Spark Upgrade New Zealand programme

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#1664523 6-Nov-2016 11:46

Slightly off topic, I know, but I've been thinking about the idea of fusing together the fibre and wireless delivery that Spark is pursuing here. How feasible would it be fibre companies to set up some sort of wireless access point outside your house connected to fibre, thereby avoiding the painful process of having a fibre run to your actual dwelling? In some respects it may not be ideal, but for a lot of people it could save a lot of problems with bad installs, negotiating with neighbours and landlords, etc.

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#1664649 6-Nov-2016 18:57

alasta:

Slightly off topic, I know, but I've been thinking about the idea of fusing together the fibre and wireless delivery that Spark is pursuing here. How feasible would it be fibre companies to set up some sort of wireless access point outside your house connected to fibre, thereby avoiding the painful process of having a fibre run to your actual dwelling? In some respects it may not be ideal, but for a lot of people it could save a lot of problems with bad installs, negotiating with neighbours and landlords, etc.

Wireless is not a replacement for a physical connection at all.

For a reasonably equal experience you would want LOS for best signal, once you look at all the build of providing power out there etc... it makes far more sense to simply get it installed inside and skip any potential issues of such a setup.

Bad installs, they need to be attacked head on so the LFC can look into it, possibly improve on their QC..

Negotiations are due to become easier next year with the changes that are being bought in.

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#1664654 6-Nov-2016 19:11

chevrolux:

Hehehe I wonder what Chorus thinks of this.

Very interested to see this "street in a week" happen. Really hard to understand how it might work with coordinating with all the home owners. I don't see how they could do that differently to how MDU's are dealt with. But clearly they have thought about it. Again, keen to see what Chorus thinks. Delayed Chorus UFB installs are just the bane of my life lately.

I don't really understand how this street in a week thing works in a practical sense.

Does anyone have any actual information that explains it? Are they taking over from Chorus on a street by street basis, handling consents and actual installs?

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#1664658 6-Nov-2016 19:22

networkn:

chevrolux:

Hehehe I wonder what Chorus thinks of this.

Very interested to see this "street in a week" happen. Really hard to understand how it might work with coordinating with all the home owners. I don't see how they could do that differently to how MDU's are dealt with. But clearly they have thought about it. Again, keen to see what Chorus thinks. Delayed Chorus UFB installs are just the bane of my life lately.

I don't really understand how this street in a week thing works in a practical sense.

Does anyone have any actual information that explains it? Are they taking over from Chorus on a street by street basis, handling consents and actual installs?

it still in trial with UFF, not chorus according to the press release.

I can assume all day on how exactly this is planned out, but i would love to see a real world example of where it has been done and statistics on start to end completion times.

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#1664741 7-Nov-2016 01:13

They really do need to start rolling out 700MHz LTE support in the Hutt Valley because at the moment the 4G coverage is spotty at best. Dear people at Spark, you can actually use 700MHz in built in urban areas - you do realise that...don't you?

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

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#1664748 7-Nov-2016 06:14

matisyahu:

They really do need to start rolling out 700MHz LTE support in the Hutt Valley because at the moment the 4G coverage is spotty at best. Dear people at Spark, you can actually use 700MHz in built in urban areas - you do realise that...don't you?

Spark are putting 700Mhz Band 28 LTE on towers in Christchurch now.

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#1664761 7-Nov-2016 08:00

andrewcnz:

matisyahu:

They really do need to start rolling out 700MHz LTE support in the Hutt Valley because at the moment the 4G coverage is spotty at best. Dear people at Spark, you can actually use 700MHz in built in urban areas - you do realise that...don't you?

Spark are putting 700Mhz Band 28 LTE on towers in Christchurch now.

The problem with 700 in urban areas is you really need to wind down the TX strength of the transmitters otherwise you hit the noise floor pretty quickly. With tens if not hundreds of thousands of connections all in the same area using the upper frequencies due to them not going a longer distance makes completely sense.

Think of it like 2.4G wifi.. just on a larger scale of your city.

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#1664762 7-Nov-2016 08:04

networkn:

chevrolux:

Hehehe I wonder what Chorus thinks of this.

Very interested to see this "street in a week" happen. Really hard to understand how it might work with coordinating with all the home owners. I don't see how they could do that differently to how MDU's are dealt with. But clearly they have thought about it. Again, keen to see what Chorus thinks. Delayed Chorus UFB installs are just the bane of my life lately.

I don't really understand how this street in a week thing works in a practical sense.

Does anyone have any actual information that explains it? Are they taking over from Chorus on a street by street basis, handling consents and actual installs?

I don't know the exact details but I would expect that a letter drop would be done on a street saying "Hi we're from Spark and UFF want want to upgrade your street between x and y, if you meet all these requirements (owner or can get permission as a renter, Spark customer or want to be, happy to be at home during a day this week) then we can get you upgraded."

To me it makes a lot of sense if you can get the civil and internal build crews all cracking on a street at the same time.

If it were me I would have had them during the initial build doing exactly that. When the street build work was complete, follow on with a build team to deploy everyone onto Fibre. Since having them all work on the same street for a week or two makes a whole lot more sense than racing around the city on a house by house basis connecting people up.

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#1664763 7-Nov-2016 08:10

BarTender:

If it were me I would have had them during the initial build doing exactly that. When the street build work was complete, follow on with a build team to deploy everyone onto Fibre. Since having them all work on the same street for a week or two makes a whole lot more sense than racing around the city on a house by house basis connecting people up.

In the early days of the NBN before it became a complete train wreck they were installing fibre to the ETP on the premises during the rollout. The plan was you either let this happen (for free) during the rollout in the street or would have to pay for it if you opted to not have it done until a later date.

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#1664781 7-Nov-2016 09:26

A street a week sounds more efficient overall. However what if the number of people on your street wanting fibre are low? Are you low priority until there is sufficient mass in your street?

Mike

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#1664963 7-Nov-2016 13:00

MikeAqua:

A street a week sounds more efficient overall. However what if the number of people on your street wanting fibre are low? Are you low priority until there is sufficient mass in your street?

Aa Bartender suggested, if they do a street a week, they want to make sure its a good makeup, so you would expect them to gather registrations of interest. Then proceed with the bigger numbers.

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#1665343 7-Nov-2016 20:56

Like I said above, my only offer from Spark was for wireless, even though there is fibre in the street.

hio77

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#1665347 7-Nov-2016 21:07

linw:

Like I said above, my only offer from Spark was for wireless, even though there is fibre in the street.

Which LFC services your area though? Spark are only trialing this with UFF currently AFAIK.

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matisyahu

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#1665358 7-Nov-2016 21:28

andrewcnz:
matisyahu:

They really do need to start rolling out 700MHz LTE support in the Hutt Valley because at the moment the 4G coverage is spotty at best. Dear people at Spark, you can actually use 700MHz in built in urban areas - you do realise that...don't you?

Spark are putting 700Mhz Band 28 LTE on towers in Christchurch now.

BarTender:
andrewcnz:
matisyahu:

They really do need to start rolling out 700MHz LTE support in the Hutt Valley because at the moment the 4G coverage is spotty at best. Dear people at Spark, you can actually use 700MHz in built in urban areas - you do realise that...don't you?

Spark are putting 700Mhz Band 28 LTE on towers in Christchurch now.

The problem with 700 in urban areas is you really need to wind down the TX strength of the transmitters otherwise you hit the noise floor pretty quickly. With tens if not hundreds of thousands of connections all in the same area using the upper frequencies due to them not going a longer distance makes completely sense.

Think of it like 2.4G wifi.. just on a larger scale of your city.

The only other option is building another base station because right now I'm sitting in the middle of the doughnut that can either be addressed by either implementing 700MHz or putting up another base station. The likelihood of the later occurring is highly unlikely which means the only other option is the 700MHz option.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

chevrolux

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#1665399 7-Nov-2016 22:31

BarTender:

networkn:

chevrolux:

Hehehe I wonder what Chorus thinks of this.

Very interested to see this "street in a week" happen. Really hard to understand how it might work with coordinating with all the home owners. I don't see how they could do that differently to how MDU's are dealt with. But clearly they have thought about it. Again, keen to see what Chorus thinks. Delayed Chorus UFB installs are just the bane of my life lately.

I don't really understand how this street in a week thing works in a practical sense.

Does anyone have any actual information that explains it? Are they taking over from Chorus on a street by street basis, handling consents and actual installs?

I don't know the exact details but I would expect that a letter drop would be done on a street saying "Hi we're from Spark and UFF want want to upgrade your street between x and y, if you meet all these requirements (owner or can get permission as a renter, Spark customer or want to be, happy to be at home during a day this week) then we can get you upgraded."

To me it makes a lot of sense if you can get the civil and internal build crews all cracking on a street at the same time.

If it were me I would have had them during the initial build doing exactly that. When the street build work was complete, follow on with a build team to deploy everyone onto Fibre. Since having them all work on the same street for a week or two makes a whole lot more sense than racing around the city on a house by house basis connecting people up.

Yea that's how I figured they would do things too. So I really only see it being a statistics exercise. The install would only 'start' once they collect all consents and booking dates for the street. Then I could totally see it happening in a week. However, could still take a month or two get all the consents and a date planned. But then I guess if they had a team just doing paperwork and staying on top of home owners it could work really well. That seems to be the biggest failing at the moment - land owners aren't being proactively chased for consents and stuff only happens when you escalate.

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