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| Thread ID: 130259 | 2013-04-02 22:08:00 | Telecom's Utra Fibre | bk T (215) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1335232 | 2013-04-02 22:08:00 | Telecom has rolled out it's Utra Fibre plans (www.telecom.co.nz), very reasonably priced. I'm tempted to upgrade to the Fibre 30 option from my present ADSL2 and am getting 14.79 Mbps down and 0.97 Mbps up. Will I experience great improvement when changing to Fibre 30 which I SHOULD (max) get 30Mbps down and 10Mbps up? How's their 'free Fibre wireless router', is it good? Anyone here has it already? |
bk T (215) | ||
| 1335233 | 2013-04-02 22:31:00 | You'll connect back to your local cabinet / exchange at those speeds, but it's still not a guaranteed speed. A lot is going to depend on how much they oversubscribe their international circuits (Apparently 80-90% on average of NZ traffic is international) so how successful UFB becomes is going to largely rely on each individual ISP ensuring they don't grossly oversubscribe like many do currently with ADSL. Some smaller ISP's that offer VDSL2 are significantly better at that but it's a constant issue that your ISP will have to upgrade their international capacity all the time as they bring on more customers. If it's a free router, I'd hazard a guess it's not going to be super-duper reliable :-/ |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1335234 | 2013-04-02 23:02:00 | I think telecom's fibre is a tad dodgy, the price doesn't seem to add up. Orcon, Snap and a few other Fibre ISP's ALL sell their fibre at the same price as ADSL. I know some have premium but that's often because it comes with "premium" features targeted at people who actually want to use fibre for professional reasons (static IP's, business use etc) Other than the price side though, it should reflect pretty much the same as any other ISP although as chill said, that depends on their available load. I wouldn't doubt for one second that NZ's INTL traffic is that high. Other than PF1 and TVNZ I don't know of any website that's hosted in NZ. Most of our "local" services are actually hosted in Aus (Akamai content, even Google NZ is hosted in Sydeney... I think, don't quote me on that though!) Chorus use their own fibre "modem" - you plug what ever gear you want into an Ethernet port on it and away you go. You would think that a simple router in AP mode wouldn't be too hard for telecom. Then again. It's telecom! I bet they try and compete with Orcon's genius and fail miserably with an even worse Thompson version. Genius isn't *that* bad for your Jim and Jane home user, it works "ok". At least for me it's kept running nicely at my mums place without dropping connections or anything. Had a few people here complain about their internet dropping out here. I told one girl to throw that shitty white Thompson box out the window and buy something decent, her response "How'd you know what wireless thingy I had?" If it drops out more than once a day it's almost always a Thompson :D I might add - the chorus modem is good, it's enterprise grade (sort of) equipment and chorus built it last a wee while. It shouldn't need replacing unless they upgrade the fibre technology in place at the cabinet or if it dies. I think it should last about 6+ years, depending on technological advancements etc. You can telnet into them, and there's some interesting information on them. |
The Error Guy (14052) | ||
| 1335235 | 2013-04-03 04:15:00 | We've put our address forward, our contract with TCL comes to an end in a month and they are just gonna hike our price up by $40 unless we sign another contract, their basic plans are quite a bit more than Orcon for eg. All the Internet plans incl fibre are within a $10 difference. It's only for a year's contract, free connection and all the wirings for most places. From what I seen the Vodafone's now Telstra Cable is more than Telecom's Fibre plans - including the 100Mbit speeds. There is VDSL from a few ISPs, the plans I seen on Snap (with landline) are more than Telecom UFB. We can get VDSL and UFB here. We registered for UFB b/c it's a bit cheaper from what I have seen (the 30 speed) and there's potential in the future that customers can get faster speeds when the entry 30 is repalced by something else. From what I understand VDSL is still dependent on the distance to exchange than UFB, we get 12Mbit on ADSL2+ so there is abit of difference too that may be lost in the works. The Telecom's UFB is convenient for us b/c the copper line is maintained so all the phone jacks in the house continue to function and from what I heard from people in the forums, when UFB is installed ATAs are provided as well so when voice services go fibre as well it would be seamless. The Snap VDSL + phone also has a $400 installation fee. They don't currently list any contract plans to exempt them. The Telecom UFB -you can BYO modem too .... |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1335236 | 2013-04-03 04:26:00 | The Snap and some others maybe. Also you might need to purchase your own modem which you may prefer, for some others it may be an added expense. The Telecom UFB provide free modem -you can BYO modem too .... Still early days. Not sure if any beneifts but the UFB network isn't that loaded at present. |
Nomad (952) | ||
| 1335237 | 2013-04-03 04:40:00 | Also I read that it has been suggested on VDSL customers pay a telco enginner to have a dedicated phone jack for the modem. Which is added expense while for UFB most customer doesn't have to pay for the wirings. | Nomad (952) | ||
| 1335238 | 2013-04-03 05:29:00 | Sort of.... The $400 Installation fee *surely* includes a Chorus technician coming out to your house. The ISP I've started doesn't charge that fee unless Chorus have to go out to your premises. Most are only $99 for a connection fee, which is partly a "churn" cost incurred by joining that Chorus charge which is subsequently passed on, and partly a small fee to cover the costs of getting a customer setup, managing the changeover and the likes. However, this is only because there's no term contracts which many other ISP's use to lock people in with and they recover the fee during that period. The dedicated jack in your home is *completely* optional. If you feel your speeds could be better, or you're having issues, it's *still* cheaper then to get a technician or an electrician out to run a wire from the demarcation point to a wall point later on. Purchasing your own modem, while still a bit of an additional expense, is well worth it. I've personally proven, as have others, time and time again that the cheap-ass freebies ISP's traditionally give away actually cost them next to nothing (The Thomson ADSL2+ modems cost <$30 a pop for your ISP). Given you're now pushing *more* data through your router at faster speeds, I'd personally suggest that it's just not worth the hassle and you're best off getting yourself something reliable. That's the position I've taken at least, with VDSL2 services. Same applies to UFB. The "UFB Network isn't that loaded at present" isn't entirely true. It's ISP-specific. UFB is basically just a method for getting the data from your house to them. There's absolutely nothing stopping the likes of Slingshot from throwing all their UFB traffic in with their currently highly oversubscribed DSL traffic. If you're currently getting 12mbps on ADSL2+ then you may be pleasantly surprised by VDSL2. I was on 9mbps down and 1mbps up on ADSL2+. I'm getting 24mbps down on VDSL2 and 6mbps up. Brother-in-law was syncing at 8-9mbps on his ADSL2+ (But getting SIGNIFICANTLY less on his Slingshot connection, even locally). Now, he's syncing at 45mbps download with me and regularly attains over 40mbps. He's a whole lot closer to the cabinet than I am. We were both using the same ADSL2+ routers and are both now using the same VDSL2 router... Either way, for a few bucks extra a month, I'm more than happy to pay for it for the huge increase in speeds, especially upload makes quite a difference! YMMV. The "30mbps being the entry speeds which may be replaced" is kinda correct. It's the speeds that your ISP gets from you to them, they pay Chorus, and they can sign you up to either plan. AFAIK 100mbps download speeds are already available through UFB, though not all ISP's are choosing to offer that, as it means they've got to buy even more additional international bandwidth to keep up with the expectations customers have, even though most customers will barely "peak" anywhere near that except for during speed tests... So by starting most customers off on 30mbps and slowly raising expectations, they can mitigate most of their costs with international bandwidth. That's my theory anyways... I'm also going with that as the theory about why some ISP's are offering the UFB plans so low, because they know that at most the customers will be getting 30mbps, and can account their international circuits around that. Also, the copper is maintained by Chorus with VDSL2, but only to your house demarcation point like it generally speaking is with ADSL2+. You can pay an additional fee most of the time with providers for your home line to be managed from the demarc to the jackpoint, I don't believe most providers of naked DSL incorporate that. I could be wrong though, I've not looked into it a lot to be honest. Fact of the matter is that both VDSL2 and UFB are "premium" services at the moment, over and above ADSL2+. They cost more, so you're going to get people on both that actually *value* their internet as being important to them. If they only use it for one or two things on the odd occasion, they can get internet and phone for like $50 combined, with Flip. If it's important enough for you to spend more and get a decent / fast service, IMO it should also be important enough for you to get a good router, as using something sub-standard will *severely* detract from the overall experience. I know, I've seen people try with certain Thomson / Technicolor TG789Vn routers and it only ended in tears... Literally I've seen a grown man cry because he was completely out of ideas about what to do and why his VDSL2 connection kept dropping and his job was on the line (This was with another ISP, not mine, a year ago). He finally agreed to replace his TG789Vn router as I'd suggested and instantly all his issues disappeared! Wow that turned in to quite the rant, didn't it!?! :D |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1335239 | 2013-04-03 05:57:00 | So chill, tell us more about your ISP... | plod (107) | ||
| 1335240 | 2013-04-03 06:15:00 | I'm happy to, but I don't wanna abuse my position here :p Can't be seen to be spamming and whatnot ;) | Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 1335241 | 2013-04-03 06:16:00 | So chill, tell us more about your ISP... Yes, tell us..... |
GameJunkie (72) | ||
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