New Plymouth fully connected to Ultra-Fast Broadband

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Lorenceo

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#1495908 19-Feb-2016 19:34

Lots of recent UFB cabling I've seen in Auckland seems to be overhead. Seems to be that it'll be deployed in mostly the same way the power cabling already is, on the same poles. I'm 100% ok with more cables on the poles if it means UFB is deployed faster.

That said, there's also a lot of it underground too. For example down a main roads, the fibre seems to often be underground. The fibre feeding the residential streets streets perpendicular to the main road have the cables and small FATs attached to the power poles.

In areas where the utilities are already underground this doesn't seem to change with UFB.

WRT UFF areas, I've seen this in Hamilton and New Plymouth. Thicker cables, and bigger FATS up on power poles. Again, no issue from me.

sbiddle

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#1495936 19-Feb-2016 20:32

I think the whole irony of this is that the telco landscape in NZ could now be very, very different if TCL had rolled out their cable network in Auckland but were prevented in doing so because of a very effective campaign that was pretty much orchestrated by the NZ Herald to protest against overhead cables and ultimately saw the network being canned because of public discontent and neither United Networks nor Vector allowing access to their poles.

Behodar

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#1495944 19-Feb-2016 20:45

It could be very different indeed, and whether it'd be good or bad could depend on your perspective. One possibility is that widespread access to cable in Auckland may have resulted in no national fibre plan, and therefore I may not be enjoying fibre in a small town today!

deadlyllama

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#1496265 20-Feb-2016 14:31

sbiddle:

deadlyllama:

And that, folks, is why you want to be in an Ultra Fast Fibre area. I'd hope they get a decent set of UFB2 contracts.

Why?

They won the contract because they were the lines company in that area - if they were to expand beyond their area they'd face the exact same issues with access to poles that Chorus face when dealing with lines companies.

I was up in New Plymouth the other week and it's very interesting to see the architecture - because pretty much the entire network is all overhead (North Power in Northland are similar) deployment is a lot faster and easier than Chorus where the vast majority of the network is underground. Visually their network is incredibly ugly.

There are other advantages to UFF. I've seen a lot of pictures on GZ and Twitter of dodgy cheap Chorus installs, avoiding undergrounding in lieu of tacking the fibre straight to fences etc. Never seen an install like that in Whanganui. We had an overhead install and they did an outstanding job, in a day. My in-laws have underground services and it took a week or two -- different crews turning up to do different parts, and all just before Christmas. Properly trenched, in conduit.

DarthKermit

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#1496285 20-Feb-2016 15:13

When you live in a city with almost no overhead power poles or telephone poles, no matter who the local fibre company happens to be, they've no choice but to go underground.

Street view, no power poles

In Palmerston North's case, Chorus have gone underground in the few remaining streets with either power and/or phone lines above ground. I presume this is incase they're ever undergrounded.

You're right about mickey mouse installs from the road plinth to houses. I can see many shining examples in my immediate neighbourhood.

MadEngineer

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#1496323 20-Feb-2016 15:52

So many benefits to underground cabling. Aesthetics are only one.

Our ufb install was super easy - fired up the existing phone conduit under the driveway the night before, then installed over a couple of hours the next day. House built late 1930s.

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

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DarthKermit

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#1496327 20-Feb-2016 15:59

MadEngineer: So many benefits to underground cabling. Aesthetics are only one.

Our ufb install was super easy - fired up the existing phone conduit under the driveway the night before, then installed over a couple of hours the next day. House built late 1930s.

What area are you in, if you don't mind me asking?

MadEngineer

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#1496394 20-Feb-2016 19:57

also palmy

You're not on Atlantis anymore, Duncan Idaho.

wsnz

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#1496684 21-Feb-2016 20:22

sbiddle:

They won the contract because they were the lines company in that area - if they were to expand beyond their area they'd face the exact same issues with access to poles that Chorus face when dealing with lines companies.

UFF's parent isn't the lines company for New Plymouth nor is it in most of the areas they won contracts for; they negotiated an agreement with PowerCo for access to the poles in Taranaki, BOP and Wanganui. In the Waikato however, their parent WEL Network is the lines company.

Aredwood

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#1496726 22-Feb-2016 00:52

sbiddle:

I think the whole irony of this is that the telco landscape in NZ could now be very, very different if TCL had rolled out their cable network in Auckland but were prevented in doing so because of a very effective campaign that was pretty much orchestrated by the NZ Herald to protest against overhead cables and ultimately saw the network being canned because of public discontent and neither United Networks nor Vector allowing access to their poles.

Agree that TCL should have been allowed to roll out HFC to Auckland. Would have also meant that they would have had enough cable TV customers to build their own packages. Therefore being able to compete against sky instead of reselling.

Also there seemed to be some bad relations between Telecom and Power NZ in the 90s. (Lines company on North Shore, Auckland before they eventually became part of what is now vector) As when Power NZ under-grounded some of their lines. They would then remove all the poles, and just leave all the phone cables lying all over the ground. Forcing Telecom to quickly underground it all. Also back then the North Shore City Council owned lots of shares in Power NZ. So there was always undergrounding work happening.

So maybe Power NZ was treating TCL the same as they treated Telecom.

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