Fibre to the Door
April 12th, 2010 at 4:30 pm by David FarrarThere is a discussion on Scoop about what people would do with fibre to the home, sponsored by Vector’s fibre to the door campaign.
For me there are four major things it would allow me to do:
- Video Conferencing. I don’t mean through a webcam on Skype. I mean full steroids video conferencing through my TV set. Just as I have 50 TV channels, I want 50 video conferencing pre-sets. I want it so I can push four buttons and be immediately connected to a five-way video conference. That would allow me to work at home far more, and travel far less.
- Remote File Access. I can access files on a remote server now. For example I used to be able to remote access the National Party HQ server. But it would take me a couple of minutes to connect, and copying or opening files was deadly slow. What I want with fibre to the home is that files on my office server open as quickly as if I was on the office LAN. Potentially I even want all my files stored on the Internet and I can access them from anywhere almost as quickly as if they were on my laptop.
- TV and Movies on demand. With fibre speeds to the home, I want to be able to push a button or two and for (hopefully) $1 or so, a movie will start playing in real time, or maybe the series finale of MASH or the 1963 first episode of Dr Who.
- A LAN in every house. With fibre to the door, the logical thing is to wire up the house. So then one can view your security camera remotely. You can switch on or off the power to any heaters or appliances. You can grab files off your desktop PC while travelling. You can even turn on a light to keep burglars away. Over time, most of your appliances will be IP connected.
So they’re my four things I want to be able to do. I’m sure there are many more.
Tags: fibre, Scoop, Vector
April 12th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
#3: TV and movies on demand work fine with what people have now (cable or DSL). You can go into iTunes, select a movie, and it starts playing within a few seconds. I’m sure other companies must be doing the same too — or at least could.
#4: *none* of that either requires or is even helped by fibre to the door. You can do it all now if you want to, and faster internet won’t make it appreciably better or easier than now. Only grabbing files off your home computer will be faster, but that was covered under #2
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
I don’t need fibre to watch Dr Who episode #1, I’ve got it on disk. (gloat).
In fact, I have the entire first series on disk. (gloat, gloat).
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
My #1 is Online Classroom Training – as if I were there, interacting with the enthusiastic, highly-skilled, highly-knowledgeable professor and the rest of the class. Learning from the best.
(I wonder what that would do to the teaching profession. Suddenly, there could be teaching superstars — just like in sports and entertainment — because they would be able to reach HUGE audiences at once.)
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Does that mean your toilet will get an I Pee address?
(Sorry
)
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
@aardvark
You eventually would not need local storage. All your photos, movies, books, data, etc could live in the “cloud”. Backup would be to the cloud, too. Hard drives would become local cache storage, for when you’re temporarily offline.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I’m with MajorBloodnok. The potential to expose and democratize a huge base of on-line education professionals/personalities is untapped. Universities may need to re-scope their business models.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Phuck you Dorklanders.. what about us in the sticks.. we try to get away from the hassles of working in the cities.. do we now have to move back to Dorkland to get away from it all with fibre to the door.. If you want people to stay home and work.. bring fibre to the country door.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
lan in the house is already do-able.
I did this couple of years ago. I have a cat 6 gigabit network running throughout my house, with a media server tucked away and media streaming devices for each tv set. Is very nice.
Now, sky need to sort their #$%#$% out and work out a solution to stream hd through the house.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Sounds great, David, but is there $1.8 billion of additional value for the country in this? TBH these extra features seem like small potatoes over and above what we can already get on DSL/cable. Would each of us, if given the choice, pay an extra one-off fee of $500 for each member of the household to get this? $2000 for a household of four. Annualise that fixed fee and you have to charge an extra $400 per annum per household forever. It really does not sound like a good deal to me.
Would have been nice if we consumers had been given a choice.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
‘I want it so I can push four buttons and be immediately connected to a five-way video conference.’
And to think something like 1 billion people don’t have adequate drinking water. Life’s hard for you DPF, real hard.
[DPF: What the hell has that got to do with anything? Do you think we should throw away the Internet and hope that wiil result in better drinking water for Africa?]
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
I have to say a recurring problem I have with promoters of this FTTH concept is the difficulty they have in explaining why this is necessary. Of course some businesses really do need very fast internet, and they can get that right now with T1 and bitstream products. Ok, one can argue ‘we don’t know what the killer app for this higher speed is’ because dynamic economies are hard to identify in advance. But then $1.8 billion is a lot of money for a government already badly in the hole. Why can’t the investment be made as and when the killer application that most NZers will actually need and which requires these speeds comes along?
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Like most people
Porn
more porn
ripped movies
What else would you do at home that you couldn’t do in a modern office?
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Imagine what NZ would be like without any state highways, and the roads we did have were narrow, winding and full of slow traffic. It could take several days to transport people or goods between parts of the same island, eg to send items to market. That is what our internet is like today. Not literally — but in comparison with what it could be.
As a remote island nation in a far flung corner of the globe, high-speed internet is arguably MORE important for NZ than for most countries. As web cameras become ubiquitous, we can BE THERE, almost anywhere in the world — just as much as someone in Europe or North America.
It means that I’ll be able to live in NZ and work in a country where you get paid more than NZ rates — without having to emigrate.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
My house is partially wired – the third floor has 10 outlets, the gigabyte switch, ADSL link, fibre to the next door premises, and my office and bedroom are wired. The rest of the house is ok with wireless at the moment. The fibre runs next door to our actual office (which I can’t work in because my partner and staff are too noisy). We are waiting for decent broadband as we can use it. Video conferencing would be excellent. My partner provides remote education services and hosts online workshops. Doing this over ADSL is … painful to say the least.
Fortunately we received good news recently. A company has budgeted to build a fibre loop that will run very close to us so we should be able to hook into that.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Don’t be an arse.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Sounds very cheap to me. I’d be happy to pay this sort of money. In fact, I’d happily pay more if it would guarantee me a good fast link. $2000.00 up front and $400.00 a year is bugger all really.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I enjoy #2 (Remote File Access) right now for most documents I have online and I don’t have a Fibre-sized connection, just DSL at about 5Mb down and 1Mb up. Of course this is prohibitive when the document I’m trying to open is a 120Mb TIFF or something ISO-sized, but remote file access is certainly something that doesn’t require a huge pipe.
I have had #4 (LAN at every house) at every house I’ve lived in since about 2000 and have controlled household appliances remotely at every house I’ve lived in since about 2000. Again, this is something that doesn’t require a huge pipe.
The number-one issue facing NZ home Internet use is the charging scheme. Charging more for international traffic? Charging for uploads? That’s some Third-World shit right there.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
MajorBloodnok @6:27 pm
Imagine what NZ would be like without any state highways, and the roads we did have were narrow, winding and full of slow traffic. It could take several days to transport people or goods between parts of the same island,
Like trying to get one side of Auckland to the other…
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
David
I have concerns about this. It is hard enough to get you out of the house as it is. At this rate you may never leave your living room.
Actually the whole system sounds like home detention without the ankle bracelet.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Assuming, of course, that the other end doesn’t have the same sort of constraints as your own link and that it doesn’t already have a pile of users on it.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
I think that when the ADSL2+ cabinet comes to your neighbourhood, you will find the 10-20 Mbps downloads will do most of what you want.
The problem with video conferencing and file sharing is you need more than the >1 mbps upload that the ISP’s restrict you to.
This is not a technical problem but a deliberate slowing of the speed.
Telecom is trialing VDSL2+ which is even faster if you are within 0.5 km of a cabinet.
http://www.telecomwholesale.co.nz/maps
Vote:http://www.telecomwholesale.co.nz/vdsl2
April 12th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
I’m aware of that. However, it is looking increasingly likely that we will have a fibre loop before we have ADSL2+. I live and work in a rural area and we aren’t due for an exchange/cabinet upgrade until late 2011 at the earliest.
I’m also very aware of the artificially constrained upload speeds and am fairly sure I will be able to get a service with a fast enough upload once I have a decent link.
Also, once I can get away from Telecom, they are gone. I as little to do with their network as possible. My reward for their dragging the chain for all these years.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Auckland isn’t where this will happen first, it’s already happening in places like Whangarei, Nelson, Blenheim and Ashburton!
Vote:It is happening because the usual suspects only invest where their ‘business cases’ stack up!
Fibre changes everything! it is also infrastructure that will last for a long time.
The payback is way more than faster porn! it is going to allow a whole lot of services like health and education to be delivered in a ‘location independent’ fashion any where there are fast connections.
I know so many families that are being pulled closer together by Skype! YouTube is becoming a marketing channel to the world and the ‘cloud’ is real.
When you combine all of these in a multi user household DSL won’t cut it!
We need to get the other bits in the jigsaw sorted backhaul and international capacity.
So if you want future connectivity – no need to move to Auckland, go the Whangarei! there is fibre to the door going in right now and they can do it for around $500 per home passed!
The market needs to catch up with products prices and service to create and meet demand!
April 12th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
That should be: “I want as little to do with their network as possible. My reward for their dragging the chain for all these years.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Those all sound like marvelous private benefits, where are the $1.5b of externalities to justify the taxpayer money?
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:52 pm
Exactly. It is being put in by people with a longer term view than telco short term profits; people who see the need for such services and who realise that it is hard to envisage services that may be available in the future that will require high speed broadband to provide them.
Would youtube ever have happened if we were still using dial-up? Nope. Not a chance.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 7:54 pm Vote:
April 12th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
TC
There seems to be a lot of things with Broadband that just dont seem to have rational answers.
Some I can think of.
Why the upload limit?
When a cabinet is installed, Why arn’t the users in the area told? Why ISP’s keep speed caps (up and down)? Why dont users get advised that their modem may need upgrading for ADSL2+?
Why has Telecom put fibre all over rural areas but appear to have no plans for users to connect to them?
http://www.broadbandmap.govt.nz/map – zoom to your area and tick the Telecom Group box.
Why can’t Telecom up the speed of the upgrades?
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
I know the Telecom fibre in our region is for specific purposes – usually to do with large/very large rural businesses.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Beats me why they don’t open it for other uses though.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
I think a lot of these can be answered by, “where’s the money?”.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:38 pm
And they have this wrong too. It should be fibre to the kerb, VDSL2+ to the home/apartment building/office stack etc.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I can understand why Telecom will service large users. There is money to be made.
The problem with the Vector plan is they will only do fibre to large urban users as well.
The Urban users will get better and better broadband but the rural users will be left further and further behind.
Fast BB would appear to have more economic benefits in rural areas eg #1 and remote learning and medical support.
There would appear to be a market for small rural comunities to band together and build local ‘lans’ that back haul on the Telecom fibre network. The problem is the technical knowledge to set it up and a the availability of a 20 – 30 line router (cabinet).
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Sounds very cheap to me. I’d be happy to pay this sort of money. In fact, I’d happily pay more if it would guarantee me a good fast link. $2000.00 up front and $400.00 a year is bugger all really.
Fair enough. Actually it is either the $2000 or the $400/annum for a household of 4, not both, so I guess you’re doubly happy.
But let me speculate that if given the choice 80+% of NZers would think this is a bad deal. That $400 (again roughly) adds 50% to what a broadband plan costs now. Most NZers do not video conference. Most do not regularly do file sharing. The second service DPF cites sounds neat but is not available anywhere to my knowledge (I might be wrong on that) and spending all that money hoping it will be rolled out in NZ is very dangerous. Now if NZers were going to be asked to pay their own way on this, $400 per annum per household would be flatly refused by most people I would say. “Thanks, my dialup/DSL is fine, count me out”.
If correct, that makes this plan a bad deal for New Zealand. Funding it through taxes and giving nobody a choice to pay all that money doesn’t make it a good deal – the costs just get hidden and shifted.
I am a heavy user of internet myself but I think if given a choice I would probably not increase my bill by 50% for higher speeds I can’t see a need for.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Thrash
Exactly. It is being put in by people with a longer term view than telco short term profits
That is a ridiculous thing to say, especially in telecommunications of all industries. It is hard to think of any equipment telcos invest in that lives for less than 10 years and has payback times measured in years and sometimes decades. Everything they do, at least on investment, is directed at the medium and long terms.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
I mentioned David’s second service above: I meant third.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
It’s all academic ben. The socialists think the internet is a human right (code for ‘we should control it in the name of social justice’). On that basis we should never have scope to buy better speeds, instead making do with what the state believes we need, judiciously and evenly distributed across the population.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
I’ll dispute that. If that was the case then Telecom would have been doing their fibre runs and other improvements years ago. People have been clamouring for faster broadband for years and claiming Telecom have underinvested in their network for years too. It is only comparatively recently that they have pulled their finger out.
Can you recall the $600 – $900 per month business ADSL costs that suddenly got cut to almost nothing? Telecom seems to have traditionally taken a short term view of almost everything in order to ratchet that immediate gain – and that includes investment in things like ADSL, ADSL2 etc.
I may well be wrong but this is the impression I have gained over the years.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Speaking as an IT worker, this would allow me to try starting a small IT business from home.
For example:
- Hosting MS Exchange servers for small businesses.
- Creating and Hosting the next Trademe or facebook.
- Off site backups for small businesses.
- Video conference facilities in the suburbs.
- Teaching English to business people in Tokyo.
- Streaming live performances by local artists.
ADSL2+ is no good for hosting any of these things.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
It doesn’t ‘matter how fast the link is – the drinking straw is connected to a small water tank that is only filled once a month. THe data allowance would have to be much, much, much larger given how quickly it disappears on ADSL, let alone fibre
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:43 pm
At least one company provides a flat rate service: FX Networks:
Internet services
We provide high performance business internet services that will see you connected to the internet at very high speeds. All our plans are charged on a flat rate, fixed cost basis which means unlimited use of the internet to connect to your business partners. There are no volume charges plus you get unrestrained international upload speeds.
http://www.fx.net.nz/FX_Networks/What_we_do/Introduction.htm
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Couch potato paradise, but great for paraplegics.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
It is useful to note:
ADSL2+ is designed to be a maximum of 24Mbit/s down, but only 1Mbit/s up.
Fibre typically runs at 10 Mbits/s, same speed, both directions.
Fibre normally has less delay.
Finally Fibre connections are generally more reliable.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Thrash, I don’t know what $900 ADSL and how people’s clamour (without any idea of costs) have to do with a company’s short term thinking. No company focussed on the short term will ever invest in long lived assets with returns over decades. Yet Telecom and all other companies in the industry do, to varying extents.
The better explanation for no fibre to the home is that it is completely uneconomic and nobody is willing to pay its enormous cost. I can tell you Telecom invested a lot in trying to work out ways to get FTTH as early as 2001 and just couldn’t make it work.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
Emailing home movies to relatives in the UK.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
GJM: absolutely. I believe data caps are the bigger problem in NZ. Data caps are what genuinely separates NZ from most of the rest of the world. And that is a much easier problem to solve than rolling out fibre everywhere. Wayyy cheaper.
Kermadec: can’t you buy fat pipes to the internet from a commercial host on an as-needed basis? Isn’t this a much more efficient way to do it than have fibre rolled out to everyone when, at a guess, only 5% of people, such as yourself will use it?
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
Will Frontera be able to push milk down the fibre optic network if it doesn’t work or we run out of power?
FFS don’t let Telecom project manage a BIG system again. They will no doubt ask the French to advise again? Alcatel are simply awful.
Vote:April 12th, 2010 at 11:10 pm
TC @8:38
If VSDL2 performs as set out in Wikipedia it would appear to satisfy most users. It appears to only need an upgrade of the cards in the cabinets (and a new modem).
“VDSL2 deteriorates quickly from a theoretical maximum of 250 Mbit/s at ‘source’ to 100 Mbit/s at 0.5 km (1640 ft) and 50 Mbit/s at 1 km (3280 ft), but degrades at a much slower rate from there, and still outperforms VDSL. Starting from 1.6 km (1 mile) its performance is equal to ADSL2+.” ‘permits the transmission of asymmetric and symmetric aggregate data rates up to 200 Mbit/s on twisted pairs”
I am about 1.1 kms from a cabinet and get 6.5 mbs which covers most of my needs. VDSL2 @ 30-40 mbs would cover my needs if the upload rate was increased.
Vote:April 13th, 2010 at 2:39 am
I agree that all four of your needs are completly valid.
However, having been subjected to the GWN Easter MASH Marathon, I would advocate the banning of all 251 MASH episodes from the internet.
Is it possible to set up a Golden Firewall of Chinaesque type of block for this?
Vote:April 13th, 2010 at 2:47 am
I think the point here is that many of these things can already be done. Are the extra minutes saved worth the investment outlay required. Clearly not (at least not for a sufficient number of the population), or it already would have happened. However this is not to say entrepreneurs can’t get involved and gradually open up these areas over time as technology falls in price, certain locations demand it etc etc, so HD videoconferencing etc will be common place.
Where I have huge problems is when people declare that ‘this is what we need’ and the taxpayer should pay for it regardless of cost. People seem to forget that somehow a government that can’t run a railway is supposed to know where to install fiberoptic cable, decide upon capacity etc etc.
@Kermadec At least 4 of your items can easily be done by leasing space at a datacentre/provider.
Vote:April 13th, 2010 at 7:05 am
I will add a little scope to kiwis perspective of internet capabilities NZ internet service.
I spent some time in a particular eastern European country.
I had an internet connection there.
*cable
*Unlimited bandwidth.
*90 TV channels.
*download a 700mb torrent in 4 minutes.
*27nzd per month.
Eastern Europe is light years ahead of NZ, i think what NZ really needs to get ahead is is a few new cables on the ocean floor first before cable to city houses, at present broadband is bottle necked by its connection to the rest of the world, but if we can afford it then cool, get some cables in too, 5 channels video conferencing etc…..
Vote:April 13th, 2010 at 7:18 am
With out new continental connections data caps cant be dropped.
Vote:April 13th, 2010 at 9:52 am
I get 10Mbps+ international bandwidth reliably from my ADSL2+ connection (thanks ICONZ) and 17Mbps national. A normal quality movie is around 1.5GB and takes me about 20 minutes to download. I could get Blu-ray movies over the net, but they’re usually around 20GB each, which would be over 4 hours to download. FTTH would be useful if I was downloading from a NZ mirror/server, but the international is still constrained by Southern Cross keeping their pricing high and bandwidth low. They have unused capacity in the pipe but aren’t going to turn it on until they really have to, which won’t be until they have competition.
Vote:Angry about our international bandwidth? Southern Cross Cable are the pricks to be angry at. Their offices are at 45 Johnston St in Wellington, if you happen to be passing by I suggest you pop in and let them know they’re money-grubbing wonkers who make Telecom look virtuous.
@Thrash – you can have ‘all you can eat’ international bandwidth for $500/Mbps (FX are probably a bit more expensive than that). O
April 13th, 2010 at 9:56 am
For example I used to be able to remote access the National Party HQ server.
Vote:Well at least we’ve solved the Brash email thefts finally…
April 13th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Ha caught.. and i’m of to Whangarei! Is that $500 to the Door or passed the Door.
Vote:May 3rd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I’ll echo what menace is saying. The rest of the world is light-years ahead. I write this using a 768kb ADSL connection, which is pathetic when compared to the 8Mbps I had in England. Oh..and I was paying half of what I’m paying now. (1 hour out of London, compared to 10 minutes outside of Nelson). I contract IT services to a company in the UK, so I’m forced to deal with this issue everyday. Oh yeah, and if I was working for a NZ company, I wouldn’t be earning what I am now, nor paying that extra tax…oh wait…could that be justification to expend money in the short-term on infrastructure that will benefit the company in the long-term?
When I came here, I was utterly incredulous that a 1st world country could still have monthly download limits and bandwidth caps. Reading some of the comments here is equally dumbfounding. It’s like watching the Luddites or the Saboteurs trying to break their mechanical looms! DOWN WITH THE BAD MAGIC! I used to jokingly tease my kiwi partner…now I see that it’s true!
To the detractors who question the legitimacy of rolling out to business users and large urban areas first, and whining about people in rural areas…this is pretty much exactly how ADSL was originally rolled out in the UK. Businesses can afford to be early adopters, and economies of scale in large urban areas keep per-user costs as low as possible. Once tech becomes cheaper, technology is proven and demand for higher speed increases in rural areas, THEN they roll it out to those in the sticks.
$1.8Bn is a pittance in the grand scheme of things. Further economic growth is NOT going to come from agriculture, tourism or mineral exports…so where will it come from? Maybe join the 21st century and find out?
Vote: