2011 21:28

freitasm:

As I said before, you can get "unlimited" now, if you are prepared to pay for it. You can get "unlimited" dial-up right now for cheap.

This.

OP never said anything about the speed he wanted. Theres a list as long as my arm of ISPs that provide unlimited international traffic for $25 or less per month, at 56k

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#442920 23-Feb-2011 22:41

TwoSeven:
freitasm: As I said before, you can get "unlimited" now, if you are prepared to pay for it. You can get "unlimited" dial-up right now for cheap. Or you can pay over NZ$500/month for unlimited broadband.

I am not sure the costs would be that high.

That's what Actrix was (is) charging.

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nickb800

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#442923 23-Feb-2011 22:49

freitasm:
TwoSeven:
freitasm: As I said before, you can get "unlimited" now, if you are prepared to pay for it. You can get "unlimited" dial-up right now for cheap. Or you can pay over NZ$500/month for unlimited broadband.

I am not sure the costs would be that high.

That's what Actrix was (is) charging.

To be fair it could come down a little, with slingshot-quality customer support, no SLA and more visible competition. But its still in that ballpark, well out of reach of the average houshold

Ragnor

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#442925 23-Feb-2011 22:55

Un-metered is a better description for fixed monthly price without a data cap.

Anyway there are a few ISP's offering "unmetered" post Big Time ending, I was looking at it the other day.

Obviously Slingshot should be avoided if you care about getting more than 50KB/s and Actrix have that $400ish / month plan that I didn't bother putting in.

I'm not sure why HD's naked ADSL is more expensive than standard + landline, doesn't make sense to me.

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#442943 24-Feb-2011 06:13

Ragnor: Un-metered is a better description for fixed monthly price without a data cap.

Anyway there are a few ISP's offering "unmetered" post Big Time ending, I was looking at it the other day.

Obviously Slingshot should be avoided if you care about getting more than 50KB/s and Actrix have that $400ish / month plan that I didn't bother putting in.

I'm not sure why HD's naked ADSL is more expensive than standard + landline, doesn't make sense to me.

It it EUBA with a CIR using QinQ? What is the handover speed? Lots of variables that could put the price up.

Anyway getting back to the OP they only wanted unlimited national data. Just looking at one ADSL provider now this is $99 + GST with POTS and $124 + GST without with 5GB international traffic.

Lots of people seem to be completely overlooking the fact that what the OP wants IS available in the marketplace. "flat rate" data both int and national is another issue entirely.

freitasm

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#442951 24-Feb-2011 08:27

Another thing to consider is the way people put two different measure units as one:

revolution488: How hard would it be to get unlimited national bandwith? Because telecom owns most of the lines. I think it would not be that hard.

BANDWIDTH *is* capacity, not usage. It's a bit rate measure unit.

You can have very large bandwidth and still have a small cap. Also, there's no such a thing as "unlimited" bandwidth in practical terms, seeing that it is defined by capacity and infrastructure, not by "plans".

Imagine you have a motorway. With one lane the "bandwidth" is about two cars per second. Add two lanes and the three lanes motorway bandwidth is now five to six cars per second.

The total capacity that can be used is obviously how many cars can go through the motorway, on those seconds per day of usage available in a month. Multiply all and you know how many cars can go through during the month.

Now obviously one can't always achieve the nominal bandwidth, even "full speed". That's because cars slow down in bad weather, slow down for others to leave the motorway, slow down for others to come into the motorway, etc.

Then there are the exits. You leave a motorway where you can drive at a certain speed (the backbone) and get into a small suburb where you can drive at half that speed. The "bandwidth" will be smaller, less cars per second, and until each car reach their destination, things might get queued up on each exit, waiting for the small streets to clear up. You can have a very fast motorway, but if the streets after the exists are slow, then things will not clear as fast as we would like.

The "billing" here is a toll motorway. You pay what you use of it. If you get into the motorway on exit 3A and leave it on exit 65A then the toll is charged on how much you used of the motorway.

Some "motorways" (ISP) charge different prices depending on the type of "vehicle" you are driving. Like in real life, where a heavier truck cause more stress on the motorway than a motorbike, or a trailer can only drive at reduced speeds, so some ISPs manage their traffic.

Even with the talk of Net neutrality some ISPs force heavy trucks (those users that use a lot in high volumes) to slow down on a special lane for them. That's the "prioritisation" they keep talking about. This can include a slow down on that lane, because that causes less impact on the infrastructure.

Again, this is just to show that "BANDWIDTH" is not usage, but capacity.

Asking for "unlimited" bandwidth shows there's a lack of knowledge in the community of what constitutes the products and services being sold, and how they are priced.

I understand I can refine my example with better definition but this should do for the morning...

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Ragnor

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#443038 24-Feb-2011 13:20

sbiddle:

It it EUBA with a CIR using QinQ? What is the handover speed? Lots of variables that could put the price up.

Anyway getting back to the OP they only wanted unlimited national data. Just looking at one ADSL provider now this is $99 + GST with POTS and $124 + GST without with 5GB international traffic.

Yes actually I believe HD are using the newish EUBA0 with 100kbit CIR for the internet service (still 0 for the voice and no vlan tagging/QinQ modem needed) for naked, so that explains the higher price.

That would be xtreme offering un metered national on their business ADSL plans but their pricing for plans with higher international data usage is awful (~$10/GB), not a viable option for most people.

May suit the OP though, so good point.
http://www.xtreme.net.nz/connections/adsl.php

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