what broadband speed is reasonable? (aka poor contention rates!)

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › what broadband speed is reasonable? (aka poor contention rates!)

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#698579 9-Oct-2012 17:02

NonprayingMantis: look at it this way.
you were getting a better service than expected before when there were fewer users than there was capacity. they were undersubscribed so everybody got more bandwidth.

now that they have taken on more people in the cabinet (and this will be a chorus thing, not telecom) the speeds have dropped back to the level that you 'should' be getting when the cabinet is fully subscribed.

they let motorways get congested at peak hours for years before they upgrade them. this is the same kind of thing.

sucks for you unfortunately, but that is the nature of things. sorry that isn't much help but there really isn;t anything that you, telecom or any other ISP can do about it short of you moving house.

zl4plm

45 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 4

#698580 9-Oct-2012 17:07

NonprayingMantis: look at it this way.
you were getting a better service than expected before when there were fewer users than there was capacity. they were undersubscribed so everybody got more bandwidth.

now that they have taken on more people in the cabinet (and this will be a chorus thing, not telecom) the speeds have dropped back to the level that you 'should' be getting when the cabinet is fully subscribed.

they let motorways get congested at peak hours for years before they upgrade them. this is the same kind of thing.

sucks for you unfortunately, but that is the nature of things. sorry that isn't much help but there really isn;t anything that you, telecom or any other ISP can do about it short of you moving house.

Sorry I dont accept that!

with a 6.5MBps modem speed to have down rates of 400K- 300Kbps a second isnt acceptable

That clearly shows the cabinet backhaul is falling over in peak times ...

As I said ... if it was a distance thing or a particular app or webpage I could live with it ....

Im damm sure you would be unhappy to if you had to live with it LOL

If its backhaul capacity then that can be dealt with .... to say tough but we are still charging you the full amount each month but you can't use it is crap !

NonprayingMantis

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#698582 9-Oct-2012 17:14

zl4plm:
NonprayingMantis: look at it this way.
you were getting a better service than expected before when there were fewer users than there was capacity. they were undersubscribed so everybody got more bandwidth.

now that they have taken on more people in the cabinet (and this will be a chorus thing, not telecom) the speeds have dropped back to the level that you 'should' be getting when the cabinet is fully subscribed.

they let motorways get congested at peak hours for years before they upgrade them. this is the same kind of thing.

sucks for you unfortunately, but that is the nature of things. sorry that isn't much help but there really isn;t anything that you, telecom or any other ISP can do about it short of you moving house.

Sorry I dont accept that!

with a 6.5MBps modem speed to have down rates of 400K- 300Kbps a second isnt acceptable

That clearly shows the cabinet backhaul is falling over in peak times ...

As I said ... if it was a distance thing or a particular app or webpage I could live with it ....

Im damm sure you would be unhappy to if you had to live with it LOL

If its backhaul capacity then that can be dealt with .... to say tough but we are still charging you the full amount each month but you can't use it is crap !

ah, I just realsied your survey results are almost entirely cut off on my browser. I copy pasted your post into word and now i can see you have posted dozens of speedtest results you may want to reformat as I sus[pect other people will have the same problem.

I thought you meant that your speeds were dropping down to 6Mbps, which is pretty good.
dropping to 300kbps is pretty bad though you are right.

Talkiet

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#698583 9-Oct-2012 17:15

[snip]
If its backhaul capacity then that can be dealt with .... to say tough but we are still charging you the full amount each month but you can't use it is crap !

As has been pointed out, it's not an issue under the direct control of any retail ISP, including Telecom. It's an investment decision made by a completely separate company called Chorus.

Bear in mind that if Chorus invest the $$$ to upgrade the backhaul, they will expect a return on that investment.

The Retail ISP will be paying the same amount for the chorus input product as they are in other similar areas without, or with less congestion.

Who in your opinion should pay for the backhaul upgrades, and how would they fund it? Depending on what they need to do it might be a few tens of thousands up to millions.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

zl4plm

45 posts

Geek
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#698620 9-Oct-2012 18:16

Date Time    Ping    Down Speed   Up Speed

28-Sep
23:05:00    159   1.04      0.09
29-Sep
07:20:00    137 4.29        0.66
09:30:00    142       1.3        0.08
10:30:00   150         1.2              0.7
12:00:00   171         0.8      0.64
13:00:00    140   1.59          0.71
16:30:00    134 3.8        0.74
22:00:00    165      1.2         0.7
30-Sep
08:50:00    77    5.7         0.74
12:04:00   78      1.4   0.7
16:30:00    153        1.7           0.7
21:00:00    147    0.6       0.7
22:50:00     137   2.04       0.7
00:08:00   140    1.6      0.7
1-Oct
06:50:00    133    5.47      0.74
18:13:00   156        0.9          0.67
22:40:00    192    0.48          0.6
23:00:00    161    1.1       0.6
2-Oct
07:05:00    137      4.9        0.7

reformatted as it was taken from an excel table

zl4plm

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Geek
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#698621 9-Oct-2012 18:21

Talkiet:
[snip]
If its backhaul capacity then that can be dealt with .... to say tough but we are still charging you the full amount each month but you can't use it is crap !

As has been pointed out, it's not an issue under the direct control of any retail ISP, including Telecom. It's an investment decision made by a completely separate company called Chorus.

Bear in mind that if Chorus invest the $$$ to upgrade the backhaul, they will expect a return on that investment.

The Retail ISP will be paying the same amount for the chorus input product as they are in other similar areas without, or with less congestion.

Who in your opinion should pay for the backhaul upgrades, and how would they fund it? Depending on what they need to do it might be a few tens of thousands up to millions.

Cheers - N

I am aware that its a Chorus issue

upgrading the back haul might be as simple as adding some additional bandwidth - that may or may not be simple

My point was in the first instance ... what is classed as 'a reasonable level of service'

Telecom says it cannot guarantee a level so in effect says pay your money and its a lottery if you get something

I used to get a decent service .... its DSL ... 6mb I dont expect miracles .... but I dont expect not to be able to operate more than a couple webpages before it falls over - in a house of 4 users it makes it nigh on impossible to use!

As I said before .. this situation for West Melton will only get worst ... hence my attempts to get someone to look at it!

Cheers!

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ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#698661 9-Oct-2012 19:49

zl4plm: what is classed as 'a reasonable level of service'

Telecom says it cannot guarantee a level so in effect says pay your money and its a lottery if you get something

I'm not sure where 'reasonable' has come from. As Chorus nor Telecom guarantee any particular level of speed or reliability, if it works at all, it meets the product requirements.

Unfortunately this is systematic of what is effectively a monopoly in much of the country, and poor governmental mandates for minimum performance of "broadband" developed some time ago.

At a technical level, my understanding is that the ADSL1 equipment that Chorus started rolling out back in Jetstream days (remember Spot!?) have very limited bandwidth per unit (where a number of subscribers terminate) something like 16Mbps per 24 odd subscribers. So once the ports fill up with full speed ADSL subscribers, everyone on the unit slows down.

I guess the expectation then was that 128/128 or 256/256 was fast enough for most people.

As you might imagine, the equipment is not cheap to replace, and Chorus are in many cases under no obligation nor competitive pressure to do so. It's only because of a few brave souls putting in their own LLU gear and threatening Chorus/Telecom's broadband business that most of the country has decent broadband at all, in my opinion.

Ultimately, your complaints will get you nowhere; it is very much a case of lump it or leave it (or buy a very expensive alternative offering). This is the kind of issue that UFB and RBI are in place to solve, but like most NZ infrastructure projects they are running 5-10 years behind demand.

On the plus side, it looks like RBI is coming your way in the next year or so, this makes you luckier than some :)

plambrechtsen

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#698711 9-Oct-2012 20:59

To me it sound like you may be on a conklin.

The problem there is that they only have a 6mb syncronis link typically (3 stacked E1's).

If your cabinet is being upgraded under RBI then I would be pretty happy. As at least you know when Chorus will be making it happen.

Otherwise there are always the options of Satellite or Mobile Broadband if you're willing to put your hand in your pocket. Or perhaps there is someone closer to a cabinet that you could run point to point wifi connection to.

As has already been suggested the other option is to move to an area already covered with VDSL coverage so then you know you will be connected via an EUBA connection.

Happy to look up your address if you PM it to me or email me pl at telecom dot co dot nz and I can take a further look over and above what Neil has already done.

colinuu

246 posts

Master Geek
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#699022 10-Oct-2012 12:23

To zl4plm:
This is an unfortunately familiar story, I experienced exactly the same here in Turakina, and I figure there are many West Miltons and Turakinas around the country. Here's my (simplistic) take on the story so far:

Back in the day when Telecom rolled out their Jetstream ADSL service, they fitted DSLAM equipment supported by a low capacity backhaul to many remote exchanges. The backhaul was commensurate with the number of ports provided and the line speed at the time of 256kbps. Although ridiculously low by today's standards, it was 5 - 6 times faster than what we perviously had, and everyone was happy.

Later on, line speeds were opened up to "max speed" (7Mbps for those near the exchange). While there remained some empty ports, users were still happy by and large with the increased speed. It was never blindingly quick, and sometimes choked, but was mostly pretty good.

Nowadays all the infrastructure is in the hands of Chorus. Chorus have no retail customers, and are under a financial imperative to maximise earnings which they do by connecting more users to the network. If there is an empty port available they will connect a new user and collect the additional revenue from the ISP. Chorus don't care about the quality of service, and the ISP appears to have no influence over it. The end result is what we see happening today with choked up data streams and unhappy users.

For Chorus it is a simple business decision. They could install increased capacity backhaul which would make the users happy. It shouldn't cost a lot, given that Telecom installed the existing infrastructure for a relatively small number of users without going broke, but they would not increase their earnings without putting on more users. So bottom line is they won't do it. Instead they increase their earnings by connecting people in the urban areas to the road side cabinets and now to the UFB fibre (making great use of the government funding...)

The end result will be that the wireless operators will move in on the rural areas and pick up all the unhappy ADSL users. Eventually Chorus will find they have too few users and pull the gear out because it is uneconomic to maintain. Although Chorus have now lost some revenue, they will be happy due to less ongoing maintenance costs. And the rural users end up with a mostly pretty good service once again, but at a higher cost. This will keep the urban members of Geekzone who believe rural people should always pay more for everything happy. It's a win-win situation all around really (except for the poor rural resident who doesn't really count much anyway...)
　

Lastly, a quote from Vodafone's website about RBI:

Pricing
We are committed to meeting the government’s objective that rural areas will receive urban-like pricing.
It is also important to note that all wireless operators charge rural and urban customers the same rates for voice, txt and data, unlike fixed broadband where prices are often different. We expect the RBI to allow retail service providers to deliver urban prices to rural customers

When you compare the up-front installation costs and ongoing data charges for RBI broadband with urban connections, you can see that this isn't actually happening. But we are told that the RBI pricing is government regulated. So what is it to be - urban prices to rural customers, or regulated prices based on what was a couple of years ago? Will the regulated pricing come down over time to meet the urban prices, or will there always be a sizeable lag? It doesn't take too much imagination to come up with your own answers...

Colin

plambrechtsen

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#699037 10-Oct-2012 12:45

In regards to the cost of installing a cabinet. The typical cost is around 250k per cabinet from the numbers I have read online and seen talked about. That's including the actual equipment being installed, trenching the fibre to the cabinet, resource consents for digging up the road for the fibre and installing the cabinet and lastly the labour to do the full end to end installation and cutting across all the copper pairs.

So if you were interested in funding that, I am sure I could put you in touch with the correct people within Chorus to assist with that.

Also remember that's just the wholesale price of internet which is heavily regulated. That's not including any of the additional costs with providing a retail internet service.

colinuu

246 posts

Master Geek
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#699305 10-Oct-2012 20:15

plambrechtsen: In regards to the cost of installing a cabinet. The typical cost is around 250k per cabinet from the numbers I have read online and seen talked about. That's including the actual equipment being installed, trenching the fibre to the cabinet, resource consents for digging up the road for the fibre and installing the cabinet and lastly the labour to do the full end to end installation and cutting across all the copper pairs.

But that's for a modern cabinet supporting adsl2+/vdsl - right? What's involved with say doubling the 4Mb backhaul to 8Mb? Such would probably be sufficient in most cases to restore the standard adsl service to a level equivalent to what we were getting before, which would restore happiness.

Also remember that's just the wholesale price of internet which is heavily regulated. That's not including any of the additional costs with providing a retail internet service.

Bottom line is We expect the RBI to allow retail service providers to deliver urban prices to rural customers. I contend that this expectation is not being met, least of all by Vodafone themselves.

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johnr

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#699307 10-Oct-2012 20:20

colinuu:
plambrechtsen: In regards to the cost of installing a cabinet.? The typical cost is around 250k per cabinet from the numbers I have read online and seen talked about.? That's including the actual equipment being installed, trenching the fibre to the cabinet, resource consents for digging up the road for the fibre and installing the cabinet and lastly the labour to do the full end to end installation and cutting across all the copper pairs.

But that's for a modern cabinet supporting?adsl2+/vdsl - right? What's involved with say doubling the 4Mb backhaul to 8Mb? Such would probably be sufficient in most cases to restore the standard adsl service to a level equivalent to what we were getting before, which would restore happiness.

Also remember that's just the wholesale price of internet which is heavily regulated.? That's not including any of the additional costs with providing a retail internet service.

Bottom line is We expect the RBI to allow retail service providers to deliver urban prices to rural customers. I contend that this expectation is not being met, least of all by Vodafone themselves.

RBI Pricing is regulated wholesale RBI pricing is regulated as well

All this INFO can be found online with a Google search

Cbfd

307 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#699334 10-Oct-2012 21:26

The price of updating backhaul of e1s depends on how they are feed either being copper circuits or over fibre - obivously copper backhaul costs alot more to upgrade due to more hardware needed to be added alng the cable run etc

plambrechtsen

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#699387 10-Oct-2012 22:33

colinuu:
plambrechtsen: In regards to the cost of installing a cabinet. The typical cost is around 250k per cabinet from the numbers I have read online and seen talked about. That's including the actual equipment being installed, trenching the fibre to the cabinet, resource consents for digging up the road for the fibre and installing the cabinet and lastly the labour to do the full end to end installation and cutting across all the copper pairs.

But that's for a modern cabinet supporting adsl2+/vdsl - right? What's involved with say doubling the 4Mb backhaul to 8Mb? Such would probably be sufficient in most cases to restore the standard adsl service to a level equivalent to what we were getting before, which would restore happiness.

The backhaul is going as fast as the equipment can go from my understanding so it would require a new conklin for new capacity to be added. For tha first Chorus would require end-of-life equipment (another conklin) to be sourced, require a resource consent and council permission to build a whole new cabinet next to the existing one doubling the current footprint which is very tightly controlled by the local council. Then re-routing half the cables from the current cabinet to the new one and assuming there was sufficient capacity for the new backhaul.... Why would you go to all that cost and effort for a end of life device to service a small number of customers?

colinuu: Bottom line is We expect the RBI to allow retail service providers to deliver urban prices to rural customers. I contend that this expectation is not being met, least of all by Vodafone themselves.

Isn't RBI a 5 year project... and we're only into year 1??? And aren't you getting a new cabinet under RBI?... So isn't Chorus (not Vodafone) doing what they said they would do?

Chorus is providing the fibre backhaul for Vodafone and further cabinets in higher use areas. Vodafone are providing the additional towers and mobile coverage in the remote areas.

Cbfd: The price of updating backhaul of e1s depends on how they are feed either being copper circuits or over fibre - obivously copper backhaul costs alot more to upgrade due to more hardware needed to be added alng the cable run etc

All Conklins are fed by stacked E1's which is copper. If there was already compatible fibre fed to those cabinets normally Chorus would have already upgraded those cabinets. Normally getting fibre to those cabinets is done as part of upgrading them to provide ADSL2+/VDSL service via the ALU ISAM 7302.

Cbfd

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Ultimate Geek
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#699431 11-Oct-2012 06:10

@plambrechtsen
Not all conklins are feed from copper - alot are feed via fibre with hdsl or shdsl links

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