FTTP/FTTH getting closer. Is NZ on the right track?

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webwat

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Topic # 60805 3-May-2010 17:31

I did a bit more research about government broadband initiative, its getting closer now... Ministry of Economic Development is still reviewing "Fibre To The Premise" proposals they received by the cutoff date last month. Will be interesting to see if any proposals are successful, and whether they get a smoother ride than Australia's FTTH programme.

The "Invitation to Participate" (ITP) invited potential partners to co-invest with the government for 100Mbps broadband in one or more areas. Proposals must meet criteria for the "Specified Layer 1 Service" but there may be extra "alternative" proposals as well, and the selected partners would form a "Local Fibre Co" (LFC) at arms length from its shareholders, ie being a self-contained entity with its own premises and staff. Crown Fibre Holdings would be a shareholder for each Fibre Co's first 10 years of operation.

Objectives for FTTP in NZ

Directed to open-access infrastructure.

Focussed on building new fibre within each area.

Ensuring affordable broadband services.

Selection of proposals that meet ITP criteria.

The target is coverage for 75% of nationwide population, including centres as small as 10,000 residents. Proposals for places that have non-viable areas are allowed to exclude parts of the area and/or include neighbouring areas.

A Local Fibre Co may provide:

Any Layer 1 Service in addition to the Specified Layer 1 Service (physical optics); and

Any Layer 2 Service (electronic network traffic), but only where CFH consents and the Specified Layer 2 Service is to be provided by the LFC.

Specified Layer 1 Service

Uncontended 100Mbps on a single strand past each subscriber in the area within 10 years, and to greenfield developments and priority users within 6 years (including schools, healthcare and bandwidth concentrations eg cell sites).

Backhaul to "Points of Interconnect" within the area is also included for government funding.

Government contributions are averaged by Cost Per Premises Passed and Cost Per Premises Connected.

Being an open network, Access Seekers such as ISPs must be allowed to provide their own Layer 2 access nodes and backhaul at the CO cabinet.

Demarcs for the Specified Service are the optical terminations (ie plugs) at the subscriber premises and on the Access Seeker's CO equipment.

Fibre Cos might propose 100Base-BX Ethernet as the Specified Layer 2 Service, allowing Access Seekers to innovate with alternative services. Some may also provide CATV signals like FreeView on the 1550nm wavelength to add value and save backhaul traffic.

I can't find any minimum backhaul contention, so providers will hopefully try to differentiate their offerings. The government also expects Local Fibre Co and Access Seekers to innovate for different requirements of each type of customer. For example, critical user networks might need faster links, geographic diversity and/or point-to-point links. I'm not sure if Access Seekers have to provide the Specified Layer 2 Service, but will be interesting to see what else they offer.

It looks pretty open on who is allowed to become an access seeker, so user groups could sign up to provide private networks to their own members.

Questions:

Does anyone have some ideas about whether 100Mbps service will be attractive to households? What price would people be willing to pay for it?

How much speed would be enough for you? What performance would you expect for international traffic if you got connected?

Whats a fair install fee to join up? What freebies would make it worthwhile?

What would it take to convince landlords to approve the connection?

What extra services would you expect? Would you have a good enough TV if the new ONT came with a coax TV outlet?

If you got disconnected for copyright infringement, would you reconnect with another provider?

What sort of home business opportunities could you see becoming attractive with fast internet at your place?

If your office had a faster connection at the right price, would you invest more into offsite backup, ecommerce or any other applications? Whats the "next big thing"?

And will there be a serious shortage of fibre contractors??

Qualified in business, certified in fibre, stuck in copper, have to keep going ^_^

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Reply # 326153 3-May-2010 18:48

1. Does anyone have some ideas about whether 100Mbps service will be attractive to households? What price would people be willing to pay for it?

I would have my house connected with a 100Mbps connection. I would pay almost anything for 100/100 (probably up to $250 - $300 p/m) but far less if it was only 100/50 or 100/25 (maybe $50 - $80 p/m).

2. How much speed would be enough for you? What performance would you expect for international traffic if you got connected?

I think 100Mbps is probably overkill for average home use _at the moment_ but I like to work with data overseas and would very much like to be able to shift files at that speed. Upload is equally important to me in this equation. Data throughput needs to be uncapped. There is no way users could stay under a 40GB cap with this kind of bandwidth available to them.

I would expect consistent performance, if not always full speed, from the fibre. I would like key locations such as Europe, the USA and Canada to have very reliable connections which do not drop off randomly throughout the month (Telecom, anyone?) This would probably require some kind of minimum contention ratio for international traffic and national backhaul. I would pay a premium price for this though.

3. Whats a fair install fee to join up? What freebies would make it worthwhile?

I would pay up to $300 for installation of the equipment to my house (assuming standard home, residential area). I'm not entirely sure what equipment will be needed (ONT, new modem/router, cabling?) but would like that to be offered free of charge/subsidised (sort of an early adopter deal).

4. What would it take to convince landlords to approve the connection?

Well as long as their walls and yards remain intact and you can show that the value of the property will likely increase I do not think they will object.

5. What extra services would you expect? Would you have a good enough TV if the new ONT came with a coax TV outlet?

I might consider an IPTV service but other than that I just want faster internet. I can get UHF Freeview (have an HDTV as well) so unless IPTV can offer better than 1080i streaming then I'd probably ignore that as well.

6. If you got disconnected for copyright infringement, would you reconnect with another provider?

If I was disconnected for copyright infringement I would be shocked initially but yes, I'd most likely join with another provider assuming my current one did not want me anymore.

7. What sort of home business opportunities could you see becoming attractive with fast internet at your place?

Mainly the option of working from home would become attractive. I can't think of any business cases which would depend on an 100Mbps internet connection (perhaps website host :P) but my imagination is lacking this evening.

8. If your office had a faster connection at the right price, would you invest more into offsite backup, ecommerce or any other applications? Whats the "next big thing"?

My current employer has a very small online presence currently. I would definitely encourage them into e-commerce (they should be already *rolls eyes*). Offsite backup is already implemented though.

9. And will there be a serious shortage of fibre contractors??

I think if this plan goes ahead there will be a shortage. I can see schools, hospitals etc... etc... being connected before the clamoring army of geeks who will want this service but the initial demand will wear off if international and national bandwidth constraints do not increase inline with the service offered (we can't get a decent ADSL2+ speed internationally so how can we even consider speeding that up four times?)

Kyanar

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Reply # 326157 3-May-2010 19:15

Bear in mind, folks, that VDSL is coming this year with a theoretical maximum speed of 54Mb/s - and Telecom Wholesale intends to treat anything short of 40Mb/s as a technical fault. This should affect expectations from the new fibre networks - I see no reason why the fibre should be expensive and capped to the absolutely puny speeds they currently are (see: Vector Fibre) with that sort of speed available affordably on VDSL over copper wires.

I finally have fibre! Had to leave the country to get it though.

Cymro

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Reply # 326177 3-May-2010 20:07

Kyanar: Bear in mind, folks, that VDSL is coming this year with a theoretical maximum speed of 54Mb/s - and Telecom Wholesale intends to treat anything short of 40Mb/s as a technical fault. This should affect expectations from the new fibre networks - I see no reason why the fibre should be expensive and capped to the absolutely puny speeds they currently are (see: Vector Fibre) with that sort of speed available affordably on VDSL over copper wires.

Incorrect, anything below 15Mb/s down 5Mb/s up will be treated as a fault according to the industry informer mail.

Screeb

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Reply # 326187 3-May-2010 20:52

Kyanar: Telecom Wholesale intends to treat anything short of 40Mb/s as a technical fault.

Uh, what? Mind giving a reference for that? Unless Telecom intends on classifying my distance from the exchange as a "technical fault" and then doing something about it, I can't see that happening. At my distance, my speed would top out at approximately 25Mbps. The suburb I'm in has already been cabinetised (evidently I'm close enough to the exchange that I'm not worthy of one).

There's also a big difference between a theoretical maximum and speed in practice - I have yet to see an ADSL2+ line go >20Mbps in NZ, for instance.

Edit:

Cymro:
Incorrect, anything below 15Mb/s down 5Mb/s up will be treated as a fault according to the industry informer mail.

Now that's a bit more reasonable, but what about the people who are >2.5Km from an exchange or cabinet?

sbiddle

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Reply # 326207 3-May-2010 21:57

Screeb:
Kyanar: Telecom Wholesale intends to treat anything short of 40Mb/s as a technical fault.

Uh, what? Mind giving a reference for that? Unless Telecom intends on classifying my distance from the exchange as a "technical fault" and then doing something about it, I can't see that happening. At my distance, my speed would top out at approximately 25Mbps. The suburb I'm in has already been cabinetised (evidently I'm close enough to the exchange that I'm not worthy of one).

There's also a big difference between a theoretical maximum and speed in practice - I have yet to see an ADSL2+ line go >20Mbps in NZ, for instance.

Edit:

Cymro:
Incorrect, anything below 15Mb/s down 5Mb/s up will be treated as a fault according to the industry informer mail.

Now that's a bit more reasonable, but what about the people who are >2.5Km from an exchange or cabinet?

You won't get more than 20Mbps due to the SNR targets. 24Mbps is not so much a theoretical maximum but a target that is really only possible under ideal situations. 17-18Mbps is certainly very possible for the majority of people who have been cabinetised (or using ULL circuits from Orcon etc) and plenty of people are getting these sorts of speeds.

wreck90

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Reply # 326214 3-May-2010 22:17

Currently my telecom adsl2 is getting 18,059kbps, downstream.

I am around 30 meters from the cabinet.

Pretty happy, but 100mbps is better.

Surely on fiber, they could get way more than 100mbps? Why is it such low speed on fiber?

Even the latest dsl technology has just been maxed out to 300mbps.

sbiddle

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Reply # 326217 3-May-2010 22:32

wreck90: Currently my telecom adsl2 is getting 18,059kbps, downstream.

I am around 30 meters from the cabinet.

Pretty happy, but 100mbps is better.

Surely on fiber, they could get way more than 100mbps? Why is it such low speed on fiber?

Even the latest dsl technology has just been maxed out to 300mbps.

The G in GPON is short for Gigabit - but there is no demand or need to offer speeds anything close to this to 99% of cases. Backhaul is always the major determining factor in offering such speeds.

Kyanar

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Reply # 326220 3-May-2010 22:53

Oh, the Stuff article was incorrect. They've since reworded their statement about 40Mb/s. It used to say that was the fault threshold, now it just says that they'll treat "slow" speeds as the fault threshold, with 40Mb/s as the theoretical maximum.

That'll teach me for believing a technology story on Stuff.

I finally have fibre! Had to leave the country to get it though.

uktuatara

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Reply # 326266 4-May-2010 09:03

Having Fibre to your home, is not going to change the speeds you browse at internationally. This is NZ Infrastructure.

Also, other than moving large video files, I do not know of a consumer grade application that will benefit from having more SPEED. Fibre will of course provide a more stable connection, therefore things like VOIP etc will run smoothly. Even a FullHD video stream wouldn't gte near to hitting a cap of 100 Mbps.

Having recently being upgraded to a cabinet, using ADSL2+ I regulalry download files at 900 Kbps+

I'm still not sold on the fibre initiative, yep it's a nice to have, but will it drive our economy to greater heights? Are we being held back by our 'poor' boradband access ... I really don;t think this is the case. I still think that whatever the merits of having this network ... it is political posturing, something National can pin their name to.

Will I turn down a fibre to connection to my house? ARE YOU KIDDING? :)

stuzzo

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Reply # 326302 4-May-2010 10:21

Looking first at future needs/uses for high speed Internet I would think:

-Video Conferencing/Videophones\Telephony.

-Requirements of moving to cloud computing ie streamed music & video & gaming.

-Decentralization of business and work from home.

While most of these could be handled by existing & future ADSL type services I would wonder whether copper can meet the total bandwidth requirements of multiple video/data streams and the reliability needed where every appliance in a house and business are Internet enabled. I would think it would be a waste of time putting in fibre that wasn't able to be gigabit enabled in the future.

As far as what people are prepared to pay I would say about what they pay now to a greater or lesser extent depending on need but technology has always trended to provide more for the same price over time as long as I've been alive so I don't see that as a great issue. It is really about being able to provide the initial capital investment which business may not be prepared or capable of doing.

I currently pay about $200 a month for Homeline, Internet (1.5m/bit) and Sky and I would expect this to be all provided by Internet based service in the future.

The other thing about high speed and capacity data services to all is that it can provide great downstream efficiencies to people ie not having to use the car so much, not having to have physical media and reduced hardware needs, better access to services and medical care. To me getting high capacity to the home is a no-brainer but there is still a nagging doubt about the best way to do it.

cyril7

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Reply # 326376 4-May-2010 11:55

While most of these could be handled by existing & future ADSL type services I would wonder whether copper can meet the total bandwidth requirements of multiple video/data streams and the reliability needed where every appliance in a house and business are Internet enabled. I would think it would be a waste of time putting in fibre that wasn't able to be gigabit enabled in the future.

I think you will find that when copper is deployed in a short tail situation (as the current FTTN rollout is doing) its performance wrt to reliability and subject to interference, noise and the contention ratio in the aggregation backhaul that feeds it, (either as applied now or can be upgraded in future) makes it a far more stable and capable product, compared to the DSL services we have been use to in the past 8-10yrs

Cyril

webwat

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Reply # 326419 4-May-2010 12:29

wreck90: Currently my telecom adsl2 is getting 18,059kbps, downstream.

I am around 30 meters from the cabinet.

Pretty happy, but 100mbps is better.

Surely on fiber, they could get way more than 100mbps? Why is it such low speed on fiber?

Even the latest dsl technology has just been maxed out to 300mbps.

Despite Telecom's VDSL hype, phone lines are not capable of faster speeds at distance. VDSL speeds drop quite dramatically with distance, and its down to 20-25Mbps speeds at 1000m from the cabinet depending on wiring. VDSL might offer some competition to fibre but probably not reliable enough for anything critical due to customer modems being more difficult to test remotely whenever theres a fault.

The fibre itself is good for 10Gbps now, although a single strand would need a multiplexer and really expensive electronics that aren't designed for home use. If you need Gigabit, you also need extra backhaul which is even more expensive. An exception would be where you only need high speeds between 2 users on the same node and the ISP has the configured it for local peering. The faster technology will get cheaper of course, and fibre has a really good upgrade path with the faster Ethernet standards and and low cost lasers in development.

Sounds like international bandwidth and prices really do need to improve before the whole thing is marketable. Telecom was talking about upgrading Southern Cross link to San Jose, would they also upgrade the leg to Sydney? They must be able to get more speed out of it but I guess they already use all possible wavelengths, maybe its capable of STM-256?

Qualified in business, certified in fibre, stuck in copper, have to keep going ^_^

richms

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Reply # 326594 4-May-2010 19:24

webwat:
Questions:

Does anyone have some ideas about whether 100Mbps service will be attractive to households? What price would people be willing to pay for it?

No more than I pay for the ADSL connection at present. More concerned about the usage costs as they are well in excess of the fixed costs. IMO worrying about the fixed costs of the internet connection while there are data charges is like looking at the daily charge of your power account and ignoring the unit costs.

webwat:

How much speed would be enough for you? What performance would you expect for international traffic if you got connected?

If I am sold a 100 meg connection, then i expect that nationally. I would tollerate 50% of that internationally at peak times, but any less than that on an ongoing basis would be a fault IMO.

webwat:

Whats a fair install fee to join up? What freebies would make it worthwhile?

Fair installation - if I have duct to the road that can be used, nothing on a 12 month term. If I dont then them allowing the finance of the digging charges interest free for 12 months.

webwat:

What would it take to convince landlords to approve the connection?

Landlords are not allowed to prevent the installtion of services to the property so this is irrelevent.

May be some equipment housing issues in large apartment places but that is something else that should be dealt with by the RTA

webwat:

What extra services would you expect? Would you have a good enough TV if the new ONT came with a coax TV outlet?

I would hope that those services would be able to be billed seperatly since I dont want overpriced DRM crippled TV service

webwat:

If you got disconnected for copyright infringement, would you reconnect with another provider?

I am hopeful that the laws allowing for that dont get anywhere, but if they do then yes, I would reconnect with another provider or under a different name if I was unfortunate enough to get done for the same thing 3 times in a row.

webwat:

What sort of home business opportunities could you see becoming attractive with fast internet at your place?

Online streaming (skype or ustream) of stuff both ways meaning not having to go places

webwat:

If your office had a faster connection at the right price, would you invest more into offsite backup, ecommerce or any other applications? Whats the "next big thing"?

Offsite backup is a biggie, but that is currently limited by data costs, not speeds

webwat:

And will there be a serious shortage of fibre contractors??

Probably will be since it needs skill and the skille dpeople are all leaving.

Richard rich.ms

NonprayingMantis

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Reply # 326706 5-May-2010 00:47

Questions:

1. Does anyone have some ideas about whether 100Mbps service will be attractive to households? What price would people be willing to pay for it?

my guess is that it will be some years before the price becomes attractive to mass market. Sure there will be a few geeks that will pay whatever for the fibre, but most people won't.

2. How much speed would be enough for you? What performance would you expect for international traffic if you got connected?

I only get ~3Mbps down at the moment. I would think 10-15 would be sufficient for just about anything I can think of right now. Of course, you never know what future apps may arise that will benefit from 100Mbps speeds.

3. Whats a fair install fee to join up? What freebies would make it worthwhile?

maybe $100-200 install? I would expect to pay $100-200 for the modem at launch, but that will come down over a few years.

4. What would it take to convince landlords to approve the connection?

no different from regular BB in that respect. if the tenant want sot pay fine, or if the landlord want so to pay to help attract better tenants, then fine. either way.

5. What extra services would you expect? Would you have a good enough TV if the new ONT came with a coax TV outlet?

coax? wouldn't HDMI be better? I would be expecting full streaming on demand HDTV at least with fibre.

6. If you got disconnected for copyright infringement, would you reconnect with another provider?
yes, although that is unlikely to happen to me. I rarely torrent nowadays (kids takeover life)

7. What sort of home business opportunities could you see becoming attractive with fast internet at your place?

nothing for me personally. I have no intention ofbecoming self employed. even if I was, there is very little that I canconcieve of that would require fibre, but VDSL would be too slow.

8. If your office had a faster connection at the right price, would you invest more into offsite backup, ecommerce or any other applications? Whats the "next big thing"?

no

9. And will there be a serious shortage of fibre contractors??

depends on how much the government *really* stumps up.

sbiddle

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Reply # 326716 5-May-2010 08:07

NonprayingMantis:

5. What extra services would you expect? Would you have a good enough TV if the new ONT came with a coax TV outlet?

coax? wouldn't HDMI be better? I would be expecting full streaming on demand HDTV at least with fibre.

Just as a bit of clarification, in current fibre networks (such as FiOS) the bulk of the TV content is sent over fibre as an RF signal, IPTV is reserved for some of their VoD content. Using RF is a lot more logical for live content.

The ONT's have an F connector that is then connected to a STB for viewing the content. There is no technical reason why you couldn't simply output the video signal as a psuedo DVB-T signal with appropiate hardware so it could be connected firstly into Freeview|HD TV for example which would save the need for an aerial and could carry additional channels.

The ONT is always installed at the demarc point in the house (both in the USA and here in NZ) and all signals are then carried over copper inside the house via ethernet over cat5 or RG6 coax.

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