What you never knew that you needed to know about Broadband and Fibre to the Home

December 16, 2009 Chilling_Silence How-To's / Guides / Tech info

With the government investing NZD$1,500,000,000 into this “Ultra fast broadband” Fibre-Optic network, you’d expect them to have good reason for it right? You’d also expect people would generally back the idea of it, and know why we, as a country, need this infrastructure investment. If only that were so! Communications and Information Technology Minister Steven Joyce is pushing for a major infrastructure rollout across the better part of NZ, and everywhere you look there’s talk of the $1.5 billion the Govt is investing.

That’s a lot of money, and as you can imagine a lot of people are keen to get their hands on a slice of that pie. What you also need to understand is that 3rd parties are also expected to front up that amount (and more) themselves, some estimates suggest that independent parties will need to invest over 6x the amount the Govt will be putting into this project.

Not only that, but it’s my understanding that if you have a “retail” arm, you’re basically kicked out of the group and not allowed to take part in this fibre rollout. You may only on-sell the services later once the project is done.

Technical Notes:

• When referencing things here, I will use “kilobits” or “kbps” (Kilobits per-second) as well as “megabits” or “mbps” (Megabits per-second), in order to avoid all confusion. There is 1024 kilobits in 1 megabit.
• Exchanges are where all the local phone / internet lines meet up in an area. The further from it you are, the slower your broadband speeds. This is why Chorus are rolling out Roadside Cabinets, to bring the equipment closer to your home, so you get a faster connection to the network. See this diagram for a visual representation
  
• ADSL1 began in New Zealand as “Jetstream Starter” back in 2001. It had download speeds of 128kbps, or roughly double that of dial-up.
• ADSL1 has a theoretical max of approx 8mbps, however those speeds are rarely attained. You were more likely to get 1 -> 4mbps
• ADSL2+ has a theoretical max of approx 24mbps, but again those speeds are rarely achieved in the real world. You’re more likely to get 4 -> 16mbps
• VDSL2 has a theoretical max of 250mbps, but in the real-world it’s more likely to peak around 50mbps.
• When I speak of “Sync speeds”, that’s the speed that your Modem or Router connects to the Exchange or Roadside Cabinet. It’s the theoretical maximum speed that your line can push data through it.
• Where I refer to HD (High Definition) Video, I’m generally implying 720p.
• FTTH (Fibre to the Home), FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) and FTTN (Fibre to the Node, or Roadside Cabinet) are phrases you’ll hear a lot of. Just letting you know.

Before we begin, I’d like to share with you.

A few fun facts:

• There is already multiple Fibre providers across New Zealand, for example in the Auckland CBD there is Vector, Citylink, FX Network, Chorus and others who sell to Retailers, who provide you with a Fibre connection
• Where Fibre is available, it roughly goes for $1000 a month upwards. Usually in speeds of 2, 5 & 10mbps, each costing more than the previous. Naturally the pricing varies a lot from provider to provider to reseller.
• Telecom has a Maps website which allows you to easily see if you can get ADSL2+ or VDSL2, or if not then when it is expected to be available: http://www.telecomwholesale.co.nz/maps
  
• There is a national “broadband map” which also shows who’s got Fibre running where: http://broadbandmap.govt.nz/map
  
• Current estimates put 50% of the 1.1million broadband users on an ADSL2+ connection. What about the other 3-million odd New Zealanders? That can’t be 1.1 million homes, so it must be individual users.
• Telecom Wholesale is not allowed to sell to Telecom Retail (Xtra Broadband) at rates different from other ISP’s. As such if you wanted to start up an ISP and buy bandwidth off Telecom Wholesale, you’d be buying it at exactly the same rates as Telecom Retail does.
• Estimates suggest that New Zealand is made up of around 90-95% “small businesses” which consist of less than 30 employees
• Chorus are rolling out Roadside Cabinets, known as Whisper Cabinets to around 3600 places across the country by the end of 2011. As of march 2009, these contain VDSL2 technology inside them which is backwards compatible with ADSL2+ and ADSL1.
• Since Telecom began offering Broadband in New Zealand, the technology inside the Roadside Cabinets and Exchanges has changed 5 times. That’s 5x in 9 years! That technology isn’t cheap to upgrade!
• To deploy a Whisper Cabinet costs Chorus well in excess of $145,000. They’re not cheap.
• Initially, Whisper Cabinets were being deployed at a rate of 5-per month. Not bad considering there’s two tons of concrete they have to put into each, fibre backhaul, monitoring of the site / equipment etc etc.
• As of November 2009, they are now being deployed at a rate of 5 per-day! That means it’s gone from 5 a new Whisper Cabinets a month to around 125 a month.
• 3rd party ISP’s such as Vodafone or Orcon are able to install their own equipment in these Whisper Cabinets, or they can simply resell you a connection using Telecom Wholesale, much in the same way that Telecom Retail does.
• These Whisper Cabinets can also be used to deploy FTTP, with many now coming with the ability to deliver fibre connections to local homes and commercial buildings in the same way you would get your ADSL broadband connection.
• There is already around 1300 of the proposed 3500 deployed. Upon completion Chorus aims to provide over 80% of New Zealand with access to a connection of between 10 & 20mps by the end of 2011.
• The Government proposed FTTH initiative (Which is costing the government alone $1.5b) is expecting to cover 75% by around 2021.

“Super facts” I hear you say, “But what does that mean to me?”. Well, I’ll tell you.

What this means for you:

As a Kiwi, being a home user or a SOHO, there’s a good chance you can already get yourself either an ADSL2+ connection, or a Cable line through somebody such as TelstraClear (In Christchurch or Wellington).

It means there’s a choice of who you use to provide you with this service, as ISP’s can generally resell you the same product from a wholesaler. In other words regardless of who you use for your ISP, it still goes down the same pipe to get out to the rest of the world.

It also means that it’s going to take 10 years for the Govt’s new scheme to be completed, which won’t even have the same coverage as the Chorus network alone (Not to mention other existing fibre networks), and it’s gonna cost a truckload of both taxpayer and independent 3rd parties money!

Uses for an “Ultra high speed fibre network” in NZ

If we’re going to be getting a super-fast broadband connection, lets look at some of the reasons why we would want it, or at least what we could do with it:

• Streaming High Definition (HD) video and content on-demand television / movies
• Sharing Photos & Videos easily through the likes of YouTube, Flickr, Facebook etc
• Teleconferencing / Video Telephony in HD
• Online gaming for your PC, PS3 or Xbox 360 for example
• Remote home monitoring & security in HD
• Calling & VoIP telephony
• Music streaming
• Web Browsing & Emailing
• Realtime Instant Messaging, such as Yahoo / MSN Messenger
• File backups & off-site storage
• P2P / filesharing

And for businesses there’s also:

• Multi-site links, for sharing files etc
• Remote desktop control, working out of the office
• Real-time collaboration, projects etc
• Business-specific or unique data

Wow, that’s a pretty impressive list! The key theme seems to be High-Definition content, as well as real-time.

Of that list, there’s mainly 4 types of traffic:

• High-bandwidth traffic which needs a relatively constant stream for a long period of time, but throughput speeds can fluctuate without interfering too much. This is basically everything Video-related, or streaming music.
• Real-Time traffic which needs a generally very small amount of bandwidth, but it must be 100% reliable, getting through no matter what. This is your gaming and VoIP telephony
• Lower-priority services that use next to no bandwidth, such as Web Browsing, Emailing, Chatting, but still require the “instant feel” to them
• Lower-priority services that use a decent amount of bandwidth, but that aren’t time-critical, such as sending an Email with an attachment, sending your photos / videos to online sites, remote backups or off-site files storage and P2P / filesharing

Naturally some services cross over, such as sending an email via your web browser, or doing a video conference through MSN Messenger, but you get the general idea.

That’s a lot to be doing all at once on your Internet Connection when you think about it, isn’t it? However with todays “wired families”, it’s not uncommon to have 4-5 people on the internet at once, using online services. Lets look at a scenario:

• Child 1 is streaming HD Video from the internet
• Child 2 might be chatting on a VoIP phone while browsing the internet
• Mum might be uploading photos to Facebook for the extended family to see
• Dad is send emails for work and remotely controls his office PC
• Child 3 could be doing online gaming
• Child 4 streams music off the internet while researching school subjects online
  (You can tell I’m from a large family when I speak of examples with 4+ children)

So while it may seem like “a bit much” at the moment, surely we want to future-proof New Zealand so that tomorrows children will have the infrastructure needed to sustain a growing country and a changing lifestyle, right? Of course we do! That’s what this whole FTTH initiative is about, right? After all, how will we do all of the above without FTTP?

Well we could do it with todays ADSL2+ and more specifically VDSL2 services that are readily available. Not to mention the fact there is already multiple fibre networks that run across the country as it is, and we’re just adding to it a 3rd, 4th, 5th, or even the 10th fibre network in some areas.

So lets move on to the rough stuff:

Common misconceptions

The following is a collection of statements, questions and misconceptions that I have personally identified through my own experience working in IT and Communications that the general population seems to suffer from. Hopefully it opens your eyes a little bit to the massive undertaking that the Govt. wants to do, and also shows you a little about what’s already out there.

Current internet speeds are far too slow to do any of the aforementioned online activities concurrently. I can barely browse at decent speeds let alone dream of streaming HD Video content.
Yes, in some parts of NZ the broadband speeds are dire. This stems from the fact that you must currently be within a 2KM radius of the nearest Exchange, or Roadside cabinet if you want to attain any form of semi-decent speeds. It’s for this reason that Chorus is rolling out 3600 of them! Also, with it’s VDSL2-equipped Whisper Cabinets, Chorus is hoping to reach 80% of NZ with speeds of between 10 -> 20mbps. That’s pretty fast! It’s certainly faster than commonly offered 2, 5 & 10mbps fibre connections which cost thousands of dollars each month. There are many things you can do which won’t “speed up” your internet, but will help you maximize what you’ve got, effectively doing the same job. For example, try changing to OpenDNS and see if browsing feels better. You can also try using a better browser like Google Chrome.

You can never reach the speeds they show you though, my speedtests are all really slow.
Unfortunately there’s become a lot of attention lately on speedtest.net, and dont get me wrong it’s a great service, but there’s so much more to the story than just that. For example, did you know that even replacing the Router that your ISP supplied you with a “better” one, can increase your connection sync speeds by 4-5m/bit in some cases?

I’m a gamer and I need a fast connection. Sometimes it lags and I know it’s my internet, I can’t have that while I’m playing!
You’re absolutely right, lagging while playing is a big problem for gamers. However, lag has nothing to do with how much data can be pushed down your phone line. Lag happens when data takes a long amount of time to get from you, to another party, and then back again. You’d be better off analyzing your connection through Pingtest.net and seeing what kind of a score you achieve there, amongst other troubleshooting techniques. Games require very little bandwidth generally, around 10 -> 30 kbps (Sending and receiving) if you are just a “client”. Hosting games obviously requires slightly more. Lets just say that on an average home DSL connection, with an upload speed of around 700kbps, you could have 20 of your mates over, all playing different PC and Console games on different servers, and still not run into issues!

Telecom has a monopoly, we can’t rely on them!
It’s a good thing that we don’t! Technically speaking there’s a good dozen+ operators who have a fibre backhaul around Auckland. Truth be told, Telecom Retail buys off Telecom Wholesale at the same rates as any other ISP out there. Telecom Retail (Xtra) has no advantage over Orcon, Vodafone or anybody else when it comes to pricing. None at all. They’re forced by government regulation to “trade at arms-length”, and believe me, they are. This means that if you really wanted to start up an ISP, and buy from Telecom Wholesale, you’d have exactly the same margins as Telecom Retail (Xtra).

The Southern Cross cable is almost un-used, there’s no need for any additional international cabling
Actually, in reality it’s the total opposite. NZ’s biggest issue is it’s limited international bandwidth availability. The national backhaul is great, but the international pipes aren’t big enough to support the growing communication with the outside world (Read: USA), especially with the likes of YouTube and streaming HD Video. Once that data reaches NZ though (And in the instances of Big Time you can see a lot of it being cached locally), it’s MORE than fine, in fact it’s great!! That’s why performance for the likes of TVNZ OnDemand is generally better than that of YouTube, because the traffic never leaves our shores.

The Govt plan will decrease the minimum cost of Broadband, making it more accessible for people on Dial-Up
Again, it’s unfortunately just not the truth. Because the gear that is put into Roadside Cabinets etc costs money, that has to be made back some how. If those Roadside cabinets are not being used, it’s either going to take longer to recover the cost of the hardware inside them, or the vendors will have to put their prices up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everybody should use this because if they don’t then prices will go up, but what I’m saying is that it’s already tough enough for independent “access seekers” such as Orcon or Vodafone to put their gear into a Roadside Cabinet because it’s simply not cost effective in any way at all! It’s just not worthwhile for Orcon / Vodafone / TelstraClear etc to put their own gear into the “nodes”, because as you saw from the “fun facts” earlier, the gear inside these cabinets has been upgraded 5 times in 9 years. That all costs money, which is tough to recover the cost of. Having the Govt funded Fibre-to-the-node still requires ISP’s gear to be inside roadside cabinets, so whilst it’ll give ISP’s even more (unnecessary) choice about who to use as a wholesale provider, it’s also going to mean that as a customer you’re paying for corporates to have their gear in two nodes. See why it’s not going to make things cheaper?

If the Govt doesn’t roll out Fibre now, it’ll cost 10x as much a few years down the track, and I’m not going to get Fibre to my home without it.
Actually, a lot of the country could get Fibre at their home already if they so chose to. The problem is not the setup cost, which is usually only a couple of hundred dollars, but the on-going monthly cost which is around $1,000 for even the most basic of connections (We’re talking about a connection that’s slower than ADSL1 even!). Yes, NZ may very well need Fibre to the home in the future, but as it stands, adding in this additional national network backend will not do anything to aid with implementing that. Diversity of national carriers won’t bring down the price at all, as it’s the international data that costs you so much each month. Having multiple national players isn’t going to magically spark a “price war” and make it affordable. Having multiple international routes on the other hand, may well do just that!

Final words

Hopefully this has provided you with a little information about the current state and future direction of Broadband in New Zealand. Draw your own conclusions from it, but hopefully I’ve shown you a little bit about why I feel the way I do about the FTTH project by the government.
Open to comments as always

Cheers

Chill.

ADSL, Broadband, Fibre, Fibre to the Home, FTTH,