Telecom and Vodafone team up for RBI

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#436276 7-Feb-2011 13:22

johnr: What about on going rent for your AP on the tower?

Sure, that's also a really good question John. I was trying to limit my questions to two basic ones to start with and get answers to just those two.

However I agree that rent is also a very fair question.

How much do Telecom and Vodafone have to pay for rent to service their 11 customers?

Who is the rent payable to?

What does the rent cover?

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#436288 7-Feb-2011 13:44

Received from IDC:

IDC: Open access is the key
IDC's commentary on the government's commercial negotiations with Telecom and Vodafone for its Rural Broadband Initiative

Auckland, New Zealand, 7 February 2011. Today's announcement that the government has commenced commercial negotiations with Telecom and Vodafone for its Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) highlights the importance of an open access regime that allows competitors to access and provide their own services across both the fixed and mobile networks.

IDC believes the government has opted for a pragmatic outcome in the selection of the Telecom and Vodafone bid, based on their existing network scale, deployment capability and the fact that it results in a mixture of both fibre/copper and mobile/wireless technologies for rural users. The inclusion of mobile capability will also support growth in business demand for mobile and machine-to-machine connectivity and services, integrated with fixed broadband.

However IDC Senior Analyst, Rosie Spragg, says the concerns expressed in the industry about fair access to these government-subsidised networks is valid - and underscores the need for a robust open access policy regime.

"Historically, telecommunications carriers have faced significant challenges in the rural sector. To some degree this reflects the difficulty of the investment business case in rural New Zealand – scale, and with it the ability to cross-subsidise between more and less profitable customers, is crucial," says Spragg.

"It is this challenging business case that the government has sought to support through the RBI. The government has made no secret of the fact that is seeking to maximise its 'bang for buck', unsurprising given the limited funds available, most of which is sourced via an industry levy. It appears the Telecom and Vodafone bid has met the government's expectations in this regard. The key challenge now is for the government to ensure wholesale pricing and open access terms and conditions that encourage the development of a competitive rural retail market, allowing for a broad mix of competitive technologies to be provided including 4G fixed wireless, high-speed copper and, where suitable, fibre to the farm," says Spragg.

"There is limited information on what the open access provisions are going to look like in any detail, or whether there will be opportunity for input from competitive carriers before the contracts are finalised. This is making informed debate difficult."

IDC says at this stage of the tender process, the debate is focused on who will be the builders of the rural broadband network. However the real challenges lie in the nature of competitive access, pricing and optimised service - and these exist no matter who wins the tender. Ultimately this will be a national, government-subsidised initiative - its success or otherwise will be dictated by the effectiveness and enforcement surrounding how access to the network is regulated, and what mechanisms will be in place to ensure ongoing maintenance and infrastructure upgrades over time.

It is also critical that the rural community is able to afford and effectively use the broadband services once they are available to attain the economic and social benefits that the RBI is seeking to achieve. IDC believes these are the key issues that require an informed and public debate as the RBI moves forward.

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#436289 7-Feb-2011 13:45

Looks like ComCom to determine co location and backhaul service prices.

Source:
http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____45664.aspx

RBI towers will be open access, meaning that:
- Co-location will be offered at cost from day one under standard Commerce Commission non-price terms;
- Towers are constructed from day one to be able to accommodate multiple Carriers? equipment;
- Consumers will have wireless broadband choice from any Access Seeker who uses the Vodafone fixed wireless wholesale broadband service or from any other carrier who chooses to use the towers directly;
- Defined tower deployment notices with plenty of advance notice will allow other Carrier?s ample planning time to co-locate if they desire; and
- Appropriate WiMAX and WiFi operators will be able to cost effectively co-locate if they choose to.

Vodafone and Telecom will provide Layer 2 Wholesale bitstream services to any Access Seeker on a non-discriminatory basis.
The wholesale fixed wireless broadband pricing will be competitive.

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#436304 7-Feb-2011 14:10

DonGould:
johnr: 12 is alot more than 1 (12 x more)

Clearly you missed the point of what I was saying.

The given area has 12 customers. They are all currently serviced via a Telecom FTTN cabinet because that's the only choice.

However with this RBI thing, the govt is giving Telecom/Vodafone $300m to put a fibre fed tower in range of those 12 customers.

I want to know what it will cost me to put an AP on said tower to feed 10% of the customers in that area - 1 customer.

8.333*%

DonGould:
Ragnor: Probably quite a lot.. rental of the space on the tower, connection/access to fibre backhaul, backhaul service and handover to your network/noc/pop.

Hold up....

The govt is paying for the tower and the fibre.

Why shouldn't I have equal commercial terms - ie I pay for my AP and media converter the same way Telecom and Vodafone are paying for theirs?

I don't follow where the hand over comes in to it. I just want to put my other media converter on the other end of the bit of fibre in a box out side just like any normal telecom demarcation point now.

I assume that each one of these towers is going to be feed with at least a 12 core fibre? Or will it just be 6 cores? That's more than enough for each of 6 providers to have a single core each.

Now again... what's it going to cost me to put my AP on the tower and use the govt funded fibre?

Will it be a reverse retail calculation as a forward build cost calculation clearly won't work?

1. Exactly what equipment would you envisage your AP consisting of including (as Ragnor asked) handover equipment for data travelling to/from your network?
2. Are you expecting to piggyback off the backhaul and through other Telco's networks for nothing?

Towers have a much greater reach than cabinets, are you sure 12 people is all it would be servicing? - aside from the fact it could also act as a repeater and/or relay station for other signals and services.

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#436309 7-Feb-2011 14:15

oxnsox: Until there is a service one cannot predict who the 'providers' are, therefore nor how many customers each may terminate....

(What do we call this new joint venture??? Voda-com [err...no] or Tele-Fone....... finally rural customers will be able to get a Tele-Fone service.... )

hahahahahaha, very clever.

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#436325 7-Feb-2011 14:59

And now is the Federated Farmers turn:

Is broadband ambitious for rural New Zealand?

While Federated Farmers is welcoming news Government is to commence negotiations on the $300 million Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI), the announcement raises a number of questions that need answer.

“When it comes to broadband, Federated Farmers has been pretty upfront about seeking a step change to future proof rural New Zealand,” says Don Nicolson, Federated Farmers President.

“Our bottom line is pretty simple and ambitious. That’s to get the greatest number of the one million Kiwis deemed ‘rural’ by the RBI onto the fastest broadband as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible and as cheap as possible.

“We’re not just talking download speeds but upload speeds too.

“While download speeds are important, farmers want the ability to upload content to the web. Ultrafast upload speeds give us the opportunity to play a full part of the digital economy as well as having a gateway to true internet telephony.

“This though needs competition to drive innovation, service and price.

“For some 800,000 Kiwis in ‘rural’ New Zealand, Federated Farmers wants monthly wholesale prices of around $35 and retail at around $60 for speeds of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps).

“While there is talk of five Mbps by 2016, the first urban broadband deals are for speeds twenty times greater. Are we gong forward or treading water?

“Generally our copper is old and has its challenges, so Federated Farmers knows the solution demands a number of technologies and not just fibre. 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless is relatively new and is being rolled out in Australia, India and China.

“So the jury is still out on these negotiations.

“Government needs to make sure it is as ambitious as Federated Farmers is in negotiating the next stage. While we’re not privy to all bid details or a party to the official negotiations, we understood at least one of the other bidders was offering faster speeds sooner and at a competitive cost too.

“Ultrafast rural broadband means more productivity and social connectedness because rural people are people too. We want to export protein and fibre from the country, not our people. We want to grow exports so the country can pay its bills.

“The outcome of this RBI process will have an impact for at least a quarter of a century.
“It is that critical and demands we get the best collective possible outcome for rural New Zealand no matter how rural is defined.

“Because of this, Federated Farmers supports the Minister’s suggestion that if a satisfactory outcome cannot be negotiated in the next quarter, then the RBI should be retendered.

“If it takes a bit longer to get the right outcome then so be it

DonGould

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#436374 7-Feb-2011 16:50

Dratsab: 1. Exactly what equipment would you envisage your AP consisting of including (as Ragnor asked) handover equipment for data travelling to/from your network?

Ok, I'll scope a concept quickly.

Let's say some sort of M5 solution. So a very small AP with a PoE feed back out to my own small cabinet.

I'll take care of my power either from the power provider in the area (as I'm assuming they've already run power for the other providers at the tower) and I'll look after my own UPS requirements.

In my cabinet I'll also have a 1GB media converter and an RB 750G router or RB 250G switch.

Dratsab: 2. Are you expecting to piggyback off the backhaul and through other Telco's networks for nothing?

No. My expectation would be rented access to one of the cores on the fibre run that has had to be installed to the new tower back to the termination point of that new fibre and then the ability to pick it up in the same way it's being dropped off to me.

I expect the core rent to reflect a figure that factors no less than the following:

- Total build cost less government input / life of the fibre (75 - 100 years). So, if the fibre run is 10km and cost $10m dollars, and the government funding was/is $10m then there is not cost to me over that run because there's no cost to either of my competitors for anything other than putting tails on it. If the govt funding is $9m then the cost to the owner is $1m, which is to be put over the life of the fibre, 100 years, and devided by the number of cores in the cable (Yes I'm wanting to ensure that the owners don't put in 180 cores simply to over inflate the cable cost!).

I will add that I would also expect the government to expect me to provide a layer 2 product for the 900mbit that I'm not using on my core to be provided back to any other provider on a cost basics.

So if I pay $300 for media converters, $200 for switches and $500 for UPS, that gives me an input cost of $1000, so $100/100mbit, I am obligated to sell access at $200 for 200mbit (yes, I even considered the switch only has 5 ports so you can't pick up 10 * 100mbits) (you can also factor the life of my kit and add power usage etc, plus a figure for maintenance and service call outs/ faults etc, plus some insurance on the plant, let me know what I missed.).

Dratsab: Towers have a much greater reach than cabinets, are you sure 12 people is all it would be servicing?

Not really a point you can argue for my example easily. In the case of copper, it will run 2000m. You may have 3 valley's. You run the cable up the center of one then over the hill on the left and the right. So you span is 4km with 4 customers on each side and 4 customers up the valley you're in.

We really could make up stories all day on that one.

Which is why I return to the questions I asked:

Price to put an AP on the tower.

Price to have 1 core in the feeder cable.

Dratsab: - aside from the fact it could also act as a repeater and/or relay station for other signals and services.

Yes correct I could. Any of my competitors could also do the same with there services. For example they could point a p2p link in up the valley to a small settlement then put a micro cell on it. They've used the govt funding to get us all to the foot of the valley, then fill the foot of the valley with mobile and 3G bb, then use a p2p to get them selves up the valley for more mobile and more 3G bb.

I'm not providing mobile, but I'd like to be able to service the bb requirement up the value as well for my 1 customer.

With respect to relays, I would also be open to providing a layer 2 or layer 3 service on those at a wholesale price based on build cost subject to retail assurances. ie, If I am only selling you a layer x service so you can go and take my 1 customer that I built the link for then you'll be paying a price for the entire link plus a 20% net profit for me.

/random thoughts on links. :)

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#436410 7-Feb-2011 17:37

freitasm: And now is the Federated Farmers turn:
Is broadband ambitious for rural New Zealand?

While Federated Farmers is welcoming news Government is to commence negotiations on the $300 million Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI), the announcement raises a number of questions that need answer.
.... (edit) ....
“We’re not just talking download speeds but upload speeds too.

“While download speeds are important, farmers want the ability to upload content to the web. Ultrafast upload speeds give us the opportunity to play a full part of the digital economy as well as having a gateway to true internet telephony.

Have these folk done their homework here. 3G BB currently offers higher upload speeds than most low cost fixed BB plans.

....(edit)....
“For some 800,000 Kiwis in ‘rural’ New Zealand, Federated Farmers wants monthly wholesale prices of around $35 and retail at around $60 for speeds of at least 10 megabits per second (Mbps).

OK but how much data do they really want???

“While there is talk of five Mbps by 2016, the first urban broadband deals are for speeds twenty times greater. Are we gong forward or treading water?
“Generally our copper is old and has its challenges, so Federated Farmers knows the solution demands a number of technologies and not just fibre. 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless is relatively new and is being rolled out in Australia, India and China.

Are they suggesting the solution should incorporate LTE , because it will give them higher (high) speeds?? Or because they belive it will be faster than fibre??? Or is too new to trust???
I understood the joint proposal was to use a mix of technologies.

...(edit)...
“Government needs to make sure it is as ambitious as Federated Farmers is in negotiating the next stage. While we’re not privy to all bid details or a party to the official negotiations, we understood at least one of the other bidders was offering faster speeds sooner and at a competitive cost too.

Soo would it be better for us to let the Feds negotiate with the technologists on this... since it's their dime??
I've been told there are more efficient ways to make dairy herds more productive at competitive costs... but I wouldn't presume to suggest that to any farmer. They're the experts in that area.

“Ultrafast rural broadband means more productivity and social connectedness because rural people are people too. We want to export protein and fibre from the country, not our people. We want to grow exports so the country can pay its bills.

Faster broadband make dairy herds more productive and wool grow faster..... eh??

“The outcome of this RBI process will have an impact for at least a quarter of a century.
“It is that critical and demands we get the best collective possible outcome for rural New Zealand no matter how rural is defined.
“Because of this, Federated Farmers supports the Minister’s suggestion that if a satisfactory outcome cannot be negotiated in the next quarter, then the RBI should be retendered.
“If it takes a bit longer to get the right outcome then so be it

I'd be thinking the government want their investment to last a little longer than that... and in 25years technology is going to go thru unimaginable changes.

Perhaps the only certainty is that speeds will improve and, based on historical tech changes, there will be backwards compatibility. Is that good enough for the farmers or do they insist on wanting urban BB speeds in the same time frame as urban users.

Is it un-realistic for urbanites to expect their milk to arrive any sooner??

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#436419 7-Feb-2011 17:51

DonGould:

No. My expectation would be rented access to one of the cores on the fibre run that has had to be installed to the new tower back to the termination point of that new fibre and then the ability to pick it up in the same way it's being dropped off to me.

I expect the core rent to reflect a figure that factors no less than the following:

- Total build cost less government input / life of the fibre (75 - 100 years). So, if the fibre run is 10km and cost $10m dollars, and the government funding was/is $10m then there is not cost to me over that run because there's no cost to either of my competitors for anything other than putting tails on it. If the govt funding is $9m then the cost to the owner is $1m, which is to be put over the life of the fibre, 100 years, and devided by the number of cores in the cable (Yes I'm wanting to ensure that the owners don't put in 180 cores simply to over inflate the cable cost!).

I will add that I would also expect the government to expect me to provide a layer 2 product for the 900mbit that I'm not using on my core to be provided back to any other provider on a cost basics.

So if I pay $300 for media converters, $200 for switches and $500 for UPS, that gives me an input cost of $1000, so $100/100mbit, I am obligated to sell access at $200 for 200mbit (yes, I even considered the switch only has 5 ports so you can't pick up 10 * 100mbits) (you can also factor the life of my kit and add power usage etc, plus a figure for maintenance and service call outs/ faults etc, plus some insurance on the plant, let me know what I missed.).

Your missing some pretty big figures in here.

First off, Why give you dark fibre? It's a waste - Unless you can show your going to push 1gbit down the pipe then you are simply hogging a limited resource. Second your missing the massive maintenance costs involved, Depending on the method of fiber delivery (overhead, trenched, shallow trenched etc) there will be breaks, if it's trenched and your 10km run of cable is following some backwater road then chances are every time we get a decent downpour your cable will break. I'd plan on 1-3 breaks a year. This is a decent costs as you have to have fibre guys on call 24/7 to repair it and they may actually be based a few hours away from the break.

Thrid, Fibre's lifespan is not 75-100 years, It's 20-25years for trenched and above ground is slightly less I believe.

My personal nightmare scenario is exactly this, Open access gold rush where ma & pa ISP's sprout up all over the country who dont have a clue what they are doing and starting a race to the bottom, Past experience show's us that these kinds of ISP's will come to the game running back-of-the-shed gear with next to no margin's and offer rubbish customer experience which results in the tarnishing of fibre's name in the public's mind much like what woosh did back in the day with their 1st gen wireless, The last company I worked for still had to deal with the "Well we had Woosh wireless and it sucked back then, why should your wireless be any different" rubbish from clients 5+ years on

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#436543 7-Feb-2011 20:42

Beccara: First off, Why give you dark fibre?

Because it's insanely cheap and secure to give me a dark fiber over a 10km link compared to giving me a layer 2 solution of your routing gear.

Beccara: It's a waste - Unless you can show your going to push 1gbit down the pipe then you are simply hogging a limited resource.

Rubbish. You're going to be running a minimum of a 6 core fibre to the tower from the last hop point. That's one for Telecom, one for Vodafone, one for 2Deg, one for me and two spare.

I'm going to provide cheap layer 2 access on mine for any other small guys out there and I'm sure that 2Deg will do the same and we can both offer everyone else vlans for fault support.

It Telecom, Vodafone or 2 Deg have a media converter fail then we can quickly route traffic over my network and vice verser. Just look at what everyone did in Qld with the floods. A number of providers helped each other out because not only did they have flood damage but some providers also had gear do down in other places unexpectedly.

My solution give you low cost fault protection against equipment failure. Your layer 2 solution puts all the eggs in one equipment basket.

Your layer 2 solution also depends on more expensive kit and configureations that the likes of Telecom and Vodafone need that are often very complex for small players to interface with. No thanks.

Beccara: Second your missing the massive maintenance costs involved, Depending on the method of fiber delivery (overhead, trenched, shallow trenched etc) there will be breaks, if it's trenched and your 10km run of cable is following some backwater road then chances are every time we get a decent downpour your cable will break. I'd plan on 1-3 breaks a year.

Now that's just FUD. Feel free to back those claims up with some verifiable facts.

The same 'downpour' would take out the service for the Telecom and Vodafone networks as well as mine.

Even copper is more reliable than that.

Beccara: This is a decent costs as you have to have fibre guys on call 24/7 to repair it and they may actually be based a few hours away from the break.

Which is why we need more regional fibre so that we can have guys 20 minutes away from most fibre with the right gear to do a patch job on a 6 core cable. Clearly you don't know much about this stuff. It's really not that hard to fix up if you've got the right gear at hand. Look how quickly the Aussies got their networks back on line recently and they've got distances that just make us look silly.

Beccara: Thrid, Fibre's lifespan is not 75-100 years, It's 20-25years for trenched and above ground is slightly less I believe.

Again more total rubbish with no facts to back up the claims. I've seen stats on fibre that suggest a life of 60 years. Who would have thought copper would last as long as it has. I'm still not even clear why we're doing UBF when the base service is going to be less than what the new VDSL network could deliver.

As for over head... I don't see TelstraClear running round replacing the fibre runs in Wellington that must be getting close to 15 years now?

SCX even just extended the life expectancy on it's fibre by another 10 years past the build spec.

Beccara: My personal nightmare scenario is exactly this, Open access gold rush where ma & pa ISP's sprout up all over the country who dont have a clue what they are doing and starting a race to the bottom, Past experience show's us that these kinds of ISP's will come to the game running back-of-the-shed gear with next to no margin's and offer rubbish customer experience which results in the tarnishing of fibre's name in the public's mind much like what woosh did back in the day with their 1st gen wireless, The last company I worked for still had to deal with the "Well we had Woosh wireless and it sucked back then, why should your wireless be any different" rubbish from clients 5+ years on

Personally I learnt a truck load about radio from the Woosh guys in my 6 month trail of their kit. I sure understand a truck load about how not to deploy wireless gear. There's a bunch of stuff you 'can' do, that you shouldn't attempt to do.

Does that make wireless a failed technology? Hell no. It just means that a bunch of guys gave something a go and it didn't meet expectations. As I understand it they spent $150m of investment funds and last year turned a $1m profit. Not to bad, not what I'd like to do by choice, but still well ahead of the guys who wrote off billions of dollars on Reach, OneTel, OneNet and two HFC networks in Australia in the last decade alone.

As I understand it even Telecom had an $80m dollar play with HFC technology.

If you want to talk about a race to the bottom let's have a chat about Telecom and Telstra share values.

If you want to talk about failed wireless stuff then let's have a look at Vividwireless, Vodafone and Optus mobile networks in Australia. All of which seem to have almost never ending issues with over selling and poor load management.

Let's not forget the impact that putting a single switching unit in your southern network can have on your public perception - personally I'd be really pissed about having to appear on national TV in my gummies and a fishing rood to say sorry about that one!

Yes there will be some new ma and pa entrants in to the fibre market. It's more likely to be Pa and Son who's done a CCNA and Dad sees an opportunity or someone with some cash to invest in someone they like to give a hand up in a project. But yes I think we're in for a few of those. The technology is getting better and better and easier, so more people are going to get into the carrier game because it's simply possible.

D

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#436581 7-Feb-2011 22:16

DonGould:
Beccara: First off, Why give you dark fibre?

Because it's insanely cheap and secure to give me a dark fiber over a 10km link compared to giving me a layer 2 solution of your routing gear.

Beccara: It's a waste - Unless you can show your going to push 1gbit down the pipe then you are simply hogging a limited resource.

Rubbish. You're going to be running a minimum of a 6 core fibre to the tower from the last hop point. That's one for Telecom, one for Vodafone, one for 2Deg, one for me and two spare.

I'm going to provide cheap layer 2 access on mine for any other small guys out there and I'm sure that 2Deg will do the same and we can both offer everyone else vlans for fault support.

It Telecom, Vodafone or 2 Deg have a media converter fail then we can quickly route traffic over my network and vice verser. Just look at what everyone did in Qld with the floods. A number of providers helped each other out because not only did they have flood damage but some providers also had gear do down in other places unexpectedly.

My solution give you low cost fault protection against equipment failure. Your layer 2 solution puts all the eggs in one equipment basket.

Your layer 2 solution also depends on more expensive kit and configureations that the likes of Telecom and Vodafone need that are often very complex for small players to interface with. No thanks.

Yeah so your the big 4th player now? You, Vodafone, Telecom and 2deg? If you and ever other startup want's dark fiber then those 32 pairs or even 64 pairs will become crowded fast. Once again I'm not saying you can't have it but you should have to show your going to use it since it's not a simple option to up the fibre count.

Stop talking about media converters aswell, The big players dont aren't running cell towers on some level1 MC they picked up at JayCar. The better solution is to have the company doing the fiber maintain some switching gear, That way running in a n+1 setup on 1gbit or 10gbit strands back requires 4 strands only, run it 10gbit and you could fit 10 guys wanting gbit or 100 guys wanting 100mbit on 4 strands rather than the 20-200 strands your option would need.

As for fault protection? If the cable breaks it wont matter if it's your own strands or any other option, your down. Gear breaking? N+1 the switchs and strands and your sitting at 4 9's or better. It's just plain wasteful to hand out strands to any man and his dog when their very nature is a finite resource

DonGould:
Beccara: Second your missing the massive maintenance costs involved, Depending on the method of fiber delivery (overhead, trenched, shallow trenched etc) there will be breaks, if it's trenched and your 10km run of cable is following some backwater road then chances are every time we get a decent downpour your cable will break. I'd plan on 1-3 breaks a year.

Now that's just FUD. Feel free to back those claims up with some verifiable facts.

The same 'downpour' would take out the service for the Telecom and Vodafone networks as well as mine.

Even copper is more reliable than that.

Ever used citylink in Wellington? Sections of that network would drop atleast once a year due to cable damage, last year I can recall 3 incidents. Up north in Whangarei we've had entire roads swept away. A guy at our work often sees the main Telecom trunk exposed on the side of the road on his way to work during winter.

Remember copper is backed up by a other methods of transmission, just because it stays up doesn't mean it's still running over the same trunk copper ;)

In the city you have issues with backhoe's and road works for trenching and car vs pole for overhead. In the country fibre faces unstable land and completing a fibre ring is not always possible. We are talking rural here so expect outages even if it's just the same old "Farmer's digging where he shouldnt" problem

DonGould:
Beccara: This is a decent costs as you have to have fibre guys on call 24/7 to repair it and they may actually be based a few hours away from the break.

Which is why we need more regional fibre so that we can have guys 20 minutes away from most fibre with the right gear to do a patch job on a 6 core cable. Clearly you don't know much about this stuff. It's really not that hard to fix up if you've got the right gear at hand. Look how quickly the Aussies got their networks back on line recently and they've got distances that just make us look silly.

You make a good point here, however your still increasing costs. Rather than pay one guy to cover a 2 hour radius from him your now paying 10 guys to cover a 20min radius from him. Also you gotta train them etc etc. Maintainence costs should be factored into your pricing!

DonGould:
Beccara: Thrid, Fibre's lifespan is not 75-100 years, It's 20-25years for trenched and above ground is slightly less I believe.

Again more total rubbish with no facts to back up the claims. I've seen stats on fibre that suggest a life of 60 years. Who would have thought copper would last as long as it has. I'm still not even clear why we're doing UBF when the base service is going to be less than what the new VDSL network could deliver.

As for over head... I don't see TelstraClear running round replacing the fibre runs in Wellington that must be getting close to 15 years now?

SCX even just extended the life expectancy on it's fibre by another 10 years past the build spec.

http://www.sterlitetechnologies.com/pdf/KnowledgeCenter/AN0001%20-%20Optical%20Fiber%20Lifetime.pdf

Here's a cable manufacturer claiming 60 years, expect less. Fiber optic installer's field manual put it at upto 30 years. You also have the lifespan of the pipe it's put in to take into account. Maybe we can push the 50year mark if it's installed right and we dont have too many issue with it but getting 75 years out of it? Highly unlikely unless you consider 1 strand out of 100 working "still working"
Also factor in the human factor, smoke a strand from overpowering and it's gone!

DonGould:
Beccara: My personal nightmare scenario is exactly this, Open access gold rush where ma & pa ISP's sprout up all over the country who dont have a clue what they are doing and starting a race to the bottom, Past experience show's us that these kinds of ISP's will come to the game running back-of-the-shed gear with next to no margin's and offer rubbish customer experience which results in the tarnishing of fibre's name in the public's mind much like what woosh did back in the day with their 1st gen wireless, The last company I worked for still had to deal with the "Well we had Woosh wireless and it sucked back then, why should your wireless be any different" rubbish from clients 5+ years on

Personally I learnt a truck load about radio from the Woosh guys in my 6 month trail of their kit. I sure understand a truck load about how not to deploy wireless gear. There's a bunch of stuff you 'can' do, that you shouldn't attempt to do.

Does that make wireless a failed technology? Hell no. It just means that a bunch of guys gave something a go and it didn't meet expectations. As I understand it they spent $150m of investment funds and last year turned a $1m profit. Not to bad, not what I'd like to do by choice, but still well ahead of the guys who wrote off billions of dollars on Reach, OneTel, OneNet and two HFC networks in Australia in the last decade alone.

Something we can agree on, My point was that the "wireless" name has been tarnished in the public's mind because their first exposure to it was Woosh's 1st gen tech, God know how much money wireless providers have spent on marketing battling that problem. I fear we will see the same thing happen with coyboys and ma&pa's running fibre ISP's

DonGould:
As I understand it even Telecom had an $80m dollar play with HFC technology.

If you want to talk about a race to the bottom let's have a chat about Telecom and Telstra share values.

If you want to talk about failed wireless stuff then let's have a look at Vividwireless, Vodafone and Optus mobile networks in Australia. All of which seem to have almost never ending issues with over selling and poor load management.

Let's not forget the impact that putting a single switching unit in your southern network can have on your public perception - personally I'd be really pissed about having to appear on national TV in my gummies and a fishing rood to say sorry about that one!

Yes there will be some new ma and pa entrants in to the fibre market. It's more likely to be Pa and Son who's done a CCNA and Dad sees an opportunity or someone with some cash to invest in someone they like to give a hand up in a project. But yes I think we're in for a few of those. The technology is getting better and better and easier, so more people are going to get into the carrier game because it's simply possible.

D

Share values? I'm not much of a market man myself so I can't speak on that one. As for the other mobile networks? The difference is here the RBI will be mandating CIR/PIR rate, If a consumer isn't getting those then there needs to be a truck roll. It's not up to the winner to decide how much they oversubsribe. As for the ma & pa's? You only get those if the barrier to entry is too low. I think that in order to get into this you should have to shell out a couple of thousand $$$ on laywers to do contracts etc. That you shouldn't be able to rig up MC's and level 1 switch's into remote towers. I dont want to have to go out to a site to figure out why it's gone down to find some idiot's pulled the wrong power lead or cut thru a cable or any of the other things that happen when you put unexperienced people in community network areas.

I'm not saying leave it to the big boys but the guy whos got CCNA (Really? They hand those out in college!) should really start somewhere else. What I'd like to see come of this is a new crop of good ISP's who have the skills and the smarts to do it right and who dont have to get bogged down with the fly-by-nighters

Anyway we've derailed this thread into a different country :)

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freitasm

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#436667 8-Feb-2011 08:38

Could you please take the discussion about how the wholesale price is structured to another thread?

This is not something that either Telecom or Vodafone will decide. Minister Joyce said to the NBR (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/joyce-no-new-regulation-needed-300m-rural-broadband-project-opponents-w...):

"Specific rules around open access, and specific wholesale pricing, would be included in the RBI contract"

So people complaining about things without even knowing it, please step aside.

Regardless, whatever is the price, set by the government, people will complain about Telecom anyway.

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#436693 8-Feb-2011 09:52

freitasm: Could you please take the discussion about how the wholesale price is structured to another thread?

This is not something that either Telecom or Vodafone will decide. Minister Joyce said to the NBR (http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/joyce-no-new-regulation-needed-300m-rural-broadband-project-opponents-w...):

"Specific rules around open access, and specific wholesale pricing, would be included in the RBI contract"

So people complaining about things without even knowing it, please step aside.

Regardless, whatever is the price, set by the government, people will complain about Telecom anyway.

1. sure, sorry.
2. thanks, hadn't seen that link
3. not fair, I complain about every company I know of that can't even send it's customers emails and doesn't bother to get back to you to tell you they've fixed the problem.... (sorry, makes the assumption the problem has been fixed).

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#436694 8-Feb-2011 09:56

DonGould: 3. not fair, I complain about every company I know of that can't even send it's customers emails and doesn't bother to get back to you to tell you they've fixed the problem.... (sorry, makes the assumption the problem has been fixed).

That wasn't aimed at you. My point was that most people will blindly blame Telecom for anything. See Yellow for example. People complain about Telecom because Yellow charges for the information, not knowing Yellow hasn't been a Telecom company for years...

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#436725 8-Feb-2011 11:09

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/connect/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501833&objectid=10704808

Ok I've now had a chance to read over bits of the media on this subject and I'm sort of amused and perplexed at the same time...

Hamish has done quite a good write up with his points at the end of his post.

The schools really should be targeting for 1Gb from day one on a single core. 100mbit is yesterdays technology in more and more parts of the world. Talk about setting the bar low.

I confess I don't know where these schools are but how many can be more than 40km from anything else? I'd like to see a Google map or Google earth klm file with all these new hot spots plotted on it. I think that would be really interesting.

However over all I'm really sold on this deal with Telecom and Vodafone. I'm sure that many people don't think I am, based on my postings so far. But it really does read like some top stuff for New Zealand to me.

I agree with everyone who suggests that it won't deliver much in the way of bb to farmers. But I can fix that fast enough with a bunch of cheap M5s and a bit of effort by the farmer if they are really interested, which I don't honestly get the impression they are (more on that shortly). And if I can fix it quick enough then there's a truck load of other people in NZ who can do the same.

What is good about this deal to me is the improvement in mobile phone coverage the deal is going to mean. More towers can only mean better rural coverage for tourists can't it?

Visitors from OS will be able to use their phones to make calls and send texts when they pop 5 minutes out of town to spend a couple of hours on a hobby farm - something I discovered this week that you can't actually do properly at present.

Yes I agree with the suggestion that the bb funding has been hijacked and just pushed in to improving the big mobile networks. But so what? People do actually want phones to work properly more than they want fast data anyway. From an election point of view this is a winner from Joyce.

I also agree with the suggestion that the deal will lock other providers out of the government funded network simply on price terms. But again, so what? Farmers have truck loads of cash and know all about raising funds to invest in projects. How much do you think a basic tractor costs these days?

If orginisations like Federated Farmers actually were really serious about fixing broadband for farmers in New Zealand then they'd start by just putting the correct phone number on the web site for the President. Which is it? 03 216 7405 or 03 216 7505

Now that guy doesn't even have an answering machine on his phone line either. Or call diversion to his mobile after 10 rings, or call diversion back to his PA?

Seriously, we need to get more basic than fast broadband access for farmers and concentrate on the basics of getting phone services and education on how to use those basic services.

Spending $300m on a 4G LTE solution for farmers that clearly can't even use the basics of a telephone. Get a grip guys!

The minister has done well!

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