Posts by Matthew Poole

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  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    Steve, it's not just international pipes that lead to capping, it's the anti-peering nonsense. While traffic destined for domestic servers has to trombone through the US or West Island we're going to be stuck with restrictions on how we use the 'net.
    A huge bitch I have right now is that, despite my work being attached to reportedly with the fastest 'net connection in the country, I cannot watch "broadband" video streams from TVNZ and TV3 smoothly. I had to use TVNZ's international dialup stream to watch Sir Ed's funeral in anything approximating real-time, which is complete bollocks.

    Oh, and on the pricing thing, my $150-175 suggestion was an expectation that it would be a complete replacement for current landline communications at home. No "plus phoneline" crap.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    It's probably not the last mile or the pacific wholesale that's stuffing up your video, but the contention within the NZ backbone

    More likely it's the fact that my flat is on Go Large, and we're thus competing with the remaining people on the plan for what is, I'm sure, a shrinking pool of bandwidth. The ComCom case against TCNZ over Go Large will be interesting, when it finally gets to court in twenty-something-teen. Such a useless system :/

    Rich: it's still low risk because the asset stays available and viable. It's not going to rot away, it's not going to become obsolete in 18 months. That makes it low risk. Retail services are high risk because what's being sold is so ephemeral. Network infrastructure, regardless of the potential uncertainty of use at the time of installation, is not.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    Is wireless going to be able to keep scaling? Will the actual throughput rates (as opposed to the theoretical maximums) keep pace with demand for capacity by end users? Can the standards actually be agreed upon and available in consumer equipment in time for them to be of use? The kit to terminate fibre connections is here now, but 802.16m is still only a draft spec.

    I'm always leery of claims that wireless can be made to perform at high speeds. Thus far every wireless standard that's meant to be "fast" has spectacularly failed to achieve any such thing. Look at 802.11n, which claims 200Mbs in both directions but typically gets 40Mbs on the downlink. That's faster than 11g, sure, but it's way short of the headline rate. Big promises require big evidence, and every time the promises fail to eventuate it requires even bigger evidence to support the next big promise.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: A pig this good you don't…,

    Craig, can you show otherwise? Until the Budget's released, Key's not going to be shown Treasury's books. Fiscal Responsibility Act requires it after the Budget. So, at this point, Key's making guesses about what might be affordable, maybe, he doesn't actually have firm numbers.

    And National do appear to be "policy lite". The Herald had precious little costing of National's "pork", because so little detail is available. How else do you describe the main competition in an election that's six months away but still hasn't released clear details on policy expenditure?

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    slarty, I can barely watch YouTube as a straight stream at home now, and that's stupidly low-quality video. I end up buffering the entire clip before I start playing anything. We can't even do shit video reliably at the moment, over 2Mbps DSL.

    On the existing "ducts" thing, anyone know if it's actually been suggested in the discussions about how to get this thing done? All the main population centres have reticulated water, and using the pipes would make it a fairly quick way to get the fibre laid. Would also pretty much entirely negate RMA concerns since the pipes are already there. Not sure how the taniwha would feel about it, though.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Island Life: A pig this good you don't…,

    Craig, part of Cullen's point is that Key is pulling numbers out of his arse without having seen the Treasury books. Bandying around figures like $50/week without actually know if that can be done without requiring service cuts. We have a contracting economy and shrinking tax take, but Key's quite happy to quote numbers that aren't based on informed judgment.

    So, yes, it is entirely reasonable to say that tax cuts == service cuts.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    Tom: it'll be a good test of National's resolve to make the process work, then, won't it?

    Ben: wireless will never beat cable, unless someone finds a way to make it a non-shared medium and deals with several other fundamental issues. Check out the actual throughput figures for wireless vs wired connections. With wireless, even 802.11n, you're doing well to get 75% of the theoretical maximum under perfect conditions. With wired, it's entirely possible to get 90% or more of the theoretical maximum. I've seen captures of people getting 930Mb/s over a 1Gb/s ethernet connection, which will never be possible with wireless.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    Russell said:

    I understand Vodafone's annoyance at the sudden movement of the goalposts that is the cabinetisation project.

    It's not even very sudden. At the time that TCNZ announced it and everyone started whinging about how it was "shifting the goalposts", commentators such as Juha were pointing out that cabinetisation had been rumoured for at least 18 months. The shock for those of us who follow such things was more that people said it was a sudden, anti-competitive move. Oh, and that Telecom was actually going to do it, which may have been the real source of woe for their competitors given TCNZ's long history of not investing in infrastructure.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    If it turns out to be a bunch of crap, then fuck 'em

    The peering announcement makes it appear that they're at least trying. But it's still stupidly difficult for my inner cynic not to look at the "we expect roughly equal bi-directional traffic flows, but we're only going to put DSL customers on it" thing as a way of "proving" to the regulators that neutral peering is a total gyp because Telecom just ends up having to deliver everyone else's data without getting paid for it (yeah yeah, I know).
    I want to believe they've changed and get it, I honestly do, but it's incredibly hard to put aside their historic attitudes and outright disdain for everything except milking every last dollar out of NZ.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Hard News: Shooting for the Moon,

    18% after tax?! Find out what they're smoking, and smuggle several container loads back here. You'll make a killing!
    Most telco's would desperately love to be making 18% gross ROA on their networks, never mind 18% net. That's Peter Pan shit.

    As for the timeframes, they are in part dictated by the realities of getting it done. We don't have the ducting kit, we don't have the people. Business-as-usual stuff still has to happen involving the existing fibre networks installed here, so simply stripping all staff and equipment from everything else and putting them to work on FibreCo (for want of a better term) just can't happen.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

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