Getting Fibre in a rural location -- fools errand?

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#2963978 6-Sep-2022 19:39

you are paying for the fiber to be run from your property to a cabinet (or for a cabinet) where you are paying for the infrastructure in the cabinet to allow you to connect to the rest of the network.

raytaylor

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#2964065 7-Sep-2022 08:14

flapjack:

What's a "Fibre to the home location"?

Is the government paying 10s of thousands of dollars for each and every fibre install it does? Totally understand I'm footing the bill -- I just want to make sure I understand why and what that bill would be for, everything looks to be a standard install, and surely not every install is 10s of thounds.

The government loaned some fiber companies (chorus being one) a large amount of money to build out in fiber to the home locations which are most urban areas in NZ. Chorus offered free installations with certain conditions as a deal sweetener to get the loan from the government.

in some rural areas where they were running fiber for a school, and 10 houses were passed within a certain length of distance, they offered subsidized installations (I think the cost was about $2k) but that offer ended about a year ago.

We have paid $8k to go from a fiber-fed cabinet opposite a school, 8 metres and through a fence into our customers property. The reason was the cabinet had no equipment inside it other than VDSL. So they had to long-haul the GPON service out from a nearby town by splicing together spare fibers in the existing cabinet backhaul cable.

Another one was $30k. That was to tap into fiber running across the road on its way past our customer to a new subdivision.

And then recently I was quoted $400k for a customer that was along a path of a 12 core fiber cable which fed a cell tower, school and VDSL cabinet. I suspect for that one they want to upgrade the cabinet and shoot a GPON back up the cable as they have probably long hauled the school out from town but as soon as a second subscriber wants to connect they seem to want to upgrade the cabinet to GPON.

The other thing is that if the fiber is the old backhaul kind, its not designed to be easily tapped into. They have to dig a swimming pool size hole to expose the cable and bring it up into a new cabinet or splice enclosure and break it open without cutting any fibers inside the cable.

The new kind of cable is much easier - they can break it open and pull out a microduct with a very small hole by comparison. They pull out a microduct duct then blow it from the nearest existing splicing enclosure.

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raytaylor

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#2964084 7-Sep-2022 09:50

Oooh it gets more complicated.....

It appears that Chorus may not own the fiber cable that runs out in that direction from Hamilton/Whatawhata along SH23.

I am making a few massive assumptions but it appears to be an IRU deal with the cable owner or they are renting some fibers between Whatawhata and Te Uku exchange. At the Te Uku exchange there is
- GPON equipment which appears to feed a cell tower on Van Houtte Road, and I think I found one house that paid for a fiber install to get UFB.
- A backhaul cable going down to Raglan where there is more gpon equipment serving some urban houses in the village there.

Also from the Te Uku exchange chorus has some fiber going in different directions.

However to get to the VDSL cabinet near your house, there is a fiber cable spur coming off the shared cable running down SH23.

So its possible they only have two or four fibers in the SH23 cable coming out from hamilton that might say bring a 10gbit feeder, then it splits off into the various directions at Te Uku exchange, while also a 1gbit or 10gbit fiber comes back up to split off at the spur cable.

The spur cable goes to the VDSL cabinet and then the school is fed from one of the old 100mbit P2P business fiber connections coming off the cabinet. (Expensive monthly)
My understanding is that in the VDSL cabinets they can install fiber line cards that serve a point to point fiber connection but its not the government supported UFB format and is the old type of fiber that chorus was selling to businesses for the 10 years before fiber-to-the-home was a thing.
They did a deal with the government to serve a bunch of rural schools using this system at the start of the UFB project.
The idea was that it got some fiber into the ground and that would be of future benefit to local communities where a bunch of the cable laying cost (the biggest part) was already paid for.

So for a cheaper monthly price and faster service you need the government supported GPON UFB system. But to do that they are going to need to put that equipment into the vdsl cabinet.
The P2P business fiber coming off the VDSL cabinet for less than $500 a month probably wouldnt be any faster than the VDSL.

Technically they could tap into the fiber running past your house to the school, but it ends when it gets to SH23 and chorus may not have any spare fibers that they own or rent to get the signal back to Te Uku. Your on a fiber island and there is only a limited way to get out.

So they need to use the existing fibers to the VDSL cabinet where they could put a GPON system to then serve your house.

If you and a bunch of neighbors along that spur cable/fiber island wanted to band together you could possibly do it as a group through an ISP, but the first house to order service is the one thats going to be paying for the cabinet upgrade to GPON.

I am going to suggest you should expect a cost of at least $20k

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Geektastic

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#2964867 8-Sep-2022 22:38

Before we moved, we lived on a small subdivision of 15 houses on a former farm. The main (private) access road had all the cabling necessary laid when it was built however there was zero to connect it to in the public highway at the end, so none of the cables in that road did anything at all but were there because the council insist.

One homeowner there was very well off and apparently sought a quote to bring fibre from the nearest town (about 7kms!) to serve the subdivision. I never saw it but he suggested it was well into hundreds of thousands of dollars! Even he decided it was too much.

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#2964870 8-Sep-2022 23:18

There's a lot of great information here. I really did come to the right place to ask this question, and I really appreciate all the information I'm getting here. Thank you, truly.

In regards to getting a bunch of neighbors together... I wonder if we could form some kind of non profit ISP type thing and fund it together as a trust of some sort, to collectively pay for an install. There's a handful of people interested... But I know no one would individually fund it - though together we might, and as a non profit maybe we could get some grant funding. Anyone ever see anything like this before?

raytaylor

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#2964881 9-Sep-2022 02:46

flapjack: In regards to getting a bunch of neighbors together... I wonder if we could form some kind of non profit

Unlikely to happen
With most households in the community having VDSL/ADSL that is already capable of a netflix stream, there isnt much tangible benefit in spending a bunch of money for something that they already have.

Sure its faster, but most people wont think that is worth spending money on if they wont make use of the speed. And those that may get an improvement will be beyond the school where the existing fiber stops anyway.

Your ISP or chorus also wont be interested in dealing with a community group headache - they just want one person to invoice and pay the bill.
There would be no way for that person to demand payment from someone else who benefits that is outside of the group.
Say your group pools funds for the first installation which includes the cabinet upgrade cost. Once thats done, the group members can go and get their own quotes which would be much less because the cabinet upgrade is already done.
However if a household outside your group goes and gets a quote via their isp, and follows through with an install, there is no way your group could recover cabinet upgrade costs from that household.

Ray Taylor

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jonb

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#2964941 9-Sep-2022 09:14

flapjack: There's a lot of great information here. I really did come to the right place to ask this question, and I really appreciate all the information I'm getting here. Thank you, truly.

In regards to getting a bunch of neighbors together... I wonder if we could form some kind of non profit ISP type thing and fund it together as a trust of some sort, to collectively pay for an install. There's a handful of people interested... But I know no one would individually fund it - though together we might, and as a non profit maybe we could get some grant funding. Anyone ever see anything like this before?

Yes, having super knowledgable and helpful people like @Wheelbarrow01 and @raytaylor makes a huge difference

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quickymart

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#2964947 9-Sep-2022 09:22

You could look at a community upgrade for your area - this will depend on how many houses are near you, and if any of your neighbours are interested in pitching in.

If you want to look at that option, ask around your neighbourhood first, then maybe reach out to Chorus to start the process. Note that it is not a fast process, you will be in for a fair wait if you go down this road.

MikeAqua

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#2966018 12-Sep-2022 09:16

Handle9:
MikeAqua: Chorus will own it, and you'll still pay full price to use it.

All of which is entirely reasonable. There’s no commercial reason for Chrous to build this type of infrastructure. It’s questionable whether it’s commercially viable to maintain a service to these types of premises as chorus can’t charge more for the ongoing connection.

I pay for the capital
Chorus owns it
I still have to pay to use it.

I think two of those things together are reasonable, I balked at three. But, it is what it is because that's how utilities seem to work. Inevitably, there is no competition at the network level for a given address. I've encountered the same thing as an industrial electricity user. Monopoly is, as monopoly does.

Fortunately, Starlink seems to be a reasonable alternative for many users. I have the old man up and running now on Starlink and it's a significant improvement on the VoFo 4G wireless he was using.

Mike

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#2966072 12-Sep-2022 11:58

MikeAqua:

I pay for the capital
Chorus owns it
I still have to pay to use it.

Think of it like this.....

Ownership...
Chorus are still responsible for maintaining the network hence why the ownership sits with them. It can be expensive when a road slips and suddenly asking a community to front up with several thousand dollars for diggers and traffic management to repair something is not going to be easy, and unfair on neighbors that do want to pay.

Paying for capital....

Chorus wants to serve as many customers as possible. But for some customers there is simply no business case to do so. They have a calculation that says "per household we can invest xyz" and that allows us to break even with a small profit over a period of time before upgrade and maintenance costs begin.

But the actual cost of initially building the network to do that is abc.

So chorus charge the difference between the abc and xyz which removes the barrier that blocks the business case from being viable.

Paying to use it....

Yes there is maintenance and upgrade costs as well as the the return on chorus portion of initial investment (xyz) that still needs to be met.

Since its all regulated products, chorus has limited ability to make a profit, the government sets the pricing and therefore chorus doesnt have the flexibility they did back in the telecom/post office days where everything could be cross subsidized.

Ray Taylor

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MikeAqua

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#2966184 12-Sep-2022 15:02

raytaylor:

Paying for capital....

Chorus wants to serve as many customers as possible. But for some customers there is simply no business case to do so. They have a calculation that says "per household we can invest xyz" and that allows us to break even with a small profit over a period of time before upgrade and maintenance costs begin.

But the actual cost of initially building the network to do that is abc.

So chorus charge the difference between the abc and xyz which removes the barrier that blocks the business case from being viable.

And seven seconds after the equipment goes in, all the neighbours suddenly decide they do want fibre after all and, either: Chorus charges them a capital contribution too and pockets it. Or: The neighbours ride for free (as far as capital contributions go).

Mike

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#2966186 12-Sep-2022 15:05

MikeAqua:
raytaylor:

Paying for capital....

Chorus wants to serve as many customers as possible. But for some customers there is simply no business case to do so. They have a calculation that says "per household we can invest xyz" and that allows us to break even with a small profit over a period of time before upgrade and maintenance costs begin.

But the actual cost of initially building the network to do that is abc.

So chorus charge the difference between the abc and xyz which removes the barrier that blocks the business case from being viable.

And seven seconds after the equipment goes in, all the neighbours suddenly decide they do want fibre after all and, either: Chorus charges them a capital contribution too and pockets it. Or: The neighbours ride for free (as far as capital contributions go).

There is nothing stopping you providing your own network and offering it to the neighbours. It’s far more expensive than connecting to the chorus network but then you retain ownership.

quickymart

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#2966288 12-Sep-2022 17:42

@flapjack have you spoken to your neighbours? Would they be interested in contributing?

evilengineer

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#2966735 13-Sep-2022 16:40

raytaylor:

Oooh it gets more complicated.....

It appears that Chorus may not own the fiber cable that runs out in that direction from Hamilton/Whatawhata along SH23.

I am making a few massive assumptions but it appears to be an IRU deal with the cable owner or they are renting some fibers between Whatawhata and Te Uku exchange. At the Te Uku exchange there is
- GPON equipment which appears to feed a cell tower on Van Houtte Road, and I think I found one house that paid for a fiber install to get UFB.
- A backhaul cable going down to Raglan where there is more gpon equipment serving some urban houses in the village there.

It possibly belongs to Tuatahi First Fibre (or UFF as was) as Raglan is one of their UFB towns.

everettpsycho

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#2966850 13-Sep-2022 20:38

What you'll need to know is what ducts they have outside and what the fibres in there are for. Given where you are I would think they are most likely the backhaul between the exchanges and likely high fibre counts in larger tubes if it's underground. So the issue will also be finding a way to distribute from that network infrastructure.

As it's likely larger tubes they likely won't want to install low fibre counts as it's a waste of duct. But tapping in to the larger fibre count cables is a nuisance and generally speaking the backhaul cables are exclusively for backhaul traffic and not broken in to, especially not for residential customers where there's little profit for the outlay. Those backhaul cables will be leased at significant cost for the traffic going down them so I think they'd want to fill a splitter as close as they can to capacity to justify using one up, it's just not worth sacrificing that potential revenue for one customer roaying residential rates.

On the subject of the school I believe early in the ufb build lot of effort went in to working with network for learning to get schools up and running. As a result a significant number of them ended up with bespoke P2P connections running off early infrastructure and all sorts of weird and wonderful things got over the line that weren't to current standards or rules. I'd think a lot of that has been migrated on to the final ufb network and downgraded to regular connections where possible but some rural schools may well still be set up that way.

Cost wise it will likely be tens of thousands to install a cabinet on any fibre available and then they'd likely want to run all new infrastructure from that cabinet to potential connections to not use the backhaul. I'm not sure how they operate but there's nothing saying you can't spread the cost with your neighbours but as others have said, when it's done the network owner will own it and likely won't hesitate to connect anyone else that asks at a reduced price tapping in to what you paid for. If going in to it as a community you'd want something in writing between everyone saying your agree to foot the bill spread evenly but you'd need a plan of what properties you need built to to even start getting a quote and agree to lease some of that high value line.

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