Focus on Fibre plans
Paul Winton writes on broadband plans:
In early 2008 both Labour and National admitted that, for communications, ‘the market’ just wasn’t going to get us there. In March, National trumped Labour by announcing an ambitious $1.5 billion investment into fibre-to-the-premise broadband to 75 per cent of premises over the next six years. About a month later, Labour announced a smaller investment of $325 million into broadband infrastructure.
Neither plan is perfect. Relative to National, Labour’s plan lacks scale and clarity of outcomes. Conversely, the National plan could significantly change the landscape if designed well, but equally, if done poorly could scare away investment.
Which is why presumably National has said it will get expert advice on the best way to implement a fibre to the home network.
Telecom’s slow rollout using copper technology is perfectly reasonable for them. They’re going as fast as shareholders will allow them to and there’s no reason for them to accelerate it.
Sadly for New Zealand, if we continue to roll out fibre at this rate we won’t get the sort of capabilities our close Asian neighbours like South Korea have until about 2040. Many in New Zealand think a thirty-year lag is a bit much to swallow.
There is no doubt we will end up with fibre to the home for most of NZ. The question is by when. Do we want to be one of the last OECD countries to have widespread fibre, or one of the first? Will there be economic and environmental benefits from early deployment? I think so obviously.
So what happens first under, say, a National-led government?
The first thing is to get people around the table. Those people would probably be Telecom, perhaps a consortium of lines companies and a group from overseas. There will need to be some form of RFP process, development of a long-term regulatory framework, and finally a clear assessment of what the government dollar is investing in and what returns it will get.
If designed well, with the good of the country in mind, the National programme will launch New Zealand to the front of the pack globally and create a competitive, world-class communications sector.
If done poorly we will continue to lag behind our peers and suffer the consequences of living in a nation with communications asthma.
Not much there I disagree with.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:47 am
DPF: There is no doubt we will end up with fibre to the home for most of NZ. The question is by when.
The question is who will pay for it actually. And the taxpayers will of course. So the Joe Plumbers of this country will see their hard-earned money taken from them and being spend by National on something that the market clearly does not provide, simply because there is no demand. That money would have been used more productively, so what it does is take away other opportunities from us.
No one needs fibre to the home, sorry. What we all like to see is more predictable and consistent bandwidth. And why are we not seeing improvements here? Because no one is investing, as we’re all waiting for the government to dump in taxpayers money into something.
Outspending Labour might be smart politics and typical Muldoon, but it’s not good for the country. But who cares. Hail the government, our saviour, father and mother, and which will care for us from craddle to grave. Until the pyramid scheme explodes of course.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:48 am
Paul Winton:
Government dollar? Or taxpayer dollar? I’m generally in favour of this type of infrastructure spending, but let’s be honest – it’s Joe Taxpayer that will be paying for this eventually. And I’m not that keen on giving every leftist asshat a bigger pipe a to blather on about how wonderful they are at my expense
October 21st, 2008 at 7:53 am
If you asked the greens about a fibre plan, they would probably say we need to eat more of it.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:57 am
About a month later, Labour announced a smaller investment of $325 million into broadband infrastructure after first attacking National over their plans
October 21st, 2008 at 7:58 am
Now hold on there, you young turk! We’ve got priorities!
First we need to regulate showerheads, then make sure the population is suppressed, then restrict automobile use. Then ban fat in foods, then ban soap with dyes, then ban… …and ban …that too …and that …that’s definately banned …and higher taxes… then increase GST …and you can forget that sunshine, that’s gonna be banned…
love from Green/Labour coalition
October 21st, 2008 at 8:07 am
Think of broadband as a highway, and vehicles as services using the highway. This makes eBay, Google, Yahoo, TradeMe ‘cars’. Do we want to be a nation that designs, builds and exports ‘cars’ that are the best in the world, or do we want the faster highways? Which would be better for our economy?
For me, there it too much emphasis on taxpayer-funded broadband, and far too little on fostering the kinds of services innovation that will see NZ generate real wealth. While faster broadband is not without merit, it’s just a package that’s easy to sell, because most NZers understand slow page-loads.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:11 am
So the Joe Plumbers of this country will see their hard-earned money taken from them and being spend by National on something that the market clearly does not provide, simply because there is no demand.
I’m sorry, you’re just god-damned wrong on this. The market doesn’t provide it because it can get away with not doing so, not because there isn’t any demand for it.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:14 am
Fiber to the business, deeply needed as the up take of technology is only going to spike as the Youngies get more embedded in business and less in their PS3s.
There are too many old farts out there who can’t turn on a PC let alone send an email, who are left high and dry by technology making comments about things they know not.
Go back 70 years, “we don’t need those their power pole thingies, wphoo ellactricitity? Candles are just fine.”
But Telecom at the table? Talk about letting the undertaker into an old folks home.
Telecom has SO screwed NZ in the past when they have been allowed near the tax purse strings. Anyone remember project Probe?
Communities need Open Access Ducts, Open Access Fibre and buy in options. Three things Telecom will never let happen, yet there are several companies laying fibre in NZ that do all three!.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:18 am
Forget fibre until after Great Depression 2 and World War III. We can’t afford it until then. VDSL and WiMAX can fill the gaps until then.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:19 am
I do get a bit brassed off with NZers insistence on someone else paying for things that will improve their lives. I work from home and where I live Telecom will not upgrade out phone lines for broadband, I live 25 minutes from the Beehive, I needed broadband so paid for a satellite dish on my roof.
If broadband will enable people to work from home then why do we make it a partnership between government and business or is that just too much for the freeloading Kiwi??
October 21st, 2008 at 8:31 am
Aw Berend, geat a little bit real here.
The same argument you propose would have justified all houses remaining with septic tanks or a night soil service. By your lights we didn’t “need” a centralised sewage transport and processing system. Certainly we wouldn’t have gotten one yet if we had waited for “the market” to provide it.
If you lift your head even slightly above the parapet you might find that the market takes on a variety of forms and sometimes doesn’t do the trick for major infrastructure items. Think water, electricity and roading. The entry barriers for construction are too high for any commercial organisation.
Now running the thing, that’s another matter altogether.
October 21st, 2008 at 8:43 am
VDSL and WiMAX ????
Crap technology with limited use…
live with in 1k of the exchange?
Don’t need an good upload speed?
Share a pipe line with 500 other people, don’t try to do anything when the kids get home from school!
WiMAX in the real world…. 512k at best
October 21st, 2008 at 8:48 am
Personally, I am not in favour of Fiber to the home. There are alternative wireless technologies that can be deployed much faster & cheaper than Fiber eg. http://www.araneo.net.nz – 1Gb/s wireless anyone ?
Fiber to a node and then Wireless from that local node to the end user. But not Fiber to each door, payback would be decades for that.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:37 am
getstaffed: Think of broadband as a highway, and vehicles as services using the highway.
Yeah, good example. As in a traffic jam is a collision between the free market and socialism: the market can produce cars faster than the government can build roads.
Sorry getstaffed, if you think the highway is a good example, please sit in the traffic jams in Auckland for a while. Examples with highway in them don’t fill me with any confidence at all.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:53 am
dog_eat_dog: I’m sorry, you’re just **** wrong on this. The market doesn’t provide it because it can get away with not doing so, not because there isn’t any demand for it.
The profanity isn’t needed here. It just gives you away as a leftie as well.
The market gets away??? What’s that for a crazy phrase. If someone can make money supplying a service, someone will. That’s the free market. If there is no such service, it’s because there is no demand at the price level that service can be supplied.
If you look at statistics (even the poll here on DPF’s own website), no one really cared much for fibre. The priorities are:
1. Consistent bandwidth: I don’t want to drop my bandwidth to modem speed between 3pm and 8pm (that’s when the kids come home).
2. Higher caps. Although I must say my 30GB cap is usually sufficient.
3. Lower lag: not mentioned, as most people know it when they see it, but seldom think about it. Especially for gamers, this is a biggie.
4. And only then comes higher speed.
Fibre to the home won’t help us, as the bandwidth to most servers is still constrained. How many servers can give you maximum speed at the best of times? Very, very, very few.
We currently have enough bandwidth for most uses: I’m doing audio and video with clients all over the world, and I have enough bandwidth for that. It would be better if I had more consistent bandwidth. Not more.
For your information, just did a bandwidth test to a server in Auckland: 4616 kbps down, 767 up. And that’s while playing a 128kbit radio stream from the other side of the world. A server in Houston gives me 2296kbps down, 544 up. A server on London gives me 1156 down, and 353 up. So what would it help me if I have fibre to my home if I cannot currently max out servers in the US or Europe?
October 21st, 2008 at 10:09 am
berend – the auckland motorway system is a stuffed 1st generation router. it’s not inefficient fibre
edit: you lower lag comment remineded me of suggestions that Telecom was introducing latency to lower the quality of make Skype voice, and to destroty skype video!
October 21st, 2008 at 10:13 am
[damn that edit comment timer...]
October 21st, 2008 at 10:13 am
Down and Up….
Berend you are seeing the real problem of DSL, your up sucks.
For businesses MORE and more they need as good up as down, current broadband methods of wimax and dsl do not give that, needed is fibre to nodes and businesses, and better backbones.
If you are doing over seas work on dsl, then as technologies become more interactive you will see your dsl become more of a problem. And we are not talking 5 to 10 years but 2 to 3 years. What where you doing 2 years ago? Traffic usage does not follow moores law. 2 years ago I was doing 10 gig a month, now it’s more like 100 gig! (An no it’s not movies!) My peer to peer is sharing Linux resources, plus server monitoring, plus co-hosting, plus remote support .
October 21st, 2008 at 10:19 am
There is no alternative. Wireless technologies infrastructure is much expensive to maintain on long term. Has rural areas copper?
I saw 2 European capitals (Amsterdam, Budapest) solution, Amsterdam turned to fibre without government investition and this was good business for the investors, the provider and it was a demand of most of the companies. It is good for the business, good for the people and the internet becomes like water and electricity. Heaps of people could work from home even they keep their positions – without travelling every day.
Budapest is a littlebit different, there is a same mammoth like Telecom here, (owned by the german T-Com group) and this company is forcing the copper still in 2008. The big companies and investors are sick of that, they defenitely needs fibre for IP TX and for the telephone. Copper has limits, this is a dead end today. I built networks in Hungary and there always be a fight between the big multi and the hungarian subsidiary, because of that. An american or western european multi couldn’t imagine how they can prosper and grow, without excellent infrastructure.
I think if a country is in this situation like NZ now, this is a best time to invest into own future. A clever government has to decide on it, how they can keep tax dollars later with spending tax dollars now. Mainly it is good for business and governmental services but if the collateral benefit is the fibre reaches the resident’s premises… let’s do this. There is many methods to financing a fibre-project like this, PPP, lease, partial investments, common owning, etc. New Zealand has to be connected well.
When we arrived to NZ (january, this year), we saw there is no free hotspot on every corner, there is no free, city owned w/l networks, there is no naked adsl, and every provider has serious limitations, i can’t keep my number if i moved 4 streets away, 3 weeks needed to change my subscription, (and the two provider blames each other) so it was awkward. The same situation was in Hungary or in the Cech Repulic in ’92. Now, over there the very rural areas has the same or higher level than Auckland…
As I see, this country is smart enough (yeah, I know, Winston
to plan its own future, smart enough to recognises the problems. I hope it is recognises thte importance of the communication.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:44 am
The market is not providing fibre to the home because the majority of New Zealanders do not demand it. I’m sorry DPF but your in the minority. This is not one of National’s better policies. It merely lays out fibre before we need it at the tax payers expense. Also what about new technology? What happens if we lay out fibre and it becomes obselete before we really need it?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am
Technology : if you need it, you are late.
(new technology could use the fibre for long time, as adsl uses the copper wich is invented for talk )
October 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
tux: serving websites with DSL just doesn’t make sense. Any hosting in NZ, except if you’re really targeting the local market, doesn’t make any sense. And a few years from now, fluid computing environments and CDNs will make even local hosting obsolete. It’s simple the economy of scale, which NZ will never be able to deliver.
So the up isn’t a problem.
How many people in NZ think fibre to the home is great? Only the people who would financially profit. The average voter isn’t interested in it and doesn’t need it. And with all government plans, it will become the usual disaster as business sense doesn’t rule, but political sense. When was the last time you thought government health was any good? You think government delivered broadband will do any better?
October 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
National are against socialism, but are in favor of handing cash over to Telecom to help them build a network for Telecom to profit from.
Smacks of corporate welfare does it not ?
Yet we in the rural areas will be left sucking on the hind tit.
As I said to my neigbour, strange party the Nats, handing dosh over so that urban Labour voters can get better broadband.
Yet they will be doing nothing for loyal rural Nat voters.
Would I be an old troublemaker ?
October 21st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Well coming from an IT professional I am not a big fan of fibre to the home. Fibre to the cabinet and copper for the final 500M-800M to deliver VDSL2 speeds (50Mbps@1KM, synchronous) to the home is plenty IMHO. Providing enough backhaul from the cabinet to the core is way more important to providing a decent service end to end.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
MikeMan, you are right, this is the optimal, if you deploy the copper with the fibre, too.
But here the last few hundred meters of copper is old and bad quality (corroded, cheap wires).
Than why good the fibre to the street cabinet if you loose the bandwith from the cabinet till the home. In that case the fibre is unnecessary and expensive.