Orcon expands unbundled network

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freitasm

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#64671 20-Jul-2010 09:41

Orcon has announced today:

Telecommunications company Orcon has unbundled three more Auckland exchanges – Birkdale, Henderson and Albany – with a total of 41 now unbundled across the country.

Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett says: “Unbundling means more Aucklanders will see faster, cheaper and better broadband as it should be.”

This month’s unbundling follows an agreement between Compass, Orcon and Slingshot that sees the three telcos sharing their unbundled exchanges.

The three companies have plans to unbundle 50 new exchanges this year.

“Unbundling is key to New Zealand’s broadband performance in the coming years,” Bartlett says. “It enables us to install our own equipment and provide a better, faster service at a better price.

“While there is much talk about fibre being the future, we can’t take our focus off the here and now. The extension of LLU services is good news for Kiwi households.”

To date, CallPlus has unbundled eight exchanges in Hamilton and Compass has unbundled two in Christchurch. Orcon has unbundled 39 in Auckland and two exchanges in Wellington.

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#355164 22-Jul-2010 23:37

Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett says: “Unbundling means more Aucklanders will see faster, cheaper and better broadband as it should be.”

Let me translate...

"Unbundling means more Aucklanders will be falsely sold ADSL2+ on the seemingly reasonable premise that it will show any improvement over ADSL1."

Since the local exchange for St Heliers was unbundled, the Orcon service has been as pisspoor as ever. 100kb/s download speeds, constant YouTube buffering, images slowly revealing themselves in a manner reminiscent of dialup. I would run SpeedTests but it takes up to 3 minutes to load the page.

xpd

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#355203 23-Jul-2010 08:25

And have you spoken with Orcon regarding your issue ? Your issue could be caused by any of 100 different things.

Im on Orcon+ and happy with it, its a huge step up from the old ADSL I was getting from other providers.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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#355210 23-Jul-2010 08:35

Simbosan:
Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett says: “Unbundling means more Aucklanders will see faster, cheaper and better broadband as it should be.”

Let me translate...

"Unbundling means more Aucklanders will be falsely sold ADSL2+ on the seemingly reasonable premise that it will show any improvement over ADSL1."

Since the local exchange for St Heliers was unbundled, the Orcon service has been as pisspoor as ever. 100kb/s download speeds, constant YouTube buffering, images slowly revealing themselves in a manner reminiscent of dialup. I would run SpeedTests but it takes up to 3 minutes to load the page.

Have you performed basic tests such as an isolation test with your modem?

What are your sync stats? If these are low the issue is one of wiring, probably internally in your house.

Sounddude

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#355236 23-Jul-2010 09:38

Simbosan:
Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett says: “Unbundling means more Aucklanders will see faster, cheaper and better broadband as it should be.”

Let me translate...

"Unbundling means more Aucklanders will be falsely sold ADSL2+ on the seemingly reasonable premise that it will show any improvement over ADSL1."

Since the local exchange for St Heliers was unbundled, the Orcon service has been as pisspoor as ever. 100kb/s download speeds, constant YouTube buffering, images slowly revealing themselves in a manner reminiscent of dialup. I would run SpeedTests but it takes up to 3 minutes to load the page.

Whats your helpdesk ticket number?

Simbosan

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#355310 23-Jul-2010 12:18

I have had several tickets over the period since switching to ADSL2. No action was taken by Orcon, I have sent my line stats many times, there is nothing wrong with the modem or the wiring. I have done countless tracerts and pings over this period too.

ADSL2 will give no advantage if the bottleneck is elsewhere.

Another fact of extreme interest. Service to NZ sites, take the orcon or Telecom sites for example, is blindingly fast. International speeds are pitiful, Steam games download at ~80kb/s. YouTube constantly buffers, images slowly unfold in a way I havent seen since dialup.

Another fact: The performance degrades profoundly at peak times. This is pretty strong proof that congestion is the issue, not my wiring.

S

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#355557 23-Jul-2010 21:11

Simbosan: I have had several tickets over the period since switching to ADSL2. No action was taken by Orcon, I have sent my line stats many times, there is nothing wrong with the modem or the wiring. I have done countless tracerts and pings over this period too.

ADSL2 will give no advantage if the bottleneck is elsewhere.

Another fact of extreme interest. Service to NZ sites, take the orcon or Telecom sites for example, is blindingly fast. International speeds are pitiful, Steam games download at ~80kb/s. YouTube constantly buffers, images slowly unfold in a way I havent seen since dialup.

Another fact: The performance degrades profoundly at peak times. This is pretty strong proof that congestion is the issue, not my wiring.

S

Ahh the Orcon peak time congestion issues are well known. Your earlier post inferred issues with all traffic all the time.

Simbosan

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#355571 23-Jul-2010 22:01

Nah, it's crap all the time, just worse at peak. At no point does it reach ADSL2 standards, sorry if I implied otherwise

S

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#355695 24-Jul-2010 08:33

Simbosan: Nah, it's crap all the time, just worse at peak. At no point does it reach ADSL2 standards, sorry if I implied otherwise

S

What are your line stats from your modem? While Orcon obviously do have some issues at off peak times I don't know any Orcon ULL customers who aren't getting a minimum of around 13Mbps sync speeds and are getting these sorts of speeds off-peak.

If your sync speeds are "under ADSL2+" speeds then Orcon aren't fully at fault and there are wiring issues affecting your speeds.

You aren't cabinestised and haven't chosen to move back to a wholesale connection?

Simbosan

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#355763 24-Jul-2010 13:02

Downstream rate: 22198 kbps
Upstream rate: 1020 kbps
PPPoE pass-through: Disabled
ADSL Line
Status: Cable connected
Line mode: ADSL2+
Maximum line rate: 22084 kbps (downstream) / 1336 kbps (upstream)
Noise margin: 5.5 dB (downstream) / 17 dB (upstream)
Line attenuation: 21.6 dB (downstream) / 8.7 dB (upstream)
Output power: 19.9 dBm (downstream) / 11 dBm (upstream)

"You aren't cabinestised and haven't chosen to move back to a wholesale connection?"

I haven't a clue, I assume I need to ask Orcon?

Thanks for taking the time, more response from you than Orcon. My current ticket has gone two days without reply...

S

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#356016 25-Jul-2010 11:12

I can only see Orcon's service getting worse. There should be some legal recourse to prevent Orcon from running television campaigns to grow their market share when the available bandwidth is so clearly over-subscribed. Actually, does NZ have a legal definition of "broadband internet" - I'm pretty certain that no matter what it is, I'm not getting it.

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#356062 25-Jul-2010 13:52

Simbosan your connection looks just fine and would appear to be connecting at 22Mb/s, so should support TCP throughput of around 20Mb/s back to the exchange, only thing you might want to check is the error rate of the channel.

Orcon run a 6dB noise margin, which gives you higher top sync speeds but at the risk of higher error rates. That said I doubt that the ADSL connection is the issue I suspect they could give you a GigE fibre run back to the exchange and you would get the same results as its more likely a uplink from the exchange to Orcon HQ thats probably the issue.

Cyril

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#356068 25-Jul-2010 14:08

PntBlnk: I can only see Orcon's service getting worse. There should be some legal recourse to prevent Orcon from running television campaigns to grow their market share when the available bandwidth is so clearly over-subscribed. Actually, does NZ have a legal definition of "broadband internet" - I'm pretty certain that no matter what it is, I'm not getting it.

Residential internet is a shared network best effort service, this is reflected in the low price of residential services. Closest analogy is a motorway, there are 5000 cars going south at 8am, you don't have a 5000 lane highway you have a 4 lane one and traffic flows in a queue.

Basically you can think of it this way Orcon might buy 20Mbit of international transit for every 50 or 100 customers not 20Mbit for every 1 customer. A 20Mbit dedicated guaranteed service (1:1 dedicated bandwidth for you alone) would cost thousands per month.

Orcon does seem to have a demographics problem though, too many heavy active users and not enough low usage mom and pops users to balance it out.. this means their international transit it fairly congested compared to other ISP's.

I suggest you switch to an ISP like Maxnet, Telecom or Telstra, these ISP's do seem to have a large amount of low activity low usage users and you have a much higher chance of getting your line rate more often.

Simbosan

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#356124 25-Jul-2010 17:42

Yup, pretty much my understanding. Orcon don't buy enough for credible ADSL2 performance. Time to move on.

PntBlnk

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#356237 25-Jul-2010 22:41

Ragnor:
PntBlnk: I can only see Orcon's service getting worse. There should be some legal recourse to prevent Orcon from running television campaigns to grow their market share when the available bandwidth is so clearly over-subscribed. Actually, does NZ have a legal definition of "broadband internet" - I'm pretty certain that no matter what it is, I'm not getting it.

Residential internet is a shared network best effort service, this is reflected in the low price of residential services. Closest analogy is a motorway, there are 5000 cars going south at 8am, you don't have a 5000 lane highway you have a 4 lane one and traffic flows in a queue.

Basically you can think of it this way Orcon might buy 20Mbit of international transit for every 50 or 100 customers not 20Mbit for every 1 customer. A 20Mbit dedicated guaranteed service (1:1 dedicated bandwidth for you alone) would cost thousands per month.

Orcon does seem to have a demographics problem though, too many heavy active users and not enough low usage mom and pops users to balance it out.. this means their international transit it fairly congested compared to other ISP's.

I suggest you switch to an ISP like Maxnet, Telecom or Telstra, these ISP's do seem to have a large amount of low activity low usage users and you have a much higher chance of getting your line rate more often.

While it's true that I am free to take my business elsewhere, it is also true that Orcon's marketing promise to its domestic customers is that they will receive "broadband internet" for their monthly fee. Orcon is not a "cheap-and-cheerful" ISP, and Orcon's customers deserve something at least resembling broadband when they use the Internet - even when it's "peak" time, the time period that occurs every day during which residential Internet users would normally use their connections.

Orcon is demonstrating to its customers that they don't really care about "peak" time network saturation. They have so far failed to do anything to bring about substantial improvement (which is needed), and yet have just embarked on a further round of television advertising targeting precisely the kind people who will expect to enjoy their broadband Internet during "peak" time.

So what I want to know is what's the bottom line? How far will Orcon let the "peak" time Internet experience of its residential customers deteriorate before it does anything about it? My guess is that they probably won't bother. Much better to bring in the punters with a snazzy advertising and a pretty web site than provide the service levels customers think they are paying for. Not only will they increase their profits because they are able to sell smaller slices of the same pie to more people paying the same monthly fee, but they can paint a lovely picture for their board and their owners about how much market share they have, and how successful the latest ad campaign has been.

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#356247 25-Jul-2010 23:09

All NZ ISPs suck at some stage like this. It makes the whole idea of voting for a "best" isp in the awards like people have been soliciting for on facebook a farce.

Its not isolated to NZ, loads of complaints on other forums about slow cable internet at peak times, but you can put a 0 on the end of the speeds we get to see what they are complaining about.

Richard rich.ms

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