Is a fibre connection really necessary?

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KiwiSurfer

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#2768284 29-Aug-2021 09:50

Acknowledge Ray's fantastic post above. However I would still feel uneasy about buying a property based on it having VDSL.

In the short-term, VDSL is a viable option as long as Chorus continue to operate and maintain the network up to acceptable standards. Ray has shown this very well.

However as OP is buying a property I would be thinking long-term. I would be thinking about:

1. How long will Chorus maintain the VDSL network up to acceptable standards? 5 years? 10 years?

2. What are my options when the quality of the VDSL degrades and becomes unsuitable? (Chorus has no responsibility to provide you with the best possible service over copper. If your service degrades but is within Chorus' parameters and it costs them more than what its worth to fix it then you may be forced to accept the degraded service.)

3. What are my options when copper is withdrawn altogether? (Not sure how long before this happens in rural areas but certainty something to be mindful of).

4. Are my alternative options (should VDSL be taken out of the equation) suitable? (or in other words, if VDSL is degraded/withdrawn, do I have a reasonable and affordable alternative I can easily switch to?)

I would totes go for VDSL if it was a short-term rental.

For a long-term investment I'd be looking for a property that has either fiber or at least a property with access to a diverse range of options (including WBB, WISPs, a friend up the road with fiber, etc) I can fall back onto.

lucky015

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#2768374 29-Aug-2021 14:22

As a whole as someone that's worked in a range of Telco's for 10 years (although half the people offering advice in this thread have done so also if not longer) I'd avoid DSL like the plague when Fibre is available in the area, experience can be good but more often than not it can be very poor and made worse by the relatively high thresholds (aka burden of proof) Chorus have in place for anything to be considered a valid fault and the required arguing involved to actually get a lot of issues fixed.

The short version is that the copper network throughout the country in a lot of places is in a much poorer condition than anyone cares to admit and Chorus have less than zero incentive to fix or maintain it, its quite common for an entire bundle of cables running along a street to be severely damaged and end up in an endless cycle of techs swapping a connection between multiple (already marked faulty) pairs to attempt to "repair" the issue.

Speed is the most visually obvious difference between the services but is probably only really noticeable in the sub 40Mbs range (depending on the number of people in the property and how many of them like doing things such as streaming at the same time) unless you have any very heavy users in the house, stability and fault occurrence/resolution times however can make a world of difference, the average fiber fault troubleshooting is significantly easier, quicker and gives a more concrete result than copper troubleshooting. You also get the benefit of the LFC owning everything up to and including the ONT in the property rather than dealing with the typical "throw a tester on the line outside the house and see if there's an issue in the first 60 seconds then close the job off" that seems to be standard with Chorus technicians on copper services at this point in time no matter the fault description, also remember that can lead to No Fault Found fees valid or otherwise as well as delaying resolution of the actual issue while arguing takes place between the ISP and Chorus.

chevrolux

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#2768377 29-Aug-2021 14:34

lucky015:

[snipped]

Big +1 for the above. While speed is certainly a factor when choosing a connection, stability and support is significantly more important. Especially when it's WFH purposes.

Copper sucks. Chorus don't want to look after it, and they have less and less technicians on the road that can actually fix a copper fault. And there are a whole bunch of different faults that can impact service.

Fibre fault finding, and resolution, is easy in comparison. "Red light = no light signal". Is customer service lead broken, unplugged at the FAT/Cabinet, or the entire OLT is down? That's it, fixed. And it's fixed right up to the customer CPE, not just a test point outside that is helpful to no one except the fault man who like to test and run.

nztim

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#2768397 29-Aug-2021 15:31

KiwiSurfer:

3. What are my options when copper is withdrawn altogether? (Not sure how long before this happens in rural areas but certainty something to be mindful of).

A free fibre install has to be available for that to happen

Any views expressed on these forums are my own and don't necessarily reflect those of my employer.

pih

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#2768469 29-Aug-2021 17:46

I'm in the Kaipara area, west coast north of Helensville. We are near the limits of ADSL, but mobile and satellite options are still limited. While rural options are slowly improving, fibre is basically impossible for much of the rural community.

Chorus not only has no desire to maintain aging copper, they also appear to have no desire to lay new rural fibre lines. I was quoted an eye-watering $300k to have fibre laid 250m from the trunk on SH16 to our home. Yes, it would have meant putting down a new cabinet and hardware, but I can't help but think with that sort of price they just didn't want to do it.

I'm hanging out for Starlink (still on a waitlist, our cell is oversubscribed) which will be a game changer for us and many others around the country. It still won't match the reliability or top speed of fibre, but I bought out here knowing that was the price we were paying for the lifestyle we were after.

Still love the peace and quiet out here: slow, broken internet notwithstanding.

raytaylor

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#2768474 29-Aug-2021 17:56

KiwiSurfer:

1. How long will Chorus maintain the VDSL network up to acceptable standards? 5 years? 10 years?

As long as they continue to make money off it. They just spent a boatload of money rolling out rural VDSL over the last 3 years as they see the threat of competition from cellular and RBI.

KiwiSurfer:

3. What are my options when copper is withdrawn altogether? (Not sure how long before this happens in rural areas but certainty something to be mindful of).

Chorus cant remove it until they have run an alternative to you.
The kiwishare agreement provides for minimum standards when it comes to landlines etc with responsibility shared between spark and chorus.
Most of all they have shareholders that want your valuable revenue.
The "copper shutdown" is an urban problem. Even then its not a problem because to continue receiving revenue from you, chorus must provide an alternative (fiber).
The lines that cost chorus more to run than they are worth, and the ones they probably want to switch off is the CMAR network, which you cant get DSL on anyway.

Ray Taylor

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quickymart

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#2768475 29-Aug-2021 17:57

pih: I'm in the Kaipara area, west coast north of Helensville. We are near the limits of ADSL, but mobile and satellite options are still limited. While rural options are slowly improving, fibre is basically impossible for much of the rural community.

Chorus not only has no desire to maintain aging copper, they also appear to have no desire to lay new rural fibre lines. I was quoted an eye-watering $300k to have fibre laid 250m from the trunk on SH16 to our home. Yes, it would have meant putting down a new cabinet and hardware, but I can't help but think with that sort of price they just didn't want to do it.

It costs a fortune to extend the network to sparsely populated areas, so if it's just purely for you, that price is probably about right.

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chevrolux

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#2768513 29-Aug-2021 20:41

raytaylor:
KiwiSurfer:

1. How long will Chorus maintain the VDSL network up to acceptable standards? 5 years? 10 years?

As long as they continue to make money off it. They just spent a boatload of money rolling out rural VDSL over the last 3 years as they see the threat of competition from cellular

They might have chucked a bunch of cabinets in, but they do zero work on the local loop. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!!

alavaliant

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#2768523 29-Aug-2021 21:05

All I can say, is that personally. If I had to choose between two similar houses. One with fibre one without. The one with fibre is going to win everytime.

tim0001

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#2768644 30-Aug-2021 09:57

We’ve had Starlink for a few weeks and I have to say it has exceeded expectations (which were pretty high).

Zoom and team sessions worked well. Out of 18 hrs of meetings it has “blinked” once.

Haven’t had any capacity issues yet. Given it a good hammering.

But yeah, fibre is better and less risky…

Starlink is currently a beta. Firmware updates occur every few days at 4am

Re the copper. VF told us that they will not be able to continue providing us with a landline (voice) in a couple of months because Spark is shutting down the local NEAX. Spark told us that they can’t guarantee future phone service in our area. (A bit surprising because my understanding of the TSO was that residential telephone service was to be widely available as it was at December 2001.) So looks like we are going VoIP over Starlink….

quickymart

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#2768746 30-Aug-2021 12:07

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/internet-shakeup-first-wave-of-kiwis-connect-to-elon-musks-starlink-how-its-working-out/4OSNFTGUKWJU4PFHPUTDVMIINM/

A (paywalled) Kiwi review of Starlink.

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