It is all useful, and a very effective way to deliver cable TV. It also means I can get my cable TV on my laptop when on the network at home, I can record the streams to my harddrive and play back to my settop box etc etc.

Is all of that worth investment in new cabling? My impression is that my local provider in Canberra is slowing going bankrupt, so probably the answer is no. As a commercial proposition it probably never would have gotten off the ground – local taxpayers subsidised it.

Most web servers just are not connected to the internet at the same speeds as what many consumers are now connecting to the net at – which means unless you are seriously multi-threading your windows and/or downloading (as opposed to browsing) – then you just aren’t going to see that much difference.

Do you have Woosh locally? They charge $40 pm for 256k with double at $5 extra – need to be line of sight to their towers.

$59.95 for 1GB of data per month at 256kps speed
$69.95 for 2GB of data at 256kps speed

going up to -

$99.95 for 2GB per month at 512kps speed

That is ridiculous really. I’m not paying that kind of thing..lol

I think I’ve looked at Xtra Wireless, but it’s a lot more expensive that your garden-variety broadband. I’ve also tried Wired Country (I think that is what Compass uses?) and that also was expensive if I remember for wireless. You had to be ‘in sight’ of certain towers or areas which I wasn’t.

I guess I’ll just have to wait…….

Apparantly, in my area here, we can’t even get 3G cellphone service (and my normal Vodafone reception is pretty weak as well).

Who could afford the data cap?

There is very few places in NZ that it would be worth deploying this because of the very severe distance limitations. The article quoted Singapore which couldn’t be further from the population density of NZ.

The speeds of all the DSL versions drop off dramatically in an exponential fashion with distance. I would question VSDL being able to get 4Megs at 5km.

Another problem is the cross talk in the cables. As you had more DSL services to a cable feeding from an exchange the cross talk (interference of noise from other cable pairs) increasing dramatically. This limits the speed of the service and the ability to add more connections. Having very high frequency systems like VDSL make the problem worse.

Also when has Orcon ever made good on a press release?

Fletch have you tried to see if you can get wireless. Xtra Wireless and Compass both have services in the Franklin area.

You have control over (1) because you can move house. Next door is good! Your only control over (2) is who supplies the copper. If you’re lucky enough to live on the TelstraClear network your wiring is likely to be newer and higher quality than that of Telecom.

Oh also, note that Telecom may well move away from claiming peak speeds and resort to something like ‘full speed’ or ‘unlimited speed’ claims because performance varies so much across it network that claiming any kind of limit would expose them to legal challenge. You have to sympathise with them given the cost of upgrading their national copper network is estimated at $1.5b. So, while we wait for VDSL2 don’t be fooled by ‘full speed’ claims. They will be to keep the lawyers at bay .

We have one of those cabinets on the roadside with a 30 phone line capacity and it’s already using all 30 lines, apparantly, and no one can be bothered to upgrade it or anything.

So I’m STUCK with dial-up speeds.
It’s not good enough!!
I’m told that folks in town can’t even get Caller I.D for the same reason – the age of the equipment.

It just ain’t fair, I tell ya.

You have control over (1) because you can move house. your only control over (2) is who supplies the copper. If you’re lucky enough to live on the TelstraClear network your wiring is likely to be newer and higher quality than that of Telecom.

Oh also, note that Telecom may well move away from claiming peak speeds and resort to something like ‘full speed’ or ‘unlimited speed’ claims because performance varies so much across it network that claiming any kind of limit would expose them to legal challenge. You have to sympathise with them give the cost of upgrading their national copper network is estimated at $1.5b. So, while we wait for VDSL2 don’t be fooled by ‘full speed’ claims. They will be to keep the lawyers at bay .