Fibre for Wellington?

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JonC

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#12080 27-Feb-2007 09:28

Stuff has news of a possible Wellington City Council initiative to roll out 100km of fibre using the existing trolley-bus power-cable network - http://www.stuff.co.nz/3975592a28.html

Good to see the council taking responsibility for what is becoming an essential business utility nowadays. It's an excellent model for what councils should be doing - providing the basic infrastructure and then letting the telcos battle it out on providing services using the infrastructure.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#62099 27-Feb-2007 09:43

Jama talks about this on his blog. And he's right. We had CityLink, but that was sold. We had TelstraClear, but that was never helped. Very opportunistic, vote seeking move I think.

Bung

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#62106 27-Feb-2007 10:04

Interesting that according to this Wellington trolley history page Here at the peak there was 50km of overhead.
Perhaps the fibre will be run up and down both sides of the street to give them the 100km :)

JonC

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#62115 27-Feb-2007 10:29

Aaah - some interesting points from Jama.

Jama: Laying fibre will obviously involve a certain amount of digging up the roads - yet again.
Here's hoping that if they do this they go for wireless (Wi-Max?) on the last mile and avoid the need to dig up roads.

Jama: And why are they not simply extending the existing CityLink network?
I kinda assumed that this network would be a residential extension of the CityLink network - is it not? It would make no sense if the two were not interconnected.

Jama: The council did not bid for any money from the 'Government Broadband Challenge' coffers
Stuff: Funding could come from public- private partnerships supplemented by central government broadband challenge funding.
Jama contradicts the stuff article which says that the council can get money from the government's "broadband challenge funding".
I'd hope that the council can extract some money from the government for this.

Jama makes a good point that there are already a multitude of broadband options in Wellington already and why should the council take the risk. But the council won't be running the service - just providing the infrastructure for the telcos to provide better broadband options. Anyway, I personally think for the amount of money they're spending (pretty cheap for rolling out a network of this type) it's worth it to hasten the step-up to the next level of broadband speeds. Who else is going to roll out fibre like this anytime soon? I think it's a good way of attracting businesses and skilled workers to the city and encourage telecommuting.

Jama

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#62119 27-Feb-2007 11:10

From Stuff:

Last year, the council opted not to bid for cash from the Government's $24 million Broadband Challenge fund, which is subsidising the rollout of open access fibre and wireless broadband networks in Auckland's North Shore, Hamilton, Christchurch and other centres. Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Porirua received $2.3 million from the fund to help pay for an open access fibre and WiMax network linking businesses and public institutions in the three centres.

JonC

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#62120 27-Feb-2007 11:13

OK - stuff contradicts itself. Why am I not surprised.....

xlinknz

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#62145 27-Feb-2007 14:29

I don't get it, if I am inside the city boundry but nowhere near a trollybus overhead cable how does that get me high speed broadband ? - its not like these overhead cables go anywhere near most residences, therefore who provides the last mile and more importantly what technology would they use to acheive that ?

Like Jama I would rather [read insist] the WCC spend my money on improving other things

Time to start voting in local elections...

Jama

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#62146 27-Feb-2007 14:35

I think they are proposing one of those funny wireless technologies (or dear I say it copper) for the last mile. Like you there are no trolley bus cables anywhere near my house.

Another half baked idea from our half baked council. I am sure they just have the pip that Telecom might be uprooting itself and shifting to Auckland. The council recently also moved to Vodafone for mobiles/desk phone replacement.

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#62173 27-Feb-2007 18:51

Hi,

As for the 100k fitting into a 50ishk road loop, i think the cable will zig-zag along the road.

I also thought that Saturn had single operator rights to the cable bus poles.

Oh and I''d like to see it rolled out along the electrified main trunk line of the railways, but i think clear got one of them exclusive deals on fiber there as they have an underground one already.

Anyway, luck backbone for Wellington.

xlinknz

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#62234 28-Feb-2007 09:08

Jama

Well I used to be on TCL Cable but moved to a location where my only choice is ADSL since TCL stop 3 doors down, and nzwireless don't offer coverage where I am and I am reluctant to use TCNZ/Vodafone mobile data due to the cost

The sensible choice is imho is WiMax hopefully from Mt KauKau which I have line of site of [why don't nzwireless use Mt KauKau ?!]

Maybe WCC should be talking to Callplus re WiMax !

To be honest I am quite happy with DSL [from Xnet] seems more reliable than those horrible overhead cables that TCL use ;-)

jpollock

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#62423 1-Mar-2007 12:35

I can't believe that the city is thinking of doing this. Lets see what happens...

Wellington rolls out fibre, chosing a single fibre technology. Then then provide raw bitstream access through the WIX to various ISPs.

All of a sudden, we're locked into a single provider for the last km. That's a terrible place to be. You can see what happens here with Telecom's backbone problems.

Not only that, but to switch technologies, you have to get approval from all of the stakeholders! EEK! Imagine if someone needed more bandwidth than was available on the wire? How about if they wanted to use it in a non-standard way?

So, in 3 years when the existing routers are ancient, would the city be willing to spend the money to upgrade them? Change technology completely? Telstra Australia is TURNING OFF their CDMA network. That's a multi-billion dollar investment. Do we want our city government making choices with the same level of risk?

It would be much better if the city thought about it a bit more and figured out why people weren't falling over themselves to
wire wellington up. Is it the cost of laying wire? Where are the costs? In the cable itself? I expect it's everything except the actual wire.

How about laying conduit instead of a single cable? Rent out the conduit per km. No more roads being dug up just to pull another cable. The carrier doesn't need to go through consent to pull a new wire! The standardisation of machinery (robotic cable puller anyone?) would simplify it further!

The wire isn't the common good. The wire goes with the technology. The right of way is the common good.

---
http://blog.jason.pollock.ca

JonC

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#62425 1-Mar-2007 12:41

Laying conduit makes sense to me - it would make sure in the future we don't have a whole gaggle of cables running down each street.

xlinknz

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#62428 1-Mar-2007 12:52

The plot thickens !

http://www.stuff.co.nz/3977342a28.html

thin on detail for the last mile...

Bung

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#62438 1-Mar-2007 14:04

Why the emphasis on trolley wires? They're held up by the same poles that already carry wiring for TelstraClear, Telecom and UnitedNetworks. Is it because undergrounding won't happen on those routes.

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#62448 1-Mar-2007 14:56

I still think it's so funny that so pany people have issues with TCL cables strung from power poles yet the damn ugly trolley bus wires that span the city seem to be fine in people's minds because they are "green.. Despite the fact that we're burning coal to generate the electricity to run the buses..

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#62453 1-Mar-2007 15:46

I think pole's are a pretty good old school tech and cause way less carbon impact than underground, yeah still holding up well.

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