Vocus and Vodafone: fibre unbundling

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#2178544 14-Feb-2019 21:04

So what happens when you want 2 unbundled services in one property? Chorus wouldn't even talk to me about a second fibre lead in to the shed unless it had a separate title. Will they get over that and pull a second cable run? Can 2 pairs of fiber go thru a single microduct?

Richard rich.ms

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#2178592 14-Feb-2019 22:11

richms:

So what happens when you want 2 unbundled services in one property? Chorus wouldn't even talk to me about a second fibre lead in to the shed unless it had a separate title. Will they get over that and pull a second cable run? Can 2 pairs of fiber go thru a single microduct?

I do not recall that usecase in the details so i can't comment.

It's all on sp.chorus.co.nz though so go dig? one of the joys of chorus exposing to the public almost everything they are sending to providers.

here: https://sp.chorus.co.nz/news/fibre-product-consultation-post-2020

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#2178631 15-Feb-2019 06:42

richms:

So what happens when you want 2 unbundled services in one property? Chorus wouldn't even talk to me about a second fibre lead in to the shed unless it had a separate title. Will they get over that and pull a second cable run? Can 2 pairs of fiber go thru a single microduct?

Hi, no only one fibre bundle in a single 3/5mm micro duct. Although you can purchase blown fibre in higher core numbers per bundle, 2/4/6/12 as I recall, we use 12 core in all our stuff at work, I think Chorus use 12core as well to commercial buildings, but not sure. The dia of 2core is just on 1mm, and 12Core about 1.1mm so all blow up a 3mm duct no trouble.

You can also get large core counts up to 144 but you need 12-20mm dia tube for that.

As for unbundling, yeah nah, as Chevrolux says, copper unbundling went so well it has to be a winner.................or maybe not!

I guess the main advantage fibre unbundling has over copper is that pretty much all OLT locations of interest will be at exchanges so no need to provision OLT's in cabinets every km or so, so it might be a better $ value.

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#2178633 15-Feb-2019 07:16

I'm gonna call it now..IMHO unbundled UFB will end up a stillborn product because real world reality doesn't match the hype.

Vodafone have no money to invest into this as they're already too busy cutting costs to make their books look good for their IPO. They can barely even roll out 4G expansion right now.

I'd be highly surprised if by the end of 2020 there is anything in place except unbundling in some carefully cherry picked areas to target business customers. Mass market residential simply doesn't make sense.

It's also of interesting to see the comments from people in recent weeks comparing unbundled UFB to unbundled copper and exclaiming how successful that was in the NZ market. I actually regard unbundled copper as a bit of a failure that never delivered on the hype either - yes it did force some costs down and yes it did help the bottom line of some providers, but much of that was because they delivered a sub optimal unbundled connection to cabinetised customers who would have seen significant performance gains on a cabinetised connection but providers would not actively move them as they'd be the ones losing money.

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#2178663 15-Feb-2019 08:57

sbiddle:

I'd be highly surprised if by the end of 2020 there is anything in place except unbundling in some carefully cherry picked areas to target business customers. Mass market residential simply doesn't make sense.

This ^^^^ 100%.

I see the following playing out.

LFCs & Comcom announce the L1 access rate at $10-15 under the current wholesale rate for UFB and that "free" installs no longer apply for secondary access with a typical install cost at least $1k+ which would need to be done by an authorized installer as they would be accessing the shared ODF pit.
VocusFone cry foul that the price is too high and they are being priced out of the market by the horrible bullies of Chorus et al
VocusFone only focus on business customers in high return areas to under-cut the current DFAS offerings as the build and access prices for DFAS vs unbundled UFB means that unbundled UFB is cheaper.
Perhaps the government use unbundled as further leverage against the LFCs to drop their prices or make some other deal.

The problem is NZ is simply too small to justify more than one player offering L1/L2 fibre services to the mass-market. Unless they are a power company who own the poles.

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#2180963 15-Feb-2019 14:30

Then Chorus put out a press release, saying that they are being forced to reduce investment in rural areas. As they are collecting less income from urban fibre connections due to unbundling. While Vocusfone are not offering unbundled fibre in rural areas and small towns.

As a big part of the design around the UFB network. Is that all customers on the UFB network should receive exactly the same services, for exactly the same fees. An inherent part of that means that fees in urban areas will be more expensive than they otherwise would be. As they are a subsidy to rural areas. Allowing other providers to undermine that inherent subsidy, will mean poorer quality rural services.

The only fair price for unbundled access, will be the exact same price as charged for current bundled access.

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#2180989 15-Feb-2019 15:15

^ was that not part of the argument Telecom made against unbundling? Yet they were okay with lower the price to compete with HFC in Wlg/Chch. The Commerce Commission have their methodologies and they even allowed the price of copper to be set above what they calculated.

I think it is a good thing there is a head start this time and we have parties expressing interest. If copper unbundling had occurred earlier say in 2001 we would have had more competition and ADSL2+ much earlier.

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#2181005 15-Feb-2019 16:18

yitz: ^ was that not part of the argument Telecom made against unbundling? Yet they were okay with lower the price to compete with HFC in Wlg/Chch. The Commerce Commission have their methodologies and they even allowed the price of copper to be set above what they calculated. I think it is a good thing there is a head start this time and we have parties expressing interest. If copper unbundling had occurred earlier say in 2001 we would have had more competition and ADSL2+ much earlier.

Yeah nah not really.

As soon as Telecom indicated the cabinetisation project then the whole business model of UCLL was toast, none of the other providers had the pockets to install DSLAMs like for like in every cabinet and they would cherry pick the cabinets that make financial sense. I don't think any RSPs ever took up the option to install gear into cabinets and only focused on Exchange UCLL customers to the significant detriment of cabinetised customers.

The exact same problem exists today with unbundling of fibre since VocusFone will only install in exchanges where it makes sense. You could say the same for mobile coverage where no one has the pockets deep enough to deploy nationwide and would first focus areas that are profitable.

The LFCs (and most importantly Chorus) are contractually obliged to provide access in the regional / rural areas that would never be cost effective to deploy services as there isn't the number of potential customers to justify it. So any secondary player will under-build where they primarily get a return on investment.

Exactly the same with mobile and the initial build of 2D with the roaming agreement onto the Vodafone network, and subsequently with the RBI builds for mobile where the government is stumping up the cash to extend the mobile coverage to areas that are not financially worthwhile for the mobile providers to build. The west coast of the south island is the classic example that so few people live there Telecom in the day never ran fibre down that side of the country therefor mobile is very patchy or non-existent and only over ATM, stacked E1 or eDMR links so slow. Look at the announcement for Haast last year: https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=42&topicid=230665

NZ has too small a population that is concentrated in a small number of very urban areas. We already have a UFB network the envy of many OECD countries so why do some Telcos feel the need to under-cut the LFCs to save a bit of money for services only in urban areas at the detriment of being able to fund further rural build.

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#2181013 15-Feb-2019 16:34

You can argue about cabinetisation but that wouldn't have happened (or certainly not as soon) if we had had widespread unbundling in urban areas by 2004/5. And don't forget landlines were a thing then there was no competition on that service for many years (except HFC areas). Telecom Wholesale were later fined in 2010/1 for not providing a unbundled low frequency service for customers to receive unbundled voice from exchange and wholesale broadband from the cabinet (not sure why you're blaming the unbundled providers on that one).

It's just good to have the option for unbundling realised now (as proposed at the beginning) and let things work out rather than delay it further down the track.

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#2181016 15-Feb-2019 16:43

Was it a chorus fiber or vector fiber?

If it was a chorus fiber, were they just running GPON over a DFAS (dark fiber service in the ufb pricebook) fiber?

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#2181017 15-Feb-2019 16:47

yitz: You can argue about cabinetisation but that wouldn't have happened (or certainly not as soon) if we had had widespread unbundling in urban areas by 2004/5.

You're right - and what would have been incredibly bad.

Had unbundling been established cabinetisation would have never occured because as an industry nobody would have agreed on it. While that may not have affected the timeframes for a UFB rollout, it would have ensured that slow copper connections would have been the norm right up to today.

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#2181028 15-Feb-2019 17:05

I have to say Vodafone/Vocus doing this publicity stunt has made me question going with either of them when we eventually move into our own place. I remember being very keen on unbundling back when it was done for copper. However I later realised (as many have commented on already) that unbundling never really improved anything for the majority.

In fact unbundling saw cash being poured into duplicating network assets that didn't need duplicating. I lived in a flat with an Orcon ADSL connection in the early years of cabinetisation: luckily Orcon put the flat on a wholesale DSLAM at the cabinet but they were really struggling to provide enough international bandwidth. Orcon's investment into DSLAMs at the exchange was wasted as most people's speed issues were not on Telecom's wholesale network (= today's Chorus' network) but in fact it was upstream within their network which needed the investment.

I suspect it'll be much the same crap all over again—I think I'll stick with ISPs who are happy to use Chrous' network rather than those that see the need to waste cash on building and operating a duplicate network in cherry picked areas.

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#2181032 15-Feb-2019 17:10

KiwiSurfer:
Orcon's investment into DSLAMs at the exchange was wasted as most people's speed issues were not on Telecom's wholesale network (= today's Chorus' network) but in fact it was upstream within their network which needed the investment.

Actually many urban areas were congested and some very congested on the Telecom Wholesale backbone by 2006 and that congestion in the national network only exacerbated poor international performance. Think of things like handover link dimensioning that remained for many years even after they upgraded exchanges to Ethernet/ISAMs in 2007 keeping low data caps low all the mean while Xtra retail was exempt. Would have been avoided with earlier unbundling.

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#2181041 15-Feb-2019 17:25

yitz:
KiwiSurfer:

Orcon's investment into DSLAMs at the exchange was wasted as most people's speed issues were not on Telecom's wholesale network (= today's Chorus' network) but in fact it was upstream within their network which needed the investment.

Actually many urban areas were congested and some very congested on the Telecom Wholesale backbone by 2006 and that congestion in the national network only exacerbated poor international performance. Think of things like handover link dimensioning that remained for many years even after they upgraded exchanges to Ethernet/ISAMs in 2007 keeping low data caps low all the mean while Xtra retail was exempt. Would have been avoided with earlier unbundling.

From the best of my recollection:

1. Domestic traffic not affected despite the fact they would have to go over the same handover links as all ADSL traffic.

2. About a year or so later I moved to a different flat which was also with Orcon (the ISP to be with if you were flatting in those days!) which was exchange connected to their own gear at Pakuranga exchange. I was excited until I observed the exact same international bandwidth issues and realised where the true bottleneck was. It would be resolved then crop up again a couple of months later as the demand again outstripped capacity. Rinse and repeat...

I do think the Spark/Chrous split should have occurred much earlier though. That might have had more impact than unbundling.

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#2181044 15-Feb-2019 17:34

yitz:
KiwiSurfer:

Orcon's investment into DSLAMs at the exchange was wasted as most people's speed issues were not on Telecom's wholesale network (= today's Chorus' network) but in fact it was upstream within their network which needed the investment.

Actually many urban areas were congested and some very congested on the Telecom Wholesale backbone by 2006 and that congestion in the national network only exacerbated poor international performance. Think of things like handover link dimensioning that remained for many years even after they upgraded exchanges to Ethernet/ISAMs in 2007 keeping low data caps low all the mean while Xtra retail was exempt. Would have been avoided with earlier unbundling.

Sorry you are wrong again in many areas.

All RSPs (Telecom Retail included) purchased handover dimentioning at the same price so there was never low data caps on EUBA. The rate limiting was only applied to BUBA handovers based on purchased capacity however that was never applied to EUBA handovers.

The Chorus run the EUBA/WVS (VDSL) Copper network backhaul uncongested so in the days I worked there I never saw any congestion on the network for long periods of time (as those links would typically get upgraded when they neared 70% utilisation) so you don't know what you are talking about.

International bandwidth costs have been dropping year on year so in every congestion case / argument I have always seen it has been either the domestic transit or international capacity purchased (or not purchased) by the RSP rather than a problem with artificial limitations on the access network from Chorus for the handover in that POI (Point of Interconnect).

Lots of over-subscribed domestic transit (getting that broadband connection from CHC -> AKL where the RSP BNG was) or international capacity was the issue.

I don't see that issue changing any time soon with fibre being unbundled.

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