[Snap] VDSL Pricing vs ADSL

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › [Snap] VDSL Pricing vs ADSL

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#738802 31-Dec-2012 10:14

Thanks Talkiet for hunting that down, I had checked it a month ago when doing the tests, but not last night.

The problem we all have with testing is that we are looking for a proxy for the "peak" performance, Speedtest do a 7MB file download, we do a 300KB file download for obvious reasons (24 hours x 30 days = 720 tests/month) In order to get a reliable test result we studied the impact of choosing parts of a test, Speedtest sample 20, we tried sampling 10 and 4 and found the difference minor, so used 4 - and we use the fastest. Sampling part of a file sometimes produces an erroneous result due to rounding of small numbers, worse on 10 samples than 4, but this is not sufficient reason to change our practice - we discard those tests as you would when you see a strange Speedtest result.

Speedtest would discard the slowest 30%, because they are very likely to be the first 2 out of 20 due to rampup and discarding the two top and bottom results is more likely to drop the rounding errors. Our results never use the first quartile and we publish averages or medians in the main, which removes the need for high levels of accuracy on every single test, ie we can be within say 5% of the result for each individual test and still provide good information in the aggregate.

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JohnButt

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#738807 31-Dec-2012 10:24

In reply to Behodar

Your "14391/1176 on ADSL2+ with 26.5 dB downstream" is almost identical to my results prior to rebuilding my house - and hence rewiring when I got 18Mb/s, then getting VDSL;

My connection is 555, ie at 900m from the exchange and the best I have had is;

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Dropbox and picture uploads to Geekzone work very quickly on this connection

Spyware

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#738825 31-Dec-2012 11:03

Behodar:
Currently 14391/1176 on ADSL2+ with 26.5 dB downstream, with Fyx (Maxnet). I'm not sure exactly how the cable runs from the local cabinet but I'm guessing 1100-1200 m. The longest one on John's graph is 1000 m but even then it has a decent upload speed (which is the main thing that I'm interested in).

I'm unsure about Snap as their website is almost completely devoid of information.

26.5 dB would be around 1800 metres at least.

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#738828 31-Dec-2012 11:17

Spyware: 26.5 dB would be around 1800 metres at least.

Using the measurement tool on Google Maps I simply can't get it anywhere near that length. I can see from the Chorus maps that the cabinet only serves two streets and even if I go right past my house to the end of the street, do a U-turn, and come back up the other side it's still only 1600 m.

Do you happen to know how far the "green zone" on the Chorus maps goes? I thought it was 700 m, which would put my place at about 1160 m.

RunningMan

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#738852 31-Dec-2012 13:09

Talkiet: [snip]

edit: I've just noticed the speedtest page has a mistake... It says top 10% and bottom 30% in one place, and then says top 10% and bottom 10% a few line later... Not sure which is right.)

I understand they drop the top and bottom 10%, then drop another 20% from the bottom to remove TCP ramp up from the equation, which is where the 30% figure comes from (10% + 20%).

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#738857 31-Dec-2012 13:20

I just measured a vdsl radius at 750 metre which is probably typical, no cable runs exceeding 800 metres or so. I just measured my run to exchange and have 33 dB at around 1600 metres, I would guess the real cable length exceeds 2 km though.

Note: I'll have vdsl at 70 metres in 3 months. Cabinet, BEL/D, was to be just over my fence but pegs have been removed and shifted to around the corner. Oh well. Surrounding area had been cabinetised two years ago and was surprised to discover that one cabinet was still to be installed.

JohnButt

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#738961 31-Dec-2012 18:47

Today I completed a quick comparison with two locations downloading Speedtest.net files on all VDSL probes that allow me to use 5GB/month. Each Speedtest and the TP_National (Standard test) is the average of five individual tests. This provides an example of the issues demonstrated by @fellaintga

Sorry the lines do not mean anything, they are provided to assist interpretation only.

The spread of results changes from probe to probe, with one probe showing 40Mb/s for the Auckland speedtest, 18Mb/s for Christchurch and 35Mb/s for our standard test (interestingly, that probe previously had a lower standard speed result - see my chart earlier) ;-)

The Christchurch Speedtest is surprising, many of these probes are on Snap, the host of the Christchurch Speedtest.net.

My probe has almost no variation between all five test types - 555

We use the Akamai and 5MB files for "sense" comparisons, in this case each spot is a single test for each probe, we only test every 4 hours.

fellaintga

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#739236 1-Jan-2013 21:38

Probe 250 is mine. Speetest.net will give me about 37Mb to Christchurch not sure why it was so low on Johns test. I think there is a few VDSL lines that should be doing better or wiring is a factor.

JohnButt

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#739239 1-Jan-2013 21:44

@fellaintga, The speed tests are both the average of 5 tests - no answer why your test is so low either.

I too think there are lots of VDSL lines that may need wiring upgrades to get better results. However I would understand if you get VDSL and the performance is greatly improved to a "sufficient" level, then the cost of fixing wiring may not be justified.

myfullflavour

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#739900 3-Jan-2013 20:42

Interesting discussion, I thought I'd jump in on this from an ISP point of view:

"Except there are very few VDSL sellers out there and worse, the data caps are so incredibly low."

If ISPs were focused on selling VDSL to residential customers (which means competing heavily on price and data caps) I'd say they'll end up losing money on selling the product. The average retail difference between ADSL and VDSL is roughly $20-$25 and the majority of this is what Chorus charge the ISP.

Take into consideration that a VDSL connection requires a much higher level of support (while ADSL is basically an automated provisioning process, VDSL almost always requires extra work with the client to get the best from the connection particularly with wiring) and the performance requirements on the ISP network are much higher, suddenly selling mass-market doesn't isn't worth it.

On a per port basis, a similar spec UFB Fibre connection will cost the the ISP much less.

As an aside, our company focus on VDSL for business clients. We have a general "unmetered" pool that we keep an eye on and do custom bandwidth plans for clients needing in excess of 500GB a month or need dedicated performance at specific times.

Worth noting 90% of our clients jump onto VDSL for the 10 X faster upload speed which is worth paying a premium for.

We aren't a mass-market ISP, but have a chunk of bandwidth that sits idle 95% of the time particularly on the download side as our main business is co-location & web hosting.

fellaintga

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#740190 4-Jan-2013 16:20

myfullflavour: Interesting discussion, I thought I'd jump in on this from an ISP point of view:

"Except there are very few VDSL sellers out there and worse, the data caps are so incredibly low."

If ISPs were focused on selling VDSL to residential customers (which means competing heavily on price and data caps) I'd say they'll end up losing money on selling the product. The average retail difference between ADSL and VDSL is roughly $20-$25 and the majority of this is what Chorus charge the ISP.

Take into consideration that a VDSL connection requires a much higher level of support (while ADSL is basically an automated provisioning process, VDSL almost always requires extra work with the client to get the best from the connection particularly with wiring) and the performance requirements on the ISP network are much higher, suddenly selling mass-market doesn't isn't worth it.

On a per port basis, a similar spec UFB Fibre connection will cost the the ISP much less.

As an aside, our company focus on VDSL for business clients. We have a general "unmetered" pool that we keep an eye on and do custom bandwidth plans for clients needing in excess of 500GB a month or need dedicated performance at specific times.

Worth noting 90% of our clients jump onto VDSL for the 10 X faster upload speed which is worth paying a premium for.

We aren't a mass-market ISP, but have a chunk of bandwidth that sits idle 95% of the time particularly on the download side as our main business is co-location & web hosting.

Thanks for your input from an ISP perspective. As noted in the first post yes it costs $20 more a month from Chorus and my beef was technology pundits are saying why does it cost more? Well for the reasons you say more effort on Chours network and more effort on the ISP part so why shouldn't you pay more for a better service?

My original point was we have over 50% of people able to get VDSL and people always want better speeds and its there on offer at a reasonable price.

myfullflavour

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#740283 4-Jan-2013 21:05

fellaintga:

Thanks for your input from an ISP perspective. As noted in the first post yes it costs $20 more a month from Chorus and my beef was technology pundits are saying why does it cost more? Well for the reasons you say more effort on Chours network and more effort on the ISP part so why shouldn't you pay more for a better service?

My original point was we have over 50% of people able to get VDSL and people always want better speeds and its there on offer at a reasonable price.

And the problem is the vast majority of residential users want loads of data, fast and cheap. In the real world you get to pick two of those features.

With UFB upon us, I don't see the major ISPs adopting VDSL despite it being like you say, a good product available to roughly 50% of current DSL users (I've never seen confirmed fact of VDSL coverage vs DSL but in our numerous pre-quals we perform each week it sounds about right).

I posted my last VDSL speedtest here a few weeks back - not bad for copper wire!

http://www.fullflavourmedia.co.nz/blog/2012/12/14/dsl-vs-vdsl-is-vdsl-broadband-faster/

sbiddle

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#740293 4-Jan-2013 21:15

Except the UFB project in it's infancy. It'll still be another 3 years before coverage starts ramping up in many areas.

fellaintga

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#740376 5-Jan-2013 09:38

sbiddle: Except the UFB project in it's infancy. It'll still be another 3 years before coverage starts ramping up in many areas.

Yeah my house is 3 years away and VDSL2 could be as fast as UFB is some cases anyway. The equipment is there yet nobody is using it which is crazy. Anyway atleast we have Snap to provide it at a good price.

Nil Einne

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#747723 20-Jan-2013 12:03

fellaintga: I am seeing over and over so called technology experts writing about how VDSL is so much more expensive and its $20 more because Chorus just want to make lots of money. If you look at Snap's pricing as it is the only reasonably priced ISP offering VDSL it is $25 more but their pricing is already pretty sharp anyway so compared to Telecoms offering for example its pretty much the same except you get 3 X downloads and 10 X upload so I think Chorus and the ISP is well within their rights to charge $25 more a month. Its not like going to ADSL2 from ADSL as that was only a small bump in technology and inline with technology getting better over time. VDSL may share some common traits but is far and above a better technology and we could have half of the connections in NZ on 100Mb tomorrow if the latest VDSL technology was used. Why did Telecom bother to invest in VDSL line cards in the first place if only a fraction of the connections who could use it tomorrow don't? Then you have the head of TUANZ offering up this garbage.

I don't see by what token it's 'its pretty much the same except you get 3 X downloads and 10 X upload'. Telecom's pricing used to be rather bad, but it's gotten a lot better recently, particularly for resonably high usage which I assume we're talking about (most people only using 50GB a month probably won't care about VDSL2 much). By way of comparison you can get 500GB from Telecom for $119 including a homeline. With Snap's VDSL2 (which I agree is the only decently price option out there), you only get 300GB for $120 and with no phone line. If you want a phoneline with a local number, you pay $11.50 - $15 more for a VOIP phone line depending on who you use. If you want to go up to 550GB with Snap VDSL2, you need to pay $140. And this still no phone line.

Okay you do get the free off peak ('all you can eat nights') with Snap but having used both a free offpeak and an unlimited plan in the past, I can see even when you leave your computer on all the time anyway it's far more convenient to not have to worry about when you use the internet. To be fair, 300GB is a more reasonable data cap then what I had in the past. However depending on the service level, I'm not convinced you could frequently achieve 500GB in total using the 300GB+offpeak unless you had a specific usage pattern.

In other words, no it isn't 'pretty much the same except you get 3 X downloads and 10 x upload'. Whether or not the price premium is worth it is up to the user but it's clearly not 'pretty much the same' unless you have a rather odd definition of 'the same'.

Of course the big complaint on price is not just the higher price but the comparison with UFB. You can get 550GB with Snap UFB including a VOIP phone line for $120. As with many ISPs, the lowest level UFB price with VOIP phone from Snap is pretty much the same as the non naked ADSL2 bundle price from them. So not surprisingly, this compares well with the Telecom ADSL2 price. But of course if you're like me and UFB isn't arriving for at least 3 years, you're SOL. UFB is being partly subsidised by the government but does this mean that the government should discourage or prevent reasonable regulation based on existing rules just to push people to something a lot of the country can't get? Even ignoring regulation, I think it's an open question whether Chorus is really making a smart move here or have effectively ensured VDSL never gets much usage in NZ when they could easily be making more money if they weren't so convinced of the need to keep prices high. And without wanting to take this thread too far OT, many people did question whether the UFB tender process was done well or by design it gave way too much priority to Chorus.

The other thing of course is until recently, there hasn't been a good reason to go with Telecom. You could get a similar level of service from others with more data or cheaper price. Or even more data with a lower level of service. The fact that Telecom's prices were silly until recently is not a good reason to say VDSL2 pricing isn't expensive.

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