Shifting to UFB and to a different Exchange

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pdh

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#1108770 15-Aug-2014 04:53

I'm sure they made it clear - but I wasn't paying attention as I had little day-by-day interest.

When I now come to review the market, I (mistakenly) had some expectations based solely on VOIP having been in NZ for 10-odd years and on Telecom/Spark being a large Telco. I just didn't dream that they would still be at the testing stage of a development that they must have been able to foresee for more than 10 years. My fault for making assumptions ;-)

On bundled VOIP & broadband being better always - isn't that likely to be wishful thinking ? I tend to find that ISPs get lazy and rely on the inertia of the customer base to accept a lesser / more costly service component - just because it's part of the bundle.

I'm sure you are correct that tagging is easier (or only possible) when the ISP is handling the voice packets - but doesn't this advantage evaporate as soon as the packet gets out of your ISP's own infrastructure and into the big bad world ? Experience with WXC (donkeys years ago) and Skype (more recently) indicates that occasionally bad stuff happens - and you just re-dial. Of course, that's true on a POTs call too - since it's been some time since that was copper end-to-end.

To keep the 'land line' bundled with the UFB: a quick comparison of Vodafone & 2Talk's VOIP service indicates an almost 200% premium. (VF = +20$ over naked UFB +10$ for Vmail, ID, etc; 2Talk = 11.50 all up). So, for lowly residential land line use – is this premium justified by superior tagging ? For me - probably not.

Paul

sbiddle

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#1108892 15-Aug-2014 11:04

pdh: I'm sure they made it clear - but I wasn't paying attention as I had little day-by-day interest.

When I now come to review the market, I (mistakenly) had some expectations based solely on VOIP having been in NZ for 10-odd years and on Telecom/Spark being a large Telco. I just didn't dream that they would still be at the testing stage of a development that they must have been able to foresee for more than 10 years. My fault for making assumptions ;-)

Telecom have spent more money trying to make VoIP work than many could ever imagine. Their losses from their IMS write down are very, very significant. A small provider can find it easy to drop a couple of hundred $ on a switch, but Telecom ultimately have to replace the entire PSTN. That's not just their customers, it's also ensuring that every call in NZ that goes via their network (which includes a huge % of calls that aren't even for their customers). That's ultimately a case of doing something that nobody else in the world is doing right now. Had Telecom's IMS deployment not been pulled it would have been one of the world's largest deployments at the time, but pulling it was great because it was a horrible solution.

Why aren't Telecom doing this right now? Because voice as we know it is dead and nobody wants to pay for it.

Ragnor

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#1109125 15-Aug-2014 15:04

sbiddle:

Telecom have spent more money trying to make VoIP work than many could ever imagine. Their losses from their IMS write down are very, very significant. A small provider can find it easy to drop a couple of hundred $ on a switch, but Telecom ultimately have to replace the entire PSTN. That's not just their customers, it's also ensuring that every call in NZ that goes via their network (which includes a huge % of calls that aren't even for their customers). That's ultimately a case of doing something that nobody else in the world is doing right now. Had Telecom's IMS deployment not been pulled it would have been one of the world's largest deployments at the time, but pulling it was great because it was a horrible solution.

Why aren't Telecom doing this right now? Because voice as we know it is dead and nobody wants to pay for it.

Why do they have to replace the PSTN to offer a voip service? Sounds like a hideously bad idea to try and do both at once.

Why can't they leave the existing system as is, then setup a separate voip offering so they at least have an offering in a timely manner, wouldn't they just need to interconnect like every other voip provider?

DonGould

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#1109141 15-Aug-2014 15:30

Ragnor: Why can't they leave the existing system as is, then setup a separate voip offering so they at least have an offering in a timely manner, wouldn't they just need to interconnect like every other voip provider?

Spark are in the mobile network business.

It just makes way more sense for them to put products on that network as they need to.

2Degrees seem to be leading the charge with consumer priced services. I'm sure Spark will catch up when they need to (ie when they start to loose an unacceptable amount of market share).

How hard can it be for Spark to deliver PSTN numbers on their mobile network like 2Degrees already does?

I fully agree that eventually voice is going to become worthless and nothing more than a value add to the data connection you purchase.

I've invested a bit in VoIP, but the way mobile is heading, even I can see that it's only got a short life outside of empowering office comms, and even that is going to get more and more limited as we can deliver calls to mobiles at no cost.

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ubergeeknz

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#1109144 15-Aug-2014 15:35

Ragnor: Why do they have to replace the PSTN to offer a voip service? Sounds like a hideously bad idea to try and do both at once.

Why can't they leave the existing system as is, then setup a separate voip offering so they at least have an offering in a timely manner, wouldn't they just need to interconnect like every other voip provider?

Very good question, or wholesale VoIP service from another provider :)

I guess we can all dream...

DonGould

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#1109151 15-Aug-2014 16:00

ubergeeknz: wholesale VoIP service from another provider

I question how long it's going to be before Spark start to do exactly that.

Who ended up owning the NEAX gear?

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#1109170 15-Aug-2014 17:20

DonGould:
ubergeeknz: wholesale VoIP service from another provider

I question how long it's going to be before Spark start to do exactly that.

Who ended up owning the NEAX gear?

2talk trunks into the back of their NEAX :)

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sbiddle

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#1109376 16-Aug-2014 03:05

coffeebaron:
DonGould:
ubergeeknz: wholesale VoIP service from another provider

I question how long it's going to be before Spark start to do exactly that.

Who ended up owning the NEAX gear?

2talk trunks into the back of their NEAX :)

NEC built VoIP linecards for the NEAXs (to do the opposite and do SIP to the CPE from the NEAX) but these were abandoned due to ongoing technical issues.

sbiddle

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#1109377 16-Aug-2014 03:07

Ragnor:
Why do they have to replace the PSTN to offer a voip service? Sounds like a hideously bad idea to try and do both at once.

Why can't they leave the existing system as is, then setup a separate voip offering so they at least have an offering in a timely manner, wouldn't they just need to interconnect like every other voip provider?

They are not doing both at once, however ultimate need to do so. I'm not actually aware of their agreement with the government to decommission the PSTN network in 2020 being changed, but personally I'd still see NEAXs around for at least another 10 years. There is plenty of life left in them.

cyril7

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#1109407 16-Aug-2014 09:21

I believe the NEAX's have had a recent local initiative CPU upgrade to modern devices, albeit running the same OS/firmware, I understand the old CPUs were struggling with number portablility due to a lack of ram and mips, and there is a active refurbishment program to replace all vunerable bits (electros etc) on line cards, so as I understand it they are good for 10yrs as long as someone keeps topping up the dial tone :)

Cyril

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