Pacific Fibre

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Pacific Fibre

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#306320 11-Mar-2010 16:51

freitasm:Pacific Fibre, an early stage international fibre venture founded by a group including New Zealand businessmen Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan and Rod Drury, announced its plans today, aiming to break the digital divide between New Zealand, Australia and the rest of the world.

At least you know there'll be plenty of capital investment from these three wealthy business heavyweights.

Screeb

698 posts

Ultimate Geek

#306347 11-Mar-2010 17:58

In regards to the "unlimited" thing, they say on their Twitter feed:

we will sell to ISPs and major corporates. We are aiming for prices which will let them fulfll the uncapped high speed mandate

Some people seem to forget that "unlimited" is not the same as "infinite". You are still constrained by your connection speed. A 10Mbps connection can "only" download 3TB in a month if it went flat out 24/7. There's nothing inherently unfeasible about "unlimited" internet.

I'm very glad to see this project come about. I'm especially pleased with the capacity, latency, price and timeline goals. And to top it all off, the founders are perfect for the job. I really hope this happens, but the cynic in me is wary. It's very ambitious - but if anyone can do it, it's them. The government needs to make sure this doesn't fail.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79294 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#306348 11-Mar-2010 18:00

The 10Mbps connection can get a theoretical 3TB. But how much of this connection is contrained? ISPs can't "buy" full speed for every single user. They can't pay the price. So they buy the amount of traffic for the average user base they have. Then they have to start limiting because buying more costs money...

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79294 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#306349 11-Mar-2010 18:02

nate:
freitasm:Pacific Fibre, an early stage international fibre venture founded by a group including New Zealand businessmen Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan and Rod Drury, announced its plans today, aiming to break the digital divide between New Zealand, Australia and the rest of the world.

At least you know there'll be plenty of capital investment from these three wealthy business heavyweights.

I don't think they will put only their money into this. They have to raise capital - they don't have $900 million dollars available at their fingertips. So at some stage they have factored the capital cost - and they will have to get that money back. This is going to be just one little bit of the total cost for this initiative.

Ragnor

8222 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#306352 11-Mar-2010 18:10

freitasm: The 10Mbps connection can get a theoretical 3TB. But how much of this connection is contrained? ISPs can't "buy" full speed for every single user. They can't pay the price. So they buy the amount of traffic for the average user base they have. Then they have to start limiting because buying more costs money...

ISP's have always purchased X bandwidth for Y users at their own choice of "contention ratio", eg: 1000 users with average sync speed is 10Mbit each, they might use 100:1 contention ratio where they'd purchase 100Mbit of bandwidth.

Sadly No ISP's in NZ disclose their contention ratio(s) for international traffic/bandwidth (so we don't know how bad they really are).

Charging per GB has always been just an easy way to get users to restrict their usage without requiring the ISP to have hardware/management/enough bandwidth to share fairly between users.

I guess what Pacific are saying is that they are aiming to offer large amounts of bandwidth cheap enough that the contention ratio becomes favourable/low enough that per GB charging will become a non factor or irrelevant.

Should be interesting.

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79294 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#306353 11-Mar-2010 18:13

Hopefully they can pull exactly that through...

VFNZPaulBrislen

970 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#306366 11-Mar-2010 18:58

We would be interested in talking to these guys about buying capacity off them.

Cheers

Paul

Paul Brislen
Head of Corporate Communications
Vodafone

http://forum.vodafone.co.nz

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
79294 posts

Uber Geek

Administrator

ID Verified

Trusted

Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#306367 11-Mar-2010 18:59

I am sure every ISP will hear from them from now until they go live...

System

521 posts

Ultimate Geek

#306374 11-Mar-2010 19:23

Ragnor:
freitasm: The 10Mbps connection can get a theoretical 3TB. But how much of this connection is contrained? ISPs can't "buy" full speed for every single user. They can't pay the price. So they buy the amount of traffic for the average user base they have. Then they have to start limiting because buying more costs money...

ISP's have always purchased X bandwidth for Y users at their own choice of "contention ratio", eg: 1000 users with average sync speed is 10Mbit each, they might use 100:1 contention ratio where they'd purchase 100Mbit of bandwidth.

Sadly No ISP's in NZ disclose their contention ratio(s) for international traffic/bandwidth (so we don't know how bad they really are).

Charging per GB has always been just an easy way to get users to restrict their usage without requiring the ISP to have hardware/management/enough bandwidth to share fairly between users.

I guess what Pacific are saying is that they are aiming to offer large amounts of bandwidth cheap enough that the contention ratio becomes favourable/low enough that per GB charging will become a non factor or irrelevant.

Should be interesting.

I hope they calculate this enough for it to actually come true, it would work wonders for NZ in general

PC: 3.3ghz Core i5-2500, 8gb DDR3, ATI Radeon 5850, 27" QHD IPS Monitor

Mobile Phone: iPhone 5 32gb Graphite.

Screeb

698 posts

Ultimate Geek

#306386 11-Mar-2010 20:40

freitasm: The 10Mbps connection can get a theoretical 3TB. But how much of this connection is contrained? ISPs can't "buy" full speed for every single user. They can't pay the price. So they buy the amount of traffic for the average user base they have. Then they have to start limiting because buying more costs money...

Ragnor has answered this and I don't really have any more to add, just a bit of expanding. "Unlimited" is all about having enough bandwidth available to offer a service without caps at an acceptable contention ratio. You either introduce caps, have a high contention ratio, or have a fat pipe. Bandwidth in NZ today isn't cheap enough for most ISPs to offer an unlimited plan without having a significantly higher contention ratio than they do. Obviously most people wouldn't like to put up with such potentially slow speeds, so the unlimited services aren't offered. The hope is that the new cable will be able to reduce bandwidth costs enough that ISPs could offer unlimited plans without that vastly increased contention ratio.

freitasm: I don't think they will put only their money into this. They have to raise capital - they don't have $900 million dollars available at their fingertips. So at some stage they have factored the capital cost - and they will have to get that money back. This is going to be just one little bit of the total cost for this initiative.

What they do have is significant experience, contacts, knowledge and clout. Being who they are, they are in a very good position to raise the capital.

Screeb

698 posts

Ultimate Geek

#306389 11-Mar-2010 20:53

More technical details released: http://blog.pacificfibre.net/uncategorized/the-technical-details/

exportgoldman

1202 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#306415 11-Mar-2010 22:01

freitasm: I don't think they will put only their money into this. They have to raise capital - they don't have $900 million dollars available at their fingertips. So at some stage they have factored the capital cost - and they will have to get that money back. This is going to be just one little bit of the total cost for this initiative.

From memory Southern Cross Cable paid off it's capital outlay in some ridiculous amount of time like 9 months or something (I should did up the actual time instead of offering inaccurate figures :) but it was well well worth it for Telecom and the other investors in SCC.

I'm all for a second (and third :) cable, and the cable going to the USA as well - but I wonder why it's required to go to the USA, you would think the cheaper option would be just to run a cable to Australia, they have a quite good connectivity to the internet backbones

Worldwide Internet Backbone Map
http://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/m.dodge/cybergeography//atlas/teleglobe_large.gif

Don't get me wrong I'm all for doing it right the first time and doing the whole kit and caboodle - it's just so unlike NZ'ers to do it that way :-)

I'm loving the focus on latency, it would make things like the Amazon EC2 cloud usable for latency sensitive applications

Oh, and can someone tell me why the Peering location at Auckland is like 100 odd stories up the sky tower, I would have throught this would have been the worst location to have a peering point for disasters etc??? I've never been able to figure this out - apart from lack of flooding!

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

paul151

309 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#306420 11-Mar-2010 22:16

I'm very happy to read of these developments as any investment to improve our connectivity with the wider world is key to the future success of the much vaunted future domestic investment by private and/or public sectors alike.

While debate seems to rage here about the overall use and availablity of the anticipated capacity when it arrives, the fact there are investors keen to connect up a 'big fat pipe' between NZ and USA to get us this extra capacity is 'the' story for me today.

Quic "Sprinter" UFB - Ref (free setup): R338237EFDIUJ

Agency BBS | fsxNet | Agency News | Total FM

Jarno

270 posts

Ultimate Geek

#306442 12-Mar-2010 00:38

exportgoldman:
I'm loving the focus on latency, it would make things like the Amazon EC2 cloud usable for latency sensitive applications

In the technical details they estimate that oneway latency should reduce from 61ms on SCC to 54ms on PacFib. For comparison, the time it takes for light to travel 10,500km in a vacuum is about 35ms, which would represent the absolute rockbottom theoretical latency between NZ and the US.

Oh, and can someone tell me why the Peering location at Auckland is like 100 odd stories up the sky tower

Because:

The Sky Tower was agreed to be a sensible meeting place, since it was already kitted out as a telehousing facility, it's a good high-point for wireless access, and it was about as neutral a point to meet as anybody could think of.

And because the rooms set aside for telecommunications equipment is high up in the air, mainly for all those antennas on top.

PhantomSS

25 posts

Geek

#306494 12-Mar-2010 09:43

Screeb: Some people seem to forget that "unlimited" is not the same as "infinite". You are still constrained by your connection speed. A 10Mbps connection can "only" download 3TB in a month if it went flat out 24/7. There's nothing inherently unfeasible about "unlimited" internet.

While you might be right about that, the whole idea is a "fibre rollout to the home" which Vector has been doing for some time, and is currently in the process of trying to get the Government to pay for it.

It's not like we are going to have a 12TB fibre cable that is going to be coming to the exchange - cabinet or straight to our homes on the current copper pairs is it.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4