How do unlimited internet provide fiber in so many places?

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Stan

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#195387 18-Apr-2016 23:15

Question in the title, following on from bigpipe launching in Hamilton, how have unlimited internet (a small isp run by HD) managed to launch ufb in so many places with presumably limited resources. Is there a large set up cost to launch ufb in all the different regions?

Not taking a jab at big pipe or anything just genuinely curious.

tdgeek

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#1535258 18-Apr-2016 23:28

RSP's not ISP's these days do not launch UFB. Chorus, Enable, UFF, Northpower launch UFB. I expect the technology comfortably supports the national backhaul. Your small RSP sells you a connection, just like a large RSP. The key is if the RSP buys enough international capacity to supports its customers. Southern Cross, who own the international link, have stated as long as I can remember that capacity has never been fully utilised. They upgrade ahead of the demand. The question is really, can a small RSP economically provide adequate bandwidth to cater for peak times. I've not seen any threads here that show they don't, IMHO.

You mentioned unlimited as if thats a major factor, then you mentioned limited resources. Do you mean the brick and mortar resources of said small RSP? If so, I don't see that unlimited matters, its just an internet feed. In fact, being unlimited would reduce helpdesk contacts as there are no usage complaints, throttling issues, billing issues to worry about.

DarkShadow

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#1535261 18-Apr-2016 23:31

tdgeek:

RSP's not ISP's these days do not launch UFB. Chorus, Enable, UFF, Northpower launch UFB. I expect the technology comfortably supports the national backhaul. Your small RSP sells you a connection, just like a large RSP. The key is if the RSP buys enough international capacity to supports its customers. Southern Cross, who own the international link, have stated as long as I can remember that capacity has never been fully utilised. They upgrade ahead of the demand. The question is really, can a small RSP economically provide adequate bandwidth to cater for peak times. I've not seen any threads here that show they don't, IMHO.

You mentioned unlimited as if thats a major factor, then you mentioned limited resources. Do you mean the brick and mortar resources of said small RSP? If so, I don't see that unlimited matters, its just an internet feed. In fact, being unlimited would reduce helpdesk contacts as there are no usage complaints, throttling issues, billing issues to worry about.

I think OP is asking about why smaller RSPs have handovers in fewer areas for NGA connections.

Stan

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#1535277 19-Apr-2016 00:33

tdgeek:

RSP's not ISP's these days do not launch UFB. Chorus, Enable, UFF, Northpower launch UFB. I expect the technology comfortably supports the national backhaul. Your small RSP sells you a connection, just like a large RSP. The key is if the RSP buys enough international capacity to supports its customers. Southern Cross, who own the international link, have stated as long as I can remember that capacity has never been fully utilised. They upgrade ahead of the demand. The question is really, can a small RSP economically provide adequate bandwidth to cater for peak times. I've not seen any threads here that show they don't, IMHO.

You mentioned unlimited as if thats a major factor, then you mentioned limited resources. Do you mean the brick and mortar resources of said small RSP? If so, I don't see that unlimited matters, its just an internet feed. In fact, being unlimited would reduce helpdesk contacts as there are no usage complaints, throttling issues, billing issues to worry about.

Sorry you miss understand my question "unlimited internet" is the name of the provider, as they are small I was curious as to how they have more fiber handovers around NZ than say big pipe allowing them to operate in more places.

Or am I missing something here?

michaelmurfy

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#1535278 19-Apr-2016 00:36

"Unlimited Internet" is a part of HD.net which is part of the Ben Simpson empire. Essentially, it appears he has cash to burn or a massive business loan as handovers don't come cheap. Just a race to make his empire look more mighty than it really is. He could also be only provisioning handovers when there is sufficient customer demand in an area to justify it saying that he "covers" these areas - I have noticed quite a few providers doing that too.

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NonprayingMantis

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#1535283 19-Apr-2016 01:46

I suspect they don't have their own handovers except in Auckland and Wellington, instead they buy UFB at resale type arrangement from someone else (e.g. voyager.)

When you read their FAQ for UFB modem, they say to not use VLAN tagging in Auckland and Wellington, but to use VLAN tagging everywhere else. There is no real reason to do it differently for those areas unless you have no choice over what can be provisioned in those other areas (i.e. your reseller provider only provisions tagged connections)

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.

All this is speculation because they are one of the shadiest and least transparent ISPs out there. They don't post here, they block anybody from posting on their facebook page (this is a good enough reason to never join them IMHO), they buy facebook likes to make themselves look bigger and more credible than they are , and they even run their own 'independent' review site where, funnily enough, UnlimitedInternet gets a solid 5 stars. :)

JayADee

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#1535293 19-Apr-2016 06:15

NonprayingMantis:

I suspect they don't have their own handovers except in Auckland and Wellington, instead they buy UFB at resale type arrangement from someone else (e.g. voyager.)

When you read their FAQ for UFB modem, they say to not use VLAN tagging in Auckland and Wellington, but to use VLAN tagging everywhere else. There is no real reason to do it differently for those areas unless you have no choice over what can be provisioned in those other areas (i.e. your reseller provider only provisions tagged connections)

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.

All this is speculation because they are one of the shadiest and least transparent ISPs out there. They don't post here, they block anybody from posting on their facebook page (this is a good enough reason to never join them IMHO), they buy facebook likes to make themselves look bigger and more credible than they are , and they even run their own 'independent' review site where, funnily enough, UnlimitedInternet gets a solid 5 stars. :)

Interesting. Thanks for the info.

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sbiddle

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#1535298 19-Apr-2016 07:22

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

Having a handover in every region doesn't come cheaply - at a complete guess you're probably looking at a minimum of $50,000 per month for 1GB handover to each of these regions to get that data back to Auckland, and probably $75,000 - $100,000 for 10GB to every region.

This means for a nationwide ISP the costs are huge, and for a new player there is a massive break even point if you want to offer nationwide services, and it's the reason why providers such as MyRepublic will probably be burning money for quite some time as they gain customers. Apparently (and this could be incorrect so I stand to be corrected - I'm only basing it on a conversation with somebody was doing some work with them) the reason for their poor performance and Truenet results outside Auckland is that they still only have 1GB handovers due to the cost.

I still really don't understand why Bigpipe was set up as an entirely new operation with it's own infrastructure and simply didn't leverage Spark's existing handovers and backhaul. Had they done this they would have been able to get to market a lot quicker, and cover every region.

tdgeek

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#1535313 19-Apr-2016 08:09

Stan:

tdgeek:

RSP's not ISP's these days do not launch UFB. Chorus, Enable, UFF, Northpower launch UFB. I expect the technology comfortably supports the national backhaul. Your small RSP sells you a connection, just like a large RSP. The key is if the RSP buys enough international capacity to supports its customers. Southern Cross, who own the international link, have stated as long as I can remember that capacity has never been fully utilised. They upgrade ahead of the demand. The question is really, can a small RSP economically provide adequate bandwidth to cater for peak times. I've not seen any threads here that show they don't, IMHO.

You mentioned unlimited as if thats a major factor, then you mentioned limited resources. Do you mean the brick and mortar resources of said small RSP? If so, I don't see that unlimited matters, its just an internet feed. In fact, being unlimited would reduce helpdesk contacts as there are no usage complaints, throttling issues, billing issues to worry about.

Sorry you miss understand my question "unlimited internet" is the name of the provider, as they are small I was curious as to how they have more fiber handovers around NZ than say big pipe allowing them to operate in more places.

Or am I missing something here?

Understood, my bad, I was going to say, wait for Steve B to chime in. And he has

Stan

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#1535343 19-Apr-2016 09:17

Interesting, thanks for the replies.

I actually have a friend on there 30/10 plan and when I suggested going to big pipe as they are launching in Hamilton soon he said he was happy with unlimited internet, so that got me thinking.

chevrolux

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#1535346 19-Apr-2016 09:27

Or rather than actually running their own network they could just be getting the UFB tails installed by one of the big wholesalers and only running the core network?

myfullflavour

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#1535353 19-Apr-2016 09:41

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.