Telecom Takes UFB Priority

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3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417302 14-Dec-2010 21:53

PenultimateHop: Just out of curiosity, why do you think NZ went from ~200 access focussed ISPs to less than 30? (And really, probably less than 20).

Industry consolidation... yes, I do take your point. For the small guys to survive, once Telecom and Clear got into the game properly, they needed to get together so that they could get better value from marketing and systems that could scale to 10's of thousands of users by simply throwing a single faster machine at the question.

Why does a franchise business model work well? Why don't we see 2,000 locally owned petrol stations with 1500 brands - Mairehau Petrol Ltd. Why are most of us running windows rather than one of the thousands of Linux distros or other OS choices?

I do tend to agree that 33 fibre providers is a bit bonkers... but so is 1.

Personally I'd like to see the Minister give Enabled chch, the dun team that area, vector akl, city link wgtn and telecom the rest. Do we end up with ~8 then?

D

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matisyahu

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#417308 14-Dec-2010 22:02

DonGould:
PenultimateHop: Just out of curiosity, why do you think NZ went from ~200 access focussed ISPs to less than 30? (And really, probably less than 20).

Industry consolidation... yes, I do take your point. For the small guys to survive, once Telecom and Clear got into the game properly, they needed to get together so that they could get better value from marketing and systems that could scale to 10's of thousands of users by simply throwing a single faster machine at the question.

Why does a franchise business model work well? Why don't we see 2,000 locally owned petrol stations with 1500 brands - Mairehau Petrol Ltd. Why are most of us running windows rather than one of the thousands of Linux distros or other OS choices?

I do tend to agree that 33 fibre providers is a bit bonkers... but so is 1.

Personally I'd like to see the Minister give Enabled chch, the dun team that area, vector akl, city link wgtn and telecom the rest. Do we end up with ~8 then?

D

I personally would sooner see a nationalised wholesaler operating a nation wide broadband network where Telecom along with others are merely the layer that floats onto rather than doing the heavy lifting - allow the competition to exist at the user visible layer of the equation and not the providing of the network itself.

We have roads but there are many cars that run on those roads from many different vendors that abide by certain standards and regulations as being one example. There are multiple freighting companies and yet we have single organisation that owns all the highways - the competition occurs at between the freight vendors not based on who owns the road but who can provide the best service.

Pricing is not the only part of the equation; there is the issue of performance, services offered, reliability, quality of customer service and so on. If there is a single vendor operating as the wholesaler and regulated by the government which then on sells it to ISP's then part of the equation has been solved.

What also needs to be solved is a new international cable - a massive cable terabytes in size and selling capacity at rock bottom prices which will allow caps of 200GB rather than the puny and pathetic ones we have today; run Telecom's international traffic racket into the ground after raping and pillaging New Zealand customers for years under their unchecked monopoly.

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

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417318 14-Dec-2010 22:12

kawaii:What also needs to be solved is a new international cable - a massive cable terabytes in size and selling capacity at rock bottom prices which will allow caps of 200GB rather than the puny and pathetic ones we have today; run Telecom's international traffic racket into the ground after raping and pillaging New Zealand customers for years under their unchecked monopoly.

Pacific Net - it's being worked on. The next problem is having enough customers/networks that will pull the data.

SCX hit this problem when they started. In .au they couldn't get data to users because t.au where the only provider and not interested in moving data to users. I talked to the consultant they hired at the time to figure out what to do in .au and he outlines the frustration they had.

I wish that Kordia had sorted out ppc2 by now.

D

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matt45

311 posts

Ultimate Geek

#417324 14-Dec-2010 22:20

sbiddle:
PenultimateHop: Pro-question: How many ISPs have fully automated interfaces to TNZ's provisioning systems? (This used to be called OOT, it may have a new name now)

It's still called OOT and it hasn't changed much!

Some people also call it Wireline ... there are automated tools which push to and from it but it is still largely the big pile of fail it has always been.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417326 14-Dec-2010 22:24

Hey I've watched telstra.au use spreadsheets for database tasks for over a decade now.

How hard is access to learn to use?

D

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ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#417327 14-Dec-2010 22:29

PenultimateHop:

One of the biggest problems people bemoan is poor performance of the current networks. The only way the other countries that are often cited achieve consistently good performance is through scale economics (either very low population density on the networks, or very high population density). Take this away and the ISPs and LFCs are all going to be extremely challenged to build networks that will meet and exceed performance characteristics that are expected by end users.

Scale of economics helps here I am, living in a country with the same size and population New Zealand has, and people do not complain about the poor performance of the network. The local loop may sometimes be bad but after that, it's full speed across the country and halfway to Europe (to Sydney in terms of comparable distance), and doesn't slow too much to North America nor Asia.

Just saying that it can be done.

When the local loop is 100 or 1000 Mbit/s, it gets trickier but a decent bandwidth is doable. My outsider understanding is that the NZ problem isn't just the local loops but the domestic capacity as well -- it's too expensive.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417332 14-Dec-2010 22:35

45k hand overs that are being pushed past the limit also can't be helping.

Really interesting chat with someone yesterday who told me that t.nz were being soft on hand over limits expect on isps that had pissed them off... at least that's what I thought I understood.

I've yet to confirm that ISPs can simply order the hand over they'd like - I've read comments about stuff that seems to suggest it should be doable, but not an actual confirmation.

Had a really interesting chat with a power industry guy over the weekend (we were at the same flying doo) and he was just shaking his head when I said the hand over for a 50mbit tail was 96k. He commented that if they ran power that way the lights would go out at dinner time.

D

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matisyahu

1623 posts

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#417340 14-Dec-2010 22:49

DonGould:
kawaii:What also needs to be solved is a new international cable - a massive cable terabytes in size and selling capacity at rock bottom prices which will allow caps of 200GB rather than the puny and pathetic ones we have today; run Telecom's international traffic racket into the ground after raping and pillaging New Zealand customers for years under their unchecked monopoly.

Pacific Net - it's being worked on. The next problem is having enough customers/networks that will pull the data.

SCX hit this problem when they started. In .au they couldn't get data to users because t.au where the only provider and not interested in moving data to users. I talked to the consultant they hired at the time to figure out what to do in .au and he outlines the frustration they had.

I wish that Kordia had sorted out ppc2 by now.

D

What is the ETA On Pacific Fibre coming on line or will I be dead by the time it actually turns into reality - like so many projects in New Zealand that never turn from pub talk into reality.

As for 'having enough customers to pull the data' - as long as Pacific Fibre don't do something stupid like make it expensive for ISPs to purchase then there should be no reason why in 2 years there are 200GB plans for the amount one pays for 40GB plans today.

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

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#417347 14-Dec-2010 22:58

kawaii: What is the ETA On Pacific Fibre coming on line or will I be dead by the time it actually turns into reality - like so many projects in New Zealand that never turn from pub talk into reality.

As for 'having enough customers to pull the data' - as long as Pacific Fibre don't do something stupid like make it expensive for ISPs to purchase then there should be no reason why in 2 years there are 200GB plans for the amount one pays for 40GB plans today.

No idea what time line PF are on. I don't know that .nz is on its own for idea that don't get past the pub... but I do take your point.

With Sam and Tindell behind it I'd have thought it should get somewhere... they've both done plenty with data already.

As for pushing 200gb plans... hummm do the math on this hand over stuff and I can't see how you could have to many customers on a 40gb plan without running aground.

But who knows... is there even the demand there yet on large for 200gb plans?

.au have 1tb plans now, but how many ppl are using them, no idea.

D

Promote New Zealand - Get yourself a .kiwi.nz domain name!!!

Check out mine - i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz - don@i.am.a.can.do.kiwi.nz

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#417363 14-Dec-2010 23:27

kawaii:
As for 'having enough customers to pull the data' - as long as Pacific Fibre don't do something stupid like make it expensive for ISPs to purchase then there should be no reason why in 2 years there are 200GB plans for the amount one pays for 40GB plans today.

In two years data plans should be pub talk.
"Do you still remember the old days when people had internet data caps?"

Regs

4066 posts

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Snowflake

#417366 14-Dec-2010 23:52

DonGould: Personally I'd like to see the Minister give Enabled chch, the dun team that area, vector akl, city link wgtn and telecom the rest. Do we end up with ~8 then?

what are you basing this 'decision' of yours on? i've had connections delivered over vector fibre in auckland with several unscheduled outages over the period, and connections with citylink in wellington, again with several unscheduled outages - some of which lasted over 8 hours. interestingly enough, a few of the vector outages coincided with power outages.... pretty poor for a 'power' company. i've never had an unscheduled outage with telstraclear or telecom fibre in auckland - even through the power outages.

one of my concerns with a lot of smaller fibre companies is that they lose the cost benefits of scalability. when they are required to meet a specific price, will they take shortcuts on the network build and maintenance so they can deliver the price point? are there any penalties for excessive outages or poor service built in to the service delivery specification?

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Zeon

3916 posts

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#417367 14-Dec-2010 23:55

kawaii:
DonGould:
PenultimateHop: Just out of curiosity, why do you think NZ went from ~200 access focussed ISPs to less than 30? (And really, probably less than 20).

Industry consolidation... yes, I do take your point. For the small guys to survive, once Telecom and Clear got into the game properly, they needed to get together so that they could get better value from marketing and systems that could scale to 10's of thousands of users by simply throwing a single faster machine at the question.

Why does a franchise business model work well? Why don't we see 2,000 locally owned petrol stations with 1500 brands - Mairehau Petrol Ltd. Why are most of us running windows rather than one of the thousands of Linux distros or other OS choices?

I do tend to agree that 33 fibre providers is a bit bonkers... but so is 1.

Personally I'd like to see the Minister give Enabled chch, the dun team that area, vector akl, city link wgtn and telecom the rest. Do we end up with ~8 then?

D

I personally would sooner see a nationalised wholesaler operating a nation wide broadband network where Telecom along with others are merely the layer that floats onto rather than doing the heavy lifting - allow the competition to exist at the user visible layer of the equation and not the providing of the network itself.

We have roads but there are many cars that run on those roads from many different vendors that abide by certain standards and regulations as being one example. There are multiple freighting companies and yet we have single organisation that owns all the highways - the competition occurs at between the freight vendors not based on who owns the road but who can provide the best service.

Pricing is not the only part of the equation; there is the issue of performance, services offered, reliability, quality of customer service and so on. If there is a single vendor operating as the wholesaler and regulated by the government which then on sells it to ISP's then part of the equation has been solved.

What also needs to be solved is a new international cable - a massive cable terabytes in size and selling capacity at rock bottom prices which will allow caps of 200GB rather than the puny and pathetic ones we have today; run Telecom's international traffic racket into the ground after raping and pillaging New Zealand customers for years under their unchecked monopoly.

ScX is run on commercial terms and faces competition in Australia. The price they charge for NZ is the same as that in Australia where there is competition. One of the main issues is the contracts that an ISP has to enter e.g. buy X bandwidth for 10 years. For small ISPs thats really hard as its a big commitment and thus risky whereas with APE or WIX (or even Telecom/Telstra transit) its much less risky. That's why there are international wholesalers in that area, who themselves also face the same problem. Some are being a little more creative to get around this such as Vocus whose new Sydney/Auckland peering product is amazing $2500 AUD for a 100mbps port with the peering switch in Sydney I believe.

In any case, the whole point of UFB isn't just about taking what we are doing now and making it faster. It's about changing the way we use broadband e.g. a DHB could have a whole bunch of clinics around their area with robots and nurses with the specialists in the big cities able to use telepresnce, ultra fast transfer of xray or CAT data so they can provide real time consultations etc.

Or for say the Indian community able to launch their own TV channel delivered over fiber which would have been impossible if they needed to broadcast it from Kordia - at the same price as TVNZ or tv3 but with a fraction of the potential market density.

Or for your girlfriend whose away in Dunedin being able to be with you virtually with ultra HD 3d video conferencing and tactile feedback making you feel like your there. That saves what, a $200 airticket and countless amounts of CO2 (if your that way inclined).

For as much as I hate Muldoon - "think big". International access to resources will become less important in the scheme of things if you think of the above and the fact caching technology will only get better and be able to keep the data in NZ. The big thing is we need to get Telstra and Telecom onto the NZIX exchanges NOT JUST the APE and WIX but all of them.

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Zeon

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#417370 15-Dec-2010 00:00

Also, while I don't like Telecom Retail because of their peering policy and I don't like the handover congestion caused because of Telecom Wholesale; I think Chorus is right on the money and the best part of Telecom by far. the FTTN is a brilliant program and after we met with them on the Exchange tour I really got the impression that they are very interested in providing the best layer 1 service.

The thing with fibre is that its nothing like DSL. Really it either works or doesn't, no sync speeds slow or anything like that. The biggest challenge will be home wiring.

And choosing Telecom was a must. If they had been allowed to compete UFB would have been a failure as most people wouldn't want to shift from copper due to their houses not being ready. This way - Telecom has a direct incentive to encourage people move off their legacy copper network as otherwise their new company is a dead duck.

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matisyahu

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#417379 15-Dec-2010 00:24

DonGould:

No idea what time line PF are on. I don't know that .nz is on its own for idea that don't get past the pub... but I do take your point.

With Sam and Tindell behind it I'd have thought it should get somewhere... they've both done plenty with data already.

As for pushing 200gb plans... hummm do the math on this hand over stuff and I can't see how you could have to many customers on a 40gb plan without running aground.

But who knows... is there even the demand there yet on large for 200gb plans?

.au have 1tb plans now, but how many ppl are using them, no idea.

The problem is that people don't use them because they're expensive; if you had a 200GB service priced at the current 40GB then people would be flocking to using the internet connection as a way to be entertained, video chat, conferencing such as stickcam with a group of mates etc. When people see a big plan they adjust their habits accordingly - all the things they put off because they're bandwidth heavy they start doing.

I had a look at Pacific Fibre and it appears that'll come online around 2013 so it must be already in the process of getting things ready to move off the planning board to getting laid.

ojala:

In two years data plans should be pub talk.

"Do you still remember the old days when people had internet data caps?

We can only wish but its almost a certainty we'll have old out of touch groggy old men thinking "all you need internet for is email and reading the news" as the current crop of CEO's of companies now think that people only use their internet for. If you provide the bandwidth and traffic allowance people will use it to its fullest - peoples behaviour is moderated because the fools who run these companies have constricted what people can do by having the traffic allowances so insanely low.

Zeon:

ScX is run on commercial terms and faces competition in Australia. The price they charge for NZ is the same as that in Australia where there is competition. One of the main issues is the contracts that an ISP has to enter e.g. buy X bandwidth for 10 years. For small ISPs thats really hard as its a big commitment and thus risky whereas with APE or WIX (or even Telecom/Telstra transit) its much less risky. That's why there are international wholesalers in that area, who themselves also face the same problem. Some are being a little more creative to get around this such as Vocus whose new Sydney/Auckland peering product is amazing $2500 AUD for a 100mbps port with the peering switch in Sydney I believe.

BUt where is the competition? here we are in 2010 and we're still talking about idiotic allowances that were around 2-3 years ago - don't ISP's realise that what people expect is going up and they're staying static? all evidence shows there is no competition in the international capacity because if there was then the price would be driven down and then passed along to us - Joe or Jane Sixpack sitting in front of our PC.

In any case, the whole point of UFB isn't just about taking what we are doing now and making it faster. It's about changing the way we use broadband e.g. a DHB could have a whole bunch of clinics around their area with robots and nurses with the specialists in the big cities able to use telepresnce, ultra fast transfer of xray or CAT data so they can provide real time consultations etc.

Which is all very nice but the reality is that there are already fibre optic networks that exist and could allow such feats but even today one doesn't see it being used - why would another fibre network magically make things work that couldn't be bothered being implemented earlier.

Or for say the Indian community able to launch their own TV channel delivered over fiber which would have been impossible if they needed to broadcast it from Kordia - at the same price as TVNZ or tv3 but with a fraction of the potential market density.

Which can only happen if national traffic is cheaper - if they tried to broadcast now they would be bankrupt in a few days. People keep telling me that international traffic is expensive - so why not differentiate the two? why not have flat rate national traffic and an international traffic allowance?

Or for your girlfriend whose away in Dunedin being able to be with you virtually with ultra HD 3d video conferencing and tactile feedback making you feel like your there. That saves what, a $200 airticket and countless amounts of CO2 (if your that way inclined).

For as much as I hate Muldoon - "think big". International access to resources will become less important in the scheme of things if you think of the above and the fact caching technology will only get better and be able to keep the data in NZ. The big thing is we need to get Telstra and Telecom onto the NZIX exchanges NOT JUST the APE and WIX but all of them.

Why would it become 'less important' - the locally provided content is horribly pathetic; all the websites worth visiting are hosted in the United States for example, the only way to drive down the request for international capacity is not only fancy caching technology (that never seems to work properly and constantly causes problems for end users) but about the development of some decent local websites and services worth visiting. But with that being said it is time for the ISP's to realise that we will always be looking outside of NZ for content no matter how much they protest - so it is a matter of them sucking it up and finding a way to reduce that reliance.

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

Zeon

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#417387 15-Dec-2010 00:59

Why would it become 'less important' - the locally provided content is horribly pathetic; all the websites worth visiting are hosted in the United States for example, the only way to drive down the request for international capacity is not only fancy caching technology (that never seems to work properly and constantly causes problems for end users) but about the development of some decent local websites and services worth visiting. But with that being said it is time for the ISP's to realise that we will always be looking outside of NZ for content no matter how much they protest - so it is a matter of them sucking it up and finding a way to reduce that reliance.

There is a MASSIVE pricing difference for business internet NOW. For example we have UNLIMITED national data and regularly move 1TB+ per month yet pay $5 per GB of international.

The main problem is, that while ISPs could offer free national - the problem is that Telecom Wholesale congestion means that they have to price it otherwise there would be massive congestion (and its already bad enough). Local Content will come, when we start seeing a few CDNs beyond Akamai here you will see. Think about Youtube and ISP caches - half of the videos I watch on Orcon are cached on their Google cache so I can watch them for free at work...

In fact, the big project I'm working on ATM we are planning on running a private CDN network (for a web app so quite a bit more complicated) to service NZ alongside other countries. If ISPs offer free domestic then it will encourage content providers to provide it here. It's a chicken and egg situation really.

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