NZ Broadband testing from Samknows

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#2082591 1-Sep-2018 21:27

acjh58:

Agree with the sentiment, but in reality, switching off copper in UFB areas right now would require all the affected premises to have fibre drops and the customers to have internal wiring/equipment and commercial arrangements to replace their current copper based services. I suspect that would be way more costly than occasional copper repairs. Also, turning off significant amounts of copper in 2020 might be optimistic (unfortunately) - might be driven by Spark PSTN upgrade??

Sounds the same as any other obsolete technology. Heard complaits when analog went away. Progress has to happen. Make it happen.

Richard rich.ms

DarkShadow

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#2082595 1-Sep-2018 22:33

Chorus included this in their latest investor presentation. When fibre is available, people do take it, so it's not unreasonable to expect fibre uptake to be near 100% in 2020 when the copper switchoff can begin.

Aredwood

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#2082758 2-Sep-2018 14:11

richms:
acjh58:

Agree with the sentiment, but in reality, switching off copper in UFB areas right now would require all the affected premises to have fibre drops and the customers to have internal wiring/equipment and commercial arrangements to replace their current copper based services. I suspect that would be way more costly than occasional copper repairs. Also, turning off significant amounts of copper in 2020 might be optimistic (unfortunately) - might be driven by Spark PSTN upgrade??

Sounds the same as any other obsolete technology. Heard complaits when analog went away. Progress has to happen. Make it happen.

Agree with Richms. Just switch off the copper in UFB areas. As the excuse for leaving copper operating is to provide voice service. But you can get cellphone plans that come with unlimited calls, for less per month than the cost of renting a copper landline.

Why should big $$$ be spent maintaining an old network, in areas where there are two superior network types available?

Presumably Chorus has figures on the number of still active lines in each cabinet area. And the original number of active lines before the UFB rollout began. It would be interesting to see the remaining active lines as a % of original lines in different UFB areas.

Taubin

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#2082815 2-Sep-2018 16:19

My father in law keeps a landline, simply because during the big earthquake in CHC, all of the cell towers near him went down, but the landline worked just fine. He had no power, but the phone worked and he was able to call neighbors that had landlines, and offer help, as well as call us to let us know they were okay. I know it's a small use case, but its the main reason he keeps one.

ZL2TOY/ZL1DMP

KiwiSurfer

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#2082818 2-Sep-2018 16:42

Taubin:

My father in law keeps a landline, simply because during the big earthquake in CHC, all of the cell towers near him went down, but the landline worked just fine. He had no power, but the phone worked and he was able to call neighbors that had landlines, and offer help, as well as call us to let us know they were okay. I know it's a small use case, but its the main reason he keeps one.

On the other hand I found out today my mum's neighbours (who live 10-15mins from Auckland CBD) had no phone service for 5 days due to the council (I think? as it was the workers replacing the footpaths along the road) cutting through Chorus' fibre. My mum on the other hand happily had service via her WBB operating over Spark's LTE network which her neighbours used reguarly during the 5 days! Long term I suspect cellular will end up with the most reliable service (particually in urban areas where the failure of one tower isn't always a big deal due to overlapping coverage) followed by UFB.

BarTender

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#2083044 3-Sep-2018 10:06

Aredwood:
richms:

acjh58: Agree with the sentiment, but in reality, switching off copper in UFB areas right now would require all the affected premises to have fibre drops and the customers to have internal wiring/equipment and commercial arrangements to replace their current copper based services. I suspect that would be way more costly than occasional copper repairs. Also, turning off significant amounts of copper in 2020 might be optimistic (unfortunately) - might be driven by Spark PSTN upgrade??

Sounds the same as any other obsolete technology. Heard complaits when analog went away. Progress has to happen. Make it happen.

Agree with Richms. Just switch off the copper in UFB areas. As the excuse for leaving copper operating is to provide voice service. But you can get cellphone plans that come with unlimited calls, for less per month than the cost of renting a copper landline.

Why should big $$$ be spent maintaining an old network, in areas where there are two superior network types available?

Presumably Chorus has figures on the number of still active lines in each cabinet area. And the original number of active lines before the UFB rollout began. It would be interesting to see the remaining active lines as a % of original lines in different UFB areas.

While I agree with you in principal the issue will be customer inertia to move. Plus the agreement for the property is with the end customer to the retailer and then between the retailer and Chorus. Lastly you need to consider what happens in non-Chorus UFB areas such as Christchurch (Enable), Hamilton (UFF) and Whangarei (Northpower). Does Chorus get to say "We will switch off Copper on this date" and then it's up to the Retailer and Wholesaler to sort out moving everyone. Also what about UCLL unbundled areas where other providers have put DSLAMs into Chorus exchanges and are providing service those will need to be terminated too"

Lastly there is Government Legislation with KiwiShare aka TSO that Chorus MUST provide service if there is intact copper there.

So "if it were me" it would require bold government legislation changes and clear communication to say "We are mandating Chorus switch off Copper in UFB areas on date x, and instructing Retailers to inform their customers to move to equivalent services before the cut-off date. It also means that there will be no reason to prevent UFB installs if the Tenant or Homeowner requests it and if a Tenant requests against the permission of the landlord or neighbours on a cross-lease et al there will be no legal recourse against the tenant if the UFB installer does a poor job." (see what I did there!)

There are all sorts of nasty fish-hooks around fully shutting down Copper POTS & DSL.

But this is all completely off-topic from the Samknows broadband testing.

Still haven't received my whitebox, so kinda sad panda about that.

KellyP

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#2083047 3-Sep-2018 10:08

Nothing here yet either.

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tonyr60

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#2085210 6-Sep-2018 20:26

Got our Samknows box and got it going today. Quite easy.

FWIW, we are on VDSL with no local fibre (North Canterbury). Spark tries to get us to go to Mobile Broadband at every opportunity, but we have marginal 4G coverage, reflected in variable mobile phone coverage. If Spark start charging the copper surcharge we may switch, but Spark must guarantee to at least match our VDSL rate - not possible at present.

cruxis

480 posts

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#2086002 8-Sep-2018 10:27

Had mine running since 4th September, It has only really done a few of the tests and only once. Upon reading the white paper I found this bit.

Prior to and during testing, a threshold manager service monitors the inbound and outbound traffic across the WAN interface of the Whitebox to calculate if a panellist is actively using the Internet connection. The threshold for traffic is set to 64kbps downstream and 32kbps upstream. Additionally, a threshold is also defined on the acceptable load average of the Whitebox, should these thresholds be breached prior to the test starting, the test will be delayed for a minute and the process repeated. Should this occur during a test, the current test will be cancelled and the result discarded. If the connection is being actively used throughout, this pause and retry process will occur up to 5 times before the entire test cycle is abandoned.

Does 64kbs seem a awfully low trigger on a fibre connection? Especially with multiple windows 10 PCs behind it, 1 running 24/7. Steam, onedrive, torrent, google drive,plex,sonnarr etc. I doubt my connection truly goes quiet for any lengthy period of time.

Some Tests its run so far Plan 100/20 2Degrees, Christchurch=>200/20

michaelmurfy

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#2086004 8-Sep-2018 10:43

64kbit is way too low. I have traffic heading out of my router constantly so don't even think it'll test...

I think they'll have to "tune" it for a bit for NZ connections and change the thresholds.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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ajw

1932 posts

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#2086049 8-Sep-2018 10:59

Aredwood:
richms:

acjh58:

Agree with the sentiment, but in reality, switching off copper in UFB areas right now would require all the affected premises to have fibre drops and the customers to have internal wiring/equipment and commercial arrangements to replace their current copper based services. I suspect that would be way more costly than occasional copper repairs. Also, turning off significant amounts of copper in 2020 might be optimistic (unfortunately) - might be driven by Spark PSTN upgrade??

Sounds the same as any other obsolete technology. Heard complaits when analog went away. Progress has to happen. Make it happen.

Agree with Richms. Just switch off the copper in UFB areas. As the excuse for leaving copper operating is to provide voice service. But you can get cellphone plans that come with unlimited calls, for less per month than the cost of renting a copper landline.

Why should big $$$ be spent maintaining an old network, in areas where there are two superior network types available?

Presumably Chorus has figures on the number of still active lines in each cabinet area. And the original number of active lines before the UFB rollout began. It would be interesting to see the remaining active lines as a % of original lines in different UFB areas.

Two degrees do a landline only option (mobile to fixed) for $12 per month for those that have 2D coverage.

darthmeow

101 posts

Master Geek

#2089211 12-Sep-2018 12:15

I've still not recieved my unit - and after recieving an email with tracking number this morning I've found out why. Rather than Palmerston North, NEW ZEALAND the tracking shows a delivery attempt in PALMERSTON N, IRELAND.

Someone's done a dumb. (Yes my details are correct on the samknows system before anyone asks)

tonyr60

11 posts

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#2089267 12-Sep-2018 13:38

Mine is not doing too well.

Sent this fault to them, will see if Sam Knows enough to sort this:

After installing the SamKnows white box about a week ago I am seeing problems about every couple of days.

The issue is that internet access via our HG659b modem stops or is incredibly slow. Restarting the modem clears the problem for another day or so.

The error log in the modem shows multiple "2018-09-12 10:13:43 User Level Notice Action GetTotalBytesSent from executed by UPNP/TR064 successfully."

These are repeated twice a second and I have not seen that message prior to installing the SamKnows box.

On our network, we have 4 wireless devices, two iOS, one OSX and one Android. On the Wired network we have a Linux server, a Flight Radar receiver and a Windows 7 workstation.

Talkiet

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#2089275 12-Sep-2018 13:49

That's _interesting_... Can you uninstall the Samknows box and see if that log entry stops? If you are on Spark, feel free to PM me your details. I've been involved in the Samknows and Comcom discussions and if there's an issue we'd like to chase this from our end as well...

Cheers - Neil G

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

KellyP

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#2089277 12-Sep-2018 13:50

darthmeow:

I've still not recieved my unit - and after recieving an email with tracking number this morning I've found out why. Rather than Palmerston North, NEW ZEALAND the tracking shows a delivery attempt in PALMERSTON N, IRELAND.

Someone's done a dumb. (Yes my details are correct on the samknows system before anyone asks)

Have also received my tracking # this morning. Why is it coming from the UK?

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