Consumer NZ spell out why fixed broadband beats wireless

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#1874860 29-Sep-2017 16:56

jonb:

robcreid:

I recently helped my mother arrange a fibre landline in a new house.

Spark offered to give her a temporary wireless option while waiting for fibre at no extra cost. This seemed like a great option as there was delays at Enable's end.

However because the local area was congested she went on a wait-list for wireless and ended up getting fibre before the wireless became available which was not so great.

I didn't know there were waiting lists for fixed wireless.

Spark/Skinny have lists in congested areas.

IIRC vodafone can't limit due to their RBI agreement...

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alasta

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#1874873 29-Sep-2017 17:00

hio77:

Low volume customer's, It's a great option as they do avoid potential faults. That's not to say a fault can't occur with a tower though! just is generally more rare.

The difference is that if a tower fails then you just wait for it to be fixed. With copper, on the other hand, you end up coordinating your RSP, Chorus and your landlord in order to constantly chase them up and argue over where the fault is and who is liable.

The last time I got my copper fixed it was a nightmare, and when it failed again within 18 months I gave up and dumped it completely. In a couple of years I will get UFB but in the meantime wireless suits my needs fine so I will never go back to copper.

chevrolux

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#1874874 29-Sep-2017 17:08

If Chorus are that threatened by Sparks fixed wireless then they should dam well do something about the balls up that is UFB installs. Specifically the ridiculous consents process but also actually paying a decent rate to contractors so that they actually get techs that know what they are doing. I see no reason why every UFB job (exclusing LARGE mdu, and im talking maybe the 20+ tenant ones) can't be done in a week. It's ridiculous that a scope visit is taking a month to get booked, and then the scoper who turns up has to refer to his manager blah blah blah. Sort it out and maybe Spark might throw more orders your way!

hio77

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#1874875 29-Sep-2017 17:08

alasta:

hio77:

Low volume customer's, It's a great option as they do avoid potential faults. That's not to say a fault can't occur with a tower though! just is generally more rare.

The difference is that if a tower fails then you just wait for it to be fixed. With copper, on the other hand, you end up coordinating your RSP, Chorus and your landlord in order to constantly chase them up and argue over where the fault is and who is liable.

The last time I got my copper fixed it was a nightmare, and when it failed again within 18 months I gave up and dumped it completely. In a couple of years I will get UFB but in the meantime wireless suits my needs fine so I will never go back to copper.

Exactly a perfect example.

I don't like to quote numbers from my Personal work experince however.

in my previous role, i handled both Copper and Fibre faults.

Fibre faults were about 30% user error, 10% network issues and about 60% actual faults, of those faults 90% were fixed near instantly with chorus being in total agreement and instantly dispatching to resolve issue (eg fibre break, OLT down etc)

Copper faults,is a heck of a can of worms.

Fixed Wireless i did not cover (Ok i did back end support but not front line at all)

It's hard for me to comment on fault volumes these days, I'm in a team that is constantly changing gear depending on where our next project is.

Right now, I'm covering Copper once again(Targeted not customer feeling), only seeing faults that are 70% line, 25% Chorus outages (be it fibre cut, migration or whatever) the final 5% being ofcourse physical modem issues.

As for liability of faults, I'm glad this is a conversation I'm not often involved in anymore. often this was over complicated from the otherside of the fence (IMO)

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Chis

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#1874878 29-Sep-2017 17:12

nas:

kryptonjohn:

DarthKermit:

I take it you can't get UFB yet?

We can get it if the neighbours can get their sh*t together. We're up a shared driveway and one of the neighbours is trying. We've signed the Chorus consent form a couple of times and so far it hasn't happened. The form came to us with a plan showing spur lines running to each house (five of them) off the driveway.

Once someone gets this going I'll probably get it.

Similar issue as me, except one neighbour cant be bothered responding to consent so that should fall into the implied consent category now..

Nothing has happened with the law change either last I checked with Chorus

Good news for many of us from Monday: The new, sensible consent regulations come in with Chorus on Monday meaning neighbours will need a good reason to stop people getting fibre. We've been stuck for 7 months and hope ours will go through with no justifiable reason for blocking it further.

https://blog.chorus.co.nz/landaccess/

dfnt

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#1874891 29-Sep-2017 18:04

Yeah, ended up emailing my contact at Chorus and was advised the same thing.

Good news indeed :)

hio77

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#1874894 29-Sep-2017 18:21

Chis:

Good news for many of us from Monday: The new, sensible consent regulations come in with Chorus on Monday meaning neighbours will need a good reason to stop people getting fibre. We've been stuck for 7 months and hope ours will go through with no justifiable reason for blocking it further.

https://blog.chorus.co.nz/landaccess/

Should have been a thing from the start tbh.

What i'd love to see from here, is chorus working with RSP's to follow up those customer's affected by this.

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#1874923 29-Sep-2017 19:31

My father was quite excited to call me say they'd had fibre installed (Dunedin). I asked him where they'd attached the ONT (?) to the house. He seemed confused and then talked about problems with the existing landlines not working and they had to buy new portable phones. He said things had improved a bit when they moved the router nearer a window...

So I was down there on holiday. They now have wireless broadband instead of VDSL which they had previously. This would be fine, however their house is in a small dip and mobile coverage is awful in most of the house on both networks, you often have to go to the front of the house or outside to make a call. So it's the worst solution. I've had Dad add me to their account, I intend to have fibre installed just before I'm down there next for work.

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#1874926 29-Sep-2017 19:33

mudguard:

My father was quite excited to call me say they'd had fibre installed (Dunedin). I asked him where they'd attached the ONT (?) to the house. He seemed confused and then talked about problems with the existing landlines not working and they had to buy new portable phones. He said things had improved a bit when they moved the router nearer a window...

So I was down there on holiday. They now have wireless broadband instead of VDSL which they had previously. This would be fine, however their house is in a small dip and mobile coverage is awful in most of the house on both networks, you often have to go to the front of the house or outside to make a call. So it's the worst solution. I've had Dad add me to their account, I intend to have fibre installed just before I'm down there next for work.

From previous threads here it seems Spark can be quite duplicitous when persuading customers to drop their copper connections for fixed wireless.

hio77

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#1874931 29-Sep-2017 19:44

jonb:

From previous threads here it seems Spark can be quite duplicitous when persuading customers to drop their copper connections for fixed wireless.

This should not be the case, unfortunately in some situations this can happen..

as with any newer service, there are some kinks still on the edges to iron out completely.

Hilly areas can often be bad for mapping, although when orders are ran the more indepth checks should be done.

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toejam316

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#1874947 29-Sep-2017 20:47

chevrolux: If Chorus are that threatened by Sparks fixed wireless then they should dam well do something about the balls up that is UFB installs. Specifically the ridiculous consents process but also actually paying a decent rate to contractors so that they actually get techs that know what they are doing. I see no reason why every UFB job (exclusing LARGE mdu, and im talking maybe the 20+ tenant ones) can't be done in a week. It's ridiculous that a scope visit is taking a month to get booked, and then the scoper who turns up has to refer to his manager blah blah blah. Sort it out and maybe Spark might throw more orders your way!

Fixed line is definitely the way to go over fixed wireless - but unfortunately you've hit the nail on the head - there's a brain drain on field techs, because anyone who knows anything knows to leave. I'm not the only one in the last few years who's completed an apprenticeship, become a Chorus tech, and gone elsewhere - pastures really are greener at the moment. Bit of a shame because I miss the doing of the job. Bit of a digression, but there you go.

Fixed wireless does have its places, but pretty much anywhere you can get fibre or GOOD (read: not in most of the places the WISP I work for is setup in) Copper, it's a no brainer.

Anything I say is the ramblings of an ill informed, opinionated so-and-so, and not representative of any of my past, present or future employers, and is also probably best disregarded.

hio77

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#1874967 29-Sep-2017 22:07

toejam316:

Fixed line is definitely the way to go over fixed wireless - but unfortunately you've hit the nail on the head - there's a brain drain on field techs, because anyone who knows anything knows to leave. I'm not the only one in the last few years who's completed an apprenticeship, become a Chorus tech, and gone elsewhere - pastures really are greener at the moment. Bit of a shame because I miss the doing of the job. Bit of a digression, but there you go.

Didn't realize you parted ways with chorus, a shame for them! :/

brain drained field techs are sadly something that has existed for quite sometime. Quite honestly, this is where chorus need to work mostly on.

I suspect if the bad eggs out there were came down on harsher rarther than allowed to get away with so much, it would be far harder to impression copper as a horrible broken thing...

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raytaylor

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#1878227 6-Oct-2017 01:07

kryptonjohn:

It's not faster if it's DSL.

Whether at home or office my phone gets around 80Mb/sec whereas VDSL at home tops out at around 32Mb/sec.

There are a few players in the industry talking about a complaint to the commerce commission regarding chorus's false advertising when it comes to describing faults of fixed wireless.

Sure DSL can be faster for an aggregate group of subscribers, but for an individual subscriber, fixed wireless is usually faster than DSL when you are more than 400m from a cabinet (the majority) and advertising doesnt apply to groups of people, it applies to what the individual should expect.

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#1878261 6-Oct-2017 08:04

hio77:

Chorusnz:

Hi hio77, technically VDSL can go a little higher, but we think it's good to set the upper expectation for speeds at 70Mbps: it's achievable by any VDSL user given the right distance from the exchange. When we deploy vectoring, where possible, in rural areas and in those that don’t have Chorus fibre, the speeds we see will increase again (dramatically in some instances). ^Mike

my comments were based on dslam max allowed speeds of 108mbit on broadcom cards.

Vectoring doesn't come into this :)

I bet the BRAS profiles at the ISP end wont support much more than that anyway.

703

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#1882750 13-Oct-2017 07:43

Chorus - for the new shared driving consenting process shouldn't Chorus be doing another scope or site visit to see if the job can be low impact or not?

We have applied again via Spark but Spark said the system automatically placed the order to get consent which we know will fail because of absentee owners. Because of issues with copper that Chorus couldn't fix. We're spending hundreds of dollars with Spark Wireless.

This isn't right.

Can you please assist.

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