cost to roll out fibre vs. the benefits it will bring in the future ???

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › cost to roll out fibre vs. the benefits it will bring in the future ???

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FibreFan

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#313479 31-Mar-2010 14:07

Just curious here - sbiddle, do you think NZ should EVER have fibre to the door? do you think it will ever become necessary to have the benefits that fibre would provide to your door (when looking at how much technology has advanced throughout the years and how much it will advance in the future) or will we always have a sufficient flow of information through fibre to the cabinet??? Because I can see this argument going round in circles and I can see that you already know most of the answers to all your questions, so I'm just curious on what you actually think - where do you see NZ in ten years time???

#fttd

sbiddle

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#313484 31-Mar-2010 14:31

FibreFan: Just curious here - sbiddle, do you think NZ should EVER have fibre to the door? do you think it will ever become necessary to have the benefits that fibre would provide to your door (when looking at how much technology has advanced throughout the years and how much it will advance in the future) or will we always have a sufficient flow of information through fibre to the cabinet??? Because I can see this argument going round in circles and I can see that you already know most of the answers to all your questions, so I'm just curious on what you actually think - where do you see NZ in ten years time???

#fttd

If you've read my posts you'll see I am a fan of fibre. I'd love to see fibre to every household in NZ in 10 years time. I've been blessed with a cable connection for close to 12 years which delivered me broadband when most people had dialup.

What concerns me is the cost, which to me is the fundamental issue here that a lot of people want to ignore. I'd love you or Vector to come out now and give an approxpiate cost per household of providing the service. The closest we have to base things off is the Australian NBN which is giving wholesale pricing for connections in the vicinity of $60 - $70 per month depending on who you want to believe.

If you can't come out with a price I'd like to know why you can't give me a price. Surely somebody must have done the sums?

What use is there deploying a fibre service to people's home if they're not going to be able to afford it? If the government was to look at subsidising the service even further where is the justification for this when we're faced with so many other serious issues in this country? 100Mbps to the house isn't magically going to create 1000's of new jobs, fix up the social issues in this country or give kids a better education.

FibreFan

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#313503 31-Mar-2010 15:26

As I'm not working directly for Vector I don't have access or the ability to disclose any thing like that (costs).

The use of deploying fibre now (and I realise fibre is already being deployed and that the FTTN is 'future proofed');
1) so NZ's have the strong foundation they need to keep up with the rest of the world/advances in technology
2) There's no way anyone will ever be able to 'afford' it if it stays an imaginary aspect of society - something must be put in place now so that we can gague exactly how much it will cost for consumers when looking at competitors entering the market, possible subsidies and plans for the future.
When the country built the first roads there were few/ if any cars to use them - the streets wern't filled over night and I feel it is a similary scenario to fibre - it takes time for a good thing to come around but if the infrastructure is there then we can keep advancing and look to improve - not constantly struggling to build Just in Time.
3) 100Mbps to the house won't 'magically' fix those things - over time they will happen by themselves as we will have the best tools in place to produce the greatest outcomes.

Also, I knew my broadband was extremely slow far before any company (like Vector) 'told' me it was slow - and I think the general public are the same - not everyone is an IT expert but also, not everyone is totally clueless.

But still, where do you see NZ in 10 years time?

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Cymro

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#313518 31-Mar-2010 15:56

FibreFan:
Also, I knew my broadband was extremely slow far before any company (like Vector) 'told' me it was slow - and I think the general public are the same - not everyone is an IT expert but also, not everyone is totally clueless.

Out of interest, how fast is your broadband that you consider it "slow"?

Screeb

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#313522 31-Mar-2010 16:02

sbiddle:
What use is there deploying a fibre service to people's home if they're not going to be able to afford it?

Obviously Vector has determined that enough people will be able to afford it to make it worth it. Your argument here rests on Vector and every other company that has made a submission to have not thought this through.

If the government was to look at subsidising the service even further where is the justification for this when we're faced with so many other serious issues in this country? 100Mbps to the house isn't magically going to create 1000's of new jobs, fix up the social issues in this country or give kids a better education.

I hate hate hate this argument. Just because fibre doesn't fix every single problem in the country doesn't mean we shouldn't spend money on it. Should we not spend money on parks, because parks don't create jobs, fix up social issues or give kids a better education? The government didn't say "hmm well we have this $1.5bn we were going to spend on education, social issues and job creation, but we'll spend it on fibre instead". And no, I don't think the money is going to come from thin air, it will come from spending that is not as useful to the country as fibre. That is NOT education, etc. People aren't going to be dying in the streets because damn we spent that 1.5B on fibre.

Your examples also show you need to think about this a bit more. The FTTH network certainly will create thousands of new jobs - not just in building and maintaining the network (which is a big job-creator itself), but in the flow-on benefits of ubiquitous high-speed broadband. We can suddenly have NZ-based HD video streaming services, hosted apps, cloud based storage/backup, telecommuting, etc, etc. These things do create jobs. Social issues? No, but that falls under my first paragraph. Education? Are you kidding? The first benefactors of the FTTH network will be schools. If you can't see how giving schools high speed internet access benefits education then I don't know what to tell you. This also works for in-home broadband, as kids have high speed access to school media and video-heavy online education tools.

FibreFan

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#313533 31-Mar-2010 16:16

I'm not 100% sure but I think it lies around 3-4Mbps but, what I should have said, the bigger issue for me is that it's incredibly un-reliable - at times the speed is not an issue and works fine, but other times it gets so congested it is unusable which is highly frustrating - disables me from going about daily routines and practises!

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Cymro

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#313544 31-Mar-2010 16:32

FibreFan: I'm not 100% sure but I think it lies around 3-4Mbps but, what I should have said, the bigger issue for me is that it's incredibly un-reliable - at times the speed is not an issue and works fine, but other times it gets so congested it is unusable which is highly frustrating - disables me from going about daily routines and practises!

That is pretty low - have you checked http://www.telecomwholesale.co.nz/maps to see if your address is due to be cabinetised?

Also good to know your modem sync rate and stats as well as throughput from somewhere like https://www.speedtest.net/

cyril7

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#313548 31-Mar-2010 16:40

I'm not 100% sure but I think it lies around 3-4Mbps but, what I should have said, the bigger issue for me is that it's incredibly un-reliable - at times the speed is not an issue and works fine, but other times it gets so congested it is unusable which is highly frustrating - disables me from going about daily routines and practises!

Odd, I find little to no congestion issues on my BB, infact it works good 99% of the time I use it, which is a lot, and I get regular speedtest results of >15Mb/s to NZ speedtest servers, and I get regular FTP throughput from a major clients servers in Auckland (me in Welly) close to that day in and out.

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FibreFan

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#313550 31-Mar-2010 16:49

I'll have conduct a speed test whilst using my home BB - I know for certain my work connection is far greater and that things would be a lot easier at home if I had even this sort of connection - which doesn't seem to much better than at home according to a speed test I have just done.

I think reliability is the main issue though.

ockel

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#313694 1-Apr-2010 05:47

FibreFan: I'll have conduct a speed test whilst using my home BB - I know for certain my work connection is far greater and that things would be a lot easier at home if I had even this sort of connection - which doesn't seem to much better than at home according to a speed test I have just done.

I think reliability is the main issue though.

Any chance that your work pays significantly more per month for its BB (access not data)?
And that things would be a lot easier at home if you were willing to pay the same amount for a similar connection?

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sbiddle

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#313703 1-Apr-2010 07:33

FibreFan: I'll have conduct a speed test whilst using my home BB - I know for certain my work connection is far greater and that things would be a lot easier at home if I had even this sort of connection - which doesn't seem to much better than at home according to a speed test I have just done.

I think reliability is the main issue though.

What do you mean by reliability? If it's a measure of uptime then there aren't really any major reliability issues with any of the major broadband delivery platforms, whether they be copper, fibre or wireless.

It's fine having a fibre connection at work but I suspect you'd simply be unable to afford the same sort of connection at home with the same speeds and CIR/contention ratios. While networks such as Vector's existing fibre and Citylink are great many small businesses bauk at the thought of paying upwards of $400-500 upwards for a fibre internet connection.

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FibreFan

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#313895 1-Apr-2010 14:33

Yeah I realise that's the case!
I don't want to turn this discussion into anything personal as that's not what it's about.

Thanks for your input though! :)

cyril7

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#314006 1-Apr-2010 20:29

FibreFan I think as a marketeer you have drunk too much of your own poison. No one here is disagreeing about the fact that FTTD.FTTH is a good thing that we would all like. As to if we currently are prepared to pay for the cost that it would incur at this point is a moot point.

But to bag the current BB technologies based on the hyped up info Vector or any other investor who is totally focused on preening their own ideals that are out in the future is a bit rich.

Reality is, and I am happy for you to prove details to the contray is that customers who are on the receiving end of Telecoms FTTN network and the new backend technologies that are progressively being rolled out are very very reliable and providing levels of service both in the local distribution level, aggregation level and backhaul that are previously never seen. where as arguments you put forward seem to relate to BB performance from quite some years ago, not a very balanced point of view I suspect.

Cyril

webwat

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#314063 1-Apr-2010 23:14

sbiddle:
FibreFan: I'll have conduct a speed test whilst using my home BB - I know for certain my work connection is far greater and that things would be a lot easier at home if I had even this sort of connection - which doesn't seem to much better than at home according to a speed test I have just done.

I think reliability is the main issue though.

What do you mean by reliability? If it's a measure of uptime then there aren't really any major reliability issues with any of the major broadband delivery platforms, whether they be copper, fibre or wireless.

It's fine having a fibre connection at work but I suspect you'd simply be unable to afford the same sort of connection at home with the same speeds and CIR/contention ratios. While networks such as Vector's existing fibre and Citylink are great many small businesses bauk at the thought of paying upwards of $400-500 upwards for a fibre internet connection.

Plus average install fee of a few thousand $$ just to get nearby street fibre installed into a
building, and months of waiting for the fibre people to do feasibility/price for the project.

You will probably find that half the reliability of copper-based broadband is related to customer premises equipment (CPE) such as modems and routers. Other reliability issues become worse with distance from the access node, so fibre connecting a late model DSLAM in a Telecom cabinet (as opposed to the infamous Conklin DSLAMs) does solve many problems with copper. ADSL and SHDSL are facing a limited future for other reasons, including the price of copper itself and the performance characteristics...

However fibre operators have to solve issues with usability, building installation, emergency service and network design, in addition to all the added value things that have to build the business case. I dont think reliability will improve much for residential users who only get one fibre feed and probably cheap ONTs.

Comparison of copper vs fibre:

Any accident or disturbance could equally break either fibre or copper, although hopefully any new lines would have some protection.

Copper faults such as corrosion, water or electrical issues are not experienced on fibre, however reliably joining fibre is more tricky.

Users normally own their own routers/modems for copper connections, and consumer grade electronics are generally the weakest part of such a service.

Phone service is carried on copper concurrently with the broadband signal, and the phone will generally keep working through a power cut or broadband outage even if you smash the modem.

Cabinetised ADSL has to be reasonably close to the premises so backup power for cabinets involve a bunch of batteries. Extended blackouts will drain batteries of course, but the more centralised fibre access nodes (also with lower power loads) would be easier to organise some emergency response with a few small gensets.

Both types of fibre require a powered ONT at customers premesis, likely supplied by the FibreCo, to create service to the user. The ONT may have a battery, but any electrical fault, spike, surge or outage could potentially affect all service including emergency calls. Note that batteries tend to degrade over 3 years or so and normally get replaced on a schedule (ie before they fail).

ADSL speeds drop quickly as the signal attenuates, so a DSLAM can only deliver 10Mbps speeds within about 1.5km on good lines. Fibre GPON can deliver full speeds to 5km, and 100Mbps Ethernet has minimum 10km reach on single-mode optics. This makes fibre the economic choice for greenfields developments by minimising investment in outside plant (street cabinets).

Time to find a new industry!

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