Did NZ go the right way with UFB?

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trig42

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#138502 7-Jan-2014 13:55

It seems our neighbours over the pond are having some issues:
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/01/most-aussies-have-crappy-internet-speeds/

And, the NBN became a political football during their last election (which then got severely kicked out of shape).

It seems Australia's NBN does not include much (if any) FTTH, whereas here in NZ, the UFB rollout is based all on FTTH (except in HFC areas? I'm not sure).

According to Netindex, NZ already has better upload, Download, Quality and Value than Australia (http://www.netindex.com/)

Did our Government go down the right path?

Will it become a Political Football in the election?

What more needs to be done?

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#962447 7-Jan-2014 14:21

I've been reading a fair bit about the NBN shambles, there are some good pieces in The Register . NZ already has the FTTN network, which is the cut-down version the Aussies will now mainly be deploying. I don't hold much hope of widespread use of the vdsl plus technology they are hoping for, like G.fast, given the real world usage of vdsl here in NZ already, which is limited to a fairly short run from the cabinet, and has cross talk interference the more congested the copper gets (I am no expert on this, mainly from reading other geekzone threads)

The Aussies are basically aiming for what NZ mainly has already (FTTN), architectured to allow for FTTH from those nodes at some point in the future.

Labour make some noise about UFB but I don't believe they are against it in principle, and mainly have issues with the commercial side of the implementation (read: Chorus).

I do think there is a real danger of the money running out in 2016 though. Chorus maps show no more planned deployments after that, 2016 is when it seems the contract can be re-negotiated?
http://ufb.org.nz/ufb-to-be-connected-for-free-until-at-least-2015/

tangerz

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#962465 7-Jan-2014 14:43

Was talking to my brother in law at Xmas. He works in the industry over in Oz,(Telstra). He was telling me the whole thing is a real mess. From what he told me their NBN will consist of around 20% or less FTTH! (Which surprised me!) Most of that in new developments.

The majority is now to be FTTN with VDSL2 as the 'last mile'. The balance will be via wireless or satellite but apparently those are subsidized over there? (From what he told me anyway!)

So to answer the questions asked:

Yes I think NZ went the right way with FTTH. It will provide a degree of 'future proofing' that FTTN can't match.

I certainly HOPE it doesn't become a political football which could screw things up... but who knows...

What more could be done? 'Wireless-UFB' in rural areas would be good... but then I'm just thinking of myself on that one ;-)

cyril7

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#962475 7-Jan-2014 14:50

But we already have FTTN, which was and still shows to have been the right order of process, the Oz's argued for a long long time to not do FTTN under the misconception that they could afford to complete a FTTH rollout in a certain (now passed or approaching) time frame, and they failed, so they ended up with neither and now having to go back and do FTTN to satisfy demand.

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trig42

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#962480 7-Jan-2014 14:56

It seems the FTTN upgrade was quite inspired.

Am I right in thinking that the Government had nothing to do with this (it was Chorus)?

Lorenceo

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#962487 7-Jan-2014 15:01

The majority of the NBN in Australia was originally going to be FTTH. Rural areas were to be served via WiMAX, and extremely rural areas were to be served via satellite.
When the opposition was voted in they scrapped the whole thing and are instead deploying FTTN with the aim of 25/5mb VDSL for city users.
The aim of this is apparently to save money. While I do think that the original plan had a rather bloated budget, and could have been more cost efficient with its roll out, dropping fibre all together seems like a bad idea to me. If they're going to spend a lot of money on a new network, they'd may as well use the most future proof solution (FTTH) rather than the cheapest method they can find.

I worry that FTTH will stop being deployed here, simply because we'll no longer be playing catch up to Australia. It probably doesn't help that the uptake here is so low, nor that there are many people who want it but can't get it.

Oblivian

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#962490 7-Jan-2014 15:07

Mate of mine over there is on ADSL1, (residential area near varsity lakes towards goldcoast) with no sign of ADSL2 kit in sight.

They rolled out 'hats' to the existing cabinets to allow for the larger 2+ cards, and faster internets for all. But decided it was too expensive mid-way as you see here, and cancelled the rollout plan. Affecting his entire neighbourhood.

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Ragnor

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#962508 7-Jan-2014 15:27

The coalition government has done something really sensible by appointing Simon Hackett (Internode founder) to the NBN Co Board.

http://simonhackett.com/2013/07/17/nbn-fibre-on-a-copper-budget/

Hopefully he can promote/push through a compromise that isn't as expensive as the Labour plan was and isn't as weak as just FTTN.

In my opinion Fibre to the premises is a once in a generation infrastructure upgrade that simply needs to be done, no different than roads, power or water in the past.

Australia has an even worse population density problem with all the bush/rural areas than NZ so there are some real cost challenges. If you're on tank water or solar/wind power you shouldn't expect FTTH.

blakamin

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#962509 7-Jan-2014 15:28

You'd be lucky to get a 6Mbs connection in most places in Oz that don't have cable. And the upload speed on cable suck too. We get 35 down, 1 up. The next plan is 100 down, 2 up!

trig42

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#962513 7-Jan-2014 15:30

blakamin: You'd be lucky to get a 6Mbs connection in most places in Oz that dont have cable. and the upload speed on cable suck too. we get 35 down, 1 up. The next plan is 100 down, 2 up!

Have they got the ability to change their plans there though? Could they just turn around and provision a 35/10 or 100/20 or is there something in the technology preventing it happening relatively easily?

blakamin

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#962518 7-Jan-2014 15:36

trig42:
blakamin: You'd be lucky to get a 6Mbs connection in most places in Oz that dont have cable. and the upload speed on cable suck too. we get 35 down, 1 up. The next plan is 100 down, 2 up!

Have they got the ability to change their plans there though? Could they just turn around and provision a 35/10 or 100/20 or is there something in the technology preventing it happening relatively easily?

They think that's all people deserve. Cable is DOCSIS 3 so there's no real reason

Ragnor

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#962520 7-Jan-2014 15:36

trig42:

Did our Government go down the right path?

Will it become a Political Football in the election?

What more needs to be done?

We are on a pretty good path, a lot of the stuff around the regulated copper price is just grandstanding on both sides.

I'm confident with either major party in power UFB will be fine, Joyce in National and Cunliffe in Labour, remember Cunliffe oversaw separation of Telecom etc.

We could have gone a step further an made the layer 1 stuff a SEO as it's pretty much a public good like roads or power lines but Chorus is tightly regulated so no as much chance of a repeat of Telecom in the 90's underinvesting and making out like bandits.

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JohnButt

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#962542 7-Jan-2014 15:57

We were pretty lucky with the government - Telecom agreement to cabinetise (read FTTN here) to help Telecom from being separated prior to actually separating them.

TrueNet now have FTTN and for TrueNet over 50% of our probes are on "nodes" or Cabinets, which could mostly be on VDSL, the number of probes with tails longer than 1km is small and our selection basis is independent of distance to the node.

The remaining almost 50% are on exchanges and the same applies. Often FTTN is confused the VDSL due to European attempts to prove they have lots of fibre when comparing countries.

Upload speeds in NZ leave the Australians wallowing, our cable speed for most 100M probes has 10Mb/s upload and gets close, whereas theirs is just 2Mb/s and they get less than 1.5Mb/s on the Australian Cable probes we have.

Actually our download speeds are also in a different league, but that is a longer story.

Jas777

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#962550 7-Jan-2014 16:14

I don't know exactly but part of the problem they have and we have to a certain extent is that:

1) They have to keep rural voters happy, so have to give them cable even though the cost to do so is vastly uneconomic.

2) The consumer doesn't want to pay increase cost for the new infrastructre.

3) This one maybe more Australia than NZ, because there is a number of competing ISPs they want to retain market share and see only way to do this is to out bid others even though the cost to provide is increasing infrastructure wise

4) Everyone always complains about not having internet speeds and expects to have like in Singapore, Korea etc where the population density is vastly greater than in Australia/NZ.

blakamin

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#962571 7-Jan-2014 16:37

Jas777:

4) Everyone always complains about not having internet speeds and expects to have like in Singapore, Korea etc where the population density is vastly greater than in Australia/NZ.

I'd be happy with speeds like NZ!
Until we found the house had cable (rental) we had a crappy adsl connection. Under 6mbs and we were told by the ISP we were lucky to get that! I live in Adelaide, so it's not like I'm rural! That's pretty much what all Aussie has.
When we knew there was cable, I was amazed at the crappy upload speed. I still am. The plan is 30/1 but we get 35.... and sometimes 1.
It's pathetic and the reason we were pinning all our hopes on the NBN. That was a waste of time. I think NZ has done it right and you should be thankful for what you have.

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#962578 7-Jan-2014 16:52

Ah, so now some people are waking up to the reality: New Zealand Internet is not that bad as some like to say... Considering the size and density of this country, we have some good deployments.

UFB take up is another story but in terms of existing Internet, ours is good in the sense that a majority of homes get good speeds, with only rural areas in need of some upgrades (conklins) but with RBI in sight.

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