So what do ISPs have to pay for a higher than 45kbps handover? This certainly is pointing the finger at Telecom/Chorus as to whats causing our low data caps.
I do note with the UFB platform there is not any provided backhaul by crown fibre. This begs asking exactly what chorus(or others) will be charging for this or if they will be placing speed restrictions on it.
I'd hate to see a similar situation where a companies prevailance within the local internet infrastructure allows it to make unreasonable demands of isps(like paying them to provide their customers with internet content that they do not host/abnormal peering costs or only allowing a very low per user handover rate for excessively high charges) like we currently get.
From a UFB handover point ISP's will likely have a choice of Telecom Wholesale, Telstraclear and FX Networks for backhaul to their location in most areas. Depends where the handover is and where the ISP's stuff is located.
LFC's are also required to sell point to point L1 and also L2 in the region.
Can someone explain me why there isn't a big movement to uncap the Internet in NZ? Call it "national pride" or similar, to change the NZ Internet from the "last position" to the "first position" in the western world. That's the advantage of being a small country, you can move fast, you can do things among the first. Telecom NZ can deploy things across the country in the same time British Telecom has covered just the city centres in London. Roughly speaking, of course..
Most of the arguments are true, especially if you're looking both sides of the coins. My 500G needs are different from the 1G needs of my parents (who actually just dropped the fixed broadband and moved to only mobile) -- but that's irrelevant when you could get uncapped internet for less what's the smallest cap today. Internet in NZ is expensive to start with, and it's really expensive if you plan to use it.
Even the title of the discussion paper is on the wrong side of the coin. "Barriers ..." should be "How to uncap the domestic internet traffic", or preferably "the internet traffic in NZ".
The terabyte caps in Australia are practically uncapped internet. In uncapped world, they are the just in the T&C as misuse.
PS. Just for comparison, in our small country you can get uncapped fixed and mobile broadband, with the sticks and modems, without installation fees, for less than what Telecom NZ charges for the 2G plan. In a small market with fierce competition, just because the carriers are working one step ahead instead of many behind. The don't try to limit usage, they are actually encouraging it with new services like bundling Spotify or IPTV.
It is because we lack any real competition here. The domestic fibre providers have set prices artificially high as have the international link providers. There is apparently no interest in reducing that price to something that would allow unmetered plans to become available.
- Lack of competition - Poor economies of scale and low population density - Telecom was privatised as a vertically integrated monopoly instead of broken up in the 80's - Poor regulation of Telecom in the 80's, 90's and early 00's - Government delayed local loop unbundling twice until 2006 - Government gave Telecom an obligation to deliver 10Mbit line rate to 80% of connections just before LLU, this meant roadside cabinets serving ~300 customers to reduce the line distnce to 1-2km, the business case for sub loop unbundling is exteremely weak for other ISP's to install gear in cabinets.
We have relatively healthy competition with two big ones and one smaller (an alliance of small telco's). LTE still in pilot but e.g. dual-carrier HSPA+ has been advertised this year. Fiber is being installed by all three, slowly but happening, VDSL here and there but the local loops are typically a bit too long. We do have quite unique history of having 800+ local telco's in the 40's so perhaps there is some "built-in" mentality for competition. But the carriers are still eager to compete.
Why isn't Vodafone more aggressive in NZ? Why don't they try to outperform Telecom in every possible way?
In the 90's when the fiber building around the world was hot, we also had plenty of activity from various players from the telco's to the railroad and power companies. Pretty much every railroad and powerline is equipped with fiber. The bubble is gone but what's left is plenty of capacity and realistic prices.
- Poor economies of scale and low population density
Same here, NZ is world's 200th densely populated country. We are 201th. Even the list of city populations match NZ pretty well.
But here a small city means that a they might get fiber much faster and easier than we in the bigger cities do. A lot of small local telco's are offering fiber in their region.
- Telecom was privatised as a vertically integrated monopoly instead of broken up in the 80's - Poor regulation of Telecom in the 80's, 90's and early 00's
That hurts.. Here the telco's were mostly privatized somehow (many owned by the subscribers, subscriptions turned into stock) and the regulation just finished the monopolies. Telco's were given obligation to serve the areas where they used to have a monopoly. Still causing some issues as in the rural areas the obliged telco's are turning fixed subscriptions into mobile. "Dominant market position" is the word to stir the pot here.
- Government delayed local loop unbundling twice until 2006 - Government gave Telecom an obligation to deliver 10Mbit line rate to 80% of connections just before LLU, this meant roadside cabinets serving ~300 customers to reduce the line distnce to 1-2km, the business case for sub loop unbundling is exteremely weak for other ISP's to install gear in cabinets.
Ok, here the we went the other way. LLU products has been available and the regulation's job was take care that the pricing was right. Wholesale of incumbent's DSL isn't really happening although it's available for a price, own gear is mostly used (My local exchange has DSL gear from 4 or 5 ISP's).
The regulator has spent a lot of time in the 00's to solve problems and pricing issues between the telco's. Usually it's about the prices as the telco's have never had the attitude to really keep others away. Perhaps one reason as we have never went from "one telco to many" but from "a lot of telco's to many telco's".
We as a relatively small ISP rent our first dark fiber from the local "monopoly telco" around '94. A few years later they realized that renting dark fiber isn't very smart and started offering bandwidth instead. We never had to wait what the telco had to offer, we always did things before they realized what we were doing and moved forward. Early 90's one could get straight copper across two phone exchanges, we kept each and every one of them as we moved customers to our new local equipment. Again, it took couple of years before the telco switched to offer copper just within the exchange.
I can understand the reasons and I know that things happen differently, pretty much every country is unique how things happened and some where luckier than others. I just can't stop wondering why things aren't improving in NZ any faster, local cities or local utility companies aren't installing fiber here and there, the little competition that exists isn't fighting more fiercely against each other in both price and product. Even with the national infrastructure I find it hard to accept the "we'll keep the high prices forever" plan. When a road is resurfaced or a new housing area prepared, there should have been fiber installed for many years now.
No offend to anyone, just trying to behind the rational reasons and my way of expression can be quite straight. I've got my permission to start living in NZ so I'm highly positive about the country but I can't help worrying about the state of the Internet and how it effects the iCT industry as a whole.
Somehow I can't help comparing the cabinetization and UFB to the five-year plans for the national economy of the Soviet Union. :-)
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