[TelstraClear] How did telstra lay cable?

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tombrownzz

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#69571 11-Oct-2010 16:29

So people in Christchurch and Wellington have telstraclear's cable tv. How did telstraclear originally lay the cable? Did people have to buy a telstraclear tv service and then would telstra run a cable from the roadside into a person's property?

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2031 posts

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#390551 11-Oct-2010 16:44

For Chch from memory it was a planned build on a street by street basis.
And when Telecom went door-knocking on a street-by-street basis as it was rolled out and offered terms to customers to stay then TLSClear found the economics extremely challenging so ceased the rollout.

Welly, with its overhead cables, coupled with purchasing the Saturn business meant the sunk cost acquisition plus lower cost rollout meant customer acquisition was less economically challenged. In the early days the point of differentiation (free local calling between Kapiti Coast and Wellington) made the offering compelling vs Telecom.

Someone else help out with the history lesson?

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

graemeh

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#390552 11-Oct-2010 16:46

You do mean Saturn, don't you? (Telstra bought Saturn and got the network that way).

To answer your question though, when you signed up to take the service they came around, wired your house up and connected you to the cable(s) in the street.

ockel

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#390553 11-Oct-2010 16:47

Ooops.

Forgot to add that it was an offering based around telephony first and then bundling the rest.

Of about 60 odd thousand HFC customers there are around 40 odd thousand TV customers. So about 2/3 bundle TV. But it wasnt a requirement for the build.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

tombrownzz

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#390555 11-Oct-2010 16:58

ockel: For Chch from memory it was a planned build on a street by street basis.
And when Telecom went door-knocking on a street-by-street basis as it was rolled out and offered terms to customers to stay then TLSClear found the economics extremely challenging so ceased the rollout.

Welly, with its overhead cables, coupled with purchasing the Saturn business meant the sunk cost acquisition plus lower cost rollout meant customer acquisition was less economically challenged. In the early days the point of differentiation (free local calling between Kapiti Coast and Wellington) made the offering compelling vs Telecom.

Someone else help out with the history lesson?

Welly had overhead copper telephone cables or overhead cable tv cables?

cyril7

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#390560 11-Oct-2010 17:19

Both, in places there are cables hanging in the air that are as thick as a grown mans arm. The digging in of the cable in the Kapiti area caused masses of disruption for months, and in many streets the road had to be resurfaced several times till the council was happy with the outcome, some contractors were very dodgy.

The cable if underground is layed in the street with pillars between every proptery pair. When you decide to connect to Telstra they come and put a cable from the pillar to your house, this is normally done by horizontal drilling, often if its a long run or has a dogleg in it they have to dig temporary holes in your property/drive.

Anyone who thinks the proposed FTTH dig in is going to be easy is dreaming, for those of us who lived through TCLs HFC dig in it was a nightmare. I know many folk who simply refuse to deal with TCL just because of the pain they went through 8-10yrs ago when their streets/properties were significantly disrupted.

Cyril

Ragnor

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#390569 11-Oct-2010 17:43

There are a lot of ways it can be done and things have moved forward since "back in the day" with micro trenching and blown fibre etc.

Crown Fibre recently invited tenders to trial different laying technology for fibre to the home
http://www.crownfibre.govt.nz/news/press-releases/tenders-invited-to-trial-innovative-technologies-f...

Micro trenching at Google
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXMe6WGa84I

alasta

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#390583 11-Oct-2010 18:19

cyril7: Anyone who thinks the proposed FTTH dig in is going to be easy is dreaming, for those of us who lived through TCLs HFC dig in it was a nightmare. I know many folk who simply refuse to deal with TCL just because of the pain they went through 8-10yrs ago when their streets/properties were significantly disrupted.

Ahhh, yes, I had almost forgotten about the disaster that occurred when TelstraClear where rolling out cable on our street in Christchurch and hit a sewage pipe in the process. We ended up with overflowing drains, and the remains of used toilet paper all around the outside of our house. They also did quite a bit of damage to the footpath.

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Linuxluver

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#390594 11-Oct-2010 19:07

ockel: For Chch from memory it was a planned build on a street by street basis.
And when Telecom went door-knocking on a street-by-street basis as it was rolled out and offered terms to customers to stay then TLSClear found the economics extremely challenging so ceased the rollout.

Welly, with its overhead cables, coupled with purchasing the Saturn business meant the sunk cost acquisition plus lower cost rollout meant customer acquisition was less economically challenged. In the early days the point of differentiation (free local calling between Kapiti Coast and Wellington) made the offering compelling vs Telecom.

Someone else help out with the history lesson?

Saturn's Canadian bank backers (TD Bank, in particular) refused to front up with any more money, having sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into a network with little prospect of a return. The reason was simple enough: Telecom had been sold far too cheaply, gaining a (est. if you had to build it today) US$50B national network to almost every home and business for US$4.8B. No one else could get a national network at an effective 90% discount....and the NZ taxpayer was royally ripped off by the entire transaction.....both at the time of sale an in the 15 years that followed with mainly National (mainly Maurice Williamson) doing nothing to aid the competition we had been promised when Telecom was sold.

Saturn had to find a buyer to carry the debt...and Telstra stepped up. They, too, found that it wasn't possible to build out a new network and be profitable against an incumbent who had effectively been given a national network for almost nothing.

It's not accident we really only have competition in cellular as Telecom was wedded to CDMA while Bell South built out a GSM network...with all the advantages that brought.

I was on Saturn cable (TV, phone and 2mbps Internet) in the Kapiti area from 1998 to 2004. They employed contractors with specialist - expensive - underground cable drilling machines. I had a tenant who was such a contractor and he explained how it was done and showed me the gear. Of course you needed to have soft soils or you broke the machines. They would extend the network into a street if most of the people in the street wrote them a latter saying they would take up the service. This is how we got it. We got our neighbours to all call up and ask for it.

In Wellington, Telecom encouraged grumpy people and business partners to lobby against 'ugly' overhead cables. This increased the regulatory overhead for Saturn. People who moan about regulation ignore the role of private businesses abusing public consultative processes to ring fence their own vested interest. These same people will then, with a straight face, claim to be acting in the public interest. It was farcical. The present government has now "fixed" it by excluding the general public....and making it easier for the people who abused the processes in the first place to be heard. Utterly backward.

Saturn cable was an awesome service. But it was also painfully obvious that there was no way they could make a profit up against Telecom. Anyone with a calculator could see that in 3 minutes.

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I've been on Geekzone over 16 years..... Time flies....

stuzzo

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#390609 11-Oct-2010 19:29

Linuxluver:Anyone with a calculator could see that in 3 minutes.

So noone at Saturn or Telstra had a calculator and 3 spare minutes ?

SteveON

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#390617 11-Oct-2010 19:38

Anyone remember FIRST MEDIA? Telecom's trial for cable... If only the gear was compatible with TV then it would have been a great buy!

antoniosk

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#390640 11-Oct-2010 20:48

SteveON: Anyone remember FIRST MEDIA? Telecom's trial for cable... If only the gear was compatible with TV then it would have been a great buy!

I remember that. For those complaining about the ugly TCL Black cable, FirstMedia's was a lovely shade of PUKE green, to go with the pedastels in the street. When I lived at home, the TCL cable was 1m below the power... and FirstMedia was 50cm below TCL. The explosion of wiring on poles was a sight to behold.

Saturn went underground in Upper Hutt, but soon emerged overhead as they got closer to Wellington. Although poles aren't pretty, it is cheaper and faster. Totara Park should be connected, but the network can't be laid with the bridge, it has to go under the river. That's real $$$ and disruption, and a very long ROI.

As for fibre... well I understand Verizon's FIOS network is overhead drops. Mmmm.... lots of lovely, THICK sheathing to protect the fragile fragile fibre....

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Antoniosk

Tatou

235 posts

Master Geek

#390661 11-Oct-2010 21:30

Badly if our street is any example.

If I recall I responded to door knocking or a flyer in the mailbox and signed up for Chello and Saturn TV but left my phone with Telecom.

In my professional capacity I had to deal with the cowboy contractors (not all were cowboys) and poor planning by Saturn when they were laying the network- what a nightmare.

However not withstanding that I have been a satisfied customer over the years for the internet services. Saturn TV has morphed to Sky without the dish and the Sky business model- I watch very little TV

Luckily I have only rung the call center about three times in all those years- once to get digital upgrade.

ockel

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#390726 12-Oct-2010 07:40

antoniosk:
SteveON: Anyone remember FIRST MEDIA? Telecom's trial for cable... If only the gear was compatible with TV then it would have been a great buy!

I remember that. For those complaining about the ugly TCL Black cable, FirstMedia's was a lovely shade of PUKE green, to go with the pedastels in the street. When I lived at home, the TCL cable was 1m below the power... and FirstMedia was 50cm below TCL. The explosion of wiring on poles was a sight to behold.

Saturn went underground in Upper Hutt, but soon emerged overhead as they got closer to Wellington. Although poles aren't pretty, it is cheaper and faster. Totara Park should be connected, but the network can't be laid with the bridge, it has to go under the river. That's real $$$ and disruption, and a very long ROI.

As for fibre... well I understand Verizon's FIOS network is overhead drops. Mmmm.... lots of lovely, THICK sheathing to protect the fragile fragile fibre....

FiOS, Uverse, even the Comcast's and Cablevision are all overhead drops. Its extremely ugly with 3 or 4 big thick cables hanging between power poles (plus repeaters!). Then they have the nice thick cable running down the side of the pole and underground it if thats the final drop. Even now you can drive around and see them add more cable between poles. Drive down a street with multimillion dollar homes and witness the ugly infrastructure along the street frontage. Yuck.

VZ has spent $20bn on a comparatively cheaper overhead build and they still cant make a crust - to the point where those at the edge of the network that were expecting to be connected in the near future are now seriously disappointed that VZ has announced an end to the rollout at the end of this calendar year.

But ugly thick cables blend in nicely with the ugly overhead power cables and the ugly overhead traffic lights with their cabling too.

Sixth Labour Government - "Vision without Execution is just Hallucination"

foamfollower

152 posts

Master Geek

#390746 12-Oct-2010 08:44

Just to complete the history lesson:

Before Saturn there was Kiwi Cable TV and before that there was Kapiti Cable TV. Urban legend has it that a Kapiti contacting company inherited drums and drums of cable in lieu of payment, and thought “What can we do with that?....”

graemeh

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#390754 12-Oct-2010 08:56

Ragnor: There are a lot of ways it can be done and things have moved forward since "back in the day" with micro trenching and blown fibre etc.

Crown Fibre recently invited tenders to trial different laying technology for fibre to the home
http://www.crownfibre.govt.nz/news/press-releases/tenders-invited-to-trial-innovative-technologies-f...

Micro trenching at Google
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXMe6WGa84I

Unfortunately it's not that easy. To blow the fibre you need a duct. To have a duct you need to dig a hole or drill.

The latest aerial cables run at the same level as the power cables so they really are not that visible. Vector has them in places on the North Shore and nobody notices.

I always laugh at the hairy hippies complaining about overhead cable in Wellington and then in the next breath they are promoting trolley buses - guess what, they use overhead cable and it's far more obtrusive than more cables on a power pole.

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