Cabinet upgrade?

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59 posts

Master Geek

#1175474 13-Nov-2014 21:25

Vodafone came out earlier this year and got no signal. But just to be sure they didn't reorient their antennas in the last few months, I went outside a few minutes ago and tried to get a cellphone signal .. nothing.

Cbfd

307 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1175493 13-Nov-2014 21:38

There is a fibre out to that cabinet .. And has conklins in it - might be upgraded at a later stage using the beer fridge install :) as there isnt good cellphone coverage out there

michaelmurfy

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#1175500 13-Nov-2014 22:14

InstallerUFB: The Cabinet is PIR/B and I think its hosted off Te Awamutu via Otorohanga - I think the school will have an RBI fibre connection not a UFB one (differnt equipment to provide the link)

Derived from Ministry of Education data Fibre provider:
Chorus Fibre initiative: Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI)
Fibre connection status: Connected
School Network Upgrade Status (SNUP): Complete

Basically a RBI Fibre connection meaning many dollars if you're wanting to tap into it I am afraid! Trust me, I've been there and tried that with a school and the ISP was wanting to charge me $1200 for a 50mbit connection, was going to resell it to a community but not enough interest in my case.

There is no way to also tap into the N4L network at the school - they simply won't let you do that and you don't really want to either as it can be quite restrictive.

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sbiddle

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#1175561 14-Nov-2014 07:53

RBI fibre for schools offers a lot of potential. The biggest problem is we have a growing number of rural people who are unhappy with their broadband, but unwilling to pay a single cent more than a person in an urban area for their connection.

With many of these schools if say 10-20 people got together be easily possible to charge upfront costs of maybe $1500 - $2000 per resident and then $150 - $200 per month for a connection somewhere in the vicinity of 30Mbps symmetrical best effort. The problem is it's very clear people simply aren't interested.

People on Conklin's that aren't being replaced as part of RBI are doomed to have poor broadband forever until they accept the solutions are in their hands, either RBI wireless or community based networks.

CraigY

59 posts

Master Geek

#1175570 14-Nov-2014 08:05

Thanks guys .. I have learned a lot from your replies and very much appreciate the time you have spent educating me on this issue. I can see the point of the capital cost not justifying the expense to upgrade a few customers. Didn't realize it was so expensive to do this. If it had been a couple of thousand dollars for an individual to upgrade we probably would have gone for it, but since that is the cost spread over 20 or so customers I can see that would be too much for one. And I would agree that for most customers out here they would not want to spend much more.

The RBI wireless is an option, but do they face the same congestion problems as the ADSL line? What I would hate to do is go through all the trouble to setup a remote 3G modem and wifi link to it, only to find that in the evenings it also drops to 10% or so of its potential.

coffeebaron

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#1175671 14-Nov-2014 10:12

You do get a bit of load during peak time on RBI, but typically most of our connections will still maintain 2-3Mbps during this time. Depending on coverage and site loading, we see speeds between 5-14Mbps outside of peak time. The target is "up to" 5Mbps during peak, so if speeds are dropping significantly below this then we can escalate.
There is also an upgrade path to 4G for RBI, so that will again increase speed and/or capacity.

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hotrok

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Master Geek

#1181986 24-Nov-2014 10:55

The only way of getting these cabinets upgraded is to allow Chorus to upgrade the cabinets and charge those a fee if they want to take advantage of this upgrade. If its $2000 per connection so be it BUT they have to guarantee a certain backhaul per customer base that is not going to piss people off.
But just upgrading cabinets is short term fix anyway, long term you need fibre.

As I said in another post http://b4rn.org.uk/ is the way to do things!

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richms

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#1182010 24-Nov-2014 11:03

CraigY: But if fibre is already at the school, why would they not upgrade the boards to provide better service to the 50 or so customers on that cabinet?

because 50 or so customers is not profitable and has been proven many times rural people are too tight to pay to make it profitable.

Richard rich.ms

CraigY

59 posts

Master Geek

#1182018 24-Nov-2014 11:10

Hi Richard,

I suspect that to be true. I didn't realize how expensive it was to upgrade the cabinet and can now appreciate why Chorus would not want to do that. What I was hoping though was under the new RBI upgrade the govt announced recently where they upped the funding to $350 million specifically to upgrade the copper based cabinets, was that ours would be included. I guess the money is earmarked for more important areas.

CraigY

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Master Geek

#1182755 25-Nov-2014 12:45

Richard,

I found this article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/60883119/government-wont-pay-for-rural-ufb

If I understand, it says the govt has thrown in an additional $150 million to the existing RBI program to be used as:

$100 million for upgrading rural copper (cabinets)
$50 million for upgrading cellular support for tourist areas, etc

So if we assume 12% of the population is rural (taken from Statistics NZ) then we have approximately 540,000 population under this additional funding. If we assume 4 people per family then we have 135,000 families. Using our cabinet as an example, it supports 50 families .. so that means we have 2,700 cabinets that fall under this increased funding. At an average of $50k upgrade per cabinet it would cost $135 million to upgrade all of the cabinets. Which give or take a bit says the Ngutunui cabinet should be funded for an upgrade.

My question then is does Chorus plan on upgrading the cabinet given the increased RBI funding ($100 million) specifically aimed at upgrading rural cabinets. I don't think this is an issue of whether Chorus can economically justify it, but rather, how is this $100 million going to be spent (or allocated).

richms

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#1182782 25-Nov-2014 13:10

Some of them will have a lot more people on them, and need a lot more spent on them to get fiber out to them etc so would be higher up the list.

Also have you verified that there are 50 people on the cabinet, using dsl and wanting an upgrade or just counting houses in the area covered?

Richard rich.ms

wellygary

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Uber Geek

#1182804 25-Nov-2014 13:48

CraigY: Richard,

I found this article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/60883119/government-wont-pay-for-rural-ufb

If I understand, it says the govt has thrown in an additional $150 million to the existing RBI program to be used as:

$100 million for upgrading rural copper (cabinets)
$50 million for upgrading cellular support for tourist areas, etc

My question then is does Chorus plan on upgrading the cabinet given the increased RBI funding ($100 million) specifically aimed at upgrading rural cabinets. I don't think this is an issue of whether Chorus can economically justify it, but rather, how is this $100 million going to be spent (or allocated).

The problem with your rationalisation is that you have assumed its a slush fund for cabinet upgrades , its not

https://www.national.org.nz/news/news/media-releases/detail/2014/08/26/$150-million-boost-for-rural-broadband-initiative

"National will make $100 million available through a contestable fund for communities to improve their connectivity through fixed broadband to homes and businesses. We expect communities, councils and service providers will bid into the fund".

I think you will find that wireless infrastrucure will be seen as the most cost effective option in many situations, rather than upgrading fixed line solutions...

CraigY

59 posts

Master Geek

#1182864 25-Nov-2014 15:23

Agreed .. in our instance there is are two cell towers (Spark and Vodafone) on Pirongia mountain, and then another tower (not sure who owns it) in Kawhia. But in between there is no cell coverage. If instead of updating the cabinet they would use the money to install a tower in between these two sets of towers then in addition to finally bringing cellphone coverage to everyone out here, we would also have the benefit of RBI wireless. Does anyone know of any plans by either Vodafone or Spark to put a new cell tower out in this area?

johnr

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#1182878 25-Nov-2014 15:53

CraigY: Agreed .. in our instance there is are two cell towers (Spark and Vodafone) on Pirongia mountain, and then another tower (not sure who owns it) in Kawhia. But in between there is no cell coverage. If instead of updating the cabinet they would use the money to install a tower in between these two sets of towers then in addition to finally bringing cellphone coverage to everyone out here, we would also have the benefit of RBI wireless. Does anyone know of any plans by either Vodafone or Spark to put a new cell tower out in this area?

This is covered on the Vodafone NZ site

http://www.vodafone.co.nz/network/rural/

pjamieson

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Chorus

#1185917 30-Nov-2014 20:27

If you are experiencing Throughput issues (speed much less than your connection speeds), you are probably Rural and either fed from a Conklin (with E1 Backhaul - up to 7.8Mbit/s) or ASAM with E1 (or ATM Fibre Backhaul with 10's of Mbit/s Backhaul). However ATM Backhaul can also be sub-tended off other ASAM's, which limits their capacity.

The minimum regulated Throughput legislated by the Commerce Commission from 2006 is 32kbit/s over a 15min period (0.03 Mbps download on your Speed-test) and DSLAM's do not allow less than this when full. Most users are far above that, but that doesn't meet today's Internet needs for Video etc in some peoples view, but worth remembering you are connected to a BASIC UBA connection.

The National Government agreed to extend the Rural industry subsidy until 2019, which should cover your area. In the end these Legacy Cabinets need to be upgraded in the next several years, they were not meant to last forever.

For Throughput issues you (and anyone else complaining in your community) should call your Retail Service Provider (RSP) so they can log a case with Chorus (after the normal troubleshooting to ensure it is not something else) for a "Slow Throughput" case to Chorus Assure (Faults). These will come back as to whether there is an upgrade currently planned or not. But they are all logged and will dictate the priority of future investment when it becomes available.

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