Drool drool
January 30th, 2010 at 1:03 pm by David FarrarThe Dom Post reports:
Wellington homes and businesses will get ultrafast broadband under a plan submitted to the Government by fibre-optic company CityLink, matching a proposal Vector has unveiled for Auckland.
Vector chief executive Simon Mackenzie said all 450,000 homes and premises in Auckland would be connected by the lines company within seven years with fibre that could provide broadband speeds a hundred times faster than average speeds provided today.
The first third would be connected in the “first couple of years”.
“We are not talking about being constrained at 100 megabits a second down and 50 up. This is capable of gigabits and terabits beyond.”
CityLink managing director Neil de Wit would not disclose details of its proposal, but said it was comprehensive and covered the “whole of the four cities of Wellington”.
Vector has done s similar proposal for Auckland.
January 30th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Yes… This is why Smartlynx3 just got bought out.
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
:-p
And when will a plan be proposed for Chch and Dunners?
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 1:42 pm
TelstraClear must have seen this coming. They have just unthrottled the speed for the 10G cable plan from 4Mbps to 10Mbps.
Wellington area cannot be as potentially lucarative for CityLink as (say) a new operator in Auckland because by and large TelstraClear supplies a very satisfactory service with its cable TV network. I suspect there are areas (eg older underground reticulated subdivisions) with no cable TV service where a newcomer could enter. Altough coax cable may be outdted in some way, a cable operator can increase overall bandwidth with existing cables by progressively overlaying a fibre optic network.
Personally what I would like to see is a progressive undergrounding of power lines and installation of a fibre optic network at the came time. However the overall regulatory climate is not condusive to this even if say a majority of people want it and accept their power bills would be slightly higher.
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
” Wellington homes and businesses will get ultrafast broadband under a plan submitted to the Government ”
Sounds great, but why was it ‘submitted to government’??
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Redbaiter – because the Government has decided to contribute to broadband reticulation as previously announced. It has moved from the ‘talk’ phase’ to the ‘do’ phase.
David – what is wrong with the cable broadband system in Christchurch to give it equal priority to Auckland, Hamilton, Dunedin etc.
Perhaps Telecom may be an early client to beef up its network to its XT towers.
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
I deliberately avoided Telecom, having had bad experiences with them in the past, briefly flirted with Vodafone/iHug (ugh!!) and have returned to TelstraClear, whose fibre-optic cable has reached across the road and a couple of buildings down, but not quite in my location yet. The coverage is spotty in Chch. Doesn’t extend beyond the Heathcote River (i.e beyond Ferrymead) nor into the NW suburbs, and doesn’t cover parts of the central city.
That said, when I lived in Avonside a few years ago, I was on the TC fibre and it was BRILLIANT!! Wish I could have that again. It’s not bad where I am, that said. Right now it’s MUCH better than Telecom or Vodafone, so I’m not switching anytime soon.
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Quite agree Peter. It’s long-term-viability vs short-term-just-get-it-done that bedevils us. When are people going to understand and accept that infrastructure is a different proposition from most project undertakings and that the Roman/Victorian approach of “lasting for a hundred years” is a much better way of looking at it, even if the hundred-year mantra no longer applies?
Still, once the power/telco companies finally get onto Tesla and figure out how to charge for wireless electricity usage…
Virtual Karma +1 to your 1:42 and 3:47…
Vote:January 30th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
David – I have no problem with areas in Wellington or Christchurch not covered by TelstraClear cable being given equal priority to the rollouts in other cities..
Reid – Direct buried underground cables would last 50 – 70 years while cable ducts where used should last 100 + years. Some batches of power cable have had inherent defects and would last 30 – 40 years only. I doubt one would ever be able to transfer snignificant amounts of power by wireless. I heard that someone made up some circuitry that would light up a bulb fron the Titahi Bay broadcast transmitters near Wellington, but that is about all (National Programme transmitter used to be 100kw, but has been reduced to 50kw in recent times).
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