Khann: I believe WXC runs the Auckland server.

You are partially wrong. Yes, Xnet does (I think) run the wellington speedtest server, but none of the others. You will notice that it detects your ISP as Xnet no matter which server you test from, so sadly that blows your theory completely out of the water.

PenultimateHop:

Khann:
So for someone that doesn't really understand what all this is at all, can yuo explain it in lamens terms? What does this mean for the consumer?

If this cable does get the go ahead and is built, there is now choice of fibre routes for international transit providers (like Telecom, TelstraClear, PacNet (formerly known as Asia Netcom), Verizon Business, etc) to buy services on. Southern Cross is currently the only viable international transport network out of New Zealand - and it's 50% owned by Telecom NZ.

Competition means that in theory the price of IRUs drops as the other telcos can now negotiate pricing between SX and PIPE/Kordia - which IN THEORY (big assumption!) that price of international bandwidth drops. This saving MAY be passed on to consumers, or ISPs may choose to take this as an additional profit margin, or they may use the saving to buy more bandwidth and increase the performance of services. This of course would be up to the individual ISP's business decisions.

Fraktul: The other more intangiable benefit people are overlooking is the added resilience an additional fibre path into the country delivers. Although there are multiple points of failure on SX as far as NZ is concerned (however the implications of any single failure depend on the transit provider you are using) there have been instances where several cables have failed at the same or similar times quite recently which should be kept in mind.

• Slow unreliable speeds for 2 months now without any response from xNet indicating when it will be resolved.
  All they say is "We have logged a fault with telecom.", that was 2 months ago and still no change.
• Unusable telephones due to jerky and delayed calling.

PenultimateHop:

Fraktul: The other more intangiable benefit people are overlooking is the added resilience an additional fibre path into the country delivers. Although there are multiple points of failure on SX as far as NZ is concerned (however the implications of any single failure depend on the transit provider you are using) there have been instances where several cables have failed at the same or similar times quite recently which should be kept in mind.

Good point regarding the alternative fibre path out of the country. That said, given the common paths (Tasman and Pacific), I'm not sure I expect additional resiliency given the proven cuts after the Taiwan quake, and more recently in the Middle East.

Although, I am unsure what SPOFs you refer to around SX. It's built very resiliently in and out of NZ; and there hasn't been a total outage (i.e. dual ring collapse) since 2001-ish, when it happened a few times shortly after commissioning and before the Northern Ring was completed. The outages from an IP perspective usually happen after a single collapse and are due to transit providers not buying protected services (cost), and not having sufficient alternate paths available.

linw: Youtube stream - just doesn't work. This saga just goes on and on. Maybe a heap of us need to leave to allow the rest some bandwidth?

If there is not enough money to buy enough bandwidth, tell us how much we need to pay and let's make a decision to stay and pay or leave. Doing nothing is a very bad alternative.

'linw'.
 i would be happy to pay a fraction more to have broadband we use to have... 

marmel: Just done a speedcheck to LA now (3pm), running at over 3500kbps. I will check again later tonight and see if it is still running at a decent speed.