NZ Plan For Fiber To the Home 169
Ars has a note about New Zealand's plans for nationwide broadband access, which will induce envy in many North American readers. "New Zealand has decided not to sit around while incumbent DSL operators milk the withered dugs of their cash cow until it keels over from old age. Instead, the Kiwis have established a government-owned corporation to invest NZ$1.5 billion for open-access fiber to the home. By 2020, 75 percent of residents should have, at a bare minimum, 100Mbps down/50 Mbps up with a choice of providers. Crown Fibre Holdings Limited is the company, and it's wholly owned by the government — for now — and the company's mission couldn't be any clearer. Two of its six guiding principles include 'focusing on building new infrastructure, and not unduly preserving the "legacy assets" of the past' and 'avoiding "lining the pockets" of existing broadband network providers.'"
Deja Vu (Score:2, Informative)
good plan (Score:5, Informative)
I spent a month in NZ at a friends house a year ago, and the internet connections where like we had in Finland 10 years ago... Or even worse. They had an ADSL connection limited to 1Mb/s down (and very slow up) with a 2GB monthly limit. After the limit is full it would throttle down to 5KB/s for the rest of the month. The price of the connection was more then I payed for a full rate (8/1) ADSL back at home, with no caps. I guess if this was somewhere far in the countryside I could understand it, but it was in one of the better areas of Auckland!
I do have to admit, that internet connections were far more expensive in Finland too until they made a law forcing telco's to rent out the last mile with pricing based on the true expenses rather to what they feel like. This brought a lot of competition that ended up lowering prices by about half in all areas worth competing in. You still have areas in the country side where the only company offering ADSL is the "old telco" of the area, but that's just because there really is no money to be made. In most of the country the situation improved dramatically, and looking how the government has originally subsidized building the infrastructure I feel the decision was a good one. You can't count on telco's bringing down prices of internet connections, or speeding them up by much.
Re:Deja Vu (Score:5, Informative)
Yep it appears to be modeled at least partly on the Australian National Broadband Network [nbnco.com.au], although it will no doubt be modified somewhat to suit the NZ telecommunications market, geography and requirements.
Incidentally, actual consumer plans on the new (Australian) network (which has several trial areas already wired up) have just been announced in the last week or two. And they are better value than comparable DSL plans (in terms of download quota), despite the far greater speeds. This will come as a pleasant surprise to those that feared that new, faster tech would also mean more expense.
Taking a look at one ISPs NBN offerings [on.net], initial launch speeds are 25/2, 50/4 and 100/8 Mbit (downstream/upstream), with a choice of quotas from 15 GB (entry level) to 200 GB. And these prices will almost certainly come down further once the NBN is available in more than just a handful of trial areas and more ISPs come on board. I actually suspect we'll eventually see true unlimited plans becoming common (some ISPs such as TPG and AAPT are offer this now, albeit expensively!)
I suspect though that NZers will get their network completed before Australia does due to their smaller land area though (and potentially less political infighting!). Good to see it happening on both sides of the Tasman. Copper POTS networks are on their way out. They have served well for ~100 years, but everyone knows replacing them with fibre is inevitable. Might as well start the job now.
Re:good plan (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Auckland and have a reasonably fast connection - much better than the one I had in the UK. I get 6Mbps down, 700Kbps up and have an 80GB cap. There is some competition now so the situation has improved markedly even over the last couple of years and I expect this fibre to the door to improve it even more. Of course we also have to worry about being spied on while we're enjoying our new fast connection. I find it funny that ISPs advertise how fast their connection is in how many movies you can get when there are few legal movie download services. I have an AppleTV and my previous 20GB cap was a serious impediment so I upgraded to 40GB and the ISP offered to double it again if I would commit to stay with them for 12 months. I wonder if caps will still exist once we get fibre because the download speeds are likely to be so high that even 80GB may not be enough.
Also, as someone else commented, it isn't necessarily the speed of the connection to the ISP that is the limiting factor. Often my connection is super fast but accessing sites in the US can be really slow due to traffic making its way across the Pacific. Also, don't get me started on how we suffer from the Aussies censorship decisions - I couldn't even get the proper version of GTAIV because the Aussies don't have adult/M ratings for games and rather than sell us the full version we got shipped the same watered down PG version that Australia got.
At least in Auckland we have broadband, there are still large numbers of people stuck on dialup out in the sticks.....
Re:International will still suck (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, Southern Cross Cable is a pretty nice cable. It's recently had a major upgrade (new wavelengths lit up) and has plenty of spare capacity, so your international bandwidth doesn't *have* to be 'piss poor' - it all depends on how much capacity on it your telcos purchase.
Having said that, I agree that the quality of that link is fairly irrelevant if there's only one link (i.e. a monopoly). That'll never get costs down. We were in a similar situation in Australia of course up until quite recently (Southern Cross, up until last year, was by far the biggest pipe in/out of Australia ... but PPC1 turning on in October made a massive difference - within weeks, quotas on my ISP almost doubled for the same price!).
Re:good plan (Score:1, Informative)
Five years ago maybe. For at least the last couple of years 4 Mb/s / 500 Kb/s and 10 GB caps have been the norm -- let's say "early Iron Age" as opposed to the Bronze Age service you're reporting. All bets are off if you're using Telecom, mind, and reliability is crap no matter where you turn.
As for competition: there are oodles of ISPs, and local loop unbundling is still in progress. The future's looking tolerable as long as Telecom doesn't regain its stranglehold on the country's collective throat. The government filter is a worry though, but thankfully not all ISPs are using it. My pick of the minute: Snap [snap.net.nz], at least if you're in Christchurch or Wellington.
Re:good plan (Score:3, Informative)
I hate the Australian game censorship problem as much as you do, but to be fair:
- That should be changing quite soon. Michael Atkinson has retired as South Australian Attorney-General. He was the only AG holding back an R18+ game rating in AU. So the wheels are in motion to amend the classification legislation to bring games into line with movies/books etc. Of course, being a slow, political process, it could still be a few years off. But I firmly believe it will happen.
- On the internet filtering side of things, it's not like NZ is any different than Australia in this area [stuff.co.nz]. At least our filter is still only a (very unpopular) proposal - nothing has actually gone live as it has in NZ. :( But either way ... it sucks I agree.
Re:I Live there (Score:5, Informative)
Well think of it this way. In the mobile space, there are data caps to prevent a few users leeching 24/7 and completely saturating the available spectrum and ruining the service for everyone else. It gives network operators some predictability of utilisation and allows them to plan and provision their networks better as a result.
That hasn't been as necessary in the fixed line/wired space (in the US) because there is more bandwidth available, and most content that is accessed is domestic. There are dozens/hundreds of routes and networks an ISP can use to get the few hundred or thousands of miles to the remote hosts that the users are usually accessing. The amount of an ISPs traffic that needs to leave the ISPs domestic network or immediate peers is fairly small.
Australia and New Zealand on the other hand are English speaking countries, 15,000 km from where most English content is hosted. 90% of the content Australians access is hosted in North America (or the UK). But there are only a handful of large capacity pipes to the US. They are expensive to lay and maintain. And they aren't owned by the ISPs themselves. The pipes themselves aren't lacking in bandwidth, per se (there's plenty of spare capacity in SXC and PPC1 which are the two main AU-US routes), but that bandwidth is more expensive in the first place.
Not only that, but from the ISPs perspective, 95% of their damn traffic has to be pulled from the other side of the planet, and from OUTSIDE their domestic network. This is why AU/NZ is different than say, Korea or Japan (who have lightning fast Internet, but are accessing 99% domestic content!). In the US, an ISP with a decent domestic network has most of its traffic remaining inside that network, or passing cheaply to other US domestic carriers. In Australia virtually ALL traffic has to get routed outside the ISPs own network and on to the US via a handful of expensive 10,000 km long cables. Data caps allow AU and NZ ISPs to stay in business and not instantly go bankrupt (or unless you want to be paying $500 a month for service!).
Also yeah, 10 GB is ridiculous but it's fine for someone like my mother who just checks her email once a day (in fact she uses under 1 GB per month). Besides, it's not like higher caps aren't available (10 GB would be an entry level plan only!). I'm on 60 GB/month and it suits my needs fine. And I can upgrade if I need to.
One other thing - metered access also has a silver lining: net neutrality issues like you have in the US aren't a concern. It also means ISPs don't have to do QoS/deep packet inspection/slowing your torrents, since again, you pay for what you use.
Re:Deja Vu (Score:5, Informative)
So because the copper's fine in your area, it's magically alright throughout the rest of Australia? Whenever it rains heavily around here we get the usual spike of complaints of faulty lines. It's not just restricted to rural areas either. Back in 2008 parts of Sydney were so bad they were resorting to plastic baggies to (try to) stop the water getting into the wiring in the pits, so much so the Telstra techs nicknamed the city "Baghdad".
Re:Deja Vu (Score:4, Informative)
Want to enter Australia? You have to declare you're carrying pornography (yes, I am naked under my clothes)!
IME, most countries have a question about whether you're in possession of pornography or other obscene material on their entry cards. Australia is hardly unique in that.