First to get in the Ultra-Fast Broadband rollout: Hamilton, Tauranga, Whangarei, New Plymouth and Wanganui

Forums › ICT Policies and Regulation › First to get in the Ultra-Fast Broadband rollout: Hamilton, Tauranga, Whangarei, New Plymouth and Wanganui

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#414068 7-Dec-2010 15:11

From TUANZ:

TUANZ welcomes news of initial UFB contracts, and waits expectantly for further updates on national recommendations

TUANZ is hopeful that today’s ultra fast broadband announcement from Communications Minister Steven Joyce will be closely followed by further recommendations on partners for the remaining areas of New Zealand.

In the announcement made earlier this morning Minister Joyce confirmed agreements with Northpower and UltraFast Fibre, a subsidiary of WEL Networks to deliver ultra fast broadband services to around 16% of premises.

TUANZ Chairman Pat O’Connell commented “We are pleased an initial partnership commitment has now been made. New Zealand’s ultra fast future is now being written and we congratulate Minister Joyce and Crown Fibre Holdings on reaching agreements with these parties. It looks like we will have fibre in the ground before Christmas”.

TUANZ now wishes to hear more of progress on recommendations for the remainder of the UFB rollout. O’Connell notes “TUANZ remains concerned at the pace with which the remaining contracts are being issued. With the Telecommunications Amendment Bill due to go before parliament tomorrow, it looks likely that the deadlines for the rollout to the rest of the country will be missed. This is troubling despite New Zealand overtaking Australia in terms of broadband penetration*. Now is not the time to take our eye off the ball.”

The big news of today centres on pricing announcements. In recently released research from TUANZ and Crown Fibre Holdings 81% of respondents wanted more information on pricing with pricing also being perceived as a barrier to uptake by more than 85%. “Today’s initial wholesale price indicators should alleviate some of those concerns”, said O’Connell. “Pricing appears to be set a level that will drive uptake, for household, business and school users and we’re hopeful that this pricing will be reflected nationwide when further announcements are made”.

“Crown Fibre has indicated that business products will be priced considerably below existing dark fibre where this is available and premium layer 2 services such as 1 Gigabit per second will also be competitively priced; around $600 or less, about half the current minimum price. This is good news for the New Zealand business community.”

* http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html

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muppet

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#414078 7-Dec-2010 15:31

Ragnor:

This is actually much better than being at the mercy of ComCom regulated Telecom wholesale UBA backhaul and handover links (handover links being the real problem currently)

So yes it will come down to ISP's contention ratios on their own domestic/international peering and transit but because ISP's will actually differentiate themselves by (international) performance this is a good thing for savvy customers.

Looking at just the trip from your to your ISP's network:

UFB 100Mbit with 2.5Mbit CIR (presumably to the ISP core network) = 40:1 contention
Current ADSL 10Mbit with 45kbps handover dimesnsioning = ~228:1

That is a significant improvement imo.

There is no doubt Fibre is a much better access method. My point is that it's not a magic bullet the way it's being touted by some at the moment.

I'm all for FTTH, it's the first step in improved broadband, the removal of crap upload speeds, outages because of rain etc. It brings a ton of benefits and is where NZ should be heading.

It is not however going to magically fix the slew of other problems in Internet Service delivery overnight, such as the ones mentioned in my post. How many people at the moment are really limited by their DSL Sync speed, especially during peak hours? I'd wager not many and yes, it certainly depends which ISP you're connected to.

I'm sure ISP's will invest the time and money to make fibre fantastic ands DSL a joke of the past. I'm also sure they'll have to pass those costs on.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

networkn

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#414089 7-Dec-2010 15:51

How in the name of all that is holy can they offer tauranga this, and not the business hubs of NZ, IE Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch it first.

Talkiet

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#414095 7-Dec-2010 15:53

networkn: How in the name of all that is holy can they offer tauranga this, and not the business hubs of NZ, IE Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch it first.

Although there are many reasons, one primary reason is that the business areas of Akl, Wlg and Chc are already very well served with options for high speed data connectivity.

Cheers - N

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ockel

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#414096 7-Dec-2010 15:54

networkn: How in the name of all that is holy can they offer tauranga this, and not the business hubs of NZ, IE Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch it first.

The JAFA in me says that you use the lesser valued areas as pawns to drive hard bargains on price and timing for the more valuable areas.

In reality it could be that Northpower and WEL made the best offer under the RFP's and advanced to negoitation on that basis.

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Ragnor

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#414103 7-Dec-2010 16:03

Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are way more complicated deals.

Make sense to get some easy wins up and rolling, help iron out the issues that will undoubtedly come up.

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freitasm

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#414117 7-Dec-2010 16:40

Some comentary from IDC:

The Government confirms its first fibre partners: The UFB gets out of proposal frying pan and into the implementation fire, according to IDC

Auckland, New Zealand, December 7 2010: The government's confirmation of its two first fibre broadband partners is a welcome and much-needed step forward in the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) Initiative. However this deal seals just 16% of the 75% coverage footprint required - and the lack of detail continues to inhibit substantive debate about the industry impact and how to best drive fibre take up, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) NZ.

Crown Fibre Holdings, which manages the government's UFB Investment, has confirmed that it will work with two electricity lines companies, Northpower (covering Whangarei) and Ultra-Fast Fibre Limited, owned by WEL networks (covering Hamilton, Cambridge, Te Awamutu, Tauranga, Tokoroa, New Plymouth, Hawera and Wanganui). Both companies are promising the fibre build will be completed by 2015.

"This news, whilst very significant for those regions, continues to leave us in limbo on the big issue: who will win the main urban cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and what will be the future of Telecom," Rosalie Nelson, Senior Research Telecommunications Manager for IDC says.

Nelson says it is encouraging to see the emphasis that is being placed in the two regions on making fibre accessible and affordable. The indicative wholesale fibre pricing for the two regions is up to $NZ40 for a 30Mbps downstream service, and $NZ60 for a 100Mbps downstream service.

This suggests there has been considerable consultation with retail service providers to strike a fibre pricing model that matches similar retail copper pricing, all other things being equal. However, Nelson cautions against taking this at face value, given the many variables affecting pricing such as:

• The cost of providing a voice service additional to the fibre broadband connection.
• The cost of transporting data across the country and internationally. Given that over 80% of New Zealand Internet traffic is routed up through the United States via Auckland, this is significant.
• The costs of customer premises equipment in the home.
• The additional investment needed to deliver rich fibre services, such as video on demand.

"New Zealand is a price sensitive market: most consumers pay on average between $40 and $50 a month for broadband, excluding a voice service. Whilst fibre will deliver greater speed and capability, international experience shows only a small number of users will pay a premium for speed - indeed the expectation is to get more broadband for the same price," Nelson says.

"The real 'elephant in the room' is how do we encourage enough users to mass migrate from copper to fibre as it becomes available - what will be the compelling content and price mix that pulls users onto a fibre platform?" she says.

"We recognise that this is a complex process, and the priority must be getting it right rather than rushing to market. Nonetheless the UFB Initiative will not only determine the future of Telecom: it will restructure the entire Telecommunications sector. To understand and prepare for the shape of things to come, we need a definitive roadmap, and we need it quickly."

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kyhwana2

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#414123 7-Dec-2010 16:51

Well, im in an apartment.. if we can get fibre into the complex (which is already wired up with lightwire, oops!) that would be sweet. I'd probably just go straight for the 100mbit plans, at least if xnet end up wholesaling it out and it's not more than $100/month (not including cap/traffic)

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#414125 7-Dec-2010 16:54

a further question from a fibre noob.

Are the wholesale prices suggested here likley to be indicative of national wholesale prices?

By that I mean that I would assume that building a fibre network in Tauranga is, per capita, more expensive than a fibre network in, say, auckland.
therefore are we likely to see lower wholesale prices than indicated here for the main urban centres, or will the wholesale prices be set the same nationally.

DjShadow

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#414178 7-Dec-2010 18:33

Uh oh, TV1 news has given the impression of pricing mentioned earlier in this thread as retail pricing

Beccara

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#414183 7-Dec-2010 18:46

What happened for those of us who dont watch TV?

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Kris89

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#414194 7-Dec-2010 19:16

TV1 essentially said it would be $40 for the "basic" service, and $60 for the "premium" service. They certainly didn't point out that that was just the wholesale pricing and that it excluded all the other costs ISPs will add on (including data cap etc).

Tbh, the govt should have invested the 1.5bn in additional international links and improved national infrastructure rather than fibre to the home. The only benefit of FTTH to users in the meantime will be to local/cached content, and even some of that will be hampered by lack of peering by TNZ/TCL just as it is now...

Regarding CIR and the numbers people have mentioned, isn't the 45kbps or whatever the average speed ISP's provision for international bandwidth, while the 2.5mbps is probably just to the ISP, as someone previously suggested? Pretty sure even customers on wholesaled ADSL to a crappy ISP get >45kbps to the ISP...

Beccara

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#414195 7-Dec-2010 19:18

I'm pretty sure 48kb is the CIR rate on a wholesale DSL connection from Telecom to the ISP

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#414198 7-Dec-2010 19:22

Beccara: I'm pretty sure 48kb is the CIR rate on a wholesale DSL connection from Telecom to the ISP

Thats crazy!

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#414200 7-Dec-2010 19:25

tombrownzz: Here are some things I want to know:

How is the fibre going to be laid? Micro trenching or digging up the footpath? If its digging up the footpath how am I going to drive my car from the road to my garage when the footpath is dug up and the concrete is drying? Will it be half of the driveway 1 day and half the next?

Is the fibre going to come into my property or do I have to pay extra to get the fibre from the footpath to my property?
?

By the time it get's to your place you'll be flying in a Jetpack. Don't worry about it.

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