Our recipe for better broadband

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Our recipe for better broadband

duncanblair

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#29710 16-Jan-2009 09:39

Thought that GZers might be interested in this: http://www.orcon.net.nz/lifestyle/page/making_broadband_better_now

Scott has written a fairly detailed peice on our recipe for delivering better broadband. If you have any feedback we would love to hear it (either here or leave a comment on our site).

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#190062 16-Jan-2009 22:02

Quoted from linked article :

But, Orcon building LLU networks won’t in itself bring about $10 broadband, we need to see more competition in international capacity, where we have literally one cable providing all the broadband connectivity to the rest of the world. One cable operator - scary! Orcon has high hopes that our parent company Kordia can solve that ridiculous situation by building its proposed PPC-2 cable to Australia, and lower the costs of international bandwidth while at the same time providing the country with a back-up should a cable be cut (and that can happen).

Wait. What ?
I thought we had more than 1 cable connecting us to the rest of the world. I thought we had 3 - the big main pipe , a connection to sydney australia and a connection to the universty of hawaii.

Someone please enlighten this poor confused soul :(

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honem

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#190065 16-Jan-2009 22:09

Having read through the entire article I'ld like give some comments about it

Where is the recipe for new broadband ?

What's the plan for things to come ?

It could be the fact that I'm playing world of warcraft right now. It could be the fact that I have to leave for work in less than an hour

But it seems to me that the blog was about how broadband used to be , what it is like now and the opportunities for growth in the future.

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Dratsab

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#190069 16-Jan-2009 22:57

http://www.orcon.net.nz/lifestyle/page/making_broadband_better_now: Competition at the network layer has lowered the price of a phone and broadband package by over 50% in 24 months

Pardon me?? I assume you must be talking about for your customers as I haven't seen the price of my broadband drop by a single cent...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash you guys - in fact a mate of mine [customer of yours] came over for a few drinks tonight and was raving about your speeds which he says appear to have noticeably increased recently - but what have you got to back this claim up?

insane

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#190088 17-Jan-2009 00:07

This also has the added benefit of being a great and sustainable differentiator for our brand, so you’d think that others would try and do the same right? Wrong. Sadly we seem to be alone in this particular quest, and while that’s great for us and our customers – the majority of users won’t be getting either Good Service or a Great Experience anytime soon.

I think this is a bit harsh as there are smaller ISPs out there which are voted to have best ISP customer service year on year and frequently make it to TUANZ call cantre award finals. I suspect though that our views are slightly biased based on who pays our paychecks.

Your comments may well stand true for the large industry players as just about everyone has a horror story or two to tell.

Ragnor

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#190092 17-Jan-2009 00:28

It's really good to see regular blog posts on the new Orcon site. Easily the best (and probably only) regularly communicating ISP in the land currently. While this post didn't contain much technical detail I appreciated the earlier posts on traffic management and sub loop unbundling.

I found the comments about gaming performance interesting, based on occasional posts on various forums recently I was under the impression that mmo's on US servers like wow, aoc etc were still had pretty inconsistent performance on Orcon. I am not playing mmo's currently due to having so much work on but when things quiet down I was planning on making a come back.

Is Orcon still using primarily asianetcom for it's route to LA for gaming traffic?

PenultimateHop

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#190101 17-Jan-2009 00:49

honem: Wait. What ?
I thought we had more than 1 cable connecting us to the rest of the world. I thought we had 3 - the big main pipe , a connection to sydney australia and a connection to the universty of hawaii.

Someone please enlighten this poor confused soul :(

Southern Cross (www.southerncrosscables.com) is pretty much the only cable available out of New Zealand. As you can see from their website, it connects Auckland with Sydney and Hawaii (and on to the mainland USA).

There are other cables (Tasman 2, Pacrim East, etc) but they are old and have less capacity than you would need for an an average ISP - for instance Pacrim East is two 560Mb/s bearers (a little over 1Gbps in total).

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honem

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#190105 17-Jan-2009 01:33

PenultimateHop: Southern Cross (www.southerncrosscables.com) is pretty much the only cable available out of New Zealand. As you can see from their website, it connects Auckland with Sydney and Hawaii (and on to the mainland USA).

There are other cables (Tasman 2, Pacrim East, etc) but they are old and have less capacity than you would need for an an average ISP - for instance Pacrim East is two 560Mb/s bearers (a little over 1Gbps in total).

Ahhhh didn't know that the Southern Cross cable connected both to sydney and Hawaii . So it's technically the same cable it just has 2 end points right ? (Like a "V"). And Auckland is kinda in the middle ?

And the other ones have such low capacity to not even count :(

EDIT : Grammer check lol

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PenultimateHop

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#190107 17-Jan-2009 02:50

honem: Ahhhh didn't know that the Southern Cross cable connected both to sydney and Hawaii . So it's technically the same cable it just has 2 end points right ? (Like a "V"). And Auckland is kinda in the middle ?

And the other ones have such low capacity to not even count :(

EDIT : Grammer check lol

No. It's built in rings as shown on their website.

BazNZ

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#190427 18-Jan-2009 20:41

Well my gaming experience continues to deteriorate with severe latency and packet loss. Forget real time game play and expect stop/start bandwidth bursts to continue in 2009. I don't know whats causing this but I'd like someone from Orcon to help me here? I've done everything possible...trace routes, logged help tickets, rang Orcon, changed to there home hub changed back to my original modem which was better. All I can put this down to is lack of International bandwidth or possibly the newly installed Chorus/Telecom cabinet 300m down the road that has been in binding state since January 1st but not yet online until April. If i change ISP's will this help me get some answers and improve my International gaming? Any suggestions are welcomed I'm so frustrated!

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#190437 18-Jan-2009 22:05

Perhaps you're an ingredient that's not in their recipe??

Regs

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#190438 18-Jan-2009 22:20

Quoted from linked article :

But, Orcon building LLU networks won’t in itself bring about $10 broadband, we need to see more competition in international capacity, where we have literally one cable providing all the broadband connectivity to the rest of the world. One cable operator - scary! Orcon has high hopes that our parent company Kordia can solve that ridiculous situation by building its proposed PPC-2 cable to Australia, and lower the costs of international bandwidth while at the same time providing the country with a back-up should a cable be cut (and that can happen).

How is building another link to australia going to solve this problem? If i recall correctly the price of broadband in australia isn't exactly much better than here. Going forward I can see the demand for GBps outstripping the available capacity very soon and a second cable will probably be necessary, rather than an option. It will have to extend all the way to where the content lives though - which is not primarily australia. When the bandwdith starts to run out what will happen? I can't imagine that pices will drop.....

In any case I dont believe that $10 broadband is even possible (although i haven't run any numbers so my accusation is baseless :). You have to pay for the wires, equipment, staff and of course bandwith and I just cant see it happening for such a low amount. What does it cost, per-port, for your adsl equipment anyway (not counting installation, backhaul, resource consents etc)?

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Ragnor

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#190458 19-Jan-2009 00:23

There's next to no chance the Southern Cross cable will run out of capacity soon.

"Southern Cross is currently delivering 295 gigabit/s of fully protected bandwidth and has the potential as demand growth requires to increase to 1.2 Tbps using the existing 10 Gbps technology or 4.8 Gbps using 40 Gbps."

The PPC-2 cable that Korida and Pipe Networks are planning will interconnect with the PPC-1 cable that Pipe Networks and Tyco are building. PPC-1 connects Sydney to Guam.

From Guam they can interconnect to Asia, Japan and the USA.

What is PPC-1?
http://www.pipeinternational.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5&Itemid=45

PPC-1 Progress:
http://www.pipeinternational.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=66

The PPC-1 and 2 cables are very important for competition are they are the first cables that heavy weights Telecom, Telstra and Optus don't have a stake.

Ragnor

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#190461 19-Jan-2009 00:40

BazNZ: Well my gaming experience continues to deteriorate with severe latency and packet loss. Forget real time game play and expect stop/start bandwidth bursts to continue in 2009. I don't know whats causing this but I'd like someone from Orcon to help me here? I've done everything possible...trace routes, logged help tickets, rang Orcon, changed to there home hub changed back to my original modem which was better. All I can put this down to is lack of International bandwidth or possibly the newly installed Chorus/Telecom cabinet 300m down the road that has been in binding state since January 1st but not yet online until April. If i change ISP's will this help me get some answers and improve my International gaming? Any suggestions are welcomed I'm so frustrated!

That's what I've heard, I wonder if it's the cabinet cross talk or more generally just a problem in the traffic management. Perhaps Duncan or Scott could clarify.

What games do you typically play?

BazNZ

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#190462 19-Jan-2009 06:35

I play IL-2 Sturmovik 1946(Forgotten Battles/Pacific Fighters Series) a WW2 Combat Flight Simulator. The Servers I game on are based in Chicago. I'm having a terrible time at the moment with packet loss/latency. If this is in fact the new cabinet installed down the road which isn't online yet who do I see to correct my problem? Orcon? Chorus? Or do I change my ISP to Telecom so I can deal direct with the source and then receive ADSL2 in April when the cabinet comes online. Can I get Orcon to send a tech out to check my lines and cables? I've done everything else I can think of and just get frustrated gaming now.

BazNZ

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#190483 19-Jan-2009 10:45

I just did a speed test to these servers at work who's ISP is Telstraclear...WOW !! Is this right?

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