UFB experience

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › UFB experience

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ... | 10

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#669896 9-Aug-2012 02:28

Just saw this graph about fixed phones lines:

http://www.kipchatov.ru/blog/?p=1048

.. pretty steep curve.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#697355 7-Oct-2012 07:56

Nice to see folks are getting UFB installed in NZ and things are starting to look going forward.

I'm still stuck with the wired ADSL2+ and wireless, the fastest option being

which I can get with the 3G (HSPA+, no dual-carrier). My carrier has improved the coverage a bit since the last time I tried, even LTE keeps connected but the performance is slightly worse than 3G. I'll give it at the office on monday where the coverage was good the last time.

I was picking up some sushi the other day downtown and I was enviously looking at the signs why one street had been opened; one of the carriers was installing fiber there.

GF's parents had their "fiber terminal" replaced with another model a few weeks ago, from Zyxel to Thomson as the IPTV wasn't working well enough sometimes.

While talking to the customer support the technician had said that there were three other customers "on the same line", perhaps referring to shared capacity at some point or being connected to the same VLAN. Anyway they replaced the terminal and "put them on a separate line". I guess they've figured out a way to talk to people without technical knowledge :-) I looked the guides on-line and gave them instructions how to replace the box using the colors on the RJ45's. I believe they've been happy with the new Thomson unit.

I run into this blog entry recently, http://martti.blogit.suomela.fi/2012/07/29/valokuitu-mokille/

The writer is retired with his wive and they've spent their retirement days fixing the two summer houses they have. They've had trouble with all the (digital) cellular networks and even trying to get TV reception has always been difficult. Back in the old days they didn't need internet access and the analog cellular network at 450 Mhz worked fine.

A year ago local telco invited people to an event about fiber connections. Wife had said that they don't need it and it's too expensive. At the event the telco folks said that several hundred people had already made an order for fiber and a few days later he received an offer as well, the installation to their summer house would cost 1750 € (2800 NZD). They made an order anyway.

During the winter they got the fiber installed. He had been worried how the forest road would look after the cable work (after all it was in the middle of forest to a summer house by the lake) but turned out it was better than before -- and he wanted to call the contractor to thank you for such a great work.

Initially they had ordered just 1 Mbit/s and the telco had said it's enough for TV. Obviously it wasn't and it was installed at 10 Mbit/s. The service comes with IPTV, PVR at the telco's "cloud", and possibility to watch past any TV program for the last two weeks.

The internet connection is free for the first year but they need to pay 9.90 €/month (16 NZD/month) for the TV service. The total cost is supposed to rise to 15.90 €/month (25 NZD) after that.

And these are 65+ year-old retired people. At the summer house.

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3317

Trusted

#698053 8-Oct-2012 17:53

I think that I'd want to have a good play on a computer hooked up to UFB before deciding whether or not it's worth getting.

It looks like they'll be laying the cables in my street before Xmas.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#698228 9-Oct-2012 06:12

DarthKermit: I think that I'd want to have a good play on a computer hooked up to UFB before deciding whether or not it's worth getting.

What makes you think it's not worth having?

As the LTE coverage was better at home, I tried it today at the office and the coverage has improved there as well. 3/5 bars (my subscription is limited to 50 Mbit/s) but I was getting solid

and the performance didn't drop at all to Amsterdam or London

but going across the Atlantic had some influence

The communications regulator authority has published their January - June 2012 broadband report. Compared to previous 6 months, the broadband speeds have developed as follows:

Below 2 Mbit/s from 12 % to 11%
2-4 Mbit/s from 18% to 17%
4-10 Mbit/s from 28% to 23%
10-25 Mbit/s from 32% to 38%
25-99 Mbit/s from 4% to 5%
100- Mbit/s from 6% to 7%

The "announcement" was that over half of the population now has at least 10 Mbit/s. I think the trend is quite visible in the numbers, the people with up to 4 Mbit/s don't want to upgrade or just can't for some reason.

During the first half 215000 new mobile subscriptions were added, putting the total to 9.2 million (5.5 million population). 4.1 million subscriptions have mobile data and 2.15 million have unlimited, flat rate mobile data.

The number of calls nor voice minutes didn't grow much (2.5 billion calls, 8.1 billion minutes). However text messages continued to grow from 2.4 billion to 2.8 billion messages. Mobile data grew from 34870000 GB to 43467000 GB, which equals about 8.5 GB for every mobile user.

The market is split with three carriers (40%, 33%, and 25%).

DSL lost 27.700 subscriptions, fixed voice lost 100.000 subscriptions to 980.000. The total number of broadband connections did grow though in direct house connections (FTTB, +22500), cable TV (+12500, up to 350 Mbit/s nowadays) and FTTH (+4600). The difference between FTTB and FTTH is somewhat vague in our market.

There was a 10% decline in fixed voice calls and minutes. 92% of the voice calls are today in the mobile networks.

sbiddle

30853 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 9996

Retired Mod

Trusted

Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#698231 9-Oct-2012 07:10

ojala: The "announcement" was that over half of the population now has at least 10 Mbit/s. I think the trend is quite visible in the numbers, the people with up to 4 Mbit/s don't want to upgrade or just can't for some reason.

This is interesting. In New Zealand around 80% of homes are winin a 10Mbps zone and should be receiving a minimum of 10Mbps via DSL to their door. $1 billion has been spent on the FTTH project to deliver this.

The problem is many aren't receiving this because of a) their internal wiring b) their modem c) their ISP.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#698242 9-Oct-2012 08:23

sbiddle:
This is interesting. In New Zealand around 80% of homes are winin a 10Mbps zone and should be receiving a minimum of 10Mbps via DSL to their door. $1 billion has been spent on the FTTH project to deliver this.

The problem is many aren't receiving this because of a) their internal wiring b) their modem c) their ISP.

I believe the bottom quarter is penalized by the folks who think that whateverythey'vegottoday is good enough for the simple things they do.

These folks disappear from the statistics if they move to mobile broadband or want IPTV (movie rentals, pay-tv channels, 5 terabytes of cloud PVR, iPad/iPhone/Android app, ...). The latter is being heavily marketed, I receive a sales call about twice a year at which point they notice that I already have the service from the time it had different name and I pay less for it :)

The mid-tier is growing due to the IPTV, about 25% of the DSL broadband users already have it. A typical full-rate ADSL2+ will give you about +-15 Mbit/s.

The upper quarter is heavily splitting into different options; cable-TV, fiber (VDSL2 used for last mile if needed), or 4G. I don't hear much about mobile phones or tablets using LTE but people who live in a good LTE coverage and LTE is the best option for faster broadband. The 50 Mbit/s 4G service is cheaper than full-rate ADSL2+ or 40M cable. There was a similar trend with 3G already.

If the LTE coverage here at home was the same it is at the office, I'd drop ADSL as well.

Apple TV

Stream your favourite shows now on Apple TV (affiliate link).

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3317

Trusted

#698563 9-Oct-2012 16:43

ojala:
DarthKermit: I think that I'd want to have a good play on a computer hooked up to UFB before deciding whether or not it's worth getting.

What makes you think it's not worth having?

As the LTE coverage was better at home, I tried it today at the office and the coverage has improved there as well. 3/5 bars (my subscription is limited to 50 Mbit/s) but I was getting solid

and the performance didn't drop at all to Amsterdam or London

but going across the Atlantic had some influence

The communications regulator authority has published their January - June 2012 broadband report. Compared to previous 6 months, the broadband speeds have developed as follows:

Below 2 Mbit/s from 12 % to 11%
2-4 Mbit/s from 18% to 17%
4-10 Mbit/s from 28% to 23%
10-25 Mbit/s from 32% to 38%
25-99 Mbit/s from 4% to 5%
100- Mbit/s from 6% to 7%

The "announcement" was that over half of the population now has at least 10 Mbit/s. I think the trend is quite visible in the numbers, the people with up to 4 Mbit/s don't want to upgrade or just can't for some reason.

During the first half 215000 new mobile subscriptions were added, putting the total to 9.2 million (5.5 million population). 4.1 million subscriptions have mobile data and 2.15 million have unlimited, flat rate mobile data.

The number of calls nor voice minutes didn't grow much (2.5 billion calls, 8.1 billion minutes). However text messages continued to grow from 2.4 billion to 2.8 billion messages. Mobile data grew from 34870000 GB to 43467000 GB, which equals about 8.5 GB for every mobile user.

The market is split with three carriers (40%, 33%, and 25%).

DSL lost 27.700 subscriptions, fixed voice lost 100.000 subscriptions to 980.000. The total number of broadband connections did grow though in direct house connections (FTTB, +22500), cable TV (+12500, up to 350 Mbit/s nowadays) and FTTH (+4600). The difference between FTTB and FTTH is somewhat vague in our market.

There was a 10% decline in fixed voice calls and minutes. 92% of the voice calls are today in the mobile networks.

Hi,
There is only myself and my partner using our DSL here at home. We're not heavy data users really. Mostly just web browsing, some video streaming (like youtube) and a few file downloads. I can't see a great deal of benefit unless we change our internet habits. Cheers.

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#704173 20-Oct-2012 23:00

Village Fiber

This is one way to do it. In some rural areas the active local folks have established a co-operative to build the local fiber networks. The one I was looking had some local (read: rich) businessmen and politics on board so it probably has some connections as well.

One pays 100 € to join the co-operative. The installation cost for the fiber is 1990 € and over half of it is tax deductible as home improvement costs, the tax benefit is 45% of the work so at the end the cost is 1432 €.

The monthly fee for the connected fiber is 30 € /month which covers only the dark fiber -- no services included. As soon as the co-operative has paid it's debt, the fee will drop to a level where it covers just the maintenance costs. The interweb service starts from basic 10/10 for 17.70 €/month to 100/100 for 24.70 €/month. Add 5 €/month and you get basic IPTV as well (basicly equivalent of cable TV but over IP), premium services available.

All the construction work locally has been through a tender, likewise the actual Internet service on top of the dark fiber. The co-operative just builds and runs the actual, physical "open access" fiber network. Overall these guys have a plan to build a 1740 km fiber network with some 2600 consumer connections.

The interesting part is the model. The co-operative members own the network. Perhaps one day it will be sold to a carrier and the 100€ membership fee will be returned with quite a decent profit. Back in the old days all the telco's here used to be co-operatives and during the 90's when they turned into companies and publicly listed companies, people's phone lines turned into stock worth thousands. At the ISP our modem pool phone lines turned into stock worth several million :)

Just one way to go around the "commercially not viable" argument from the carriers and get connected today.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#710041 31-Oct-2012 20:06

What does the carrier guarantee?

Here the largest carrier offers the following:

10/10M, download 5-10 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
50/10M, download 25-50 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
100/10M, download 50-100 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
250/50M, download 100-250 Mbit/s, upload 25-50 Mbit/s

what exactly does this mean? Since autumn 2010 they read the above so that during a measurement period of six hours the download and upload speeds are on average within the above ranges. For broadband connections ordered before autumn 2010, the ranges are a bit lower (1/3 of the ordered, now 1/2).

I believe they use tools from emotum for the measurements.

Ragnor

8279 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 585

Trusted

#710093 31-Oct-2012 22:02

ojala: What does the carrier guarantee?

Here the largest carrier offers the following:

10/10M, download 5-10 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
50/10M, download 25-50 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
100/10M, download 50-100 Mbit/s, upload 5-10 Mbit/s
250/50M, download 100-250 Mbit/s, upload 25-50 Mbit/s

what exactly does this mean? Since autumn 2010 they read the above so that during a measurement period of six hours the download and upload speeds are on average within the above ranges. For broadband connections ordered before autumn 2010, the ranges are a bit lower (1/3 of the ordered, now 1/2).

I believe they use tools from emotum for the measurements.

Wouldn't that vary from where to where or are they just talking domestically?

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#710126 31-Oct-2012 23:03

Ragnor:

Wouldn't that vary from where to where or are they just talking domestically?

As they need to compensate if the promised speed isn't being delivered, the 1/2 or 1/3 6-hour average is only within their network.

At work I'm connected through the academic network so it's not a fair comparison, from the commercial side my personal "peak" has been through the 4G at 50 Mbit/s and the domestic and European bandwidth was about the same. The performance starts to drop when one goes to the US or Asia-Pacific.

In summary, the carriers don't guarantee anything outside of their networks for non-SLA connections but they take reasonable care that the capacity isn't an issue.

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#720478 21-Nov-2012 06:21

My envy continues.. we visit better half's retired parents during the weekend.

As I might have mentioned earlier, their IPTV started dropping frames and the carrier eventually replaced the old ZyXEL firewall/gateway unit with a Thomson model. The new Thomson seemed to be much better device than the ZyXEL. Anyway, the IPTV has worked just fine since the replacement.

It also turned out that a regional carrier has also installed fiber to the cabinet. As the network between the houses is Cat6, they now have option to by fiber internet from two different carriers. I certainly wasn't expecting that to happen in a city slightly larger than Nelson, it barely happens in the city centres.

While the national carrier they're using now has bundled the broadband and IPTV, the regional carrier sells them more separately. Unfortunately most residents subscribe to an special offer that has a 24 month term (free devices, typically first 6 to 12 months lower monthly fee) so the other carrier may not attract that many customers, if any.

The regional carrier does have more service levels, though. From 70 NZD/month for 100/10, add 15 or 30 NZD to upgrade the upstream to 50M or 100M, or pay a whopping 150 NZD/month for a 1000/100 connection. That might be tempting for me... :-)

In my own case, we finally after almost three years managed to sell our house. We don't know yet if we'll use our NZ residency permit to move there nor if we'll stay here. In any case renting a base for a year sounded like a good idea and I did some rental hunting today. We don't have very specific specs for the place but one thing is for sure -- I will not rent (nor buy, which I'm not really interested to do in the current market conditions anyway) a place that doesn't have at least 100M internet access available.

At the first place there were two other people looking at it and to my surprise, an older ~60 man was the first to open the fuse box to check what kind of internet access might be available in addition to the cable TV. There was just the RJ45 jacks around the place and two RJ45's to the cabinet. The agent didn't know a thing but we assumed that the place probably comes with a 10/10 internet included, higher speeds for additional fee. Carrier's fiber in the cabinet.

The other place had just cable TV but that will give 100M as well. I think the building was from 1800's so it was somewhat different. If really lucky, there might be fiber nearby and 100/100 VDSL2+.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#720903 21-Nov-2012 18:12

I checked the two addresses I visit yesterday from one of the carrier's availability check pages.

The one with the RJ45 in the fusebox has 2 Mbit/s for free. 100 Mbit/s will cost 31 NZD/month. If one subscribes to a 24 month service, one can get both IPTV package and 100 Mbit/s for a few cents less.

The other address has fiber available as well. 15.50 NZD/month for the basic 10 Mbit/s service. 63 NZD/month for 100 Mbit/s, or 24 month contract with IPTV for 47 NZD/month.

After so many years with just ADSL2+ I'm starting to get excited about the fiber availability :)

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#724453 29-Nov-2012 05:49

So far so good. All the places we have so far checked have had either fiber or cable TV installed. I visit one place yesterday for a second viewing and found a cabinet with both fiber and 2 x RJ45 going somewhere. As always, the realtor didn't have a clue about the connectivity.

Meanwhile in Sweden, twice the size of NZ or Finland, one of the ISP's, Bahnhof, has just upgraded their connection to the Stockholm IX to 100 Gbit/s:

http://pics.lockerz.com/s/264816820

Sweden is quite interesting example in getting fiber to the homes. Already in early 90's the City of Stockholm established Stokab, a company that was installing fiber infrastructure around Stockholm and started leasing it to all kinds of customers from telco's to ISP's and companies. Today that early bird attitude is really paying off with most ISP's having plenty of alternatives to get customers connected by fiber and offer them decent bandwidth.

Just by looking at Bahnhof's web size, looking for an broadband connection in the city of Malmö, selecting Malmö Telia Open Fiber network one can get 1000/100 fiber internet connection to home for 995 SEK/month (about 181 NZD/month).

The development is also visible in IX traffic. Netnod's IX in Stockholm peaks around 400 Gbit/s meanwhile here in Finland the IX peaks just at 35 Gbit/s. In fact our national IX is just slightly bigger in traffic than Netnod's IX in the city Malmö.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 5

#732249 13-Dec-2012 20:09

F-i-n-a-l-l-y!

We signed the contract yesterday for our new place, we'll be touring around Asia the next 6 weeks and move to the new place at end of January.

The broadband comes as a RJ45 jack in the wall and I checked the options. One carrier gives 10/10 for 9.90?/month (15 nzd), 100/10 29.90?/month (46 nzd), or 100/10 with IPTV services for 39.90?/month. They also have couple of broadband + mobile broadband bundles (+ 5?/month gives you unlimited, full-rate mobile broadband).

The block has also a contract with another carrier and there's "free" (included in the maintenance costs) 10/10 included. For 5.90 ?/month (9 nzd) they'll upgrade that to 40/10 and 8.90 ?/month (14 nzd) gives you 100/10. As the other carrier has history in cable TV (this place has fiber), all the TV stuff is on the cable side.

I believe I'll be in 4G/LTE coverage as well.

I think for the interweb the 14 nzd 100/10 is a no-brainer. It's not a term contract so if it's bad, I'll swap to the other carrier. Not sure about the TV services yet, after having cloud PVR since 2008 I don't like the idea of going back to HD PVR.

Back to the topic itself.. what's the background on such a deals? You have a block (a few hundred) potential customers. The cost of having 10/10 available (the community pays a small annual fee for it) is very low. I admit the price for the 100/10 is very low and I don't know yet what they actually provide -- perhaps the 100+ customers will share a single GE uplink. But as soon as the customer has a contract, they are excellent pray for the higher speeds anyway and especially both the mobile and traditional cable TV services.

It's always easier to sell something more to an existing customer than get a new customer.

They accept small loss for the worst type of customers (taking the free 10/10 but nothing else) and consider the infrastructure itself a long-term investment. They count on market share, building potential customer base, and the extra services. I'm pretty sure if you use the 10/10, you'll get frequent ads and offers.

This carrier is the "3rd carrier" in the country with 730 million ? in revenue (1.1 billion nzd) and they are profitable. In this area their business is mainly from an acquisition, a company that had history in cable TV (largest in the country) and was owned by the leading nordic media company (history in the capital's newspaper). The first carrier is TeliaSonera, one of the big boys, Sonera being the historic "Telecom NZ of Finland".

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | ... | 10