Telecom's Cabinetisation Plans

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#96382 22-Nov-2007 12:25

Okay time for my 2 cents, from our point of view Telecom is not actually the bad guy for this, for this to be now raised as a huge issue is a bit strange, Telecom have conducted a number of briefings to it’s wholesale customers where their plans for there NGN have been openly discussed and displayed for all to see, we may not agree with all of the options and deployment choices but the Network design was freely available for all so every one was free to choice the path they wanted to pursue, to raise it now is as I said a bit of a surprise.

I actually remember seeing the presentation where Telecom showed the Cabinets now and the proposed cabinets, a Colleague and I discussed right there that this was going to be an issue for LLU, that was last year !.We wondered if people had thought out the whole feasibility of the LLU option when Telecom would be rolling out this type of network and if it would catch some people out, by the looks of the Media statements floating around it obviously has.

I am presently looking at my Telecom briefing books from June and September and it pretty well lays out the whole Topology including laying out the Cabinet design, I also remember Greg Patchell the GTO explaining to people that they have to put the ISAMs upside down due to the filter arrangements so I don’t believe they could have said anything more it’s up to each company how your business processes work for capital investment and what technology path you wish to choose and to also interpret the briefings maybe the wrong people attended them, now once again we don’t agree with Telecom on everything they are proposing / building but Telecom at least nowadays involves it wholesale customer where we get regular briefings and they at least listen to what we as customers on their network would like.

Now there were representatives of every wholesale customer at all of these presentations, we understood what the ramifications of the network topology would be so we don’t feel that this should be raised as such a huge issue now, everyone had plenty of time to raise it very early on before equipment was put into racks.

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#96385 22-Nov-2007 12:44

maverick:
Okay time for my 2 cents, from our point of view Telecom is not actually the bad guy for this, for this to be now raised as a huge issue is a bit strange, Telecom have conducted a number of briefings to it’s wholesale customers where their plans for there NGN have been openly discussed and displayed for all to see, we may not agree with all of the options and deployment choices but the Network design was freely available for all so every one was free to choice the path they wanted to pursue, to raise it now is as I said a bit of a surprise.

I actually remember seeing the presentation where Telecom showed the Cabinets now and the proposed cabinets, a Colleague and I discussed right there that this was going to be an issue for LLU, that was last year !.We wondered if people had thought out the whole feasibility of the LLU option when Telecom would be rolling out this type of network and if it would catch some people out, by the looks of the Media statements floating around it obviously has.

I am presently looking at my Telecom briefing books from June and September and it pretty well lays out the whole Topology including laying out the Cabinet design, I also remember Greg Patchell the GTO explaining to people that they have to put the ISAMs upside down due to the filter arrangements so I don’t believe they could have said anything more it’s up to each company how your business processes work for capital investment and what technology path you wish to choose and to also interpret the briefings maybe the wrong people attended them, now once again we don’t agree with Telecom on everything they are proposing / building but Telecom at least nowadays involves it wholesale customer where we get regular briefings and they at least listen to what we as customers on their network would like.

Now there were representatives of every wholesale customer at all of these presentations, we understood what the ramifications of the network topology would be so we don’t feel that this should be raised as such a huge issue now, everyone had plenty of time to raise it very early on before equipment was put into racks.

This is the best response I have seen yet. Good to see someone from the wholesale ISPs showing some sense and rationality.

Now how will Paul respond to this?

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#96388 22-Nov-2007 12:56

This is the best response I have seen yet. Good to see someone from the wholesale ISPs showing some sense and rationality.

Agreed, it seem some had the lights on but no one home.

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#96389 22-Nov-2007 13:03

Double dipping on the posting front over at TUANZ

VFNZPaulBrislen

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#96391 22-Nov-2007 13:08

There is a world of difference between discussing cabinet design and seeing an actual roadmap of which exchanges would be phased out first.

Nobody is claiming the ISPs didn't know that Telecom was cabinetising. We all knew. I knew when I wrote about it for Computerworld nearly two years ago. We knew when Telecom first announced it was building an all-IP network and would be investing $1bn in it and that was 2002 I believe.

That's not the point.

The point is that nobody knew which exchanges would be dismantled first until yesterday. So, not 18 months ago when we started technical work on unbundling, not when Telecom last discussed the matter before the Commerce Commission, not when the government announced structural seperation, not at any point since the announcement was originally made did Telecom indicate it was going to start in the urban areas and move on to the rural.

At any one of those points Telecom could have said "By the way, this is all moot as we're going to aggressively swap out these inner city exchanges for cabinets so why are bothering with UCLL when we should be looking at sub-loop unbundling". They did that yesterday after months of consultation with the industry during which they didn't mention it once.

This story on the Stuff site is from August:

Telecom's telecommunications chief operating officer Mark Ratcliffe called it a landmark moment in New Zealand telecommunications.

This story from the Herald at the same event:

Telecom's chief operating officer of technology and enterprises, Mark Ratcliffe, described handing over the access cards as a landmark moment.

"We haven't opened up exchanges to service providers and wholesale customers before and it's great that we finally get to do it," he said.

Couldn't he have mentioned it then?

Then there's this column in the Herald: and Juha wrote something similar as well:

Early this month Telecom wrote to the commissioner pleading for more time to deliver one of the key documents in the process, its "standard terms proposal" outlining how it suggests unbundling could be implemented.

Among its reasons for wanting an extension, Telecom said its staff were working under extreme pressure. It cited its responsibilities under the Health and Safety in Employment Act and said: "There is a real prospect that we will lose more staff as a result of these excessive workloads. ...

Telecom was claiming it couldn't possibly unbundle exchanges as fast as required (even though that was only 15 exchanges per quarter) because of the workload... still no mention of the need to have 2,000 cabinets built in two years and that there was no need to work on any of the exchanges as they would all be shut down.

Telecom had plenty of time and plenty of opportunities to say they were going to do this and they didn't. I don't object to cabinetisation - far from it. It's a vital and necessary part of the process. I object to this outrageous waste of everyone's time and efforts.

Paul Brislen
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Vodafone

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#96392 22-Nov-2007 13:10

Jama: Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

From Mr Russell Stanners - Vodafone Big Wig:
....
The demise of fixed-line is accelerating, he says with a grin, and Vodafone plans to move quickly into the emerging wireless market.

Lets face it Vodafone have self serving interests in growing their bottom line and market share which they intend to take off Telecom. It is a pity that Voda still see the need in delivering broadband over that old copper line technology.

...

"... No more contracts....." anyone?

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maverick

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#96414 22-Nov-2007 16:27

Well just got back from the latest Telecom Briefing session on cabinetisation....and that was interesting I noticed a lot more people attending today than the previous briefings and a lot more questions I wonder why

, a few people looked like they had been caught in the Car Headlights but bascially as far as we are concerned it was nothing new apart the timeframes in a couple of areas being moved forward.

Actually this comment is in a fact very very wrong , Telecom is not agressively going to start swapping out exchanges for Cabinets it's more about Cabinets to the fringe areas and inreasing the bit rate for those users (ie from the 2.3km where coverage was marginal at best)

"At any one of those points Telecom could have said "By the way, this is all moot as we're going to aggressively swap out these inner city exchanges for cabinets so why are bothering with UCLL when we should be looking at sub-loop unbundling". They did that yesterday after months of consultation with the industry during which they didn't mention it once."

So to be fair here you may need to look at the briefing info today and see what your thoughts are based on those.

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Fraktul

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#96418 22-Nov-2007 16:46

Yes some amusing comments at todays presentation

I believe the figure was 2.3km average? So potentially you could end up with having customers which you have sold a CIR service on which exceeds those offered under EUBA for example, these are moved to a new or upgraded cabinet and you do not have an equivalent wholesale bitstream CIR service to offer.

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#96431 22-Nov-2007 17:47

Watching the debate from overseas - it seems obvious that more than a few ISPs either weren't paying attention, or had their focus elsewhere. IMHO I would almost venture to say that some have had too much focus on the legislation and not enough on the technology. I can't say I'm too sympathetic. Of course fibre was going to be rolled out to the cabinets. Even if you had missed all the press releases, articles, info packs, etc about the cabinet plans - surely you could work out what was going to happen next? At the very least what did you expect Telecom was going to do - sit on its arse and just accept that it should be an SOE by proxy - being directed by govt and its competitors? Wake up! And as for saying Telecom should have been more upfront about its plans - since when has the govt or any of its competitors listened?

This is also a classic example of the danger of relying solely on govt legislation to manage this area. Govt put all of its efforts/ eggs into one basket - LLU (even when the industry was saying that copper is not the future). That's the nature of the policy process. I know there are a few proponents of the idea that the govt should run infrastructure - but this is one of the reasons why it shouldn't (not too mention the state of NZ roads and the national power grid - need we say more).

maverick:

Actually this comment is in a fact very very wrong , Telecom is not agressively going to start swapping out exchanges for Cabinets it's more about Cabinets to the fringe areas and inreasing the bit rate for those users (ie from the 2.3km where coverage was marginal at best)

"At any one of those points Telecom could have said "By the way, this is all moot as we're going to aggressively swap out these inner city exchanges for cabinets so why are bothering with UCLL when we should be looking at sub-loop unbundling". They did that yesterday after months of consultation with the industry during which they didn't mention it once."

So to be fair here you may need to look at the briefing info today and see what your thoughts are based on those.

Nicely said maverick. Nice to see some companys are paying attention;-)

uncmil

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#96433 22-Nov-2007 17:49

I'm going to chip in here, and as an aside, I don't use Telecom - my ISP is Slingshot, hence the heavy Slingshot references in this reply. That also means I'm not biased to Telecom in anyway - they offered (and still do) rather bad value for money (not that anyone really does now), and the service wasn't that great (but the 24 hour helpdesk was awesome), so I left. I hated Telecom, and it was my opinion that they had been acting monopolistically and stifling competition and development (not that anyone else was doing anything about it).

Copied and pasted from a post I made at Slingshot's forums.

While this is a little dastardly on Telecom's part, ISPs and everyone else has known about Telecom's plans for the NGN and cabinetisation for ages. Isn't somewhere around 2002 that Telecom started yapping about the IP-core and the NGN and FTTN and the ripping out of exchanges and what not?

I am all for competition - I'm obivously a Slingshot user, and I think it's great that other ISPs are getting a go at stuff now. But I know that it's not all that great.

LLU never was going to be something all that good for the market - Telecom always was going to switch to cabinets and kill that POTS network and the exchanges. LLU is just a way for companies that don't want to or can't afford to invest in their own network (which, let's face it, would be better for the country) to piggyback off Telecom's pile of dung.

Stop whining - roadside cabinets are a good thing - they open the door for more FTTN, they bring the technology closer to the people, drastically shortening some of the copper lopps/links/etc., which means improved speeds and all that sort of stuff. I repeat, cabinetisation is a good thing.

Sure, snuffing the competition isn't good, and we now know that it is a waste for competitors to have invested in their own gear to go into the exchanges - Telecom's fault in someways, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that investing money in something dependant on Telecom was a bad idea. Everyone knew Telecom was killing exchanges, moving to cabinets, and building a NGN.

It was a bad idea to invest in Telecom's stuff by putting in your own gear. How about spending that money to build your own network and backhaul. I.e. something that would actually be a good use of the money and bring some real improvement to New Zealand's telco infrastructure.

Just sayin', just sayin'.

EDIT: I'm just gonna say this - take it for what it's worth. If CallPlus was in Telecom's position, would they think favourably of the competition? No! No decent business would (at least not internally, they might make it look like they do in order to gain reputation with the public though). If CallPlus was the incumbent telco in New Zealand, with control over the national network, local loop, exchanges, cabinets, gear, etc. would CallPlus roll out the red carpet and lay down the welcome mat for its competitors? I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't, and neither would Orcon, Vodafone, WxC or any of the other "little shifty guy" telcos out there.

I don't mean to get on the wrong side of anyone, or insult anyone or otherwise stir the pot, but seriously. Business is business, and the idea of business is to be successful - not to lose to the competition. For business, a monopoly is a good thing - you're the incumbent, you have control and you're raking in the money.

Can we really blame Telecom for wanting to kill competition? Even if that wasn't a factor, can we blame Telecom for wanting to move forward with thier own network through modernisation, as opposed to just about every other telco and ISP in NZ, who just want to piggyback off of Telecom and then moan about it when Telecom actually does something? Because to me, it seems just a little bit silly and petty to moan about Telecom when you won't do anything yourselves.

If anyone other than TelstraClear actually put some effort and money into building their own network, then I think it is legitimate for them to look down upon Telecom from their high horse. Until then, just stop it. At least Telecom is trying to move forward, albeit in a roundabout, kind of strange way.

In addition to all of this - Telecom's a business - not an arm of the government. Unfortunately, they're there to make money, not give everyone everything for free and act on the command of it's competitors and the government. Sure, Telecom could have been slightly more upfront and transparent about its plans to do this, but it's not like anyone was actually listening to them, so it wouldn't have made a difference.

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#96435 22-Nov-2007 17:55

uncmil: LLU never was going to be something all that good for the market - Telecom always was going to switch to cabinets and kill that POTS network and the exchanges. LLU is just a way for companies that don't want to or can't afford to invest in their own network (which, let's face it, would be better for the country) to piggyback off Telecom's pile of dung.

If anyone other than TelstraClear actually put some effort and money into building their own network, then I think it is legitimate for them to look down upon Telecom from their high horse. Until then, just stop it. At least Telecom is trying to move forward, albeit in a roundabout, kind of strange way.

I agree and what I said before I repeat: LLU is not good because instead of investing in new technologies companies will simply want the cheap path of using old technology - and then complain - when in fact they are doing no good for the country's infrastructure.

If instead of using Telecom's stuff they had put the money into new networks then we would be better served - and there would be real competition in providing infrastructure that we so much need.

It looks like the MSM just wants to show the crying ISPs but do not really look at the problem - no surprise there...

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#96441 22-Nov-2007 18:26

I find it quite amusing how out of touch some providers (ironically, most of these more vocal providers are having issues of their own) can go. Clearly based off WorldXchanges response, it gives one hope knowing that there is at least one wholesale internet provider who 'gets it' and is aware of whats happening.

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#96453 22-Nov-2007 19:47

Can I ask some questions about this? If I am not mistaken (and it is very possible I am) an aDSL lines performance is impacted by three elements? The distance from the exchange, the contention ratio on the DSLAM and the backhaul from the DSLAM to the ISP's gateway...is this broadly correct? So if I am near to an exchange (say 500m) I should get great performance on my piece of twisted pair, but if the contention ration of my ISP is 500:1 when others log on I am going to get a slowed service?? Then if the ISP/Telco only has a 2Mb backhaul (just for arguments sake) then that means my bandwidth from the DSLAM to my house becomes irrelavent as the bottleneck is in the backhaul?

Sooooo, if Telecom do all this cabinetisation (sp?) have they made public what they are doing about the contention ratios or backhaul? Or does this not matter when you take the exchanges out of the loop (sorry bad pun)

Also, and this is not intended to be a troll, if in 2 years time we have cabinets but the potential to deliver 20Mb+ costs $120/mth because there is no competition for Telecom will we all be looking back at this thread and saying....whilst we were busy saying "told you so" to the ISP's we all had our lunch cut by the same company who has been doing it for the last 20 years??...I hope not

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#96454 22-Nov-2007 19:48

Whew this a huge topic and it's not as simple as it sounds there guys, There are a lot of intelligent people in both the industry and the informed onlookers and I see by the post’s here a lot of thought has gone into the post’s, a lot of it I myself agree with yet others will not, the bueaty I guess of a democracy and a public forum.The justification for a lot of these emotional response’s from people in the industry both here and the press will be because they have bet their companies future strategy and large amount of capital investment on a technology path that they think may now not be the best choice. Who’s to blame ? it’s easy to blame Telecom as we all have over the years but I don’t feel in this case that’s correct, others will disagree but that’s their right.

I believe we were all presented with the right information around LLU with Telecom Briefings and presentations and opportunities to discuss with Telecom the impact of there NGN network but some companies jumped into technology choices as soon as the announcement was made around LLU and have been pretty focused on this path they made there choices as we made ours, did they see the big picture of what Telecom would be looking to build with the NGN project that will open to debate by many people in the industry, we ourselves didn’t see this announcement as a surprise we had the same info as everyone else and this is what we totally expected to see based on the info supplied, we are not trying to be smart or smug about this just trying to point out that it was each companies responsibility I feel to evaluate the info supplied and take a course of action in the post LLU decision that best suits them , we decided very early that LLU would not be the answer , would it be cost effective the answer for us was no for a number of factors, hence the reason we have been strong supporters of UBA products and not LLU, we were in the minority until recently.

Also Telecom has been under a fair bit of pressure from the Government and the Industry as whole for a while and regulation has come their way big time, but in saying that I think that they are looking to embrace this new type of culture and to use the Operational separation as a positive and I personally think that you see that in some of their new appointments Dr Paul Reynolds, now take a look at where he came from BT, he headed up BT’s wholesale and transformed this into a huge success and is the shining business unit in BT all this came from operational seperation, so pretty sure there are some pretty good synergies around what was done there and what could be done here, here is a man thats actually done it and I'm guessing they imployed him to do the same here, will it work ? time will tell I guess, but I don’t think Telecom are now like they were in trying to ground you out, they are trying to I believe grow the wholesale business, they want us as customers, to do that I as a Telco SP will look to buy wholesale access from them as we look to buy wholesale access from any supplier, I think you will find the other Companies were going to offer there choice of products at a wholesale level and possibly now see that under threat, I don’t know just a guess.

Also should Telecom not roll out cabinets and not improve on the poor network that we currently have have now, absolutely not, I as a buyer of these services want better and faster now so I can give our customers the better and faster products and services that we have now for both VOIP and Internet the better the access the better our products will work, you also have to remember they are under obligations and commitments to improve the Broadband services to New Zealanders and I guess it’s there right to deploy the technology they see fit but they are doing this in consultation with the wholesale Telco’s / ISP’s which is a huge change, I can assure you the old Telecom never did.

There are going to be other points of view’s on this from other Telsco / ISP’s and they have the absolute right to question Telecom over this and I respect that, it’s just that I don’t think Telecom hid any of this, the information was in front of us all to digest and question, if they had issues they could have been raised a lot earlier and the current hostility in the media releases looks to be a bit of opps / panic we may have got this wrong …….well that’s my 50 cent’s worth as I could go on and back and forward and I expect to see response from others looking at it from another view point I just feel in this case for a change it may not all be Telecoms fault

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#96455 22-Nov-2007 19:58

pressF1:
Sooooo, if Telecom do all this cabinetisation (sp?) have they made public what they are doing about the contention ratios or backhaul? Or does this not matter when you take the exchanges out of the loop (sorry bad pun)

Yes this is also under consulation with the wholesale customers, they want to hear what we want as customers from there we would hope they build the products that we wish to buy off them, an example of this is the EUBA spec that was arrived at after discussions with all the wholesales customers, we all decided what we required in a spec and then that was presented to Telecom they are now building this as a product, the same philosophy is being applied to backhaul products.

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