Chorus funded study says copper better than fixed wireless

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#1736369 14-Mar-2017 15:14

I would have thought a decent copper connection would indeed be better than wireless, though some of you seem to be approaching this with skepticism\cynicism? Is that just because chorus funded the study, or do you contend that wireless is better than copper? I'm genuinely curious.

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#1736370 14-Mar-2017 15:18

My mother switched to Spark's wireless service after they approached her offering her a deal. I was originally worried about it when she first told me but I kept an open mind since she lives directly across the road from a Spark cell site. What also helps is that she can put the router wherever she want and she has put it right in her lounge giving good WiFi reception. Prevously she had to put the router on the other side of the house since that's where the phone jackpoint is. This caused WiFi issues since the speeds were pretty poor in the rooms she used her devices most often. Adding to her luck she put the router LOS to the antennas of the cell site which she can see from the lounge window. From her perspective she is getting much better service than she was previously and I can't disagree with her. While I wouldn't use it personally, for her use case the wireless service is more than good enough and she is no longer moaning about the WiFi dropping out whenever she is on the 'wrong' side of the house. The phone service works just fine as well.

I was a bit of a skeptic but I think Spark is on to a good thing here. Capped wireless for low usage customers and uncapped fibre for high usage users. Clever move IMHO using the strengths of either type of networking.

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#1736371 14-Mar-2017 15:18

sidefx:

I would have thought a decent copper connection would indeed be better than wireless, though some of you seem to be approaching this with skepticism\cynicism? Is that just because chorus funded the study, or do you contend that wireless is better than copper? I'm genuinely curious.

It depends on what services are available at a particular address over copper, and what performance wireless can offer at that particular address.

At my address, with a good signal on Spark 4G, wireless is substantially better than the ADSL that is available to me, but if I could get VDSL that probably wouldn't be the case.

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#1736372 14-Mar-2017 15:19

sidefx:

I would have thought a decent copper connection would indeed be better than wireless, though some of you seem to be approaching this with skepticism\cynicism? Is that just because chorus funded the study, or do you contend that wireless is better than copper? I'm genuinely curious.

Because plenty of people do not have decent copper connections, particually in some suburbs that have 70s and earlier cabling still in use.

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sidefx

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#1736373 14-Mar-2017 15:23

richms:

Because plenty of people do not have decent copper connections, particually in some suburbs that have 70s and earlier cabling still in use.

Fair enough.

I guess I tend to approach it with a fair bit of cynicism from the other direction as my parents had a Spark sales person try to convince them to switch to their wireless offering because it was "better", despite the fact that they already had an extremely good VDSL connection and will have fibre available in the next year or so.

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#1736471 14-Mar-2017 19:24

richms:

sidefx:

I would have thought a decent copper connection would indeed be better than wireless, though some of you seem to be approaching this with skepticism\cynicism? Is that just because chorus funded the study, or do you contend that wireless is better than copper? I'm genuinely curious.

Because plenty of people do not have decent copper connections, particually in some suburbs that have 70s and earlier cabling still in use.

Or you know, the primary market for wireless access - rural. Only 3/4G was tested here, not fixed wireless from any WISP (Primo, Inspire, Lightwire etc).

My guess it isn't really about this, they're just fighting back at Spark trying to move as many customers off copper as possible. Chorus aren't concerned about WISPs, if they deployed VDSL in an area, they'll pick up those households easily enough eventually. Anyone who cares about having an unlimited connection, stable latency, consitent(ish) speeds has already made up their mind about copper vs wireless. Spark are moving the people who don't care off it. If you used 50GB a month and your copper went down and they gave you the option of using a 4G modem that has similar speeds, datacap for a similar/cheaper price, of course you'd go for it, you'd be stupid not to.

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#1736517 14-Mar-2017 20:46

Having moved from copper to fixed wireless I can honestly say that it's more reliable, a bit faster on the downstream, and much faster on the upstream. As a light user with good wireless reception and no fibre I am a perfect candidate for fixed wireless, but those who criticise the idea are probably outside of its target audience.

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#1736520 14-Mar-2017 20:52

sidefx:

I guess I tend to approach it with a fair bit of cynicism from the other direction as my parents had a Spark sales person try to convince them to switch to their wireless offering because it was "better", despite the fact that they already had an extremely good VDSL connection and will have fibre available in the next year or so.

They misunderstood the context of the word "better". It is definitely better for Spark financially.

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#1736523 14-Mar-2017 21:05

TrueNet - First Report on Fixed Wireless Technology

Thursday, March 9, 2017

Comparing Fixed Wireless with ADSL, VDSL, Cable & Fibre

This report was independently funded by Truenet.

TrueNet have been collecting and analyzing data on Fixed Wireless plans (the mobile 4G network) for the past 4 months.
The results show Fixed Wireless is generally more comparable to ADSL, is considerably slower than VDSL, and far behind Fibre.

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#1736529 14-Mar-2017 21:43

Tonight my fixed wireless has been exceptionally poor again. Even cartoons were stuttering and freezing. Download speeds measured out at about 0.5 (!) mbps, later gradually creeping up to a blazing 3 mbps. Inconsistent and unreliable are terms that come to mind.

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#1736541 14-Mar-2017 21:59

Rikkitic:

Tonight my fixed wireless has been exceptionally poor again. Even cartoons were stuttering and freezing. Download speeds measured out at about 0.5 (!) mbps, later gradually creeping up to a blazing 3 mbps. Inconsistent and unreliable are terms that come to mind.

Have you been in touch with Spark to see if they can improve it?

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#1736542 14-Mar-2017 22:01

Throughput on my skinny wireless connection drops to the floor most nights, starting to get really annoyed with it. To be fair I did think this would happen with Spark pushing the wireless option, just glad I'm not paying top dollar with Spark.

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#1736546 14-Mar-2017 22:06

alasta:

Having moved from copper to fixed wireless I can honestly say that it's more reliable, a bit faster on the downstream, and much faster on the upstream. As a light user with good wireless reception and no fibre I am a perfect candidate for fixed wireless, but those who criticise the idea are probably outside of its target audience.

Agreed here too: VDSL over copper 18/1, Spark fixed wireless more like 50-60/18, and no real slowing in the evening. Since they just laid fibre here Auckland East), I'm hoping that the 4G will actually speed up!

gml

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#1736574 14-Mar-2017 22:16

Is anyone else having an issue with the 'fixed wireless' term? I don't see the Spark/Vodafone 3G/4G as fixed wireless at all.

Fixed wireless to me is an external antenna/radio mounted and aligned to give the best possible connection and stability, not just chuck a cheap box in the corner next to the telly and hope the lights come on.

The WISP networks out there can out perform a hell of a lot of ADSL connections (and even maybe VDSL these days) and I feel like these operators shouldn't have their product tarnished by being thrown in to the same boat as 3G/4G solutions.

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#1736582 14-Mar-2017 22:34

Rikkitic:

Tonight my fixed wireless has been exceptionally poor again. Even cartoons were stuttering and freezing. Download speeds measured out at about 0.5 (!) mbps, later gradually creeping up to a blazing 3 mbps. Inconsistent and unreliable are terms that come to mind.

That's exactly what it's like all the time in our area on ADSL. We jumped ship to a fixed wireless provider some time ago, consistent and reliable are terms that come to mind in our case.

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