How do unlimited internet provide fiber in so many places?

sbiddle: A RSP either needs to have an interconnect at every handover, or buy backhaul from another provider who does.

There are two ways you can light up a remote UFB region (this assumes the sessions terminate on equipment in a central region e.g. aggregating everything in Auckland).

1) Organise your own handover port with Chorus/LFCs & put in place a backhaul arrangement.

Handover port fee for 1Gbps is around $100 / month. You then need to pay a backhaul provider for connectivity to/from your aggregate location. Some providers offer an aggregate solution, e.g. pay a port fee in each region and a single price for the backhaul, which is based on an aggregate of all your traffic.

I forget how many POIs there are - maybe 28? Say you lit up 1Gbps of aggregate backhaul, this method is likely going to cost you around $12,500 / month.

2) Buy tails from a wholesaler

So someone has gone and done step 1. They then resell you whatever UFB tails you want wherever you want, at a higher cost than what Chorus/LFCs charge and they make some margin for each connection you have.

So in Full Flavour's case, we do a hybrid of the above. A number of regions we have our own dedicated L2 backhaul into. Other areas the economics don't stack up so we use a wholesaler to connect the odd site that might be part of a bigger project.

Sometimes our clients expand to new areas and rather than lose an entire account, we're happy to service their new area via a wholesaler and accept we're not going to make as much margin on the connection in that new area.

NonprayingMantis:
Yes, this means they are probably making a loss on all those customers (since they would be paying even higher than the regulated wholesale rate for those other connections), but they have been quite happy doing that on ADSL since they launched. God knows why, but it certianly means they must be cutting back on other things - like buying transit.

Chorus offer a tail extension service for ADSL/VDSL. Which means they do the aggregation for the RSP, for a few pennies per connection (pricing is based on distance Chorus are extending the service to, e.g. our most expensive copper tail would be in Invercargill, so an Invercargill to Tauranga extension).

Worth noting in a few months Chorus are introducing a tail extension service for UFB. You'll be able to buy 5 handover ports, one in each key regional area (Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch & Dunedin) which will give you full access to all Chorus UFB areas. If buying a port in say Wellington, your Palmerston North traffic would aggregate in Wellington.

Stan

myfullflavour