Fibre to the Home under National policies

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3892 posts

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#178476 17-Nov-2008 21:56

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

What can your average farmer get at present and who from?

What economic benefit would be gained by spending a couple of ~~benefit~~ billion to give them faster net access? Can anyone be specific with examples of how they see the economoy benefiting?

Cheers Don

Talkiet

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#178479 17-Nov-2008 22:12

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

What can your average farmer get at present and who from?

What economic benefit would be gained by spending a couple of benefit to give them faster net access? Can anyone be specific with examples of how they see the economoy benefiting?

Cheers Don

Well, IPstar leaps to mind...

http://www.bccnz.com/services/residential/

Yes, it's heaps more expensive that residential ADSL but please don't ignore these 2 salient points...

1) To economically benefit the farmers, it needs to be considered in the context of a business connection, not a residential connection. I just know you're going to start quoting a heap of small businesses that get away with ADSL, but that's not the point, and you know it.

2) Without the population density to provide a return on investment for a pervasive fixed (or even terrestrial wireless) service in rural NZ, the costs of providing the service are simply going to be higher (satellite bandwidth ain't cheap) and shared among relatively few users.

IF what farmers want is to have essentially the same broadband access as those in urban areas for the same (or even same magnitude of) cost, then that's being unrealistic.

Despite what you may believe, the average farmer isn't hard up for a buck...

And I'm afraid I just don't understand your second question...

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.

pistolpower

139 posts

Master Geek

#178482 17-Nov-2008 22:20

DonGould:
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

To awnswer your question about FTTH bein a public/private partnership you really need to look at what a public/private partnership really is. Here is a link to wikipiedias article. These 2 quotes I think are quiet relevant to your question.
"In some types of PPP, the government uses tax revenue to provide capital for investment, with operations run jointly with the private sector or under contract (see contracting out). In other types (notably the Private Finance Initiative), capital investment is made by the private sector on the strength of a contract with government to provide agreed services."
Below was from a segment of examples of public/private partnerships that have been done in the past.

"New Zealand
Vector Arena in Auckland is one public-private partnership in New Zealand. The Auckland City Council and Auckland Regional Council have contributed $68 million toward the $80 million indoor multipurpose arena. Ownership will be transfered back to the city in 40 years from completion."
Now I think that their is a bit of confusion here that needs to be cleared up in relation to how the FTTH will operate. Now yes it is highly likely that they will get some capital from some buisnesses to help fund FTTH. This extra funding will give them more money to implement FTTH but as to how much more I can not say. It is possible that part of the private/public partnership could involve orcon which is an SOE (state owned enterprise) or possibly have something to do with their infastructure bonds. But it might allso involve agreeing to provide certain services to a company for a set time period in return for their contribution to the FTTH network. For example telecom might get cheaper rates for 20 years in return for a large sum of money. Or the deal with a private company for additional funding for the fibre network might look like the example above. Where someone might have certain rights, access, services provided to them or even own the network for a while (with limitations of course).
But summing that up yes they will probably build the FTTH network as a public/private partnership. But ultimitly at the end of the day the government will most likely have unrestricted controll over the network. Remembering that governments think long term.
And to awnswer that question about investing $5billion to FTTH you must allso take into consideration the benefits it will give us and where the money is coming from. Now I could assume that their infastructure bonds could give them back a bit of that money reasonably fast. And that some of this $5 billion is allso coming out of funds allready allocated towards that type of spending. And that theyre going to make FTTH apart of government infastructure allso makes more money available to be spent on it. Although we wont know all the details untill they are released we know that they seem to have a reasonable plan so far. And as to the extent of population that would have access to this, 75% sounds like a achivable goal. As we probably have more than 75% of our population living in suburbain areas. But I guess you can never be 100% certain of anything. But to sum it up and be fair I have to say that nearly all of the $5 billion appears to me to have allready been promised to be spent on that type of thing. So its not like theyre just randomly going to spend $5 billion on something. Its that the media did not bother covering the story probably because of lack of interest.

And to tiny tim regarding his comments about economic benefits from farmers being greater than households in terms of broadband:Well that is not quiet correct. See farmers are great, they give us stuff to export. Realisticly I would probably have to say that some of the most imediate economic benefits will come in forms of increased buisness growth due to dramaticly cheaper IT services. Allso less imediatly we might get an increase in the number of satrtup companys. And new small companys might find it easier. This will allso increase the ammount of jobs out their, decreasing unemployment. This will free up some government money that would otherwise go to benefits. But it will take a while to get social, cultural benefits. And when we get those sorts of benefits we will get the economic benefits from people who start out by making open-source content and go on to get good jobs (enriching our comapnies with their skills developed via the FTTH network by making open source content) or start up their own companys that migh grow and become some of the bigest in the world. But the fact is that the benefits resulting from our own creativity will come from all of us regardless of where we live. And I dont see how famers are going to be more creative than non farmers. And it would be expensive to deploy fibre to farms. And there would be very few if any places in the world that has done that.

DonGould

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#178488 17-Nov-2008 22:43

Talkiet: Well, IPstar leaps to mind...

1) To economically benefit the farmers, it needs to be considered in the context of a business connection, not a residential connection. I just know you're going to start quoting a heap of small businesses that get away with ADSL, but that's not the point, and you know it.

http://www.rocketbroadband.co.nz/packages.html

The only package that is close to what I use is the $200/month one - I pay ~$30 for that level of service.

It will have ping times >1sec because IPStar is some 70,000km return trip.

Are framers using this in their droves? Are they finding it of value? What are they doing with it that they find useful? With 1sec lag, what are they doing that they don't find annoying?

Talkiet: IF what farmers want is to have essentially the same broadband access as those in urban areas for the same (or even same magnitude of) cost, then that's being unrealistic.

Are farmers actually calling out for this anyway? I don't see any articles in the news and no posts on forums like this. Where are all these farmers that people keep ranting about? (and yes, I did not your "IF", I think you're right).

Talkiet: And I'm afraid I just don't understand your second question...

Sorry, that was my fault. I have edited out the mistake.

I was asking for specific examples of economic benefit. How is a framer having a 100mbit internet connection in his house going to result in more economic benefit? Who is going to benefit and how?

Will it result in better education which then leads on to him growing more crop faster?
Will it result in his spending more money with service prvoders, eg accountants, lawyers, farm consultants?
Will it result in his spending more time viewing live porn from overseas and spending less time in the fields?
Will it result in his spending more time watching HD movies and spending less time on the farm?

What changes will we see on the farm that justify the community connecting him to a faster net?

I keep reading people say that it 'will benefit' the farmer, but I don't see anyone saying how it will benefit anyone.

Cheers Don

pistolpower

139 posts

Master Geek

#178489 17-Nov-2008 22:44

Talkiet:
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

Yes it costs more but they should still have a minumum level of service if posible. So alternatives should seriously be considered. Perhaps some infastructure exists that allready can or could supply a minimal level of service to these farmers. It does not need to be spectacular but as long as it is useable. Maybe 3mbps up/down in some form of wireless internet.

Companys like telecom probably have cell phone coverage at 99% of new zealand and maybe some of their equipment that needs to be replaced in more dense population areas could be moved out to the rural area and use that somehow to carry internet data instead of cellphone data.
It might be possible to implement difrent adsl techniqes at the exchange to make broadband more reliable at long distances.
Apparently you can have broadband over the power line so maybe this could be an option.
I think most houses have a few phone cables going from the road to the house. Maybe they could have like 3 adsl lines and somehow join them together to work as one good faster internet conection. Might not have the best ping but it would be good or better for downloading i guess. And this might be achieved by fancy routing?
Possibly some farmers groups (fontera etc) could get together and discuss the issue. And then all the farmers groups could then decide on some sort of infastructure that would suit everyone. Then they could chip in and pay up some of the money. That way the farmers pay too.
Perhaps some satelite providers would want to make themselves look good and give these people something. I mean after all if they have spear bandiwdth and want to get a good name and make people happy they could give some farmers cheap access.

But im certain that the new FTTH will not extend out to farmers as they only promised to cover about 70% of people. And thats probably most of the urbanised areas. The rest will cost to much. Let me put it this way, if the government could lay FTTH 2-3 times for about 70% of the population or lay it out to 100% of the population what would u pick. I mean its a lot of money. And they are not running data centres. And they might just have to pay someone for hosting services. So then a syncronous 3mbps up/down or similar connection that was dedicated would be all they would need. The uploading part would be so they can upload to their servers. But to be honoust if I had FTTH for my house and national was uncaped and had no data usage fee I would run a server and host some stuff. Hey maybe people will use the stuff i host

but i live in an urban area. And we do not know if this is what farmers want.

Well I agree with don. But that does not mean I think they should have bad internet. I think that we might be able to find methods of providing them internet that wont cost everyone alot of money. But they will most definitly not be as fast as cable.
And continuing onWell what I would like would be 100mbps connection that is syncronus. So it would have same upload and download spead. 50mbps down/50mbps up. Thats what I want. Oh and the low ping as well as free national content. I dont mind if they limit my international speed. I just want the fast national. And no national data fees. Peer 4 peer enabled peer 2 peer aplications would rule.

Talkiet

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#178492 17-Nov-2008 23:00

pistolpower:
Companys like telecom probably have cell phone coverage at 99% of new zealand and maybe some of their equipment that needs to be replaced in more dense population areas could be moved out to the rural area and use that somehow to carry internet data instead of cellphone data.

No, nothing like 99% of the land area, or even arable land area of NZ.

pistolpower:
It might be possible to implement difrent adsl techniqes at the exchange to make broadband more reliable at long distances.

Not significantly, no. You cannae change the laws of physics. Using the frequency ranges that DSL uses gives pretty deterministic range.

pistolpower:
Apparently you can have broadband over the power line so maybe this could be an option.

Suffers same sort of issues as DSL, and what about the access network?

pistolpower:
I think most houses have a few phone cables going from the road to the house. Maybe they could have like 3 adsl lines and somehow join them together to work as one good faster internet conection. Might not have the best ping but it would be good or better for downloading i guess. And this might be achieved by fancy routing?

But if you're not in the range of DSL to start with this isn't a goer.

pistolpower:
Possibly some farmers groups (fontera etc) could get together and discuss the issue. And then all the farmers groups could then decide on some sort of infastructure that would suit everyone. Then they could chip in and pay up some of the money. That way the farmers pay too.

Been done before - perhaps there's something to the fact that there are only a few expensive options available?

pistolpower:
Perhaps some satelite providers would want to make themselves look good and give these people something. I mean after all if they have spear bandiwdth and want to get a good name and make people happy they could give some farmers cheap access.

Um, so public companies decide to give farmers cheap, perhaps below cost service to make themselves look good? Um, no... Farmers and other people in unserviced areas are where these people make their money. If they gave farmers a good deal so they "looked good", who is left to provide the profit to prevent these businesses going bust?

I'm afraid to say that truly rural broadband is simply always going to be priced significantly higher that urban for a lot of very good reasons.

That isn't to say the government or a benevolent billionaire won't come along and decide that farmers deserve a subsidy and give them free or cheap satellite service, but someone has to pay for it.

And the question from Don remains - what are the farmers going to give to the rest of New Zealand if the government gives them free or cheap broadband? And don't say taxes etc, because if you do, then as a moderately high income earner I want more government subsidies on MY broadband than the students in Dunedin as well.

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.

DonGould

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#178493 17-Nov-2008 23:06

pistolpower: To awnswer your question about FTTH bein a public/private partnership

[snip long rant about ppp] - I know what a ppp is :)

pistolpower: Allso less imediatly we might get an increase in the number of satrtup companys. And new small companys might find it easier. This will allso increase the ammount of jobs out their, decreasing unemployment. This will free up some government money that would otherwise go to benefits. But it will take a while to get social, cultural benefits. And when we get those sorts of benefits we will get the economic benefits from people who start out by making open-source content and go on to get good jobs (enriching our comapnies with their skills developed via the FTTH network by making open source content) or start up their own companys that migh grow and become some of the bigest in the world.

You talk alot about "might, if, maybe". Let's look at what is accually going on rather than random speculation.

http://www.ccnl.co.nz/

CCNL is an example of PPP. $3.5m from BCF (govt) and the ballance to $10.3m from CCC.

3 weeks ago they pushed the fibre down the main road, 200m from my business. We're located in a small shopping center with a doctor, kindy, dairy, dance studio and commerical offices for a number of small businesses. We all pay rates and we all pay tax, so we all paid for the CCNL fibre.

To be connected to it we're going to have to come up with $1500 then $1000 just to connect to an ISP per month. That's before we pay for IP (another $800/month).

I know this because I called CCNL last week and had a chat. Needless to say we won't be calling them back anytime soon.

This is what PPP delivers the small business community in Christchurch.

The CCC expect to get a return on the more than $6m they put in. At just 10% that's $600,000pa.

At $12,000pa to be connected that means they need 50 customers just to cover bank interest on the borrowings.

Australia are working through this process at present and there is growing concern that all that's going to happen is that internet access will become more expensive because of the massive amount of money that people will have to pay for the new fibre network or, even worse, people just won't use the fibre because it's simply to expensive to justify.

Can you show me any proof that PPP is good for fibre and sight a local example where it has resulted in small business getting a better connection at an affordable price?

Cheers Don

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DonGould

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#178494 17-Nov-2008 23:12

Talkiet: what are the farmers going to give to the rest of New Zealand if the government gives them free or cheap broadband?

I'm still waiting to see someone answer that question and I've been waiting for almost 10 years now.

Perhaps there just isn't an answer? :)

Cheers Don

TinyTim

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#178512 18-Nov-2008 08:52

pistolpower:
Realisticly I would probably have to say that some of the most imediate economic benefits will come in forms of increased buisness growth due to dramaticly cheaper IT services. Allso less imediatly we might get an increase in the number of satrtup companys. And new small companys might find it easier. This will allso increase the ammount of jobs out their, decreasing unemployment. This will free up some government money that would otherwise go to benefits.

This is going to come from providing the services to businesses - not homes. (Sure, some people will work at home, whatever.) I brought up farmers as a needy example of businesses because they have fewer options than us in town.

DonGould:
Can you show me any proof that PPP is good for fibre and cite a local example where it has resulted in small business getting a better connection at an affordable price?

Look at any of the fibre PPPs around the country, starting with CityLink in Wellington (tho that's now totally privately owned). Installation $500, 4Mb/s for $200 - great value for a small business. Smartlynx3 up the road is still a PPP and offers similar prices (fibre footprint is still small though).

DonGould:
What can your average farmer get at present and who from?

Many farmers currently have severely limited dialup (9.6, 14.4kb/s due to interference and/or because they are on a microwave system). It's also unreliable and suffers from disconnections (electric fences are notorious for causing interference on phone lines). The farmers with the worst internet connectivity are also the ones who will benefit the most from decent internet - they live furthest from town.

Satellite despite its latency certainly is an answer. Modern satellite systems can reduce the effects of latency.

DonGould:
What economic benefit would be gained by spending a couple of benefit billion to give them [farms] faster net access? Can anyone be specific with examples of how they see the economoy benefiting?

First 'faster' is in the context of slow dialup - all the farmer needs is a few hundred kb/s, they're not after FTTH..

Benefits to NZ:

value of exports rise, international debt decreases, we spend less tax servicing loans, taxes are cut or more is spent on health and education

farmer earns more, pays more taxes (sorry, this is a valid benefit. It's not about subsidising the successful, it's about subsidising those who cannot otherwise receive any of the benefits of broadband)

farmer spends more, we benefit because we sell them supplies

farmer is more efficient, employees more staff, keeps unemployment down

farmer is more efficient, prices drop (wishful thinking when international commodity prices determine what we pay)

farmers don't need to farm marginal land, NZ keeps its green image, tourism industry benefits. Or it can be put to other use like forestry.

Benefits that aren't direct financial benefits:

farmers don't need to farm marginal land, land returns to crown, recreation benefits.

farmers can afford more sustainable farming (diary farmers clean up runoff) - e.g. fishing isn't affected in Lake Taupo, Southlanders can swim in any of their rivers again for the first time in fifteen years. You may laugh but farmers are going to find it much harder to spoil the environment and the only argument they have is cost.

pistolpower

139 posts

Master Geek

#178659 18-Nov-2008 20:03

What I wanted to achieve with the farmers was to make shure that they where not on dial up and those that could not get dial up at least had something. There will not be huge benefits from farmers having fast internet. I would not support FTTH to farmers unless we had some good way of doing it e.g. they where replacing the power lines or some such thing where they where allready going to run wires to the farmers. And even then not funded by the community. The farmers would need to pay alot of it. But all I wanted for the farmers is for them to at least have internet that is above not under the broadband minimum speed. I was worried to that the currently existing copper lines that lead to farms would eventually corode and that our farmers would have a bad life style and not be able to conduct buisness properly. And if farmers life styles become incearsingly worse compared to ours then we will only scare them of. This will result in a decrease of farmers over time.

You do not need to be so negative about my ideas of how we might possible be able to offer at least minimum broadband leavel internet and telecomunications services to farmers. I mean comeon all the numbers where just examples you know. And shorely if we are only planning to get them a budget at least broadband speed access of some kind then we must be able to do it on the cheap. And its not like my ideas are at all rediculous because you never know to you ask. And with the type of attitudes you have displayed about helping others out I should be worried.

I mean if inventors or famouse buisnessmen had listened to the people who said it is imposible then we would not even have the wheel. Im shure people said electicity will not happend, it is impossible to fly and that sewage systems would cost to much and was not neccesary. Would we have a car if the inventor of the car had given up because people said he was dumb. Would we have non-comercial fridge manufacturers before our houses had electricity, I doubt it. Why would someone supply something when there was no way that we could use it. There is allready the demmand for faster internet. Look at japan and gigabit connections for $100 a month. Are we really going to wait for japan to get petabit internet before we get 100mb internet.

And youre being completly unreasonable with your comparison of labour government style ppp to national government style. The Labour Government have a twisted sense of view that giving money to a company to do something is going to improvve the quality of service we get. Well know that just buys someone else assests with tax payer money. And anyone who accepts that is just the type of person who would rip us off. Now under the Labour Government they where going to spend less money on FTTH but the money they spent would be donated to telecom to help them. Well we all know what telecomes dividends are like and their track record. Besides that is only going to upgrade our monopolys network.

Now PPP can come in almost any way. One method is the government donates to a unworthy buiseness to do something that it will never do. That is not what national would do. Under national you would see a more reasonable partnership. Their partnership would involve most of the funding coming from the government. They would try and build it with the help not the oppostion of the telecomunications industry. They would undoubtfully make a deal with telecom who has money to invest in a new fibre network but can not compete with the government in terms of scale. They would recieve 1 maybe 2 billion or some figure of money from telecom that would go towards construction. They would allso have assistance of telecom in building it. And in return telecom may get some limited rights, access, or some sort of economic benefit one would expect from a investment. But it is not likely to majorly affect us. I mean at the end of the day when FTTH comes in telecomes copper network will be worthless in comparision. And any smaller scale network they could produce would not be able to compete with the governments. Now they will take the opportunity to invest in the governments network. Maybe the economic benefits will just be that they recieve a number of special infasturcture bonds. (special being that they are above the allocated ammount available to the public and can only be sold back to the government). Now telecom will have silly demmands at first and as they negotiate they will become more reasonable untill telecom relises that the government is not going to give them anything fancy for a 1/8th investment into the network. Meaning that they will not have 1/8th of the network. And prices and rules over the network will be regulated. It will be open meaning that anyone can plug themselves in for the same price as telecom.

Now if telecom has controll over the network in any way they will probably own something like a small bit of the pipe. Less than the 1/8th they put in. But the labour style corporate wealthare is a disgrace to ppp and should not even count. Unfortunatly I did not write the dictionary. Those companys that you keep sighting as failures of ppp are failures thats all. Their not failures because of ppp their failures because of the way the government is in a partnership with them. Im just gona say it here. Corporate wealthere, the likes of CNN and other PPP fibre groups you mention as being no good to us is a failure and a result of labours socilisim gone wrong. You would hope that a socilast would not accidently give a buissness what is essentially a benefit but they had. It promoted unfair competition and I am shure laws where made that benefited those companies lucky enough to recive the benefit but negativly affected others. Now you gota admire their attempt to create competion but that does not work.

And yes better than dial up broadband level internet has many benefits to farmers. Let me give you an example. Say you had a problem with a computer or a fridge or a car or anything. Say you went online and their where other people their. Well they might have had the same problem or know all about cars. Well then you might have just saved yourself alot of time. But they might have sited several how to, or videos about that issue on you tube. Now the farmer can not use youtube because he is on dial up. Now because of that he can not start his tractor or some peace of equipment untill the mechanic gets out eventually. 4 days later the mechanic gets out and says it was just a bit of dirt or some easily correctable problem. The farmer lost value in his livestock/crops because of that in some farmerish type way i guess. Maybe he couldnt get the feed out their or something.

Or say the farmer was wondering whether or not he should use a new irregation system well he can only ask local farmers because our farmer doesnt like to use dial up. And they keep siting you tube and websites that take hours to load. And so instead of being able to talk to farmers on a farmers forrum or something about it he has alot less advice and grounds to go on. He will probably make bad choices that result in less productivity than makeing the right choices. And he would not here about new farming techniques and other things farmers have problems with in other countrys.

What if the farmer was worried that several cows had developed an [insert a contageous really bad cow disease here] and there where you tube videos made by other farmers who had ones that looked like they had this desease but didn't. Maybe their is some way of telling but our poor farmer who has not had the best of times with his last few seasons might be a bit cash tight and doesnt want to call a vet. And so wallah we might have foot and mouth disease here and it might have been prevented if the farmer could load a youtube page without waiting for 10 minutes to see the loading box for the video that takes forever.

And don I did not mean to imply we spend billions. Maybe millions but not billions. And I did not say 100s of millions but i allso did not say it wasnt hundreds of millions. But I meant to imply that they should at least have broadband. We need to try and improve their services. But just because where trying doesnt mean its going to be possible on budgets that are reasonable and not billions of dollars. Reasonable considering it only will benefit a few people. But considering they are still our people. And that they do contribute alot to our society via exports. But allso keeping in mind that it will likely cost more to maintain the more we spend on it. Now doing it on the cheap to provide a miniimum eg broadband minumum level of service would be our first goal. Hey maybe we will discover a way to do it without investing in infastructure at all. Maybe someone needs to flick a magic switch that no one knows about. But trying can not do them harm. Now don if our government decided along time ago that we would aim to be a pathetic country years behind any other in the world and along this line of thinking did not invest in roads instead made 5 lane footpaths while keeping the option of taking out a loan to put half an extra footpath lane in then we would all be living like 3rd world people.

And how would you feel as a farmer if government took all your profits, supermarkets decided against paying you reasonable pricess for your produce, and your $80 a month rural dial up connection was going to cost another $40 next year because of inflation. If that dial up conection was only 1/50th speed dial up and the lag was so high anyway that you allways timed out. Your section is worth a bit and you would like to have dialup if you moved to the city because its so much better than what you got now. If that was me I would either have been really depereased and killed myself or moved to the city and sold my farm of to some sucker silly enough to buy it. Now if that hapened and all our farmers left we would be in trouble. Even worse they might take their money and go to australia.

DonGould

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#178688 18-Nov-2008 21:28

pistolpower: You do not need to be so negative about my ideas

TinyTim: Benefits to NZ: ...

I think we [1] all need a clue...

Then I wondered over the the AuIT site and sitting right there was a clue :)

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24666488-15306,00.html

Cheers Don

[1] I view this as a discussion to explore ideas and views. I make no claim that I have any better idea than anyone else. :) I'm not down on pistolpowers ideas because I think he's wrong, I just don't feel like any of us have expressed what's right and I'm really keen that we keep pushing each other untill we do get to what is right. :)

DonGould

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#178690 18-Nov-2008 21:39

DonGould:

I think we [1] all need a clue...

Clue 2: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1089686#r5

Cheers Don

Talkiet

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#178697 18-Nov-2008 22:08

pistolpower: [deleted stuff]

To your massively long post...

Yes, I agree farmers should have access to broadband.

They have access today. It costs more than a residential ADSL account.

They can deal with it. They are running a business and they are a long way from the network.

That's just the way it is.

TANSTAAFL

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.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#178700 18-Nov-2008 22:19

TinyTim: This is going to come from providing the services to businesses - not homes.

See www.babyonthemove.co.nz

Can anyone tell me what it costs to rent a stroller for 2 kids for 5 days in Wellington?

If you want to talk about economic value then you have to think about the home market and not the business one. Business will sort it self out.

The current problem is that businesses know that customers don't have fast net at home so they're not putting in the investment to get faster BB in their business. It's just not a vehicle to get to their customers in NZ yet.

Did everyone catch the TV3 article last night about bb performance: http://www.3news.co.nz/ScienceTech/Story/tabid/412/articleID/80280/cat/73/Default.aspx

Telecom: Only 60% of the average speed of the fastest provider. The fastest provider is only 65% of the basic ADSL1 spec limit and 26% of the ADSL2+ spec limit. The Government has ordered a min of 10mbit - they're currently at 31% of that.

See my point. The business market knows that investing in more net is just pointless as customers can't get to it.

TinyTim:
Look at any of the fibre PPPs around the country, starting with CityLink in Wellington (tho that's now totally privately owned).

Yes I will grat you that CityLink is a runaway sucess. However it's not a government PPP. It's a council/private partnership. It was started with 17 investors who put in $5,000 each.

What's really interesting about CityLink is the value that local data delivered. CL started at a time when we didn't have good conectivity to the rest of the world (err... do we even now?)

TinyTim:

Satellite despite its latency certainly is an answer. Modern satellite systems can reduce the effects of latency.

You raised some good points. I wonder how much is being used out there now?

Benefits to NZ:
value of exports rise, international debt decreases, we spend less tax servicing loans, taxes are cut or more is spent on health and education

I don't see the link between faster bb and value of exports rising. People keep suggesting this should happen, but I don't see the link. Can you suggest some examples like pistol has tried to do? (and no, I don't think his are correct either - I don't think he's heard of MAF or knows what a farm advisor is)

farmer earns more, pays more taxes (sorry, this is a valid benefit. It's not about subsidising the successful, it's about subsidising those who cannot otherwise receive any of the benefits of broadband)

Yes, I agree that this is the obvious follow on. However without proving 1, how do we make this leap?

farmer spends more, we benefit because we sell them supplies

Hummm... are farmers spending more in ways that we're all catching the spend? What are they buying? Are they just buying more technology from overseas to reduce cost of production and sale price that they then pass on to the overseas buyer?

farmer is more efficient, employees more staff, keeps unemployment down

Hummm.... ok, but are farmers employing more staff or are they going to use the net to employ less staff and do more with technology and less with people?

farmer is more efficient, prices drop (wishful thinking when international commodity prices determine what we pay)

You're right, the thinking is wishful. Commodity prices are going to keep going up because the demand for good food is growing with the growing educated population.

farmers don't need to farm marginal land, NZ keeps its green image, tourism industry benefits. Or it can be put to other use like forestry.

Hummm... see above, demand for food is growing. In the EU they've been putting more pressure on farms to grow bio-fuel. There's going to be a growing demand for good produce, I don't see how faster internet to farms is going to impact this down in any way.

Benefits that aren't direct financial benefits:

farmers don't need to farm marginal land, land returns to crown, recreation benefits.
farmers can afford more sustainable farming (diary farmers clean up runoff) - e.g. fishing isn't affected in Lake Taupo, Southlanders can swim in any of their rivers again for the first time in fifteen years. You may laugh but farmers are going to find it much harder to spoil the environment and the only argument they have is cost.

I agree that those things are great ideas, but how do you see faster BB tieing them together? If you see my arguments above, how do you tie the two together? Assume I'm right, then I don't see how the two go hand in hand. If you think my arguments are wrong, then I can see how there might be a link... but do you see the world wanting less food anytime soon?

Cheers Don

OT: Why does GZ seem to time out and not put your post in the right place (or at all) if you take a while to click post?

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#178704 18-Nov-2008 22:44

Wow, talk about power posting! Dude, less is more :)

pistolpower: What I wanted to achieve with the farmers was to make shure that they where not on dial up and those that could not get dial up at least had something.

It's already been done - satelite. As someone else already said, yes, it costs more, but not that much more.

pistolpower: There will not be huge benefits from farmers having fast internet.

Wrong. There is huge economic and social benefit from farmers and all rural people having fast internet. Just no one here has outlined and backed up what it is yet. Yes, I've got a few ideas and I iluded to them via the links I posted earlier.

pistolpower:
I would not support FTTH to farmers unless we had some good way of doing it e.g. they where replacing the power lines or some such thing where they where allready going to run wires to the farmers.

Fibre on powerlines is the way to get there, it's fast and the polls are already there. While you're on the way, with your truck of fibre, you need to install mobile towers and put wireless broadband in at the same time. Think LTE with 30+mbit.

pistolpower: And even
then not funded by the community. The farmers would need to pay alot of
it.

The community need to 100% fund it. It's the community that are going to get the return directly now and mostly in the future.

The community also need to 100% own it. The community also need to get 100% access to its entire capacity from day one.

pistolpower: Are we really going to wait for japan to get petabit internet before we get 100mb internet.

What's the population in that space? What's the public demand for service in that space? What's the uptake of service?

In the suburb I live in, I'm the only person on the TC HFC node using internet. There are pleanty of people using TV, they just don't see data as worth paying for.

And youre being completly unreasonable with your comparison of labour government style ppp to national government style.

We have yet to see what National are actually going to do. So far I've speculated that it will get all tied up like it has in AU. What was meant to take 3 months has so far taken 9.

Or say the farmer was wondering whether or not he should use a new irregation system well he can only ask local farmers because our farmer doesnt like to use dial up.

Clearly you don't know who MAF are or what a farm advisor is.

And don I did not mean to imply we spend billions.

You should be. We should be spending $10billion on running FTTN in the suburbs and FTTH in the rural areas. We should also be building a LTE network as well if Vodafone and Telecom won't step up and do it (but I suspect they will).

then we would all be living like 3rd world people.

And there's the reason why we should be putting $10b in to a 100% owned fibre owned network. We are a first world nation! Do we want to stay this way?

Cheers Don

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