UFB experience

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79 posts

Master Geek

#568438 13-Jan-2012 15:03

Ragnor: Unfortunately in NZ prices are going to be nearer $100 NZD /month still most likely.

The retail ISP's will be paying ~$37.50 / month / customer at least ($37.50 for 30/10... higher for 100/50 or 100/100) to the regional fibre company for use of the wholesale GPON bitstream 2 service which just gets data from the premises to a handover point.

Tthere are the other UFB related ISP costs too, eg: co-location, handover connections, domestic backhaul/transit. Plus all the ISP's other costs eg: staff, marketing, equipment, international bandwidth etc.

We have not seen any residential UFB based plans advertised yet other than Northland ISP ubergroup, who have 50/50 Mbit w/ 150GB data cap for $99 (they must be using the 100/50 bitstream but limiting to only 50/50 in their network)
http://www.ubergroup.co.nz/fibre/plans-fibre.uber

The "wholesale" reference service descriptions and price lists are on the Crown Fibre website
http://www.crownfibre.govt.nz/publications-and-tenders/retail-service-providers.aspx

XNET has been offering retail UFB with 30/5 for 99 without any data ($1.28 per GB) for over 1 year now
http://www.xnet.co.nz/solutions/fusion-over-fibre, that includes the VOIP line and free 1k minutes to about 6 international countries.

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Beccara

1469 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#568445 13-Jan-2012 15:08

Thats not UFB fibre, Thats the Telecom fibre trials

Most problems are the result of previous solutions...

All comment's I make are my own personal opinion and do not in any way, shape or form reflect the views of current or former employers unless specifically stated

iistudio

79 posts

Master Geek

#568454 13-Jan-2012 15:17

Beccara: Thats not UFB fibre, Thats the Telecom fibre trials

Will it not be part of the UFB rollout later? consider its the trial and its telecom, cough cough Chorus
I am a bit confused now, are you saying this is like telstra clear has been offering?

Beccara

1469 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#568456 13-Jan-2012 15:19

Who knows if it will be, I'd say the raw fiber might but I'm not 100% of the tech they used so it might not be PON based

Even it if is I wouldn't take that pricing to be what their UFB offerings will be, We dont know the wholesale rate they are being charged etc etc

iistudio

79 posts

Master Geek

#568476 13-Jan-2012 15:33

According to Sbiddle's blog, its GPON

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/sbiddle/7113

also is FTTH same as UFB?

cheers

cyril7

9050 posts

Uber Geek

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Subscriber

#568480 13-Jan-2012 15:45

Hi, these existing fibre installs (other than private ones) are described on Chorus BB tool as BOF networks, I presume that means Broadband Optical Fibre, those that are owned by Chorus I presume will just be blended in with the other UFB distribution once the pilot contract has completed, but that would be good to be clarified.

From a technical point of view I understand they are no different from the UFB other than the fact that they were trials so some of the install techniques and products used may vary but the end result is the same.

Cyril

webwat

2036 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#568855 14-Jan-2012 17:27

Beccara: Thats not UFB fibre, Thats the Telecom fibre trials

Perhaps the eventual definition of UFB will become "Broadband over Fibre" anyway....

Actually I'm interested in the issue of how UFB can be unbundled when the government takes away the protection from Commerce Commission later on. From what I can see, the number of users connecting at each splitter/aggregation cabinet is small enough to make the economics difficult for any ISP or wholesaler that wants to light up PONs with their own equipment.

Perhaps that's the reasoning behind the 1:24 split ratios, allowing competitors to be more efficient than Chorus by installing more users per splitter instead of competitors having to buy under-utilised colocation and feeds at each cabinet? Still, I thought more users aggregated at bigger cabinets would have prepared the network for competition with dark fibre PONs.

Time to find a new industry!

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#571453 20-Jan-2012 20:43

Yesterday I chatted with a friend from another city about DHCPv6 / RA / RA Guard / ramond/rafixd -type of things and he mentioned that he just changed his home broadband connection. Being a curious person I wanted to know all the details..

Turns out he got 100/100 VLAN from home straight into his office network.

That particular city has quite interesting telco history. It's a local Wellington-equivalent with 200k people (here the Auckland-equivalent is the capital). Back in the 90's they had their local telco and In 1997 it turned from a "co-operative" into a company and each telephone owner got shares. It was listed to the stock exchange the next year.

Between 2001 and 2002 the telco from the capital, also publicly listed, acquired that smaller local telco and eventually all the local operations were merged. That local telco from the capital had a similar history, every telephone owner got 150 shares when it was turned into a company. Around mid 90's our ISP had a very large dial-in pool (our policy was to never offer a busy tone) and we actually made a very decent profit from the shares -- probably doubled our profit for several years..

Anyway, all these mergers and acquisitions caused a new telco being established in 2003 in that particular city creating a very competitive environment for a city of 200k people. Their slogan is "born to be local".

This "new" telco has been very aggressive to build a network and compete against the others. My friend guestimates that they've got 70% of the area covered with fiber -- perhaps a bit optimistic guess. Due to the regulation they have access to the old copper as well.

What do they sell? 32.90e/month (53 nzd) for "adsl-type" of speed, 39.90e/month (65 nzd) for "adsl2+" of speed. If there is fiber available, these equal to 10/10 and 100/10. This type of adsl=10/10 fiber and adsl2+=100/10 fiber seem to be the norm around the country. Not cheap as such (here in the capital adsl2+ is 29.90e/month) but competitive in that city.

That's for a single house. A residential building makes a deal that e.g. everyone can get 10/10 for 10-15e/month. Each apartment has an option to upgrade their own speed all the way up to 100/50 that will about double the monthly cost for that family. Again quite common pricing policy.

Like most telco's nowadays, they offer IPTV services similar to the ones you get from satellite or cable. Unlike many other telco's they also offer VoIP services. They don't push the mobile services the same way the others so that's probably the reason for offering VoIP.

Looking at the financials figures this relatively new telco made last year 9.7 mil euros (15.6 mil nzd) revenue and 500k euros profit. Their cost for growth is very visible from the 2006-2008 numbers; total revenue for the three years 24.5 mil euros, loss 9.3 million. The new telco is owned by three small local telcos from other small cities. When it was established, the press wrote "is it too late?".

Overall something that you wouldn't expect in a city of 200k people and a good example that a telco doesn't need to be huge or even big to make things happen.

Anyway, the friend got his 100/100 fiber from this local telco and the telco was kind enough to route the VLAN all the way to his office. Not a standard service, though, but a small local telco can be flexible and bend the "product definitions" :)

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#587096 26-Feb-2012 21:26

I was looking for something a few days ago and found this blog:
http://translate.google.com/#fi|en|http%3A%2F%2Fbloki.musku.net%2F2012%2F01%2F26%2Fmarttilan-kuiduttaminen%2F
(The original finnish URL is http://bloki.musku.net/2012/01/26/marttilan-kuiduttaminen/)

The writer made his first order for fiber connection back in 2008 and received a reply in a few weeks saying that there's no fiber in place nor immediately plans to install any. He actually sent a message to the Ministry of Communications asking why an apartment building may get two or three different fibers but it's very difficult to get fiber to the single house residential area. The Ministry was supportive but said that they can't force the carriers.

His area had old-fashioned electricity network where the power cables are on poles. The phone company was paying rent to the electricity company to use the same poles for phone lines.

Now that the power company was moving the power lines underground, the phone company was forced to change their network as well.

You would expect fiber-only installation? Right.. The phone company was going to install just traditional copper, "the area is full of retired people". After some communication back and forth, with the support from an residential association, the phone company just responded that copper is enough for the broadband needs in the near future, thanks to VDSL and similar technologies.

But 15th August, 2011, he received a confirmation(!) to the fiber order he had made back in 2008. It also turned out that all the neighbors had received an offer for fiber for 900€ (1500 nzd) as the copper network was being removed and all the phone and broadband services on copper would stop to work on 19th August, 2011.

Apart from the reasonable "complaining" about not getting fiber back in 2008 but in 2011, the writer mostly "whines" about things like not getting a remote readable electricity meter, a fiber terminal device with only 100M ports instead of GE, 802.11g instead of 802.11n, and lack of VoIP as the carrier shut down their VoIP service last autumn. He got 100/10 interweb with TV services on the fiber.

One of the other carriers is marketing their fiber service quite heavily. There is a large truck stationed in various places around the city giving marketing information and they have filled the city with fiber ads stating that half of the city has access to their fiber.

I'm not included, though.

Meanwhile here in our district.. we received an ad about cable TV being available in "our area". As they offer up to 200/10 interweb over the cable, I asked for a quote.

The nearest location is 600m away and it would cost about 60.000e to get our three houses connected (20.000e each). Sorry, no deal for 32.000 nzd.

My current DSL carrier upgraded the DSLAM software a few weeks ago (a nationwide service window) and I had several outages since then, usually a few hours in the evening and the DSL would come back up during the night. We were in Italy for a long weekend and the DSL had gone down on Monday midday or so. I put our interweb connection on a 3G backup and waited. It didn't come up on Tuesday so I filled a form on their web site that evening.

On Wednesday morning at 7:30 I received an SMS saying that the case is being investigated and an e-mail saying the same, and saying that if an engineer has to go check the actual line, he will be calling from invisible number. At 8:30 a guy called and said that the DSL is now up but the DSL router must be bridged as he is not seeing IP address being obtained. I told that the router is connected to the 3G but if DSL is up, it's probably fine now. I also asked what he had done and he said that he changed the DSL to a different profile. He said he'd keep the ticket open until Thursday so that he can see an IP address being obtained as well.

Overall very well handled by the carrier. Nice to see that they have added a "clueful layer" to the process -- I was expecting the usual "please check your Windows settings" and "is the DSL modem powered on" questions (to these questions I was prepared to say "I don't have a computer, I bought the internet").

I used TP-Link's TL-MR3020 for the 3G backup, connected to my Mikrotik router the same way the DSL modem is so everything was intact in my local network. I had a 3G USB stick (Huawei E1820) laying around with an unlimited, uncapped 3G SIM. Speedtest was giving ping time of 60ms, download speed 6.2 Mbps and Upload speed of 1.4 Mbps so I was quite happy with the 3G backup. In fact during the few weeks we rent a movie on the Apple TV just fine, and we watched several TV recordings from our cloud PVR just fine. One could say that I would not have noticed that we had a connectivity over 3G instead of DSL.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#599370 24-Mar-2012 08:43

I keep reporting :)

This time nothing about Ultra Fast Fiber but reasonably Fast anyway..

I just picked up the iPad 3 from a local Apple reseller and put the SIM card inside. Earlier today I had wondered if I should order the 4G "lite" mobile broadband, 20 euros/month, 32 nzd/month, for uncapped but limited to 50 Mbit/s dual-carrier HSPA+ / LTE. The "full" variant is a bit steep at 40 eur/month (64 nzd), up to 100 Mbit/s.

But now with the iPad 3 my standard full-rate HSPA+ SIM card is giving me 20 Mbit/s downlink and 6 Mbit/s uplink here at home. Guess if I'm interested to go dual-carrier on the iPad any longer :)

.. but I'm wondering about giving the LTE a try as it could outperform my ADSL2+ by a huge margin and be cheaper as well. It comes with Huawei E392 USB stick and there's a two week money-back guarantee.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#606525 7-Apr-2012 22:07

.. but I'm wondering about giving the LTE a try as it could outperform my ADSL2+ by a huge margin and be cheaper as well. It comes with Huawei E392 USB stick and there's a two week money-back guarantee.

The carrier salesgirl called and offered the "4G lite" (limited to 50 Mbit/s with DC-HSPA+ and LTE) for 6 months half the price, with the usual two week money-back guarantee. I decided to give it a try..

Here at home iPad 3 is getting slightly better download speeds, 25 Mbit/s or so, but nothing extraordinary. With the Huawei E392 stick in the LTE-only mode, I get only one bar and 10 Mbit/s downlink. I need to wonder around the city a bit to see what the real coverage and speeds are like.

Yesterday we drove to the OH's parents for the eastern and while she was driving, I surfed on the iPad. About 2/3 of the trip (~150 km of 250 km) the performance was great, whenever I tested I got about 10 Mbit/s down. The last 100 km was pretty bad, even a few black spots in the coverage and just a few Mbit/s down at best.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#606528 7-Apr-2012 22:17

Today's newspaper wrote about the changes in real estate taxes and some counties are winning, some are losing.

One particular winning county is doing something interesting with their extra income -- expediting the fiber network building. It's a small county in the archipelago with just 800 permanent inhabitants but 3000 summer houses. Despite the small number of houses, it's not an easy task -- the land is mostly solid rock.

By end of this year they will have fiber installed to every house, including all the summer houses. Even a 75-year-old fisherman says it's good a thing although he only uses his computer to play Solitaire -- but his wife wants the fiber!

The county sees the fiber to the summer houses as an advantage, city people will spend more time in their summer houses and extend their holiday seasons. This will benefit the local businesses and the county in general.

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#609475 15-Apr-2012 04:49

ojala:
Here at home iPad 3 is getting slightly better download speeds, 25 Mbit/s or so, but nothing extraordinary. With the Huawei E392 stick in the LTE-only mode, I get only one bar and 10 Mbit/s downlink. I need to wonder around the city a bit to see what the real coverage and speeds are like.

I took the stick to my office during the week, where I was greeted with 2-3 bars of LTE coverage. The data rates were pretty stable at

.. which was quite a surprise really, the latency goes frequently below 30 ms. It seems to be hit my subscription limit of 50 Mbit/s, not the performance of the network.

During the week I've downloaded about ~2G with the new subscription. Just the other day I was downloading an VMWare update and Ubuntu image and decided not to slow down my home-DSL with the download but download them with the stick while doing other things on the DSL. Kind of interesting phenomenon after having mobile broadband that is faster than your fixed line..

I believe I'll keep the 4G/LTE 50M subscription. I'm probably going to give the subscription a try as a replacement to our DSL to see how if I'll notice the different.

The local department store chain is having their bi-annual special sale next week and I noticed that one of the big carriers has a deal on their broadband. Make an 24 month deal and you get 24M DSL or 100/10M fiber for 19.00e/month (30 NZD/month). As always, it's uncapped but it's nice to see the special offers extending to fiber as well. The norm now seems to be that 100M fiber has the same price as full-rate ADSL2+. Too bad the fiber isn't available to our house.

As we don't have capped fixed internet, there are typically a few different data rates offered -- but the pricing encourages going for the full-rate. If you want to have something cheaper, below 10e/month, you need to go with mobile broadband.

Ragnor

8192 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#609774 16-Apr-2012 01:17

ojala:

The local department store chain is having their bi-annual special sale next week and I noticed that one of the big carriers has a deal on their broadband. Make an 24 month deal and you get 24M DSL or 100/10M fiber for 19.00e/month (30 NZD/month). As always, it's uncapped but it's nice to see the special offers extending to fiber as well. The norm now seems to be that 100M fiber has the same price as full-rate ADSL2+. Too bad the fiber isn't available to our house.

$30 NZD for un-metered 100Mbit/10Mbit is so cheap, do the carriers offer the Internet connection as a loss leader to make money of selling other services?

ojala

188 posts

Master Geek

#609783 16-Apr-2012 03:42

$30 NZD for un-metered 100Mbit/10Mbit is so cheap, do the carriers offer the Internet connection as a loss leader to make money of selling other services?

I don't think they loose money as part of the bigger picture. The fiber is a long-term investment and supports also the mobile infrastructure (the carriers here invest about 800-900 mnzd annually to their infrastructure), and even if some customers are on the red the total customer base will be on the black. The coverage is market driven, a single rural house -- most likely not available. A densely built, relatively new housing area or an apartment house? Most likely available. Small towns also install fiber with their local "we can do it" mentality.

I just did a lookup for an address where I know this carrier has fiber deployed. At this random address the 10/10 fiber connection is as a basic deal the housing area has with the carrier, no additional cost to the house owner. An upgrade to 100/10 will cost just 9.98e/month (less than 16 NZD/month).

There is an entertainment option for 19.90e/month (31.50 nzd/month) that includes the 100/10 access plus IPTV with 3000 hour of recording space in the cloud, rental videos, options for pay-tv and the rest.

Another address, without the deal, the prices would be 19 e/month for 10/10, 29 e/month for 100/10 (46 nzd/month), and 39.90 e/month for the entertainment package. No doubt if you buy the 100/10 access you'll soon receive a special offer the entertainment package.

For example OH's parents who moved to the new building didn't have any other option but the fiber as the carrier had not installed any copper. Want voice? Buy a mobile phone.

So yes, there is the incentive to try to get people upgrade to the IPTV offerings to increase ARPU. That's even the case with DSL -- my local DSL carrier sells standard full-rate ADSL2+ for 29.90e/month but there's the IPTV package for 39.90e/month that includes the full-rate ADSL2+ plus IPTV with pay-channels, 5 terabytes of PVR recording space, options for karaoke, F1, sport events, video rentals, etc.

The development has been driven by both the need to increase revenue but also to compete against the cable-TV that can offer internet access for speeds up to 200/10. Even if the DSL carrier has managed to streamline the installation times to a few days, the cable-TV can still beat them with instant activation.

There's also the marketing aspect. If we had capped internet, what can the carrier offer?
"You've got now full-rate ADSL with 5 gigabytes of traffic, why not upgrade to 10 gigabytes?"
"Eh, but I only use 4 gigabytes a month"
compared to
"You've got now a full-rate ADSL2, how about an upgrade to double speed ADSL2+ for just 5 nzd/month extra and we'll give you the first 6 months for free. How about that?"

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