So you have no problem with the currently pricing. ComCom wants to halve the price of copper so VDSL should, in theory, become cheaper than entry level fibre.
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In my opinion, yes I am fine with the current pricing. Perhaps were I on a lower wage then I would be more concerned, and I am less affected by the price of internet than lower-income households (me being a middle-class, single-income with no house/mortgage or reliants). But then again I could always step down to a cheaper plan and spend approx $30-40 a month less than current.
Our prices for internet in NZ are expensive comparible to other countries such as Aus, United states etc, but they already have the underlying infrastructure - I imagine chorus needs the current spend/prices to build that infrastructure. Maybe they don't, the enquiry shall reveal this I guess. And comparing prices against other countries appears to be partly what has got us into this whole mess in the beginning..
..We may as well start comparing IKEA vs The Warehouse!
Question:
Is the fibre system a parallel system for copper - or does copper also use a fibre backbone thus becoming a hybrid system?
Here in the hills we have ancient copper lines going to the box 1km down the road (a box that is well known to Chorus technicians due to the ancient bit). From the box copper wires travel underground to the local exchange 4km further on.
The local school (4km away at the bottom of the hill and1 km from the exchange) is now on fibre. Presumably this connects to our local exchange as well.
From the local exchange.... ?? Does it go via copper, fibre or satellite to a central exchange somewhere else?
If it is fibre then presumably copper means copper/hybrid rather than standalone copper?
NBR story says CNU may need to raise 400 million at a 30% discount .....but guru analysts are just that so no worries
I think you are correct. Any where away from centres of population will possibly never have fibre at the gate. It was only because the NZPO was required by the Govt. to provide a 'phone to anyone who asked for it that rural areas got copper. There is no profit in telecommunications in rural areas.
Of course radio and satellite is an alternative,
Westerly
The copper system uses a fibre backbone. All of the relatively new large cabinets scattered across the suburbs are connected to the central exchanges by fibre. Thus the copper network is what is known as FTTN (fibre to the node) - this is what the Coalition in Australia are now planning for their National Broadband Network. Our UFB is FTTP (fibre to the premises, same as what the previous Labour government were planning for most of Australia's network).
Our copper network is reasonably competitive compared to other countries telecoms infrastructure - if "Chalkie" was claiming that it is obsolete and therefore worthless he is mistaken.
Older cabinets, especially in rural areas maybe connected by copper to the nearest exchange. I'm not sure exactly how common that is.Quote:
Here in the hills we have ancient copper lines going to the box 1km down the road (a box that is well known to Chorus technicians due to the ancient bit). From the box copper wires travel underground to the local exchange 4km further on.
It is fibre. So, yes it's a hybrid network. But when talking about these things people are always talking in terms of the "last mile" - that's where the bottleneck is.Quote:
The local school (4km away at the bottom of the hill and1 km from the exchange) is now on fibre. Presumably this connects to our local exchange as well.
From the local exchange.... ?? Does it go via copper, fibre or satellite to a central exchange somewhere else?
If it is fibre then presumably copper means copper/hybrid rather than standalone copper?
VDSL, as it is implemented in NZ, is theoretically capable of 100 Mbit/s downstream and 50 Mbit/s upstream. But Chorus limit it to 70/10. Even to achieve that you must be extremely close to the exchange/cabinet (probably not more than 100m), have good internal wiring yourself, and have little interference from other sources (e.g. not too many neighbours using xDSL over the same bundle of wires). VDSL is much more sensitive to conditions than ADSL or fibre and I suspect that post-install support costs are significantly higher than too. So you could make a valid argument for pricing VDSL higher than entry level fibre.
Aside from the consistency of fibre installs vs VDSL, fibre is also much capable. The 100/50 plan that is currently available would be possible on VDSL for only a tiny percentage of customers. The 200 Mbit/s plan Chorus are promising for next year is impossible on VDSL as it is currently implemented here (it is theoretically possible using the wider-spectrum 30a profile but currently Chorus as only implemented the 17a (100 Mbit/s) and 8b (50 Mbit/s) profiles). And fibre can do much better, at least 1 Gbit/s.
Going back to that Stuff op ed, I don't entirely agree with him. Most people aren't really going to notice the difference between VDSL and fibre. And the fact that VDSL is less capable doesn't mean it is cheaper to maintain (in fact the opposite). As some one else pointed out, telecom companies often charge the same for 3G vs 2G wireless access which is a very similar situation.