Hard News: Fibre Coming Soon! Ish ...
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Gareth - the model is not yet determined and Fibre Co is not in or out. I would make the point that at present the NZI Fibre Co model is the *only* one on the table, so if people do not like it, they need to come up with a better one.
Right - maybe slightly crossed wires here. I DO like the FibreCo proposal, I think it's the only realpolitik way of making this happen efficiently. My concern was that the criteria that have been laid out by Mr Key don't seem to allow for the FibreCo model to be utilised (regulated monopoly buying all Telecom's existing copper and fibre etc) and am trying to get a view on how the model may look... Personally I'm all for a Govt investment of $1.5b into a vehicle to make this happen, but am having trouble seeing what the vehicle may look like within those criteria.
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Yamis - It'll be one of two situations.
a) They are full at the cabinet with no more room, or
b) They haven't got suitable switches at your local cabinet = 6 months plus (AKL is the no.1 priority though).Telecom will tell you, if you find someone who knows.
The techs are all contractors so that same guy who stuffed up your Telecom connection could well come back to stuff up your Slingshot one :)
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I'd suggest an alternative scheme.
Right now the (Telecommunications Service Obligation) TSO is for 99% coverage at voice and 9.6kbps modem (!)
This could be raised by stages, initially to 2MBits, but eventually to match the worldwide state-of-the-art. The cost of doing this would need to be met by telecom customers (or government), clearly.
There maybe also needs to be a last 1% option where people in the bush get subsidised wireless / satellite (I'd note that the fibre scheme totally excludes such people - you'll never have economic fibre service to Great Barrier, or even Horokiwi).
I'd also raise the question of *mobile* service. Other countries have cheapish, flat rate mobile data plans. We have price gouging (50c a megabyte if you go over cap!). For me, being able to have medium speed internet everywhere creates a lot more possibilities than high speed at home.
Might not government subsidised fibre put the kybosh on WiMax and any other wireless innovation?
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Building high speed fibre to 75% of homes is like building dual carriageway roads to each home. Why would you do it?
We do need improved speeds and DSL can provide it with fibre to the node. The issue is really whether Telecom should own the access network?
If they did not own the network and it was a national resource we could use the most efficient method driven not by the fancy idea we all need FTTH which has to be not only a nonsense but a waste of money.
Very few disagree with the emotion behind the Key statement just the rationale. As has been pointed out if you invested $5b in the copper network you would get a better result.
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Very few disagree with the emotion behind the Key statement just the rationale. As has been pointed out if you invested $5b in the copper network you would get a better result.
How?
I thought everyone agreed that fibre is the best long-term solution and it's just a matter of what your time-frame is. If you're actually replacing the lines to every home, you'd replace with fibre, wouldn't you?
I haven't checked lately, but my understanding is that the actual cable isn't where the real cost is: it's to some some extent in the customer premises equipment, and more in the works component.
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PS: I'm sure One News didn't mean to be mean, but its video of yesterday's announcement, showing Maurice Williamson looking like he had in fact swallowed a dead rat, and Key struggling through his speech (send the man to Toastmasters, for goodness sake) wasn't terribly complimentary.
I can't open the video file on my Mac with Firefox. Any suggestions. I'd love to see Williamson as described.
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I believe that fibre to the home is quickly going to be obsolete technology. wireless networking (ie 802.11n) can already transmit super fast speeds and is only going to get better (WiMax, faster cellular data speeds) so digging up every street at $150K per kilometer (!!!) seems ridiculous to me when you can build a fast wireless network probably for a fraction of that price.
John Key may sit down at his desk for his internet but the trend is towards ever more mobile devices and ever more wireless internet. I think the expensive fibre will be a stranded asset when new wireless networks are built. I'm considering cutting my phone line.Here's my idea (warning: I'm no expert):
- invest plenty of money in upgrading the internet backbone and the undersea cables that link us to the rest of the world.
- bring that fibre to every town (it's probably already there)
- do the last mile via wirelessBenjamin
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I am not sure I agree fibre is the answer for everyone. Fibre would be the solution if you were building it from scratch but the existing copper network represents a large existing investment some of it is already fibre to the node. How much I cannot say. I am sure there are people with that information.
What we should be doing is to build the feeder cables to the sub loop in fibre and then where necessary replace copper with fibre, if demand or condition dictates.
Many people do not need fibre speeds or capacity. It is poorly thought through public policy to create a network because the Koreans have one. Their network is probably built in fibre because they may not have a copper network already. Where are the studies that show how economic benefits flow?
The argument against Key is that he has not done his homework Labour would be stupid to respond the same way. As I said the problem is a private company with in adequate resources owns one of our valuable assets, which is the real problem.
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You are right that the cost is not in the cable but most of the existing Telecom cable is ducted so using the duct is cheaper than burying a new a new one. Vector used the gas main in Wellington for that reason
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Chorus are planning to have cabinets within 2.5km of 80% of NZ homes by 2012. Thats the unsupported plan, and by my reckoning gives 5-10MBit coverage.
To get down to 1.5km and thus get universal 20Mbit (per this doc) would cost more than Telecom are prepared to spend, as would fixing the (maybe 10-20%) of households with flakey wiring. But I'd like to see a breakdown of the cost of this against universal fibre.
I'm also wondering how much speeds on the new fibre network will be throttled or bandwidth capped. My work has fibre, which we run at a blistering 1Mbit bandwidth - any more is apparently really expensive.
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DPF:
Okay Clarke is obviously from the school that if you walk on water he accuses you of being unable to swim. I won't waste my time in future.
My point was solely that the maths provided by Key in the press release and reported in the media was some way short of the real monetary and time investments needed to build a full fibre network to 75% of households. It's a reasonable criticism - after all, Key presumably signed off the press release that was duly reported.
While I'm very supportive of public investment in high speed core networks, it's clear that there are some pretty big numbers involved. If National thinks the funding should come from a 30%-70% mix of public and private money, fine - it's a perfectly valid policy approach.
But implying that it's "only" $1.5 billion and that it can be completed by 2014 - and then expecting the entire text of the speech to be parsed to discover otherwise - smacks of spin. Which is a pity, as I think it's an important policy area and Key should be commended for raising it publicly.
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To get down to 1.5km and thus get universal 20Mbit (per this doc) would cost more than Telecom are prepared to spend, as would fixing the (maybe 10-20%) of households with flakey wiring
Precisely why it should not be left to Telecom. But also why it would be senseless to reproduce what already exists. The issue is a public good in private hands.
Wireless will never have sufficient spectrum to service demand. Mobile (wireless) is important but the next possible change maybe femtocells using DSL links to take cellular traffic so that mobility becomes a reality in the home environment.
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"Stephen Moratti, I whole heartedly agree. As I see it the problem is similar to good roads. All they do is facilitate access to drinking dens and other places of vice. We should stop building and maintaining them."
You seem to misunderstand my point. I am all for the internet (I am probably one of its most devoted users). However, I would not advocate building a superhighway to my local pub when a footpath would do just as well.
This country (world) will soon face a crunch in energy/food/water etc. I think 2-3 B investment in say energy and mass transport infrastructure is more important than fibre to everyones home. You may of course disagree.
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I can't open the video file on my Mac with Firefox. Any suggestions. I'd love to see Williamson as described
You need the Flip4Mac components for QuickTime. That lets you play WMV files.
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2-3 B investment in say energy and mass transport infrastructure is more important than fibre to everyones home.
Exactly. We are slightly lucky in NZ in that we are already 85% renewable electricity. We have the opportunity (largely through new wind and water capacity) to get that to 100%, but it'll take investment. At the same time, we aren't so good on transport fuel usage (all those cars and planes) and direct fossil fuel burners in industry.
But 100% renewables is doable - look at this project in Texas (of all places) - four Huntlys!
Interestingly, if we had more sustainable development, it would reduce the cost of high-speed communications. It's a lot cheaper to cable urban apartments than sprawling suburbs. Maybe if we decided that urban sprawls like Albany and Dannemora were excluded from any new fibre rollout, the costs would become more manageable - and it would further encourage people not to live in those places.
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Benjamin F wrote:
wireless networking (ie 802.11n) can already transmit super fast speeds and is only going to get better
Ben, wireless isn't the answer. It's got several problems that don't afflict even copper connections, never mind fibre ones.
1) The latency is very average. For voice services, latency is everything. Wireless latency pushes the outer bounds for voice on a good connection, so if you've got a connection that's not so flash you can have problems. Latency in fibre is tiny, maybe 1/4 the speed of light. Copper is worse, and Telecom did its best for a long time to make DSL here absolutely crippling in terms of latency, but it's still better than wireless.
2) Wireless speeds are extremely theoretical. You might have a dot11n connection that says it can do 248Mb/s, but the typical data rate is more like 70Mb/s. That's a big difference, and a very significant problem. With terrestrial links, the theoretical maximum and the typical maximum are usually within 10%, mostly determined by the quality of the equipment in use. People have recorded transfer rates in excess of 900Mb/s on a 1000Mb/s connection. Wireless can't even get close, and almost certainly never will, because of the limitations associated with a shared, ethereal medium.
3) Wireless is shared bandwidth. The more people using a repeater, the less bandwidth available to everyone on that repeater. Thankfully the days of everyone on a repeater being dropped to the speed of the slowest client are gone, but the shared nature of the medium remain. Can't be resolved, either, because you can't physically separate wireless connections like you can with wired ones. With fibre, the full bandwidth of the connection is all yours between your device and the terminating device. -
Building high speed fibre to 75% of homes is like building dual carriageway roads to each home. Why would you do it?
If that was only going to cost 5 billion, why wouldn't you do it? Those would be some pretty choice roads.
I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I would benefit massively from both a fibre link and a dual carriageway. I work in IT from home and I drive almost everywhere.
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BenWilson said:
If that was only going to cost 5 billion, why wouldn't you do it?
And that's the rub, really. Even if it costs $8b, which was the upper end of a figure Maurice Williamson quoted, that's still a pittance. It's not even 8% of GDP, and the most conservative estimate from the NZI of the financial benefits of widespread access to fast 'net is $2.5b/year. In four years it's paid for itself, with change, and from there it's all money for jam.
Seriously, the numbers are so ridiculously favourable that I'm stunned anyone actually argues against it.
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And that's the rub, really. Even if it costs $8b, which was the upper end of a figure Maurice Williamson quoted, that's still a pittance...
Sorry for sounding all Cullen-ish here, but perhaps you'd like to tell us which social services you'd cut "pittances" from to pay for this -- health, education, vote Police etc.? Tax hikes? Increasing national debt?
...and the most conservative estimate from the NZI of the financial benefits of widespread access to fast 'net is $2.5b/year. In four years it's paid for itself, with change, and from there it's all money for jam.
You might want to ask a few restaunteurs and bar owners in Hamilton whether they place much store in economic benefit guestimates after the promised benefits of the V8 race failed to materialise.
I'm not saying this isn't a worthy project, but we're not going to have a worthy public policy or economic debate talking in airy-fairy terms.
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Craig said:
Sorry for sounding all Cullen-ish here, but perhaps you'd like to tell us which social services you'd cut "pittances" from to pay for this -- health, education, vote Police etc.? Tax hikes? Increasing national debt?
Unlike Cullen, I have no huge qualms about debt financing for infrastructure. It'd be a multi-year undertaking, so the cost would be spread out over the lifetime of the project. And unlike a lot of infrastructure work, the projections are based on increased income not decreased costs.
As for Hamilton, I've not heard about this reported lack of business. I'm aware that shops around the circuit saw a greater drop in trade during the lead-up than was expected, because of the barriers and so forth, but they knew something negative would probably happen. Are people seriously claiming that 100-something-thousand people passed through Hamilton over the space of three days and nobody was better off? That beggars belief!
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I'm not saying this isn't a worthy project, but we're not going to have a worthy public policy or economic debate talking in airy-fairy terms.
What's your estimate on the value of it? Just to come down out of airy-fairy debate and really crunch the numbers?
I wouldn't place too much store in the guesses either - they are likely to have a huge margin of error. To my mind the project is simply a basic infrastructure one for a remote nation who would like to be selling their brainpower and services rather than praying for rain for the cows.
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It's funny to watch a 'developed' nation like NZ argue about this as funny old third world Indonesia lays down some 58,000kms of fibre optic cable without much of a murmur.
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Matthre & Ben:
Perfectly fair-minded counter arguments. I've seen too many heart-warming headlines about economic benefit reports that aren't quite so impressive when you go back to the source (assuming it's been made public in the first place) -- and find the damn thing is based on so many assumptions you've got to wonder if the press release has any basis in reality whatsoever.
If you want to make an argument based on guesstimates, fine. It's pretty hard to have anything else to work on more often than we care to admit. I just think people involved in advocacy -- especially when it involves billions of dollars in public money -- should be honest enough to admit it.
And Matt, I don't get that bent about debt financing for infrastructure either. I just take a lot of convincing. :)
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I have to throw my lot in with the just do it already brigade. Ubiquitous very fast internet is going to give rise to some amazing stuff which will become commonplace, much as the internet is now. Massively distributed computing comes to mind, HD video, incredibly rich, instantly accessible user interfaces. It will change the way we code and think about the web in other, unpredictable ways.
I concede that this seems like a tenuous argument to base billions of dollars of investment on, but I think it's the difference between an old room sized mainframe and the latest Macbook Pro, not an incremental upgrade.
The analogies about highways to everyones doors assume that nothing is going to make intelligent, worthy use of the entire thing, making the whole idea silly. I don't think that will be true for long.
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Craig, even if the NZI's bottom estimate of the benefits is out by 200%, and that would require both some seriously over-optimistic initial calculations and some very adverse economic conditions, the roll-out would still pay for itself in a decade.
Because it's infrastructure, once it's there it stays there. Unlike the roads, the network itself earns money in addition to the money made by services running atop it. Even an open-access network charges connection fees.
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