Your thoughts on 1.5 bn FTTH proposed by National Party?

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# 125846 23-Apr-2008 12:15

perhaps we need a saracsm emoticon, I think some people missed my real point

sbiddle

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# 125856 23-Apr-2008 12:50

Biddle Internet (NASDAK:BI) has today announced it will be rolling out a FTTT (Fibre To The Toilet) network in New Zealand.

"Every household has a toilet and it was an obvious choice to run our fibre using the existing pipes direct to the bathroom. Most people spend plenty of time as it is in the bathroom so they'll have the added advantage of being able to surf the net at the same time" says CTI Steve Biddle. "We'll be approaching John Key this afternoon to see if we can work with his people to establish a public/private partnership for rolling out our fibre and believe we can do this for well less than the $1.5 billion estimate. We all know that NZ is on the verge of bankruptcy so every dollar saved will be a dollar more than people can get back in their wallet with tax cuts"

coffeebaron

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# 125900 23-Apr-2008 14:44

sbiddle: Biddle Internet (NASDAK:BI) has today announced it will be rolling out a FTTT (Fibre To The Toilet) network in New Zealand.

"Every household has a toilet and it was an obvious choice to run our fibre using the existing pipes direct to the bathroom. Most people spend plenty of time as it is in the bathroom so they'll have the added advantage of being able to surf the net at the same time" says CTI Steve Biddle. "We'll be approaching John Key this afternoon to see if we can work with his people to establish a public/private partnership for rolling out our fibre and believe we can do this for well less than the $1.5 billion estimate. We all know that NZ is on the verge of bankruptcy so every dollar saved will be a dollar more than people can get back in their wallet with tax cuts"

Better still, we give every household a roll of fibre and after a few flushes, the strands will join and our fibre network will be operational.

Chorus has spent $1.4 billion on making their xDSL broadband network faster and even more now as they are upgrading their rural Conklins. If your still stuck on ADSL or VDSL, why not spend $195 on a master filter install to make sure you are getting the most out of your connection?
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paragonOfGeek

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# 125930 23-Apr-2008 17:31

idlearts: I agree the network needs major investment but I wouldn't want to be the one to commit to 1.5 billion on something that should have been done a decade ago, not when you consider the pace of scientific discovery and current research, I'd be very unwilling to shell out on a fiber network in light of the possibilities of Quantum communication methods being firmly on the horizon.

http://www.quantum.at/research/quantum-teleportation-communication-entanglement.html

Quantium entanglement is very limited in what can be acheived with respect to communications; I do remember reading some years ago an experiment involving the entanglement of two photons, the research team altered the state of one of the photons and the other changed with effectivly no delay, but when they encoded multiple bits the speed of the transfer of information was still not faster the the speed of light...

I'm not entirely sure when I read it but I think it was in the New Scientist magazine, i'm no expert in quantium communications and maybe things have changed in the last few years but I don't see quantium communication replacing fibre anytime soon.

pjv3

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# 125934 23-Apr-2008 17:51

I do think it is a great idea, but right now our concentration should be focused on trying to improve what we have now rather than making it seem better. Maybe it is just my ISP, but I dont really feel I'm getting any more value out of my current plan than what I was getting 5 years ago.

Otherwise we will all end up with 10Gbit FTTH connection but with a 1:1,000,000 contention ratio.

hellonearthisman

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# 126010 24-Apr-2008 01:29

If we get 200000 new fibre connections, which would give 1Gb/s Connection nationally, until it wanted to go international, then the 200000 customers will fight for the <1000Gb/s links

mushion22

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# 126015 24-Apr-2008 06:09

sbiddle: Biddle Internet (NASDAK:BI) has today announced it will be rolling out a FTTT (Fibre To The Toilet) network in New Zealand.

Maybe you should name it Biddle Organisation for Local Loops and Open Connectivity Kinetic Sewerage (NASDAQ:BOLLOCKS) ;).
Not quite sure how it will connect rural customers with septic tanks :( Maybe I could partner with you to extend the solution to rolling out fibre through effluent ditches, water troughs and rabbit holes?

Quantum communication? Its cool and interesting but saying we should wait for it seems similar to saying we shouldn't roll out any more power stations because Fusion power looks promising. I think that's just the nature of technology - there will always be something new on the horizon but you will be forever delaying yourself and losing opportunities if you keep waiting, just like has happened so far.

Its not like Fibre is an obsolete technology. Its been around for ages but there's still a lot of improvements being made. I suppose there would be a hard limit somewhere, just like there has been for copper, but I think we would get a good amount of usage out of a fibre network before it is possible to replace it with super-duper wireless or quantum or other wired technology.

One thing we should be watching out for, though, is Platic Optical Fibre - a technology that could potentially reduce the cost of rolling out a fibre network if it becomes mainstream, mainly because its less finicky than glass fibre. It's such a slow process splicing fibres and making clean terminations onto patch panels - I dont envy the technicians tasked with installing a few million of the them!

Gah there are so many considerations when it comes to a fibre network. What topology, what management model, what investment model, what protocols, access rights, ownership... I wouldn't be at all surprised if a large chunk of the government's 1.5bn goes into planning just because of the difficult and risky nature of making decisions on this scale! It might just be easier to buy Chorus, make it an SoE and save themselves the hassle because not only will they acquire a partially implemented network, they will acquire the planning that has already been done!

I thoroughly agree that the back end infrastructure needs to be the first thing that gets invested in to reduce contention and especially to increase international bandwith (and reduce data costs). That way we will able to utilise what we have now to the fullest while new local loops get rolled out. I guess it depends on how Mr Key conceptualises the way Kiwi's will work, and whether he cares about our ability to interface with the world.

There are many details to come I suppose - he has to win the election first, and for now the fact that we are all talking about it is exactly what he wants :)

hellonearthisman

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# 126024 24-Apr-2008 07:51

mushion22:
One thing we should be watching out for, though, is Platic Optical Fibre - a technology that could potentially reduce the cost of rolling out a fibre network if it becomes mainstream, mainly because its less finicky than glass fibre. It's such a slow process splicing fibres and making clean terminations onto patch panels - I dont envy the technicians tasked with installing a few million of the them!

Glass last's better than plastic, it's proven. Most of the cost is getting the cables/pipes in the ground.

mushion22:It might just be easier to buy Chorus,

That seems a smart idea for the win, but the meaning of the word compition goes owol.

mushion22: and especially to increase international bandwith (and reduce data costs).

This is something that was not really address by National, or did I miss something *again*.

mushion22

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# 126031 24-Apr-2008 08:19

hellonearthisman:

mushion22: and especially to increase international bandwith (and reduce data costs).

This is something that was not really address by National, or did I miss something *again*.

Nah they didn't say anything about any specifics. It was basically *dangle* "Dude, Heres your ~~car~~ ~~education~~ ~~health~~ ~~roading~~ FTTH. Boo-yah!"

I was just thinking that the first place to upgrade the current network (if thats the way they go) would be to strengthen backhaul and particularly reduce international contention/introduce international competition (eg support Kordia's efforts) such that we can forget about nasty data caps and fully utilise our current connections while fibre gets rolled out, seeing as with beefy new fibre connections we would need beefy new backbones and international links to support them anyway (ie we want to see improvements ASAP). Although now that I'm typing this it seems fairly obvious that this would need to be done first otherwise we get nowhere. We'll see whether obvious and government can be used in the same sentence! ;)

hellonearthisman:

That seems a smart idea for the win, but the meaning of the word compition goes owol.

Yeah I dunno about competition in this case. I like the idea of a nice clean good-for-everyone robust network that imposes no political/commercial limits and is collaboratively developed based on prudent technical decisions within a prudent investment framework (just like the intention of a national roading or power network). Alas, maybe that is being too optimistic - I certainly wouldn't want political manouvers affecting good network designs, nor want to hand a monopoly to any profit driven company (look where THAT bright idea got us *cough* privatisation of Telecom in the 90s).

There is only one thing for it. We will all have to give sbiddle our money to invest in FTTT and then sell our souls to Google who I'm sure would love to gobble up all our information in exchange for some nice international cloud-computing links, in Beta of course ;)

allstarnz

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# 126051 24-Apr-2008 09:48

pjv3: I do think it is a great idea, but right now our concentration should be focused on trying to improve what we have now rather than making it seem better. Maybe it is just my ISP, but I dont really feel I'm getting any more value out of my current plan than what I was getting 5 years ago.

Otherwise we will all end up with 10Gbit FTTH connection but with a 1:1,000,000 contention ratio.

I totally agree. My plan which i'm on now with Ihu..., I mean Vodafone is actually much better value than anything on offer now. Broadband is just more expensive and less value for money. The only thing is my max speed is slightly slower than 'unlimited' but at the end of the day, i'm not going to max out my line speed much more than I do now anyhow. At 3.5MB/s I can pull 300-400kb/s no probs and that's plenty fast enough.

TinyTim

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# 126054 24-Apr-2008 09:55

I'm sceptical. Why is he focussing on FTTP when surely it's the service that's important and not the technology. (Compare with Telecom's goal of 89% having 5Mbit/s in 5 years or whatever it is.) In other words, who cares if it's fibre if something else could provide suitable speeds such as VDSL2 or cable?

Also he's told the world how much he's got to spend. Why should Telecom et al keep investing their own money if the government is going to hand out several billion? Private sector investment will stop and the public will end up subsidising the networks more than we should (and therefore get less for it). I believe therefore it's just rhetoric.

Here's what the government is already doing about broadband - working with industry to get FTTP for businesses and FTTN for residential- http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/StandardSummary____33146.aspx.

paragonOfGeek

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# 126056 24-Apr-2008 09:58

I have to agree; although fibre to home sounds nice in theory...the max connection speed at my house is a touch over 8Mb/s; I only know this because when my virus checker updates it pushes the line to its limits (1.01Mbyte/s) and that is only during a major update otherwise the files are too small to really measure....so as it stands faster speeds isn't really what my flat is looking for; what would be much nicer is cheaper data rates...LLU...it just seems like a better idea.

andysh

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# 126140 24-Apr-2008 14:44

Most of you are talking about how FTTH is going to increase the speed of broadband, but I am guessing that it is more than just the internet. With FTTH it gives opportunities for other things, such as other companies are able to start up a new paytv, freeview could broadcast over the network as well.

So what I think would be best is for a state owned network (just like the roads/power), and then companies able to rent the network and for them to deliver whatever services. I just hope that it becomes another mean of transferring data, whether it TV or internet. Because I think you will not be able to get much better quality then a FTTH. As Maverick said, it does not matter how far away from the exchange you really are you are still going to get the same quality of service.

I gather that it is going to take awhile to get every house hooked up, but by starting to create the network it is a step forward. I think the cabinetism at this stage is a good step, then as said before, wire fibre from those cabinets to houses.

For this to happen the backhaul network is going to have to increase as many of you have said, and this does need to be addressed, also I hope that the completion from Kordia does make international bandwidth cheaper.

TinyTim

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# 126147 24-Apr-2008 15:03

andysh: Most of you are talking about how FTTH is going to increase the speed of broadband, but I am guessing that it is more than just the internet. With FTTH it gives opportunities for other things, such as other companies are able to start up a new paytv, freeview could broadcast over the network as well.

Naturally. That's why Telecom has never said ADSL2+ is being deployed to increase b/b speed but to allow new services.

hellonearthisman

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# 126159 24-Apr-2008 15:27

ACT leader Rodney Hide has put the boot into National's 1.5 billion dollar broadband plan.
from Morning Report on Radio New Zealand)

I don't think the payTV thing would happen as people normally want TV content made overseas and would go overseas to view the programs that they want, when they want. This would mean faster internation pipes is wanted.

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