Hard News: Fibre Coming Soon! Ish ...
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"Clearly in some places it does.'
Agreed - I really don't know enuf of the others to argue. It's not an ideology I'm defending but looking at the reality of our essential infrastructure.
The cynic would invest in essential infrastructure and when it failed look forward to the govt cash injection, propping up bad businesses.
Hands up - who sold when Air NZ bought Ansett (7 x bigger) and bought back in once they collapsed?
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Thinking more about his use of 'tranche' I wonder if under a Key govt we'd be in for 3 years of incomprehensible finance metaphors
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i'd say [Williamson] was probably annoyed that he didn't get to make the announcement given it was his portfolio.
The transition from Clark to Key is looking smoother by the day.
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I figured this thread would be as good a place as any to post this little beauty. I've been laughing pretty damn hard.
For my part, I'm still al little mystified as to any any direct correlation between better broadband and, say, better economic performance. Pundits: feel free to bombard me with links, which I will probably read instead of working.
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The numbers don't make any sense to me - there are 1.6 million households, so 75% is 1.2 million, scattered all over the country. This means there's $1250 per household to make the connection - and the World Bank reckons US$750 - US$1500 per connection. So Key's costs are at the low end of the spectrum. Not encouraging.
As well, 1.2 million households by 2014 means 1100 per working day for the five years starting in 2009. I'm pretty sure this is well beyond the capabilities of the current incumbents. And I didn't hear Key announcing any new fibre installation vocational training initiatives ....
So I reckon the numbers look pretty flaky.
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I think Japan is a good case in point here.
Matteo Bortesi, a technology consultant at Accenture in Tokyo, said that "the Japanese think long-term. If they think they will benefit in 100 years, they will invest for their grandkids. There's a bit of national pride we don't see in the West." I'm pretty sure there's more to it than just national pride and wanting to be first, but there's certainly something to be said for setting up a network now that we'll need in a few years. Chances are, eventually we'll have a nice, fast, cheap, nationwide fiber network that will allow us to download porn faster than we could ever have imagined before, but at the rate we're going, it's going to be a while."
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DPF,
Clarke - no one is suggesting the $1.5 billion alone will pay for fibre to the home. NZI estimates total cost is $4 to $5 billion and Nats are saying $3 to $5 billion. So your criticisms of the costings are based on not having read the speech which makes this clear.
The NZI costings are based on fibre costing $150,000 a km, and 25,000 kms of fibre being needed. The cost per km is about right, but if one can get local govt to lay fibre when digging roads up anyway, then the cost can drop by as much as 80%.
Now not every road will be dug up in the next six years, and one still needs to get fibre from the letterbox to the house, but one can make a fair dent in the cost by utilising local govt better.
As I understand it though, the costings are not based on assuming reduced costs.
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Has Mr Key made the fibre announcement because of unbundling, or in spite of it?
Personally I'd like to see at least some of the money used to buy a cornerstone shareholding in Chorus, as opposed to a subsidy. That would probably reinforce the "Chinese wall" between infrastructure and services.
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DPF:
NZI estimates total cost is $4 to $5 billion and Nats are saying $3 to $5 billion. So your criticisms of the costings are based on not having read the speech which makes this clear.
No, I didn't read 100% of the speech - but I did read 100% of the press release, which completely neglects to mention that the $1.5 billion is only a part-payment on a much larger project.
Perhaps it might have been more accurate for the Nats to put out a release headlined "Key Commits Insufficient Money To Get Broadband Job Done; Admits Headline Date Unlikely To Be Met".
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NZI estimates total cost is $4 to $5 billion and Nats are saying $3 to $5 billion.
DPF could you give me a better idea of the rough envisaged model here? (Can't seem to register at your site)
The NZI model was built on a price-regulated monopoly that buys back the existing fibre and copper networks but this doesn't meet the criteria Mr Key put around this. So the suggested NZI model of FibreCo would not be one that National would support?
I can't see how an efficient PPP will work in those criteria but hoping you have a better view of the model?
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Is there any real need to dig up roads? If chorus were bought on board, my understanding is that they've spent years putting those lovely green duct pipes under every footpath, effectively negating the need to dig holes all over the show. That is, they ought to be able to just shove fibre through the existing pipes.
I don't remember the last street I walked down that actually had a full-blown set of phone wires on the poles. Mostly you have perhaps 10 pairs of copper strands emerging every 3-4 houses down the street, strung below the power lines. Sticking new stuff (ie fibre) seems to be exactly what this was designed for... -
Shep
Would food production and distribution, and petrol production and distribution count as essential infrastructure? The US particularly has plenty of power infrastructure developed by private business. I believe a lot of the utilities in the UK were private till nationalised. I read about a company this week planning a new power grid in Texas. COntact and Trustpower are building new power stations here.
i'm not sure you can say Telecom has failed BTW. There are plenty of companies investing in fibre where they can make money and not over commit financially. You only have to look on PA to see that fibre to homes is not a no brainer, so if it is a debateable investment how can it be a failure not to do it?
What's Telecom to do in that situation? Key's effectively saying there are benefits he can see that business either can't or the investment is too risky for any individual company, so the taxpayer is going to underwrite that risk.
I'm not sure if it is good or not, but we have plenty of examples of politicians and central planners thinking they know best and we end up paying the bill for a generation and either never use the capacity built or the market shifts and we are left with a white elephant.
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latency is still an issue - the biggest bugaboo in my work life - I can't work right now because in the NZ evening packet latency from here to my US workplace is often popping around between 300mS and 10 seconds - tough if you're trying to type - best case latency to the US for me never seems to drop below ~200mS (it's gotten a lot better in the past year though - best case latency just from here to Auckland has dropped by ~100mS)
you won't be directly controlling your robots remotely with latency like this - batch work though is here now - just ask Ponoko who already provide such a service from NZ
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I/O
Everyone of those US infrastructures privately owned will have Govt/State grants and serious tax breaks out the wazoo. US food is massively subsedised = Socialism for the Rich.
Key is making an acknowledgement the business model and 'Market' doesn't work.
That Telecom hasn't kept up with infrastructure improvements and can't do so which is a failure of theirs. Although in truth my real concern with Telecom is in their delivery of simple phone line services to New Zealanders aka the "Kiwi Share". How many people died because their phone was cut off, then their power?
Now Telecom are wanting to be an internet provider and not a phone company at all. That has me concerned. -
Belt,
In Nelson's suburb of Stoke, there is a "two week to six month" waiting list for any new broadband connections. Basically, if someone cancels the next person on the waiting list gets the slot. (Moving from address A to B within Stoke may mean you lose broadband as Telecom insist the new one can not be commissioned before the old one is disconnected...) Against this backdrop the good citizens of Stoke are told they can have 6 months of broadband at their current dial-up price if they switch NOW.
Valid questions: 1/ how any other suburbs in NZ are "full? 2/ why are Telecom not increasing capacity in those areas as there is a clear demand AND they are whipping up more demand themselves? 3/ is this an opportunity for the other providers to slap cabinets all over the place? 4/ if not, why not? Wasn't that the whole point?
While most of us are lamenting slow broadband, and the visionaries are celebrating faster broadband in the future, right now, people are not able to get any broadband AT ALL.
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I suspect that if you get your city council's ass into gear laying fibre in competition to Telecom they'll get their ass into gear - competition does that for you - Telecom has nothing to lose by not being all that nice to you if they're the only game in town
Shep: like or not phones are going digital - a good thing IMHO - I can contract with anyone to get my phone service over my internet connection - it means that your phone provider doesn't have to live in a big gray bunker close to you - it also means you can make new sorts of phone services that Telecom doesn't approve of - I have an Asterisk home telephone exchange (really just some free open source software running on an old pc I'd otherwise junk) - calls my local NZ phone ring on my phone, so do ones to my old US phone number, when I'm travelling I can call home over wifi/internet and my wife's phone rings - with an iPhone or equivalent in the future whenever I'm near wifi, anywhere on the planet, I'll get my NZ (or US) phone calls there - Telecom or Vodaphone won't be involved, I'll just pay internet charges - not roaming cell rates - my phone exchange can call yours direct - or maybe to skype - again no Telecom, it's all internet traffic - the best part, I haven't had a telephone solicitor call in 3 years
What I'm trying to say is that if we play our cards right we're all going to get to own the telephone system, or at least our part if we want to - I think Telecom is running scared - they want to get their VOIP boxes into everyones homes before someone else does - otherwise they'll lose control
BTW: did you know you can call Auckland from any little village in India for about 1/10 the price it costs from Dunedin? (look around on the main street there'll be a guy there with a VOIP phone he'll let you use for a price ....) there's no magic there - that guy on the street in India is making money, so is the service he works through - it's just that someones making a killing here in NZ - we all get to become that guy in India when we we control that little box that connects the phone to the 'net
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Telecom are already spending $1.4 billion rapidly "cabinetising" all towns and cities in NZ so to me Key's announcement is a non-event.
http://www.chorus.co.nz/cabinetisation -
Within 4 years 80 percent of NZ homes will have this Telecom service
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Belt - re Nelson - work on the network starts there in October 2008
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I figured this thread would be as good a place as any to post this little beauty. I've been laughing pretty damn hard.
There's nothing so enjoyable as laughing your arse of at something you think your friends wouldn't find funny.
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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.
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.
Ross Brader - what Telecom is doing will get fibre to the node. That is vastly different from fibre to the home.
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Paul Campbell - You've got a point or 12 there.
It's in my too hard/don't know how to prgramme the DVD/mircowave cooker so I'm not gonna try it basket.
How's the quality of service. You'll be on surface lines I take it with no satilite - so has it may have delays or bad reception?
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please don't read 'has' in the last line and it will read a bit clearer.
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There's nothing so enjoyable as laughing your arse of at something you think your friends wouldn't find funny.
I'd just like to say I'm getting a kick out of these comments.
Some might sympathise with KiwiBlogBlog:
Laughed until I remembered I was old enough to have played these games.
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My Telecom broadband experience was them coming to our house in West Auckland, trying to connect it, spending two hours stuffing up our dial up connection and then leaving. I then had to repair our dial up connection after getting home.
Six months later they tell us we still can't get broadband in our area.
My wife then calls Slingshot. They come round and hook us up with broadband in 15 minutes.
I'm afraid I don't get how that all worked apart from having a totally incompetent Telecom technician and someone on the phone who has no idea what they are talking about.
I suggest people get multiple opinions...
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