The new regulatory system for UFB should encourage Chorus and the LFCs to expand coverage further and further. They will be able to spread the costs out across all their customers and generate a fair return on it - not from the people connecting at the edges but averaged out over everyone

Talkiet:

 

With 30 seconds of googling I found figures that suggest about $1000 per household passed was funded by taxpayers for UFB.

 

Just a note, while this may be the amount of funds that is being provided the actual "true cost" of UFB is much lower as a lot of these funds are interest free loans due to be paid back by 2035. The true cost is mainly the interest charges on those loans. The actual true cost per household for the initial UFB is ~$400. For UFB2 and 2+ it's around $~1,300. This is based on the amounts disclosed here, UFB1 reaching 1.5million households and businesses, and UFB2 and 2+ reaching over 200,000 premises.

littlehead:

 

Talkiet:

 

With 30 seconds of googling I found figures that suggest about $1000 per household passed was funded by taxpayers for UFB.

 

 

Just a note, while this may be the amount of funds that is being provided the actual "true cost" of UFB is much lower as a lot of these funds are interest free loans due to be paid back by 2035. The true cost is mainly the interest charges on those loans. The actual true cost per household for the initial UFB is ~$400. For UFB2 and 2+ it's around $~1,300. This is based on the amounts disclosed here, UFB1 reaching 1.5million households and businesses, and UFB2 and 2+ reaching over 200,000 premises.

 

Thanks for that - I knew there were financial shenanigans involved which made it even better (which is why I linked the specific reference I found so if someone cared they could fact check - thanks!)

I shudder to think what the figures would be for the last 13%, last 10%, last 5%, last 1% (!!!!!)

Cheers - N

I think I should have explained myself a little better :)

I do agree that there are *some* places which are impractical to serve with fibre. Of course the laws of physics can't be disobeyed. However, I also think that our current target of 87% is unacceptable as the importance of high-speed internet increases. We can't leave 13% of the country behind.

Imagine if we left 13% of the country without telephone or power - surely you'd agree that such a target would be unacceptable, no?

What I propose is basically an equalling of the networks - if you have telephone and power right now, you should get fibre eventually. Yes, this will be hideously expensive in totality, but the alternative is leaving isolated communities to become even more isolated, impoverished and disenfranchised. That's a failure in nation-building.

Previous generations had their fibre - both telephone and power networks are stupendous in scope and horrifyingly expensive to build. But those generations agreed that in order to build a fair and just society, the cost was justified.

The international comparisons are, IMO, worthless. Yes, everyone else is doing worse than us - that doesn't mean we can just not worry about our underserved communities.

ripdog:

 

I think I should have explained myself a little better :)

 

I do agree that there are *some* places which are impractical to serve with fibre. Of course the laws of physics can't be disobeyed. However, I also think that our current target of 87% is unacceptable as the importance of high-speed internet increases. We can't leave 13% of the country behind.

 

Imagine if we left 13% of the country without telephone or power - surely you'd agree that such a target would be unacceptable, no?

 

What I propose is basically an equalling of the networks - if you have telephone and power right now, you should get fibre eventually. Yes, this will be hideously expensive in totallity, but the alternative is leaving isolated communities to become even more isolated, impoverished and disenfranchised. That's a failure in nation-building.

 

The international comparisons are, IMO, worthless. Yes, everyone else is doing worse than us - that doesn't mean we can just not worry about our underserved communities.

 

Actually, no - I would NOT agree that 13% without power or phone is unacceptable - because I don't know the cost to serve that percentage of people if the infrastructure had to be built today... Again, if someone decides to build in the middle of nowhere then they can helicopter in their own offgrid power and batteries and a satellite phone.

My point is I don't know the number, and unless you've done detailed research on the cost of serving the remaining 13% with BB in relatively small steps, then you're holding an emotional view, not a reasoned one.

I believe that there are areas today served by Power and Phone that if they were new builds, wouldn't get served through taxpayer dollars. Holding new infrastructure up to a completely differrent economic environment and cost structure from decades ago is naive.

A big reason we're doing well is because the whole thing has been reasonably well executed, with achievable and economic targets set along the way.

You are proposing spending a truly eye watering amount of money on a very small number of people... (To be clear, much of that 13% are still in the target of future RBI - just not fibre)

I'll concede that emotionally and from a feelgood perspective, you're describing a nirvana, but it's just not practical and there's always going to be a line drawn. I think the number for fibre is probably closer to 13% than 0% - and various wireless solutions are going to make a pretty big dent in the group that won't get taxpayer funded fibre.

Your statement that international comparisons are worthless is IMHO, laughable.

Cheers - N

Hmm. Decades of stupendous increases in productivity and technology, dramatic increases in GDP, huge strides in living standards... and less money available to build essential networks.

Who spent all the money?

Our predecessors knew that building a nation cost stupendous amounts of money, but they did it because it was necessary.

Of course I haven't done a detailed cost study on expanding the fibre network to equality with power/phone.

I believe that there are areas today served by Power and Phone that if they were new builds, wouldn't get served through taxpayer dollars.

But these new builds still benefit tremendously from past govt investments in the power/phone networks. Running the cables 2km from your neighbour is dramatically cheaper than running it 50km from the nearest town - and you know that without 'uneconomic' past expenditure, it's possible that even that small town 50km away might have never received power or phone. Of course, NZ would be a dramatically poorer country in that case.

Our current wealth comes from our past willingness to build networks. Nobody could build a modern and economic farm without power and phone, even though both networks were utterly uneconomical at the time of build.

Your statement that international comparisons are worthless is IMHO, laughable.

What value do you gather from comparisons with countries which haven't even tried? Because basically no countries have tried in the same way that we have. They all just say "let's give up and leave it to the free market". Then that fails, and what do we learn?

If I lived within 500m of SH1, should I be able to get fibre?

BlinkyBill:

 

If I lived within 500m of SH1, should I be able to get fibre?

 

Not necessarily, no. 

BlinkyBill:

 

If I lived within 500m of SH1, should I be able to get fibre?

 

• Not necessarily, SH1 goes through some remarkably empty country (e.g. Taihape to Waiouru)
• If you live within 500m from a rural school or a marae, I say 'Yes', and the government should 100% subsidise the cost of getting fibre to the school/marae if it hasn't already.
• If there's a group of half a dozen or more residences in a rural area within 5GHz-wireless range of one another, then I think the taxpayer should 100% subsidise the cost of getting a community antenna with backhaul (not necessarily fibre) of ~50Mb/s per connected user capacity

I actually think it's vitally important for NZ's continued progress that primary industries and work-from-home rural commercial enterprise have reliable and inexpensive access to at least the 'UFB basic' 30/10 Internet service in 2020, with a view to upgrading it to 50/20 by 2023 and 100/50 by 2025.
I also think it's really important to vastly increase the 'Rural Black Spot' cellular coverage to all State Highways with more than, say, 1500 vehicle movements a day, with the intention to moving that criterion down to say 750/day in 2023 and 500/day in 2025.
These two objectives are mutually supportive

It's said the government's got $11Billion extra to spend over the next four years. I can't think of a better way to spend a couple of hundred million than by making our rural heartland a place where technology isn't "something that townies have"

[/rant]

ripdog:

 

I think I should have explained myself a little better :)

 

I do agree that there are *some* places which are impractical to serve with fibre. Of course the laws of physics can't be disobeyed. However, I also think that our current target of 87% is unacceptable as the importance of high-speed internet increases. We can't leave 13% of the country behind.

 

Imagine if we left 13% of the country without telephone or power - surely you'd agree that such a target would be unacceptable, no?

 

What I propose is basically an equalling of the networks - if you have telephone and power right now, you should get fibre eventually. Yes, this will be hideously expensive in totality, but the alternative is leaving isolated communities to become even more isolated, impoverished and disenfranchised. That's a failure in nation-building.

 

Previous generations had their fibre - both telephone and power networks are stupendous in scope and horrifyingly expensive to build. But those generations agreed that in order to build a fair and just society, the cost was justified.

 

The international comparisons are, IMO, worthless. Yes, everyone else is doing worse than us - that doesn't mean we can just not worry about our underserved communities.

 

Except that 13% isn't being left behind. They are being served with a different technology under RBI. That is the point of RBI - to serve communities that can not be economically served by fibre. On top of this there is an active WISP industry serving less dense areas.

There is significantly higher per capita investment by the tax payers in RBI. Is it the same as fibre - no. Is it a reasonable approximation? Largely yes.

The argument that international comparisons are worthless is farcical. How do you determine what is reasonable and economic other than by looking at what is out there and what can be done practically.

What is the level of investment that you think is practical? Another $500 million or $1 billion? 

Handle9: Where is the benefit to the 87% of the population who contributed to RBI and can't access it?

Presumably you got UFB instead.

ripdog:

 

Imagine if we left 13% of the country without telephone or power - surely you'd agree that such a target would be unacceptable, no?

 

If you live rurally and want power you have to pay for it. It costs circa $20k from memory to bring it a few hundred metres and add a transformer. A few orders of magnitude less for copper, but a similar story. User pays.

boosacnoodle:

Handle9: Where is the benefit to the 87% of the population who contributed to RBI and can't access it?

Presumably you got UFB instead.

PolicyGuy:

 

I actually think it's vitally important for NZ's continued progress that primary industries and work-from-home rural commercial enterprise have reliable and inexpensive access to at least the 'UFB basic' 30/10 Internet service in 2020, with a view to upgrading it to 50/20 by 2023 and 100/50 by 2025.
I also think it's really important to vastly increase the 'Rural Black Spot' cellular coverage to all State Highways with more than, say, 1500 vehicle movements a day, with the intention to moving that criterion down to say 750/day in 2023 and 500/day in 2025.
These two objectives are mutually supportive

 

It's said the government's got $11Billion extra to spend over the next four years. I can't think of a better way to spend a couple of hundred million than by making our rural heartland a place where technology isn't "something that townies have"

 

I'd be surprised if your suggested "basic" 30/10 speed target gets anywhere near being met by the end of 2020.

As for 100/50, how may extra cell towers would that take?

Apparently the government wants "to support a communications environment that provides high-quality and affordable services for all New Zealanders ".

Who decides what counts as "high-quality"?

And shouldn't the definition of "high-quality" also address the issues of data caps, ping times and collapses in speed during peak hours?

The original RBI target of 5mbps looks laughable now and that's only 10 years old. What will high quality look like in another 10 or 20 years?

And how do the economics of fibre vs wireless stack up when you have to go back and upgrade cell towers every 5-10 years and keep building new ones to keep up with the moving target of what's considered to be a reasonable minimum speed? 

When I read these threads I find myself being reminded of how, well, geeky, geekzone is.

You're all strongly IT literate, your expectations of technology and of Internet are high - perhaps with some justification, but not as much as you probably think you have.

There will always be places where the connectivity is simply not going to be as good. As someone else said - there are other benefits to rural living, but high speed internet services usually aren't one of them.

A reasonable expectation would be to have 'enough' bandwidth.

The definition of 'enough' has evolved with people's baseline expectations of what they want to use the service for.

Very basic web and email services were functional over dial-up.

These days dial-up would barely be suitable for anything.

A 128k/s connection could be enough to pass store-and-forward protocols. You could run a low-volume email platform on that quite successfully. Just nothing real-time.

A 1M connection would probably let you websurf for general things.

A 5M connection has enough for a full-HD video stream with a little left over. Plenty of xDSL out there probably runs at that rate still, especially on the fringes.

The 30-50Mbit brackets probably cover VDSL, low rate fibre and some RBI variations as well. That's enough for a few HD streams and other activity all at once. I'd go so far as to say that (currently) that's more than 'enough'  I think 'enough' is likely to be somewhere between 5Mbit and 50Mbit/s 'right now'.  For a typical household.  Remember TV is still available over satellite and terrestrial broadcast, remember then that most internet service is also subject to a bit of time-division.. not everyone's using all of it, all at once, you get economies of scale in terms of the number of users and when they place demand on the system.

What'll push 'enough' into a larger number? More video streaming, higher resolution photos, the gradual replacement of 'other' broadcast/comms methods (like TV, POTS phones, etc) with IP-based replacements causing more and more congestion and forcing fatter pipes to allow for more simultaneous usage.

Some level of government subsidy in terms of 'social norms' makes sense. Schools, Marae, Local government facilities deliver much higher ROI in terms of benefit-to-users and so make sense for subsidy. But for people in more distant, more expensive areas to service, you should only expect 'enough', if even that.

You live within 500m of SH1? Cool. Are you gonna run your own buried trunking that distance? Not cheap. Why should anyone else pay for it, if they're not realising the benefits of it?