Heard of Vectors Fibre to the Door campaign? hope so :)

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › Heard of Vectors Fibre to the Door campaign? hope so :)

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Ragnor

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#308490 17-Mar-2010 21:46

Zabu: Won't this just turn Vector into a super monoply with power+broadband. Hope their broadband price will be capped

Sort of, however not a vertically integrated one (retail + wholesale) like Telecom used to be (arguable still is).

Vector won't have it's own retail ISP that has a massive advantage over all other ISP's that are buying a wholesale service from them.

Lenovo

Lenovo computer and accessories deals (affiliate link).

Ragnor

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#308535 17-Mar-2010 23:03

PenultimateHop:

Why do you feel that this is a likely outcome of using GPON? Without some sound reasoning you are spreading some pretty severe FUD.

GPON, sharing a single fibre strand shared between multiple consumers sounds a bit shortsighted to me. I'm sure if we go with GPON we will have to go to Active ethernet x years later.

Considering the high labour and compliance costs in New Zealand, the cost of digging up the street and building the trenches two times in x years will be far higher that those of the switchports or extra fibre of doing Active Ethernet now.

According to a treasury report the extra cost of active ethernet would be around 15%, not sure how realistic that is.

PenultimateHop

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#308570 18-Mar-2010 00:46

Ragnor: GPON, sharing a single fibre strand shared between multiple consumers sounds a bit shortsighted to me. I'm sure if we go with GPON we will have to go to Active ethernet x years later.

Considering the high labour and compliance costs in New Zealand, the cost of digging up the street and building the trenches two times in x years will be far higher that those of the switchports or extra fibre of doing Active Ethernet now.

According to a treasury report the extra cost of active ethernet would be around 15%, not sure how realistic that is.

(Not wanting to take this off-topic: we should probably shift this debate to http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=58040).

I'll reply shortly - at work right now - but to summarise: this is why I referred to making assertions without facts as FUD-mongering. Who said GPON is going to utilise a single fibre to the end-termination point - it is certainly feasible to do cabinet or CO based splitting and still maintain a single fibre per customer location.

There are significant investment differences between active ethernet and GPON, and are not entirely related to the fibre investment - not to mention you still only excavate once by using blown-fibre ducting.

Both technologies have their place -- but be careful with assertions.

sbiddle

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#308596 18-Mar-2010 08:19

I'd be surprised if blown fibre isn't the preferred solution for whatever providers win the contracts. Chorus are presently trialling this and see significant gains over their existing FTTH deployments. They have also demonstrated blowing copper as well which has the advantage of being able to delivery legacy services to those people who still want or need copper.

Once you have the microducting in place upgrades become very easy indeed.

FibreFan

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#308769 18-Mar-2010 14:33

This is all really interesting stuff - as I'm not an expert on the subject I'm enjoying the debate going on here.
From my understanding both options are feasable and usable - only one downside to the govt. chosing the GPON option is that I feel it would result in an extreme monopoly of the industry - getting the widest coverage of broadband around neighbourhoods/businesses by sharing fibre from the service providers central offices - then providing services to maintain these connections, to basically everyone in NZ, 'to the best of their ability'. It doesn't give NZ's much choice.

webwat

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#308921 18-Mar-2010 21:14

sbiddle: Welcome.

Instead of just linkdropping the site for your client maybe you'd also like to engage in the existing threads on here discussing the pros and cons of FTTH deployments?

FTTH isn't the magic solution to people's internet issues.

By itself it's not going to deliver significantly cheaper, faster broadband. There are also many issues such as the technology used for the deployment and also issues of who's going to be paying somewhere in the realm of $1000 upwards to install and kit out a house for fibre. There are also the issues with legacy services such as monitored alarms and inability to use dialup internet services and products such as PPV movie ordering on Sky. It's not quite as simple as a DIY $89 ADSL install.

The advertised website has pathetic forum subjects anyway, no subjects that actually allow people to suggest anything useful to Vector and appears that users cant start new threads over there. So lets make Geekzone the official NGN forum!

Its a thing that NZ should not be diving blindly into and I dont think experts have yet agreed on how to resolve every single issue. Commerce Commission and industry started discussions about what problems are likely to crop up, and we as users should be contributing too. The issues vary from commercial, technical and structural through to the user issues, including what happens during power cuts etc. Remember that dialup services that must be compatible with the system include fax and eftpos etc, as well as the more tricky alarm monitoring.

I reckon I should dig out the original ComCom document and put up a few discussion points they listed on a new thread.

BTW: FTTH is not strictly accurate (implying an internal fibre jackpoint) -- Fibre-to-the-Door is probably more accurate, and some unlucky apartments might have to settle for Fibre-to-the-Building.

Time to find a new industry!

tardtasticx

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#309031 19-Mar-2010 10:22

webwat: The issues vary from commercial, technical and structural through to the user issues, including what happens during power cuts etc.

Well in the US, my friend has Verizon FiOs, which is one of the biggest FTTH deployments in the US. He said when they installed it to his house, they put this backup battery inside his house next to the jackpoint. So the phone line would keep working for a few hours if a black out occurs.

Verizon: The Battery Back-up Unit (BBU) - provides up to eight hours of power in case your ONT Power Supply Unit is accidentally unplugged or in the event of a commercial power failure. The back-up battery is for voice service and does not supply power for Internet or video services.

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