Xtra how about giving us uncapped National traffic.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Xtra how about giving us uncapped National traffic.

BrutusNZ

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#130944 3-Oct-2013 13:45

Another thread and a recent News article (Orcon and Kim Dotcom) got me thinking about a pet peeve of mine... that is "Why we don't have uncapped National Traffic". Yes I know some of the network providers (including Xtra) allow uncapped traffic to certain social networking type websites but it seems very strange to me that they (the ISP's) generally treat National and International traffic the same. We can all appreciate there are costs for acquiring International traffic but what are the costs for National traffic, are they really the same costs? I had an account with IHUG years ago that had unlimited National traffic so the "Our infrastructure can't support it" answer is rubbish. So how about it Xtra?

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#907083 3-Oct-2013 13:46

Try explaining to my parents or my sisters what is national traffic and what is not and how they can tell the difference

NonprayingMantis

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#907087 3-Oct-2013 13:49

too hard to explain to customers, and also probably too hard to monitor and bill for.

.co.nz does not mean national traffic.

Inphinity

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#907088 3-Oct-2013 13:50

johnr: Try explaining to my parents or my sisters what is national traffic and what is not and how they can tell the difference

This. There's no guarantee that, say, a .co.nz domain is hosted in NZ. Likewise, there's plenty of .com domains that are hosted here.

michaelmurfy

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#907089 3-Oct-2013 13:51

Different ISP, different core routers, many more customers connected. They could do it with some work but this will involve quite a bit of work with their BNG's as well as potential network downtime (which they really don't want) - It's not something you can do at a flick of a switch. They have a 500gb data offering which is more than enough for most people also.

The real question here is why should ISP's zero rate anything? It just adds more complexity to their networks and since Telecom is more aimed towards your general New Zealander this is something they don't want. If you're wanting zero rated NZ traffic (as well as international) you might want to look at going on a dedicated CIR plan.

Plus your average customer doesn't understand that most .co.nz domains ain't even hosted in NZ.

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freitasm

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#907140 3-Oct-2013 14:22

And it's actually "Telecom". The "Xtra" brand disappeared years ago.

garvani

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#907142 3-Oct-2013 14:25

Back in the day i can understand why this was a good thing with 20gb caps being as high as you could go. Although it wasn't completely uncapped Paradise offered national traffic at 1/10th of international traffic, it was useful on the NZ based silverstripe dc++ server. Now that caps have risen to 100+ gb i don't see the point personally, that and the points raised already.

MikeB4

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#907145 3-Oct-2013 14:27

johnr: Try explaining to my parents or my sisters what is national traffic and what is not and how they can tell the difference

easy, 99.999999999999% of NZ traffic is international, for more info look at google earth or an old fashioned atlas.

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#907165 3-Oct-2013 14:41

It would be nice to have sites such as TNVZ/TV3 ondemand unmetered

stevenz

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#907190 3-Oct-2013 15:00

Don't one/some ISPs already zero-rate OnDemand traffic?

Orcon supposedly zero-rates "local" Steam traffic (or did anyway), but no guarantee that Steam uses the local mirror(s) so it's a bit of a crapshoot.

What else is there in NZ that produces enough traffic to warrant it being zero-rated for the general public anyway?

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#907192 3-Oct-2013 15:04

with the price that data is now and where it is going is there really a need for this

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AidanS

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#907196 3-Oct-2013 15:17

Well if Orcon's new campaign delivers enough of a blow then we may see more unlimited plans from the other ISPs.

-Aidan.

Inphinity

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#907197 3-Oct-2013 15:19

stevenz:
What else is there in NZ that produces enough traffic to warrant it being zero-rated for the general public anyway?

Don't some of the major CDNs have nodes in NZ - Akamai, etc - as such any content off these networks is *potentially* (if it's delivered form an NZ node) zero-rated in this circumstance.

I still don't think it's worth the hassle though. Then people will just get antsy when some .co.nz site they downloaded 10GB off isn't zero rated because it's actually hosted by DreamHost in the US or something.

AidanS: Well if Orcon's new campaign delivers enough of a blow then we may see more unlimited plans from the other ISPs.

-Aidan.

Most ISPs are offering caps well and truly large enough to cater to the majority of users (Telecom 500GB, Snap 1TB etc), so I don't see 'unlimited' being too big a deal. If anything, though, it may encourage a few other ISPs to lower cost on their capped plans, which would be nice, but I won't hold my breath.

l43a2

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#907198 3-Oct-2013 15:19

orcon being a smaller ISP i doubt it will cause much of a stir tbh

AidanS

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#907201 3-Oct-2013 15:23

l43a2: orcon being a smaller ISP i doubt it will cause much of a stir tbh

I know several people who have already switched purely for the unlimited data plan. Though I also know many people that are afraid to touch them for their past reputation.

More on topic, many ISPs already offer uncapped data to services such as TVNZ Ondemand.

-Aidan.

nickb800

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#907206 3-Oct-2013 15:33

Playing devils (ISPs) advocate here - having free national data would disincentivize ISPs from implementing caching infrastructure which as we know improves performance for the end user (or not if you are a TCL customer).

If ISPs didn't charge for national data, why would they want to spend money on a cache that reduces the amount of data coming from overseas (and being paid for by users in the form of higher plans or overage charges) and increases the amount being served locally (and served for free)? Currently all data is charged equally, and thus ISPs have the incentive to deliver this data at the lowest cost, which usually involves buying caching appliances or hosting/peering 3rd party caches.

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