Why the Internet access is so expensive?

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freitasm

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#61019 7-May-2010 10:41

While monitoring live access to Geekzone through Chartbeat, I saw one visitor coming to our pages from a Google Search:

Note this is not my opinion, but a random link. So, let's open the discussion and try to find more if this question is valid, or why is this question still unanswered after all these years, since the discussion linked in the Google results?

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#327626 7-May-2010 10:44

I believe it's already been answered many times..
ie, the southern cross cable, no competition for international bandwidth, telecom, data caps, etcetc

freitasm

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#327627 7-May-2010 10:45

Why Telecom only? What about the other telcos/ISPs?

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#327631 7-May-2010 10:56

I believe it's got to do with the international pipe 'monopoly'.

I do wish for unmetered local traffic, and I know this does not have to wait on Pacific Fibre's project or FTTH. Would be good to hear a valid reason for this not happening in residential broadband, when most colocation providers do it already.

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kyhwana2

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#327634 7-May-2010 11:03

magu: I believe it's got to do with the international pipe 'monopoly'.

I do wish for unmetered local traffic, and I know this does not have to wait on Pacific Fibre's project or FTTH. Would be good to hear a valid reason for this not happening in residential broadband, when most colocation providers do it already.

You can get unmetered local traffic on xnet. Or did you mean national?

kyhwana2

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#327636 7-May-2010 11:04

freitasm: Why Telecom only? What about the other telcos/ISPs?

Well, them too.. although some of them are wholesaling from telecom, so I guess there's plenty of blame to go around.

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#327640 7-May-2010 11:12

kyhwana2:
magu: I believe it's got to do with the international pipe 'monopoly'.

I do wish for unmetered local traffic, and I know this does not have to wait on Pacific Fibre's project or FTTH. Would be good to hear a valid reason for this not happening in residential broadband, when most colocation providers do it already.

You can get unmetered local traffic on xnet. Or did you mean national?

Yes, by local I meant national.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Doc Emmet Brown

freitasm

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#327641 7-May-2010 11:13

Oh, the good old days TelstraClear was free between nodes in the cable network and metered at 10% for national (NZ only) traffic...

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timestyles

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#327642 7-May-2010 11:13

Why is a copper wire so expensive, without the broadband?

Let's do some maths: phone line: $40 a month, internet $30 a month without any data

Over the 70 year life of a home, that's about $60,000.

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#327648 7-May-2010 11:31

Most of the traffic NZ does is international. Probably something like 90%. Add to that infrastructure costs, support costs etc etc .

I actually don't think our monthly rates are too high I just think our data caps are a bit harsh.

But having said that somewhere some time the ferry man must be paid.

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#327650 7-May-2010 11:38

freitasm: While monitoring live access to Geekzone through Chartbeat, I saw one visitor coming to our pages from a Google Search:

When I first saw this topic on my RSS feeds I was thinking, "this user is going to be banned". Then I see it's the BDFL. Ah whoops

kyhwana2

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#327651 7-May-2010 11:40

timestyles: Why is a copper wire so expensive, without the broadband?

Let's do some maths: phone line: $40 a month, internet $30 a month without any data

Over the 70 year life of a home, that's about $60,000.

More like $47 for a POTS line :P Telecom just put up the line rentals again.

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#327657 7-May-2010 12:01

kyhwana2:
timestyles: Why is a copper wire so expensive, without the broadband?

Let's do some maths: phone line: $40 a month, internet $30 a month without any data

Over the 70 year life of a home, that's about $60,000.

More like $47 for a POTS line :P Telecom just put up the line rentals again.

Or $38 for POTS in Christchurch. That's one thing I never got. Variable Pricing for POTS lines. I know it's probably to do with the infrastructure costs, but $9 a month is a big variance in cost.

And I would have thought they would have charged us CHCHers the same price, and just used pour money for infrastructure up in Auckland.

timestyles

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#327661 7-May-2010 12:16

JohnstonDJ:
kyhwana2:
timestyles: Why is a copper wire so expensive, without the broadband?

Let's do some maths: phone line: $40 a month, internet $30 a month without any data

Over the 70 year life of a home, that's about $60,000.

More like $47 for a POTS line :P Telecom just put up the line rentals again.

Or $38 for POTS in Christchurch. That's one thing I never got. Variable Pricing for POTS lines. I know it's probably to do with the infrastructure costs, but $9 a month is a big variance in cost.

And I would have thought they would have charged us CHCHers the same price, and just used pour money for infrastructure up in Auckland.

Competition, with TelstraClear here in Chch means cheaper prices. It's lucky that Telecom don't charged different rates on different sides of the street, like they used to do in the Wellington region.

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#327663 7-May-2010 12:29

My opinion - Is internet expensive? To me, not really - $1 a day for fullspeed ADSL2 access with 16-18Mbps DN and 1088Kbps UP synch rates to my exchange.

My usage pack works out at $1.20 per GB presuming I actually use my usage, the internet connection is fast and reliable (I've rarely had outages or speed issues besides TelstraClears infamous YouTube difficulties)

So yeah, it's all relevant, on my income, and for how often and what I'm using the internet for, I think it's quite affordable actually, some more flexible and rewarding usage charges for data from the main providers would be a nice present but it's not a deal killer.

_b

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#327668 7-May-2010 12:50

New Zealand consumes a large amount of content that's sourced from overseas (even though up to 60% of our Internet traffic comes from Trade Me).

Many point out the Southern Cross cable as a choke point. So do you think a new cable company such as Pacific Fibre (www.pacificfibre.net) would help alleviate the problem?

Do you think more local caches from Akamai, Amazon CloudFront would help with moving some of this traffic to local network?

What about peering? Is TelstraClear's decision to no peer locally to smaller ISPs sound? What about Telecom's own peering policies, bypassing the open exchanges?

What about the governement being late to require local loop unbundling, and when doing so being one year from Telecom's cabinetisation process?

Why other telcos don't deploy their own networks in new subdivisions, instead of waiting for Telecom to do so?

Is fiber the answer?

Is this the case of scarcity of resources or companies not planning for investments?

What else can you think of?

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