At 11:34 a.m. 27/02/2002 +1300, Don Stokes wrote:
Joe Abley
wrote: I think that mandating unbundling of the local loop would result in more competition, leading to choice and cheaper alternatives to the Jet* packages that seem to be universally hated.
While others have suggested at least 10 ISPs would get into the action, I still don't like unbundling. In my (narrow) mind, the local loop is history. End of story. Its not just the cables (old construction, water in it etc, but the terminations, dodgy splices, etc. But also that at best xDSL will never deliver the sort of bandwidth that we as an industry want to see in the as soon as possible future.
Frankly, I don't see DSL over voicegrade copper as the long or even medium term solution to the problem of providing ubiquitous broadband service. At best, it's a stopgap.
At last !! someone agrees with me.
What's happened in Wellington in particular is that Citylink & Saturn built "next generation" local loops -- cable TV, fibre -- in parallel with the voicegrade copper links. As Richard noted, Wellington is suitable for this -- it's a small geographic area with a fairly high population density. Wellington has also been in the habit of cluttering the sky with overhead cables (the, uh, uneven terrain makes underground cabling difficult for everyone), and Saturn was able to get cable rolled cheaply on existing poles, whereas in other centres such services have had to have been put underground at greater cost.
Perhaps what's needed is assistance in building such local loop infrastructure.
No - we (NZ) just spent 10 years getting away from this. The economics of local loop roll out are very simple and the figures apply in both NZ and the US. - You have to get into a house for under $1200 - thats the build, the kit, connections, converters, etc (and often the set top box/router/whatever. This is not too hard. You have to take a total street or block approach not just one house. Then you look at your uptake figures and as I mentioned before you do well if you get 25 to 30%. I think Saturn got around 30% which internationally is good. So you work out your street build and divide the number of houses and then multiply by 4 and that is your return, so start applying your roi figures.
Not just in terms of assistance in getting capital to do it raised, but in providing an environment where infrastructure can be built easily. The latter doesn't necessarily mean overhead cabling, but say co-ordinating infrastructure development; why do water supply, sewerage, power, gas, traditional telecomms and broadband need completely separate holes? If you're going to dig up a street to replace a water main, how about laying ductlines for some or all of the above? How about if local authorities were required to maintain a register of interest in all street works, and were required to notify all interested parties so that co-ordinated, shared development or maintenance could be done?
DON - they have been doing this for years ! remember that funny Palette based mapping system I used to run at the MED ? technology now called GIS....... However getting trench co sharing is as hard as interconnect....... even WCC find it hard agreeing to let us share a trench However, its not that bad. Remember we are DEREGULATED. That means YOU can dig up the road. Just fill in the form, comply with the specs and get out your shovel. Hook up 12 people and get an operators licence. your own letter from the GG. But in fact its even easier. In large parts of the US the utility reticulation is along the BACK fences. Thats where the poles are, not in the street. So what you do is run your cables along the back fences using a standard easement form for each home owner. They easy to train. Now you start using NID boxes like we build. They're basically a fiber media converter and an ethernet switch in a weatherproof box with psu and surge protection. Simple traditional engineering. You put boxes every 100m like good ethernet says, and you run cat-5 to the houses. If you can't do it bloody cheap you go broke. If your're real clever you even skip the fiber and just run gig copper between the boxes. THat saves you the media converter costs which are the big hurdle. And since you are running copper its about 30 cents per meter. So why is a decent gigabit connection to a home so hard ? Actually I only think we need 100mbps, but the gig switches are getting so cheap might as well go for gig...... rich ps if you want to see real fun look at http://www.r2.co.nz/20020219 its only wireless tho nothing too sexy, but it does show the services like voice and video running. richard.naylor(a)citylink.co.nz - To unsubscribe from nznog, send email to majordomo(a)list.waikato.ac.nz where the body of your message reads: unsubscribe nznog