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)
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.
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Yeah true. There are multiple ways it could be done from a political and economic perspective and I don't doubt that the NBN isn't one of the more expensive options. And I'm not a Labor voter so I agree with you that the management of the rollout is almost certain to be stuffed up in some way or another!
I was looking at it more from the high level technical perspective and the need for SOMETHING to be done. Wasn't making a comment on the merits (or not) of Rudd's particular scheme. I think from a technology
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I'm wondering if you are retarded or incompetent.
Regional areas are where we need fibre the most, the cost of having an upgrade in speed using copper in these areas will require significantly more exchanges to be built without the same benefits that fibre has over copper, doesn't sound very economical not to mention the constant degradation of the state of the copper. Maybe your thinking of rural areas they are defined very differently.
Not to mention you don't have an activist trying to do something he beli
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".
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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.
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Just got to make sure that fiber network is designed in such a way that it's easilly upgradable as newer tech comes along.
Many years ago (long before DSL) telcos in some places ran fiber to the cabinet and then pots/isdn from there to individual properties. This was touted as being the way of the future.
Then DSL came along and those areas were the last to get it because the decentralised system made upgrading a few customers at a time far more expensive (with a traditional exchange you can just put your DSL
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Now they just run one fiber to a cabinet and use a prism to split that signal up to about 32 ways and put everyone on a digital party line. FiOS has found that you can't off 100 mb on the 622 (or even the 1.2 gig) PON and provide TV at the same time. Cable TV take up in Australia is far lower so there is a chance your 100 mb won't have to fight with the closer data streams. And before someone says they use one color for TV and on for Internet, keep in mind that the Pay per view and preloading movies is do
I Live there (Score:1)
Re:I Live there (Score:5, Funny)
We think so too - regards, Australia
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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.
Caching? (Score:2)
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Copyright issues. And I guess some tech issues.
Without copyright issues, ISPs could run "Super Seeders" that can start downloading and seeding stuff on demand (to locals). http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/214259 [slashdot.org]
The super seeders get higher priority high bandwidth connections to networks outside the ISP. Then the ISP's customers will download fast from these (and very slow from elsewhere - but they won't care).
Despite claims that caches would be legal, I'm sure the **AA will go after any ISP that
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If I'm not mistaken, one or two ISPs in NZ already use Torrent caches.
And in terms of HTTP traffic, it's been found that a tremendous portion of our local traffic (85% or something last I heard) is to Trademe, which is a local auction site (hosted inside NZ) so the "most sites accessed are outside the country" is bunk.
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"Most 'sites' accessed are outside the country" may well be bunk. But 'most sites' is not 'most traffic'. HTTP/web in general comprises a tiny amount of the overall traffic most ISPs deal with these days.
Also I honestly find it hard to believe that 85% of domestic NZ HTTP traffic is to trademe. That doesn't even pass a sanity check - Google and Facebook and Youtube alone would comprise a LOT more than the remaining 15%, and I'm pretty sure there's more than a handful of other websites to visit in NZ ;)
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Actually funny you should say that. Proxies used to be ubiquitous for Australian ISPs (in the dialup days especially) for exactly the reason you describe.
However with the rise of dynamic content pages and more importantly, P2P/Bittorrent, ISPs realised the proxies weren't really helping anymore. People simply weren't accessing the 'same' content enough.
So now most ISPs don't have proxies anymore (or if they do, they are transparent and only used for a small percentage of (HTTP) traffic).
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Cable architecture carries an enormous amount of historical baggage. Generally speaking, the "tubes" were built as large as they could be, given the restrictions of the technology of the day, the requirements imposed by various government regulations, and the revenues that could be extracted from the customers. Add in that it was almost
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Because (in the first place) happened about 100 years ago (if you're thinking DSL), or mid 80's (if you're thinking cable. The reason that phone and cable providers are the two prominent providers at the moment is because they already had most of the infrastructure in place to provide the service at the moment that suddenly everyone wanted it. That's not to say that they aren't constantly upgrading their services, lines, etc, but that's a project that can be worked on slowly over a long period of time, wh
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: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.....
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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 t
AU's religious-right "Family First" will take over (Score:2)
I think you'll find a "Family First" MP will take-over the position of Atkinson on this issue; being an important independent with power to decide other issues when the major parties are locked-up, Family Firsters will have to be "bribed" - now & then - with silly restrictions, like the one affecting games, just like they've got the Rudd gov't backing a costly but useless mandatory Internet filter.
I'd like to know: WHO is getting all the $$$ that pays for its roll-out...?
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True unlimited is the way to go.
Unlimited simply means that the 90% of users with low usage are subsidizing the 10% with high usage.
When I go to McDonalds for just a burger, I don't want to pay for your Big Mac with super-sized fries.
A fair plan with metered use makes most sense. Problem is of course that too many Telcos and ISP's have scrapped the word fair from their spelling checker.
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As an Aussie, I'd just like to say sorry. We're not all complete morons, some of us are doing the best we can about this rubbish.
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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 go
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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.
I live outside Hiltulanlahti, which is high-density rural, but lower density than US exurbs (residences along the road are 100-300 meters apart). We have a monopoly telco which stopped laying copper several years ago. Nowadays, it's fiber only for all new houses, carrying TV and telephone as well as internet. They seem to think there's enough money in it: we have 100/10 internet and IP TV for about 65euro/month.
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we have 100/10 internet and IP TV for about 65euro/month.
I don't even have the opportunity, without leasing a dedicated line (for gobs of money, haven't even thought of pricing it), for 100/10 access (as a minimum), where I am (Champaign IL, where the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is, home of NCSA). My piddly 12/2 connection tends to barely max at 8/1, though Comcast tries to blame it on my equipment (though I've been through two modems issued by them, 4 routers, all different makes, and 4 NICs (only one of which was a 10Mbps Ethernet card). This, for
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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
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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 spent two weeks in New Zealand earlier this year, and the countryside is lucky to have wired telephones. The North Island wasn't too bad (cell phone service available except where terrain blocked, somewhat slow but reliable free wireless at one hotel), but the South Island felt like a completely different country. If it was available, internet access at hotels tended to be slow and pricey (browsing web sites was often difficult or impossible and 10 cents per megabyte was typical) and prices were simila
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No offence, but having 128Kb up with 7Mb down is still pretty sad. I guess somebody has calculated that the Ack's just manage with that rate, but how do you develop pictures from your digicam? Take them to the store with a dvd? I do have to admit I did verify the connection my friend had from the ISP's web pages, but did not check out what the competition was offering (I was just there on vacation and struggling to use VPN to do some work).
Anyway, just for comparison, here in Finland you can get a 24/1 AD
Finland - Smart -vs- AU/NZ - Dumb gov't policies (Score:2)
Finns are known to be intelligent & NEUTRAL. I respect the Finns highly!
By contrast, Aussies & Kiwis are known to be under the thumbs of -dim- governments.
Australia is dumb enough to continue to follow USA into war (to reduce unemployment?)
rather than think of smarter ways to solve its problems.
At least New Zealand is smart enough to think more highly of its people than to
be a pawn on a US chessboard (read: Iraq & Afghanistan).
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That slow upload is still a pain for video conferencing etc, With cable we get a 10Mbs down 2Mbs up and 20Gig monthly limit for about $100
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No. The intent is 85% or so of the ENTIRE country.
New Zealand (Score:1)
Take your mum.
New Zealand (Score:2)
$355 per capita? (Score:2)
First of all we should be able to mark the article a troll. That's just ridiculous.
Second that's only 355 USD per person I'm guessing they're not going to get everybody for that.
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They don't need to run fibre per person, they need to run it per address. Who knows whether they plan to run fibre to every unit in a block of flats (for example), the number of connections points will be lower than the population so they can spend more per connection.
Re:$355 per capita? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all we should be able to mark the article a troll. That's just ridiculous.
Second that's only 355 USD per person I'm guessing they're not going to get everybody for that.
FFS learn some math.
$355 per person over 10 years is dirt cheap.
It's not even the price of one month's extra internet service per year.
And no, they're not going to get everyone. The title of TFA is "75% of New Zealanders to get 100Mbps fiber by 2020"
Could you fail any harder?
Here's how it works: every fiber builder who takes government money needs to lay basic, unmanaged dark fiber that any ISP can light in order to offer service to a particular home or business. The fiber companies can also run some particular Layer 2 services, but they can't offer full-blown Internet access directly. Instead, they are allowed to sell Internet access to their own retail unit so long as it operates like a separate business, and all other ISPs must be offered access at the same rate.
That is the kind of competition most capitalists talk about, but rarely see in the real world.
If New Zealand doesn't end up with higher speeds and lower costs, I'll eat a sheep's eye.
Re:$355 per capita? (Score:4, Funny)
If New Zealand doesn't end up with higher speeds and lower costs, I'll eat a sheep's eye.
Eat one anyway.
They're good, surprisingly crunchy if cooked properly (quickly grilled by itself, or roasted in the sheep's head). Don't just leave it boiling in a soup - it will dissolve into mush.
I am with Terry Pratchett on this (Score:2)
There is a reason it is called a LOCAL delicacy. Nobody else is stupid enough to eat it.
Now if you excuse me, my swallow spit soup with bull balls is getting cold.
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I love how people justify taxation based on spreading it out over time. How many of these "little" projects can politicians contrive before your tax burden or government debt is unreasonable? Is that per person in NZ, or per ISP customer, per tax payer, BTW? Money would be better invested elsewhere.
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Availability of high speed internet access is actually pretty important to modern life, and the economy. It's a legitimate use of tax dollars for government to improve that infrastructure, especially when market forces alone have proved insufficient to do so.
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High speed's a joke with some of the bandwidth caps and the amount charged for excess GB. I lived in Australia for 6 months last year, coming from Canada. I could not believe what the Aussies tolerate for internet, nor the cost. New Zealand doesn't sound much better. Last mile speed was not my impediment to internet usage/participation, but the costs and ISP practices were. My DSL line was never the bottleneck, but rather the link across the Pacific. I'm in the UK now, and although more expensive than
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Currently there is only one cable connecting NZ to North America, use government funds to build another link that can compete with the monopoly and speed and prices will improve. Same with Australia, although I am reading that competition has improved recently resulting in better speeds and higher caps.
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I love how people justify taxation based on spreading it out over time. How many of these "little" projects can politicians contrive before your tax burden or government debt is unreasonable? Is that per person in NZ, or per ISP customer, per tax payer, BTW? Money would be better invested elsewhere.
Personally, I think that you can afford a whole lot of such small projects. Really, loads.
We're talking about $355 in 10 yrs. That equals about $1.50 per month. In many European countries, the average tax payer will pay up to 1500 euro in tax. So, you can have 1000 such small projects. Or a number of big ones (such as a war or proper healthcare) and still some small ones.
I see your point that money eventually runs out...
But contrary to popular belief, fast internet is not only used for gaming and facebook -
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You're saying Europe is an ultra fail?
We're paying up to 30% - 50% income tax in some cases. In addition, the VAT is 20%, several other taxes also need to be paid (road tax, cigarette, alcohol, pollution, recycling and whatever). We're paying a shitload of tax.
Yet anyone who has ever visited both North America and Europe would probably agree that the system isn't much worse than the US system of minimal taxes.
It's just that in Europe we're brainwashed to think that paying tax is good. You're similarly brain
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What's wrong with taxation when you have representation? We live in societies, you know, not in castles with a moat. I pay my share to keep everything humming along and you should pay yours. If you have problem with that, then change it through the political system.
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I love how people justify taxation based on spreading it out over time.
What's wrong with that? Our modern civilization was practically built on massive projects funded by taxation over time, things that would never have been done without short-term thinking or government investment.
Secondly, why would one have to justify taxation in the first place? It's proven to be remarkably effective.
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$355 per person over 10 years is dirt cheap.
no it's impossibly cheap (which was my point).
And no, they're not going to get everyone. The title of TFA is "75% of New Zealanders to get 100Mbps fiber by 2020"
Whatever it's still only like 450 USD. Good luck to them, but it seems REALLY low ball.
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Here's how it works: every fiber builder who takes government money needs to lay basic, unmanaged dark fiber that any ISP can light in order to offer service to a particular home or business. The fiber companies can also run some particular Layer 2 services, but they can't offer full-blown Internet access directly. Instead, they are allowed to sell Internet access to their own retail unit so long as it operates like a separate business, and all other ISPs must be offered access at the same rate.
That is the kind of competition most capitalists talk about, but rarely see in the real world.
If New Zealand doesn't end up with higher speeds and lower costs, I'll eat a sheep's eye.
Actually, they won't allow any fibre company under the control of the same shareholders as a retail company at all, so it pretty much actually does have to be a seperate business, not just act like one.
They also state that if local governments (city councils) want to submit a proposal, they're free to do so.
International will still suck (Score:3, Interesting)
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!).
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There's a new cable planned to compete with the southern cross. Competition will bring the price down, especially as the southern cross still has spare capacity.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3435625/Top-business-figures-in-bold-broadband-bid [stuff.co.nz]
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Fact is, most of the "bandwidth caps" and costs have more to do with artificial scarcity and cheaper local infrastructure. As an ex
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Didn't Pipe (the guys who just opened PPC-1) talk about a cable to New Zealand (possibly as an extention of PPC-1)?
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Last I heard they had changed their minds on building their own cable, and were going to team up with PacificFibre. I could be wrong about that though.
Setting the bar low (Score:3, Interesting)
10 years is a long time. A real goal would be more like 2Gb symmetrical. Or something.
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In a decade those speeds might be weak.
However, I doubt that the fiber that they lay will become outdated.
Kind of like how DSL runs over copper that was laid decades ago at much higher bandwidth than originally conceived.
The equipment running the system will probably be upgraded over the years without digging up the streets and running new media. The cost will be negligible compared to the initial roll-out.
Re:Setting the bar low (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes and no. The thing is, there's 2 parts needed for a connection: some kinda physical link, and suitable tranceivers in each end of the physical link. Changing the physical link (the copper-pair or the optical fibre) is expensive and difficult. Changing the tranceivers on the ends of an existing cable, on the other hand, is as simple as buying a new faster modem (i.e. the consumer can do it himself, and the cost can be less than $100.)
We've got fibre. The current tranceiver is just capable of 1Gbps, but that's just because currently there's no demand for more, and faster tranceivers are expensive today. (infact we're currently subscribing for only 100Mbps of internet-connectivity, so they artificially limit us in their router) If in a decade a gigabit seems puny, the actual physical fibre is capable of at least 1Tbps, with TODAYS tranceivers. (yes, those things are expensive today, but so where gigabit ethernet-cards, once upon a time)
So short answer: Once you've got a decent-quality single-mode fibre to your basement, you've got enough bandwith in the fibre for a while. I don't want to guess if/when a terabit to your home is going to start feeling puny, but I doubt it'll be this decade.
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From low cost email and light surfing to 24/7 HD options.
Thats the cool thing, its out in suburbia and free of one telco to milk, you have freedom.
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A lot depends on the topology. Afaict one of the reasons that DSL was a commercial sucess was that it could be deployed gradually. When a customer orders DSL you just add a patch jumper at the exchange to the DSL gear. IIRC there were some places in the UK and germany (I dunno if any were in america) that had fiber to the cabinet and then equipment to convert that to pots/ISDN in the cabinet and afaict these were among the last places to get DSL because of the huge cost of upgrading all those cabinated.
Does
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My point is that the fibre I have in the basement (a single-mode-fibre) with the installed tranceivers, does 1Gbps. With other tranceivers that I can buy TODAY, it can do 1Tbps. Technology doesn't tend to get worse over time.
I'm not saying they'll develop 1Tbps tranceivers for my fibre in the future. I'm saying those tranceivers exist TODAY. The only reason I ain't got them already is that a) there's no realistic need for more than 1Gbps in the next few years and b) they cost a lot more.
Sure, there's no GUA
What about the bottleneck? (Score:2)
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With Akamai, googles local caches and other content distribution networks bringing the big content closer to users there isn't actually a bottleneck, the southern cross cable isn't close to being saturated, it's just that telecom charge too much for access to it. Competition in the form of more cables is planned and will make a real difference http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3435625/Top-business-figures-in-bold-broadband-bid [stuff.co.nz]
Worthless plan (Score:2)
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I am sick of correcting this!
Australia does not have any internet filtering. There is only a PROPOSAL for doing so (mostly driven by a particular few senators). It hasn't even been introduced as a Bill into Parliament yet. Hell, the legislation hasn't even been ~drafted~ yet. And isn't likely to be, given that this is an election year and the filter is incredibly unpopular.
OTOH, New Zealand already has a live, functioning Internet filter much like the one being proposed in Australia. So your argument about
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"Internet censorship in Australia currently consists of a regulatory regime under which the Australian Communications and Media Authority has the power to enforce content restrictions on Internet content hosted within Australia, and maintain a "black-list" of overseas websites which is then provided for use in filtering software." That's from Wikipedia. If I'm misinformed, it's because I've seen that and things like that in many places.
I am sick of corr
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Wikipedia does not need to be corrected. A blacklist that can be used in filtering software (that you install on an end-user PC) is not the same as a blacklist that is mandatory and enforced at an ISP or backbone level.
ACMA maintains a blacklist, yes. That blacklist can be included in third party internet filtering software that consumers can use at their own discretion (net nanny-type software). Such commercial filter software is available in every country. But use of this software is not mandatory in Aust
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You claim NZ has a working filter and Australia just has proposals. While the truth is that NZ has an opt-in filter that two small ISPs have opted into, and Australia has two small ISPs that have opted into the Australia system. So you claim that NZ has one and Australia doesn't, when the
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Fair call on the NZ thing - that filter is indeed opt-in (well, on the basis that not all ISPs use it, and if you can choose your ISP then you can 'opt out' in that way).
But the NZ filter is still 'live and working'. The Australian one had a couple of small ISPs participate in a short-term trial of it a while back. That was only a test though, and it finished long ago. So for now, AU has no filtering (other than via user-installed software). That's the comparison I was making (NZ live and implemented, albei
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Full rate ADSL 2+ costs about $20, but will come with a cap of about 1 GB or 2 GB. The last mile speed is great, it's the cost of the bytes that's the issue. Getting 24/1 DSL in New Zealand is cheaper than your two year average in Finland. You just can't use it in NZ because the backhaul is so expensive that they have low caps.
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(And i can bank my data, so if i don't use my 40gb, it keeps rolling over.)
I'm not unhappy to be honest- i'd rather be transparently sold a cap, and be able to purchase reasonable overage, then some sort of unclear rules around what 'unlimited' really was.
Pacific Fibre may address these wider connectivity to the world problems, but the major issues appears to be people
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Well, what are you on? Slingshot advertises numbers close to what you state, but off by an hour here or there on the no limit time, data banking doesn't work like you describe, overages not like you list (unless you count buying $50 overage chunk as $1 per gig) and they don't have a 14/700 plan, but those may be your speeds, as they have FS/FS plans.
And buying that without any other ser
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References please. Last time I looked, the SSC system was the only cable network in place that even comes close to the capacity needed to service NZ's internet requirements. Every other cable I'm aware of is several orders of magnitude slower, and therefore not even worth bringing to the table...
If, as you claim, there are actually other cables of meaningful capacity (which I personally doubt), there will be available data to support this - care to provide us with a link or two?
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Google is your friend. Clue one. The southern cross cable *network* doesn't just go to Austria.
I am fully aware of that fact, and I did check Google before posting. Now instead of being so patronising, I suggest you make note of the following clues yourself, and then provide some evidence to back up your claim:
Meanwhile in Singapore... (Score:2)
More benefits of being that small island in the middle of everywhere: we had this years ago.
Of cause, being "Not in America", latency in gaming is still horrible. Bah humbug.
There is a SMART way to do this. (Score:2)
Not jealous of this at all (Score:2)
I would rather see every lamp post have a Wi-Fi base station on it and cell phone carriers cease to exist. The Internet itself only runs at Wi-Fi speeds (or less) so pervasive Wi-Fi is better than fiber that is only in my home and which I'm going to turn into Wi-Fi anyway and have to manage it.
Got Comcast? (Score:2)
I have fiber to the home with the building wiring remaining as coax. But it doesn't matter much as Comcast is only going to feed data at its usual rate anyway. We need governmental measures to mandate data speed and quantity for ISPs.
(Almost) no cable TV in NZ (Score:2)
The NZ market is significantly different from the US market in that cable TV has only ever been a very minor player in the market. (I only some suburbs of Wellington, and only in the last 10 years or so, but I haven't tried to keep current on this.) Subscription TV comes by satellite to decoder boxes. This means that currently cable modem is not an option, but I'm guessing that fiber-to-the-home will get used for cable TV service once it is installed.
Re:And 3Gb data limits (Score:5, Interesting)
Data limits won't change. Fibre-to-the-home doesn't magically increase the bandwidth of transoceanic cables. Bandwidth in and out of NZ will still be just as expensive, so the transfer caps will stay in force.
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I was under the impression that part of the problem is that the telecos/ISPs aren't buying enough international bandwidth.
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the issue is, as i believe it, NZ Telecom is the major shareholder of the Southern Cross Cable, the link between the US, and NZ...
thus no matter who you get data from, eventually, they're paying NZ Telecom money, and they're not exactly in a hurry to lower the cost of data, as there is no reason to, due to no real competition
Re:And 3Gb data limits (Score:5, Interesting)
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Far more important news for NZ is the second company that has been started to create another link. The Southern Cross Cable has shit loads of capacity, but as there is no competition, they charge too much and we all tiny caps.
Problem is that Kordia is a state owned enterprise, and we've seen just how competitive the government owned companies are (*cough*Mighty River, Meridian, Contact*cough*) with the ridiculous "make as much profit as possible" directive imposed on them. And who's to say that Orcon (a Kordia subsidiary) doesn't suddenly get vastly discounted rates to the bandwidth?
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Yes, I do look forward to PFC's solution - as a regular reader of Geekzone I really should have thought of that first, rather than assuming you meant Kordia's (which will not lower costs at all).
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$600 can get you unlimited ADSL1 internet [actrix.co.nz] with Actrix.
Ridiculous.
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"Something will come up to fill the need" is mostly rust belt lock in tech with a demand to keep others out due to the roll out costs, expected long term pay back and costly upgrades.
Like roads, bridges, clean water and the ability to dial 911, many parts of the world see it as nation building vs say a municipal golf course.
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Pretty much. Our "free market" meant that the one company who owned all the lines charged a fortune, and noone else was willing to invest the amount of money to build a complete national phone/broadband network.
Contrary to what capitalists constantly tell you, the free market is invariably a bad thing for infrastructure.