FTTP/FTTH getting closer. Is NZ on the right track?

Forums › ICT Policies and Regulation › FTTP/FTTH getting closer. Is NZ on the right track?

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#327673 7-May-2010 13:02

Last time I talked to manufacturers was only relating to ADSL so I dont know what ONTs are worth, but they probably cost around $1000 for the good ones. This means you dont need a modem anymore but you can keep using your Ethernet/Wifi NAT router to protect your LAN.

I suspect some landlords would object to the ONT being visible from the road, but not be prepared to rewire their house if thats the only way to connect existing wiring, so maybe the installers just have to plant a bush in front of it.

There is no way that any provider will be able to guarantee national or international speeds without spending huge amounts on uncontended bandwidth, so we hopefully will see them advertising contention ratios. I would say 20:1 on 10Gbps links into their core backhaul network is good value at residential prices and virtually full speed, with maybe 100:1 average nationwide and really high for international. Nationwide links can follow demand more closely (assuming peering exchanges get upgraded), but international bandwidth will always be seriously rationed until someone builds new cables or overhauls the old electronics.

Government is essentially supporting 100Mbps now on the local loop because of its upgrade potential, and because government wants Fibre Cos (with their monopoly power) to supply open infrastructure.

There could still be different options and premium services, or ISPs might all compete with similar contention. We could also see cheaper GPON services than the "Specified Layer 1 Service", so that 64-way splitters can be used to keep the cost down with a burstable 40Mbps option. They are allowed to build other services in addition to the "Specified" 100Mbps, as long as everybody can get 100Mbps if they want it.

Time to find a new industry!

Ragnor

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#327692 7-May-2010 13:32

sbiddle:

Just as a bit of clarification, in current fibre networks (such as FiOS) the bulk of the TV content is sent over fibre as an RF signal, IPTV is reserved for some of their VoD content. Using RF is a lot more logical for live content.

Not sure I agree with this.

Broadcast tv (everyone watching the same thing) is in decline, it's a sunset industry on the way out.

The future is IPTV, people watching different things at different times on demand.

sbiddle

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#327728 7-May-2010 14:45

Ragnor:
sbiddle:

Just as a bit of clarification, in current fibre networks (such as FiOS) the bulk of the TV content is sent over fibre as an RF signal, IPTV is reserved for some of their VoD content. Using RF is a lot more logical for live content.

Not sure I agree with this.

Broadcast tv (everyone watching the same thing) is in decline, it's a sunset industry on the way out.

The future is IPTV, people watching different things at different times on demand.

Sure - and things can change. But right now that's how things are done. AT&T deliver pure IPTV over uverse and it's been plagued with problems. RF based delivery is still the simplest form of delivery that guarantees performance.

webwat

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#327930 8-May-2010 12:09

Yes, RF over fibre is the obvious way to do broadcast content but requires an amplifier for the signal to get through the splitters, as well as more expensive ONTs. Another problem is that most houses are wired for coax from a satellite dish, and would have to be rewired if the TV signals came from the street.

I have a question about how ISPs will handle a shortage of international bandwidth. If the only service within your budget was say 40megs to your house with a high contention for backhaul, would it be better for ISPs to advertise the contention ratio as the "amount of sharing" or to just advertise the "average shared bandwidth". For example, if the 40meg plan had international contention of 100:1 but average offpeak performance of 20Mbps and average peak performance of 5Mbps, then how can they make this easy to understand?

Time to find a new industry!

richms

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#327934 8-May-2010 12:50

Most houses are already cabled for RF distribution as it is, this is no different to having cable or an antenna come into a house and needing to be distributed.

Richard rich.ms

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#327971 8-May-2010 15:08

richms: Most houses are already cabled for RF distribution as it is, this is no different to having cable or an antenna come into a house and needing to be distributed.

But what about older houses? If the house is not pre-wired for CATV then I guess no distribution point. I dont know what the ratio of houses would be that dont have proper wiring, but I have seen a modern house that just daisy-chained lots of Cat.5 segments (think its pretty common); kind of pointless to use Cat.5 without a distribution panel and had no coax anywhere. So a lot of house owners would need to get ethernet and coax installed by themselves before FTTP can be useful, although HPNA could be helpful with a few extra $$.

Time to find a new industry!

sbiddle

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#327999 8-May-2010 17:41

webwat:
richms: Most houses are already cabled for RF distribution as it is, this is no different to having cable or an antenna come into a house and needing to be distributed.

But what about older houses? If the house is not pre-wired for CATV then I guess no distribution point. I dont know what the ratio of houses would be that dont have proper wiring, but I have seen a modern house that just daisy-chained lots of Cat.5 segments (think its pretty common); kind of pointless to use Cat.5 without a distribution panel and had no coax anywhere. So a lot of house owners would need to get ethernet and coax installed by themselves before FTTP can be useful, although HPNA could be helpful with a few extra $$.

This is the fundamental problem we're all up against. PTC106 wiring should be required by law for all new homes in the same way double glazing and insulation is required. It's still the norm for electricians to daisy chain BT jackpoints in a new home and the scary thing is many are so completely out of touch with reality that they have no idea what they are doing is causing nothing but grief for the new homeowner.

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richms

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#328024 8-May-2010 20:14

I think you will find they are not out of touch, but that the soon to be owners of the houses do not want to pay for it as they have already stretched themselves too far just to get the house.

I know sparkys that do proper houses and there is often 40-50 boxes of cat6 going into them.

Cant blame the sparky only getting 15000 for a whole house all up for being cheap.

Richard rich.ms

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#328036 8-May-2010 20:36

I know sparkys that do proper houses and there is often 40-50 boxes of cat6 going into them.

I think I would find it hard to put 12km of cat6 into a domestic house, infact thats roughly $8k in cable alone.

For me a typcial 4-5bed top end house is around 1km of cat5 or Cat6, and probably 300-500m of RG6, so probably I am doing something wrong

Cyril

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#328332 10-May-2010 01:15

1km is way short, I would have that upstairs alone here for data (actually, bought 4 300m boxes and have about 20m left in all of them) - that is being very generous with the outlets in a couple of rooms (6 double plates in one which is going to be the gaming cave when I get all the junk out of it), but it is a tiny house and there is no long run back to where the switches are.

It is also including all the runs to the light switches for the cbus installs and the IR repeater, and many runs for the HDMI distribution which you may not have accounted for in your estimate. I dont think the light switches are star wired but the HDMI stuff sure is.

I have seen the left over boxes (which I have scored some of to do downstairs here) and they are all about 40-60m left in each, and that isnt enough for them to want to bother pulling thru the place.

Richard rich.ms

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#328333 10-May-2010 01:41

cyril7:
I know sparkys that do proper houses and there is often 40-50 boxes of cat6 going into them.

I think I would find it hard to put 12km of cat6 into a domestic house, infact thats roughly $8k in cable alone.

For me a typcial 4-5bed top end house is around 1km of cat5 or Cat6, and probably 300-500m of RG6, so probably I am doing something wrong

Cyril

I agree with Cyril - 40-50 boxes of UTP going into a house would be extremely rare. I built a datacenter a couple of years ago and IIRC, the first 36 cabinets (with 4-48 outlets each) only used about 18KM of cable.

Luckily for me the last couple of houses I've lived in have all had decent structured cabling (RG6/Cat5) from the get-go.

webwat

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#328697 10-May-2010 20:35

Well I have to say that 6 links to a gaming room would be overkill unless there was a serious reason to need gigabit there, so I would propose 3 cables of Cat5 (2 pairs per 100Base link allowing 6 jacks with only 3 cables) and a single Cat6 if someone needs it for multimedia.

Certainly cant see why cbus for light switches would require Cat6, so why not save some cash by running 2pair Cat5 there3. But I agree that sometimes sensible to install more cable just because you cant always predict where future users will need jackpoints. I wouldnt want an electrician charging me for 60m of cable that just gets thrown away though, and would expect cable runs to be planned, efficient and tested. I imagine some of the wastage would come from using 4pair Cat5 as phone cable, so would at least expect dual jacks to share with ethernet.

Time to find a new industry!

webwat

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#328707 10-May-2010 21:13

Um, have you got HDMI going through some kind of amplifier to every single room? But copper will be dated eventually, and people will probably ask why we didnt just duct their cables so they can add more later or upgrade to Plastic optical fiber or whatever as needed. If internal phone cabling had been ducted 50 years ago it would make retrofitting new stuff so much easier!

Time to find a new industry!

richms

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#328728 10-May-2010 23:12

Not getting into cable splitting, thats just a nasty hack IMO. The most we had in there before it became the upstairs junkroom was 5 PCs at once. Sadly the machines became obsolete, the cheap particleboard desks broke and the flatmates all bought houses before it could be used properly.

I dont have cbus here yet because IMO it is way overpriced for what it is so am hoping that someone else comes out with a better more affordable automation control system. But it really only needs a single pair from what I can see. It uses some obnoxiously expensive pink cat5 for it not the cat6. Since there are many short runs of it in places I didnt score any excess left over cable for it.

The house that I am talking about is one where all the switches in it are off in a small room at one end of it, and its about 4 times larger than my place. Actually may be closer to 5 times since the floor area of here counts the garage and shed in it.

Richard rich.ms

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#328743 11-May-2010 07:24

This is all way off topic, but If you have even priced Cbus you would find that if the house had fully wired Cbus lighting switches etc then the Cbus bill alone is around the same $ as a new mid priced 2litre car, and thats just for a Cbus bill, not the main electrical or data/coax. So we are not talking even a normal upmarket house.

As I say last top end house I worked on had a build price well over $2.5m and I pushed around 1.5km of cable into 58 data points, and even then I was concerned is was starting to look like a data centre.

Cyril

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