Fibre to the Home under National policies

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Ultimate Geek
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#177419 11-Nov-2008 21:20

DonGould: What do you see people doing with this capacity that is good for our economoy and society.

I agree with anyone who suggests that 56k or even 2mbit is not enough. I have a 4mbit link and it's only just pratical for browsing media rich news sites.

I think you just answered your own question there. You would have asked the same thing in the mid 90s when most people had 14.4-56k. New markets open up, new possibilities, etc. I've already covered this.

However we already have that infrastructure in place - it's called copper.

People keep wanting to write the stuff off. Why?

Because it's 50 years old... Copper is expensive to maintain, and old copper is prone to breaking, is prone to noise, etc. Even Telecom admit this.

LTE is talking about node speeds up to 200mbits. You can put up to 3 nodes per tower with just three freq blocks. No need to dig/bore across the whole city.

Right, node speeds. UP to 200mbit/s. I already mentioned the problems with wireless (congestion, effects from weather, topology, LOS, etc).

It's more suited for lower density areas, not cities or decent sized suburbs.

Don't get me wrong. I think FTTH would be cool!!!!!! I'd love to have 1GBit into my house to play with.

However we have to be just a bit pratical.

CCNL got the go ahead almost a year ago to put 80km of fibre into Chc. At present almost every street I drive down has boring equipment parked up on it. It's not going to be lite until some time next year.

Compare this with the amount of time it's take to put up a new mobile tower that's serving way more people from the minute they turn on the power.

Every major infrastructure change comes with disruptions. Are roadworks reason enough to complain about ever upgrading roads? Wouldn't it be much better if we could just build a railway and not have roadworks all the time?

Can you tell me how we're going to put all this ftth in the ground? Who's going to do it? How much resource is going to be needed?

Let's assume money is no problem, let's face it, it isn't.... we can print the stuff!

People are a problem though. So is equipment. Were is all this new boring equipment going to come from to start with?

Chorus and other contractors I presume. This isn't my problem to figure out. Of course it's going to take manpower, money, and time. Wireless towers are no exception to this rule, so I don't see your point.

Did you think people were arguing about this in regards to roads in the early days of the country? Think of how much resources it would take to put roads across the entire country! Where does all the tar/asphalt/concrete come from? The people? The machinery?

And this new "electricity" thing. Wow, you mean you want to lay wires across the whole country to every single home??!??! Crazy! Think of the resources!

A broadband infrastructure, like building roads or power lines, requires time, money and effort. There's no doubt about that. The government has decided to finally pony up the cash and do to broadband what they did to roads and power back in the day. No one said it was going to be easy.

Screeb

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Ultimate Geek
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#177423 11-Nov-2008 21:35

DonGould: In fact it's worse than that... So far the govt seems to have said very little. The oporsition has had a big waaa waaa... but that's what they're there to do.

Industry has lobbyed to stall and stall and stall the whole process.

There's been a fair amount of debate abot that point as well.

So because Australia is having a hissy fit over it means we can't do it? There are plenty of examples I've already mentioned where FTTH has already happened and is working perfectly (again, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden).

My current problems are:

Will the process end up in a mess like it has in AU?
Will the process put the breaks on current investment?
Will technology move forward in the insuing 10 years to make FTTH a mistake?

* Again, who knows? Will it end up really good like in all the other countries? And how is any other solution immune to becoming a "mess"? Everything has its risks.

* No, it won't do anything to current investment. Why? Because FTTH isn't going to happen overnight. Current investments are safe for at least 5 years.

* Are you crazy? You can't get any better than FTTH. To suggest that something will come along in 10 years time that somehow trumps it (how?) is useless. Why do anything if something better might come along some time in the future? Anyway, your wireless solution is far more prone to being oudated, as it's already lower bandwidth than FTTH.

Good argument for FTTN, not so good for FTTH.

Personally I want fast data where ever I am. Not just in my home.

Recently I've been giving more thought to the number of people who have iPhones, what they're doing with them and what's in them. It's some really interesting stuff when you start to think about it.

I've also been looking at how people use computers in their homes.

Look at the new CPE technology that's appearing.

G1, iPhone, NetTops.

All small, all portable, all used in mutipul locations.

Sure, give me 100mbits in my house, do you know what the first thing I do with it is?... that's right, I plug it into a wireless router.

I don't see how any of that nullifies the importance of FTTH. Sure, you may want to use mobile devices with fast BB, but there's still a huge market for fixed broadband that isn't going away any time soon.

Best question I've read on GZ in a while! :)

VoD --> People will order content on line rather than visit video stores. Have you looked at the number of DVDs that people buy at places like Kmart, the Warehouse, even the supermarket (yes, that's the last place my wife paid for a DVD).

Setting up VoD banks is going to give you a job. It's a highly skilled job.

What about unskilled labour such as the jobs that people like Kmart and Warehouse staff fill? Do you assume that those people are going to be able to go back to uni to study then come out being able to set up VoD banks?

This is of course assuming that people purchase the content from VoD banks rather than just using P2P to store and share the content across the network.

Value of Retail: I keep hearing people rant about how wonderful VoD is, but they never give any value to the retail experience. Go have a sit in a video store for a couple of hours and just watch people at the counter.

How many people pick up 'extras' to go with their video? Pop corn, chips, an ice cream. It's the same logic that applies in the petrol station business.

FTTH will only move the economy: Given the examples I've sighted all that's going to happen is the economy is going to change, it's not going to grow and could infact shrink.

HDVC --> Same issues apply. At present my mother comes to visit my son (Wellington --> Christchurch) every couple of months. When she comes she hires a car. She normally takes us out for a couple of meals. She take two plane flights. Can you explain how HDVC is going to benefit the economy in my home?

Not everyone wants to work in the information sector. In fact, not everyone can work in the sector.

I'm sorry, but this is ridiculous. I don't think anyone is going to back you up on your reasoning here. The exact same logic could have been used for the introduction of the internet itself. Also, just because a video store might have to move online doesn't mean all its jobs will require tech skills. Someone still needs to be the customer service, the janitor, the marketer, etc.

2. You said to look overseas at heavy bandwidth servces. Can you point them out? I don't know what you're refeering to.

HD IPTV is big overseas (countries I mentioned earlier). Apps over IP is also gaining steam. Speaking of "Steam"

... many people overseas use content distribution networks like Steam to download games (eg Fallout 3, which was released a few weeks ago, is something like 6GB. No one in NZ is going to download that).

DonGould

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#177426 11-Nov-2008 21:46

Don: However New Zealand households are yet to even see basic ADSL1 technology work as it's mean to. They have not been able to download at 8mbit even when their modems are syncing at 8mbit. Why is that, do you know?

That's because ISPs are paying too much for bandwidth on the copper network. I can get my full 10Mbit/s using multiple threads at any time of the day on TelstraClear cable. That's because it's their own network. They don't have to pay heaps to use it. An open access fibre network would allow ISPs to offer enough bandwidth that there won't be any contention.

Close, but not quite the whole story is it?

FTTH would bypass the copper, but that really is taking a sledge hammer to a thumb tack.

At present Telcom control the data stream back to a fibre tail to your ISP (AIUI).

Unbundeling fixes this problem. ISPs can then pick up your connection at the end of the copper. We just have to get more ISPs putting in DSLAMs and more back haul choices.

All those things you mentioned are happening, as you say. Of course they're needed... OK so once we have them, then what? Then we're not much better off because we're still congested out to the exchange. Thus we need FTTH (and will need it even more in 10 years time).

Ok, that just doesn't make any sense at all.

You haven't explained how we're congested at the exchange by using copper v's using FTTH. With FTTH you still need backhaul. With FTTH controlled by Telecom you'd still end up with congestion. There's no reason now why there should be congestion other than a lack of core network capacity.

cokemaster: Tell us, where does the bulk of traffic end up for the likes of japan, denmark, korea, and sweden?

What does that have to do with anything?

He's drawing attention to the fact that most of the traffic that consumers are interested in, in those countries, is local.

Most of our traffic comes from the US. See: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=7980 Paul explains the point quite well.

National infrastructure needs be good regardless of whether the traffic stays in the country or goes overseas.

Agreed. The only difference in our argument is that you're saying that we need 'runway quality roading' because we only have 'dirt roads'. I'm saying that we need to simply reseal the currently badly sealed roads, not over build them with high grade railway lines.

Of course microtrenching isn't suitable for everywhere.

I suspect that microtrenching isn't suitable for most places. Here in Chch CCNL has been putting in 80km of fibre loop, as far as I know, it's all bored and trenched in conduit.

The council has previously stated it will allow this for new fibre networks.

Our power polls look even more of a mess now that we have TC HFC all over them. How many more networks do we put in the air?!

As Don said, $2500+ is just ridiculous. Not to mention that it will obviously be subsidised by the ISP. Once FTTH is hooked up to a house it's done for the life of the house.

Isn't that what they said about the copper?

Sure, lots of people may find ADSL2+ acceptable for the time being.

10 years for many people at the current rate of up take.

However, there will always be the people like me who would want to take advantage of fibre.

That's not a reason to outfit the whole (or even 75%) of the country with FTTH. That's a reason to tell you to move to one of the new FTTH developments.

As time goes on, that number will increase as xDSL* doesn't cut it any more.

That's a very bold statement. xDSL technology just keeps finding more and more ways to push more bits down the copper. I didn't know they'd given up quite yet.

However, you could argue that the wops need it more than homes in the the larger towns and cities.

I would.

That's the farms, farms are businesses and generate most of our country's income. They have a need for broadband that goes beyond downloading games and movies but many of them currently have poor dial-up internet access only. (14.4kb/s is the maximum required speed according to the TSO). National should perhaps look at extending the government's Broadband Investment Fund (not scrapping it like they promised) rather than focusing on homes.

Good argument!

Again, as Don said, it's impractical by any stretch of the imagination to serve the wops with FTTH.

Err.... did I say that? I don't think I did. I said we had to be praticle.

Pushing fibre out to the country actually makes really good economic sense for NZ for more reasons that I'm going to bother writing down in this post.

These markets are best served by alternate means such as satelliteor mobile broadband (which they are - if anyone is still using 14.4kb/s and they want broadband, they need to accept that being the only dwelling for 10km is going to mean broadband will be more expensive).

Providing those people a doctor, power, water and roads is far more expensive than it is to prvide to me (I'm in high density housing).

However there are huge economic benefits to providing those people with equal services no matter their distance to the next dewelling.

It something we should and must do.

Cheers Don

DonGould

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#177442 11-Nov-2008 22:49

Screeb: New markets open up, new possibilities.

Agreed. However I'm interested to hear what you think the new markets will be with FTTH that are useful to the NZ economy.

I've given some examples of some that aren't useful for our economoy (even if you don't agree), can you find some that are useful that we can agree on?

Because it's 50 years old... Copper is expensive to maintain, and old copper is prone to breaking, is prone to noise, etc. Even Telecom admit this.

Most of our road network is 50 years old and all our rail network is.

In AU consession has been given that the introduction of ADSL1 technology has cause/forced proper maintenance to the CAN that has now extended its life for decades. ADSL2+ has been possible because the over all quality of the network has simply been improved. Simple stuff like cross patching and splitting pairs, that don't take down POTS, have been fixed.

Having put all this investment in to renovating the CAN, you now want to throw all that investment out?!

Don: LTE is talking about node speeds up to 200mbits. You can put up to 3 nodes per tower with just three freq blocks. No need to dig/bore across the whole city.

Right, node speeds. UP to 200mbit/s. I already mentioned the problems with wireless (congestion, effects from weather, topology, LOS, etc).

All the problems you highlight are fixed by putting in more nodes. Rather than 6km radius nodes you put in 2km nodes. In high density city areas the density can go up even more.

I note that you've ignored that fact that most FTTH is being put in as PON/GEPON which is also a shared resource. You don't get 1GBit to each point. It's 1Gb shared to 16, 32 or 64 end points. That's much less than 100mbit to each end.

Don: Can you tell me how we're going to put all this ftth in the ground? Who's going to do it? How much resource is going to be needed?

Chorus and other contractors I presume. This isn't my problem to figure out. Of course it's going to take manpower, money, and time. Wireless towers are no exception to this rule, so I don't see your point.

My point was that we just don't have enough skilled people and equipment to go putting in FTTH. We'd have to upskill a whole work force and we'd have to spend millions on equipment.

Did you think people were arguing about this in regards to roads in the early days of the country? Think of how much resources it would take to put roads across the entire country! Where does all the tar/asphalt/concrete come from? The people? The machinery?

That's a good argument... but rail is what you should be thinking about.

My father inlaw is old enough to remember the days when they build rail in NZ. Filled up the railways with staff that ended up sitting around doing nothing.

The MOW wasn't so different.

In the 80's there was a massive transition as we simply made those people unemployed to give them the message that they had to find/create new jobs.

It was stupid. We build so much infrastructure so fast that we ended up with massive social disruption.

Why do the same thing again?

Why not keep following the growth path that we're on at present?

We've been deregulated for 20/21 years in the telecommunications sector. In that time we've built a second mobile network to most of the country. We've installed 4 or 5 fibre networks in our major CBDs. We've slashed the cost of telecommuications to the average Joe.

A broadband infrastructure, like building roads or power lines, requires time, money and effort. There's no doubt about that. The government has decided to finally pony up the cash and do to broadband what they did to roads and power back in the day. No one said it was going to be easy.

I agree that the government needs to pony up some money to stimulate the market and fix some problems that simply aren't economice for the existing industry players (including Telecom) to do.

I just don't agree that FTTH to 75% of homes is the answer.

Cheers Don

DonGould

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#177451 11-Nov-2008 23:05

Screeb: So because Australia is having a hissy fit over it means we can't do it?

Well we haven't done well with ULL so far. We're way behind AU. We deregulated 10 years earlier, yet we've only just started putting DSLAMs in some of our Auckland exchanges. We've only got 2 mobile networks. We've only got one other major wireless network. We only have 1 HFC network provider. We're years behind and mostly because of our ability to get in to bigger hissy fits than they do!

There are plenty of examples I've already mentioned where FTTH has already happened and is working perfectly (again, Japan, South Korea, Denmark, Sweden).

Shocking examples!

SK Telecom and Jap Telecom are both govt owned!

What is the structure of the other two?

Don: My current problems are:

Will the process end up in a mess like it has in AU?
Will the process put the breaks on current investment?
Will technology move forward in the insuing 10 years to make FTTH a mistake?

* Again, who knows? Will it end up really good like in all the other countries? And how is any other solution immune to becoming a "mess"? Everything has its risks.

Not even close to being a good enough answer to justify compromising the whole market over!

* No, it won't do anything to current investment. Why? Because FTTH isn't going to happen overnight. Current investments are safe for at least 5 years.

Telcos put eqipment in place to last much longer than 5 years. Most telco equipment has a life of 30 years.
Current investment by VF was put on hold last year IIRC (Paul are you about?)
We just haven't seen interest from other ISPs to put in investment have we? This is a big part of the reason that the govt is wanting to stimulate the market place.

* Are you crazy? You can't get any better than FTTH. To suggest that something will come along in 10 years time that somehow trumps it (how?) is useless. Why do anything if something better might come along some time in the future? Anyway, your wireless solution is far more prone to being oudated, as it's already lower bandwidth than FTTH.

Crazy? No. FTTH may be wonderful, but so was BETA. BETA = Better.

You have to look at what the market wants and what it's doing.

VHS lasted for decades. JVC has only just stopped producing machines.

Do you see the point?

Wireless tails may not be better then fibre ones, but they are what the market is demanding. Just look at the massive up take rate of G3 iPhones despire the price!

I don't see how any of that nullifies the importance of FTTH. Sure, you may want to use mobile devices with fast BB, but there's still a huge market for fixed broadband that isn't going away any time soon.

There was a huge market for BETA.... then VHS came along.

There's a massive market for Broadband and people are slowly picking it up as the products are delivered that make sense to them.

People have limited choice.

In AU we've seen the price for G3 data drop in the last 6 months and the market has gone total mad. To the point where one network has stopped selling its product because of demand.

Wireless just hasn't caught up here quite yet.

More soon...

Cheers Don

PenultimateHop

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#177453 11-Nov-2008 23:07

I feel the need to reply to a bit of this and set a few facts straight.

DonGould: So much to respond to, I might do this in stages....

Screeb: The point is having an infrastructure that can scale up.

Again I'll agree with you on a point...

However we already have that infrastructure in place - it's called copper.

People keep wanting to write the stuff off. Why?

Simple - copper does not scale. It's reaching the end of it's useful life in many locations, it's more expensive to deploy than fibre for new services, and if copper prices continue to climb will only get more expensive. On a price-per-mbit-meter-laid it is more expensive than fibre. Once you move to new-build as fibre, overbuilding your old network starts to make sense as well.

While I'm fully appreciative of the investment that has gone into xDSL and the R&D time that it represents, there is only so much blood you can eke out of the stone.

DonGould:
Screeb: Wireless provides far less bandwidth than fibre, full stop. FTTH can provide 100Mbit/s+ dedicated to each household on the node. Good luck with that on wireless.

LTE is talking about node speeds up to 200mbits. You can put up to 3 nodes per tower with just three freq blocks. No need to dig/bore across the whole city.

Don't get me wrong. I think FTTH would be cool!!!!!! I'd love to have 1GBit into my house to play with.

However we have to be just a bit pratical.

CCNL got the go ahead almost a year ago to put 80km of fibre into Chc. At present almost every street I drive down has boring equipment parked up on it. It's not going to be lite until some time next year.

Compare this with the amount of time it's take to put up a new mobile tower that's serving way more people from the minute they turn on the power.

LTE is "talking about" speeds of "up to" 200Mbps. Realistically you're looking at 50-70Mbps and the conditions will need to be pretty perfect to reach that; and as soon as you start facing spectrum congestion you're not going to be getting that. Not to mention that most cells don't serve a huge number of active subscribers, and the resource consent process and NIMBYism for putting up cells is somewhat more difficult than a fibre rollout.

Also note that as soon as your terrain becomes more complex (think Auckland!), mobile services get even more difficult due to the further increase in cells required.

NB: I have practical experience with LTE and reasonably familiar with the technology and R&D going into it.

DonGould: Can you tell me how we're going to put all this ftth in the ground? Who's going to do it? How much resource is going to be needed?

Let's assume money is no problem, let's face it, it isn't.... we can print the stuff!

People are a problem though. So is equipment. Were is all this new boring equipment going to come from to start with?

Same way that Japan, Korea, Sweden, Malaysia, Singapore, are doing. It's not that hard, but it will take time.

Singapore plans to have 90%+ FTTH penetration by 2014 through the iDA's initiative, which is a PPP based approach. Obviously Singaporean terrain makes it easier to implement than NZ's, but it can be done - and at a relatively low cost too.

Over time the economic benefits will be great for any country who deploys this, although I am not yet sure what the 'killer app' for the bandwidth is. I am sure when the nationalised PSTN rollouts were discussed people could never see or appreciate the return-on-investment for the local economy. Put FTTH on the same timescale as the PSTN and you will begin to appreciate it.

Dyson

Shop now for Dyson appliances (affiliate link).

Screeb

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Ultimate Geek
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#177454 11-Nov-2008 23:08

Edit: ^^^ Thanks for the backup PenultimateHop

^^^

DonGould: Close, but not quite the whole story is it?

FTTH would bypass the copper, but that really is taking a sledge hammer to a thumb tack.

At present Telcom control the data stream back to a fibre tail to your ISP (AIUI).

Unbundeling fixes this problem. ISPs can then pick up your connection at the end of the copper. We just have to get more ISPs putting in DSLAMs and more back haul choices.

Exactly... Unbundling fixes that problem. And unbundling is underway. But it doesn't fix the need for getting rid of the copper.

Ok, that just doesn't make any sense at all.

You haven't explained how we're congested at the exchange by using copper v's using FTTH. With FTTH you still need backhaul. With FTTH controlled by Telecom you'd still end up with congestion. There's no reason now why there should be congestion other than a lack of core network capacity.

Because copper can only transfer so many bits at a time. Our ancient, noisy copper lines simply aren't up to the task of providing 100Mbit/s unless you're 50m from the exchange. Telecom's cabnetisation is only up to 2km from the exchange. Fibre 2km from the exchange is just as fast as fibre 50m from the exchange. Copper 2km from the exchange simply cannot provide 100Mbit/s.

cokemaster: Tell us, where does the bulk of traffic end up for the likes of japan, denmark, korea, and sweden?

What does that have to do with anything?

He's drawing attention to the fact that most of the traffic that consumers are interested in, in those countries, is local.

Most of our traffic comes from the US. See: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=7980 Paul explains the point quite well.

I know. My point was that it's irrelevant given the point below \/

National infrastructure needs be good regardless of whether the traffic stays in the country or goes overseas.

Agreed. The only difference in our argument is that you're saying that we need 'runway quality roading' because we only have 'dirt roads'. I'm saying that we need to simply reseal the currently badly sealed roads, not over build them with high grade railway lines.

Good analogy, and I agree. I still say we need 'runway quality roading'.

I suspect that microtrenching isn't suitable for most places. Here in Chch CCNL has been putting in 80km of fibre loop, as far as I know, it's all bored and trenched in conduit.

I disagree. I would think that most suburbs would be suited to microtrenching, as they have more road and curb space than an inner city.

Our power polls look even more of a mess now that we have TC HFC all over them. How many more networks do we put in the air?!

The council part was about using ducts and sewers, not overhead lines, sorry for the confusion. It's up to each council to decide whether they want overhead lines or not. Btw, the same argument could be used against wireless towers. Who wants a million towers everywhere? People are already upset about cell towers.

Isn't that what they said about the copper?

Possibly, I don't know. But I do know that copper has served for about 100 years, so I think it proves my point well enough. And did they NOT build the copper network due to those concerns? As you know, they obviously did. But what if they didn't? What would happen then? Regardless, you're welcome to posture a new technology that moves information faster than light through a fibre optic cable (yes I know it's not 100% speed of light, but it's the same idea).

10 years for many people at the current rate of up take.

I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying that people will be happy with ADSL2+ in 10 years? That's very short sighted. Sure, some people will be, just like some people are happy with 56k today...

That's not a reason to outfit the whole (or even 75%) of the country with FTTH. That's a reason to tell you to move to one of the new FTTH developments.

I think you're underestimating the number of people who would want the benefits of FTTH. It's one of those things where you don't know till you've tried it. Lots of people didn't want to upgrade to broadband from dial-up, because they were happy with 56k. Then they saw the light...

That's a very bold statement. xDSL technology just keeps finding more and more ways to push more bits down the copper. I didn't know they'd given up quite yet.

It's more bold to assume that xDSL is going to be better than FTTH at any point. Telecom aren't laying copper any more. They're laying fibre.

However, you could argue that the wops need it more than homes in the the larger towns and cities.
I would.

That's the farms, farms are businesses and generate most of our country's income. They have a need for broadband that goes beyond downloading games and movies but many of them currently have poor dial-up internet access only. (14.4kb/s is the maximum required speed according to the TSO). National should perhaps look at extending the government's Broadband Investment Fund (not scrapping it like they promised) rather than focusing on homes.
Good argument!

Uh, I don't know if you realise that's TinyTim, not me.

Err.... did I say that? I don't think I did. I said we had to be praticle.
Pushing fibre out to the country actually makes really good economic sense for NZ for more reasons that I'm going to bother writing down in this post.

FTTH out in the country? FTTN, sure. FTTH, no way, unless it's a big business who pays for it themselves.

Providing those people a doctor, power, water and roads is far more expensive than it is to prvide to me (I'm in high density housing).

And they have fewer doctors per person, less water, less reliable power, and pay more accordingly...

However there are huge economic benefits to providing those people with equal services no matter their distance to the next dewelling.
It something we should and must do.

This is getting a bit off topic. If you want to sypathise with farmers, I don't think this is the place.

PenultimateHop

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#177455 11-Nov-2008 23:14

DonGould: In AU consession has been given that the introduction of ADSL1 technology has cause/forced proper maintenance to the CAN that has now extended its life for decades. ADSL2+ has been possible because the over all quality of the network has simply been improved. Simple stuff like cross patching and splitting pairs, that don't take down POTS, have been fixed.

Having put all this investment in to renovating the CAN, you now want to throw all that investment out?!

I haven't heard anyone in Australia say this at all. The AU copper network is definitely in better condition in the metro areas than in NZ; however they haven't even gone down a cabinetisation approach yet except where driven by necessity (i.e. scarce copper resource and equipment being installed to compensate).

The copper networks may have had their life extended and some overdue incremental investment put in place, but overall they are going to stagnate and maintain their current capabilities... not grow them.

DonGould: I note that you've ignored that fact that most FTTH is being put in as PON/GEPON which is also a shared resource. You don't get 1GBit to each point. It's 1Gb shared to 16, 32 or 64 end points. That's much less than 100mbit to each end.

FTTH equipment is developing at a pretty quick rate. Multiple vendors have demonstrated GPON that can deliver 128-split services with DWDM, allowing a single fibre to service hundreds of endpoints at rates varying between 20Mbps and 1Gbps - just by varying the wavelength used. 10G based PON and 40G PON is just around the corner and in many cases can be deployedas a backwards compatible upgrade without disrupting existing services.

Note that GPON can be configured to allow for guaranteed bandwidth and burst bandwidth, which means that you might have a 20Mbps CIR with burstability to 1Gbps. This is quite straightforward to deploy (although not at all straightforward to understand).

allstarnz

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#177456 11-Nov-2008 23:14

TinyTim:
Another application is broadcast TV - can't see Sky changing from a successful satellite platform to fibre.

Yes and no. I was listening to an interview on Radio Sport the other day with Sky CEO John Fellet, he seemed to disagree with this sentiment to a point.

His basic premise was that satellite bandwidth is hella expensive, and video over the internet (hence fibre to the home) could be a way of bringing niche programming that subscribers want to have. For arguments sake, NHL content could be delivered to the box this way on a subscription basis (Center Ice or something) using this. No economic model to bring it in via DVB-S or whatever, but on demand, perhaps.

As has been stated, this sort of content delivery could be where FTH could become very useful.

Screeb

698 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 52

#177458 11-Nov-2008 23:30

Well we haven't done well with ULL so far. We're way behind AU. We deregulated 10 years earlier, yet we've only just started putting DSLAMs in some of our Auckland exchanges. We've only got 2 mobile networks. We've only got one other major wireless network. We only have 1 HFC network provider. We're years behind and mostly because of our ability to get in to bigger hissy fits than they do!

The difference between AU and NZ is that, as you hinted, we have less competition. It's not about hissy fits for us - it's about a disturbing lack of government intervention (needed due to our monopolies and duopolies).

Shocking examples!

SK Telecom and Jap Telecom are both govt owned!

What is the structure of the other two?

Sweden's is council owned. I don't know about Denmark. What's your point? The FTTH network here will be open access. I'd prefer it to be govt owned, but that's close enough for now.

Not even close to being a good enough answer to justify compromising the whole market over!

As I said, everything has its risks. How is FTTH more risky than your proposal? Should we just sit back and take it easy? No, we've been doing that for the last 15 years and look where it got us.

Telcos put eqipment in place to last much longer than 5 years. Most telco equipment has a life of 30 years.
Current investment by VF was put on hold last year IIRC (Paul are you about?)
We just haven't seen interest from other ISPs to put in investment have we? This is a big part of the reason that the govt is wanting to stimulate the market place.

1. Not today. I'm sorry, but you're living in the past. No telco is going to put in ADSL2+ DSLAMS and expect them to run for 30 years.
2. I don't know about that, so I can't say anything. What investment? They're certainly not slowing down their unbundling investment - in fact, they're ahead of schedule.
3. Sure, there hasn't been much investment by telcos. That's because Telecom has stifled them. With an open access fibre network you can bet your arse there'll be investment.

Crazy? No. FTTH may be wonderful, but so was BETA. BETA = Better.

You have to look at what the market wants and what it's doing.

VHS lasted for decades. JVC has only just stopped producing machines.

Do you see the point?

No, I don't see any point. This isn't a popularity contest between different technologies, complete with marketing fud. It's about finding the best one for the job. BETAMAX vs VHS wasn't one by some government initiative backing VHS due to how appropriate it was.

Wireless tails may not be better then fibre ones, but they are what the market is demanding. Just look at the massive up take rate of G3 iPhones despire the price!

There was a huge market for BETA.... then VHS came along.

There's a massive market for Broadband and people are slowly picking it up as the products are delivered that make sense to them.

People have limited choice.

In AU we've seen the price for G3 data drop in the last 6 months and the market has gone total mad. To the point where one network has stopped selling its product because of demand.

No one's denying that the market wants wireless. That doesn't mean the market doesn't also want fixed broadband. Wireless is already served by Telecom Mobile and Vodafone Mobile.

pistolpower

139 posts

Master Geek

#178443 17-Nov-2008 20:00

I belive that FTTH is going to be highly benefical for us and I have full confidence in John Keys to do this right. Now after reading comments made by people I have realised that some people do not seem to have their faq right. But I have some information that you might like to look at below regarding various negative comments made by certain people about FTTH:
Firstly FTTH is not a waste of money. It will generate alot of economic benefits as shown in the extract below that was taken from this web page.
"Fibre will deliver big economic benefits for New Zealand – enhanced productivity, improved global connectivity, and enhanced capacity for innovation. ""Independent experts have estimated those benefits will be worth between $2.7 billion and $4.4 billion a year. "

Some people said FTTH will cost more than the government is investing. Others where woried about where this money was going to come from. The folowing was taken from here.

"National is prepared to increase the Crown's current infrastructure investment by up to an extra $500 million a year above levels projected by Labour. This is in addition to the broadband investment commitments of $1.5 billion over six years that I've previously outlined.

This will result in National investing close to $5 billion of additional capital investment over the next six years to fund infrastructure over and above that foreshadowed by Labour."

"Last year, the Labour Government introduced what it described as "infrastructure bonds". The reality is that these bonds were no different from bog-standard government bonds. There were no infrastructure risks linked to them. National will introduce real infrastructure bonds, with funding tagged to particular infrastructure. ".

========================

Allso if you look at where most of the negative comments are orrginating from you will notice that it comes from the big telecos. They simply do not want us to have better internet because then they can not offer hosting services for rediculos ammounts of money. Allso they currently controll their own existing networks and have implemented all sorts of fees over them. Now if national where to make there fibre network then these companys would make alot less money than they currently do. But this would only affect companys like telecom or any other big player with hosting, wholesale or other over priced services. They will no longer be able to do this as all companys will be charged for usage of the fibre network based on the same pricing module. This opens the country right up for real competiton. And they can not wholesale internet for rediculous prices as the price is set by the government. And we will have the speeds to host our own stuff. This will mean that any service that is not run by a company or does not need to be on 100% can be hosted on your phone line. Allso national data charges will most undoubtfully disapear with this new network. And this is why the large telecomunication companies are against this new network. And here is a quote I heard recently "Controll is a nice thing to have, and those that have it often do not want to lose it as it is hard to get controll".

Another important factor when considering if FTTH is beneficial for us or not is whever or not we want to be left behind. Aparently their was allso alot of opposition against electricity going to housing when we where making our electrical network. Now I am going to asume that you all currently belive that electricity is a necessity in our life. But those many years ago it was not. People where saying that gas lamps where all we needed for lighting. And they didnt think much of other uses for electricity. Well now we have fridges, electric ovens, microwaves, hot water cilinders, heating, air conditioning and so on. Now what if we never paved our roads or never had electricity? We would be alot worse of than we are now.

Now I am going to say what will we do when video content is no longer sold world wide on portable media formats, and music as well as video games and software are allso not sold on portable media formats? When movie files become 30-80+GB and we have to download it online? We would be in huge problems without fibre. We would be left out and the gap between our standards of life and others will widen untill you can no longer say it is a gap. Distribution via physical objects is too expensive and will most likely be phased out for other reasons I will not go into here.

Now our international fibre data usage charges will not be as much of a problem as some think here. Because services like steam will just have a local content server in new zealand. Many other services like itunes and other media or digital content services will allso have local servers in new zealand.

FTTH allso has many cultural benefits. Content created by people like songs, music, videos, software, games or anything will be spread and made more available. More of this content will allso be made. And the reason why its not as common currently as it should be is because we just dont ahve the capacity to upload fast enough and we have to pay alot because of data usage fees. So currently we can only download content but the internet is about sharing content not giving it. And most content made now in new zealand will not be available because of this. But more content will be made when the facilitys to freely distribute such content is made available. This is how culture changes. And open source content can be alot better than some of the commercial content we buy today.

WIth the increased ammount of peer made or open source content being made, easily and cheaply distributed and freely available we will discover many talented people. This will lead to New Zealand as a country having more discovered talent that allready existed in people or lay dormant inside them. This means that we will have more people going out and becoming things like musicians, actors, software writers etc. This also creates a flow on effect that leads to growth in our buisness sectors as newly discovered succesfull or talented people start up companies or existing companies benefit from this talent. But many talented people have a problem with market penetration and geting known. But through open source content they can become known by many e,g, a you tube video or content released on p2p aplications.

Allso FTTH is not just about how much it is going to cost us and how fast my broadband speed will be. It affects many aspects like content available to us. For example if we all had 100Mbps download connections and 1Mbps upload then all our content would come from corporates who are only out their to make money. The fact that their out their to make money is fair enough considering that the point of a buisness is to make money. But this can conflict with what is good for us. Lack of content is bad as it forces us to watch what other people want us to as we have less choice. So we watch movies, tv shows music etc that has content or themes in it that may affect how we think of something. And lack of competion allso means that our quality of service from the entertainment sector could be serverly impacted. The point im trying to make in this paragraph are that monopolys, duopolys triopolys etc etc are bad. Competion is good. And that FTTH encourages it, whereas currently it is unencouraged.

Allso along the same lines of monopolistic risk we can not entrust a task like FTTH or any alternative to companys such as major telecos. They allready show major sighns of monopolistic behaviour. But regardless of that a resource such as the internet is to dangerous to be controlled by a few people. Now i know that the isps do not controll the internet but they controll our access. Now thats almost as bad I would say. It is just to important to entrust them with it. And right now im not shure that entrusting anything at all to companies like telecom is a good idea. Puting that aside you need to remember that companys are out their for money. Considering that they are out their for money and not to provide us a good service is a serious reason not to trust them. For all we know if national does not put FTTH in then it might not hapend for 20 years. I mean its not profitable for them to do it is it. But it is profitable for the government.

A long time after FTTH is implemented we will be saying that we could not live without fibre. Just like we did with electricity. Just like you probably would say about roads. And the problem is that many of you are far to short sighted to be able to make a informed comment about FTTH. It will not happend over night and that is why we must start it now. And some of your comments about our current internet being all we need are really arrogant. I mean you may not have a demmand for such a service but I do. And you will have a demmand for those services when you start using them and realise how essential they are. And very few of you took into consideration over factors about why FTTH is good or not. But I have one last comment to make.

Nationals FTTH network will be owned by the crown (The government). In now way will it be owned by a or a few private entities. Funding may or may not be sourced from buisnesses. And their infastructure bonds will undoubtably be another way to raise some of the money being invested in the network. The government allso owns orcon and they can push competion through orcon. From the expresions and reactions of some of the national politcians I can tell that they are very excited and have big plans for orcon. And anyone saying that its not fair on the telecos who will lose money should consider the fact that they shurley could not expect to stay a monopoly fore ever and that given all the time they had that they could have branched out and diversified. But if they did not bother to do this then that will be why they will lose alot of money. Anyway that is just my indepth view of FTTH. And I am looking forward to it coming to my house which I hope will not be that far away as I am near a school and by a major main road. But it is up to you whether or not you embrace the change or fight against it. cheers

Lenovo

Shop now for Lenovo laptops and other devices (affiliate link).

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 164

#178455 17-Nov-2008 20:38

pistolpower: Nationals FTTH network will be owned by the crown (The government).

As I understood it the FTTH investment that National were planning is to be a public/private partnership.

Is this no longer the case?

Are National now going to invest the whole $5,000,000,000.00 that it's going to take to reach 75% of the population?

Cheers Don

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3935

Trusted

#178463 17-Nov-2008 21:09

pistolpower: [snipped some irrelevant stuff]
Anyway that is just my indepth view of FTTH. And I am looking forward to it coming to my house which I hope will not be that far away as I am near a school and by a major main road. But it is up to you whether or not you embrace the change or fight against it. cheers

Wow. Just Wow.

N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

TinyTim

1058 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 167

Trusted

#178465 17-Nov-2008 21:25

It still remains the fact that there would be more economic benefit from getting decent broadband to businesses - including farms (particularly farms) - than homes.

Talkiet

4819 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 3935

Trusted

#178467 17-Nov-2008 21:30

TinyTim: It still remains the fact that there would be more economic benefit from getting decent broadband to businesses - including farms (particularly farms) - than homes.

Farmers can get decent broadband today... Sure it's not hosting grade broadband, but when I last checked, they were farmers, not datacentre operators...

The only problem is that it actually costs more to get the intarwebs out to those very sparsely populated bits of New Zealand.

Now, what strikes you as reasonable about the farmers that often buy a new Range Rover every couple of years having to pay a decent premium for their BUSINESS INTERNET CONNECTION?

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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