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| Thread ID: 108620 | 2010-04-05 04:05:00 | Discussion: Why fibre to the door? | Chilling_Silence (9) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 873023 | 2010-04-05 04:05:00 | OK so after a lot of reading online I'm wondering if either I'm mis-informed, or if the general populace is... Question: What will Fibre to the door give us that todays ADSL2+ connections can't? Once there's the Chorus rollout of 3500+ nodes across the country with ADSL2+ and in some cases VDSL2, that's going to give most people more speed than they can shake a stick at, including the likes of High Definition video streaming (Which for 720p is generally less than 4m/bit). Chorus expect most to be over 10mbps. Currently VDSL2 is even faster, it's available, it's just freaking expensive. HSNS Lite is available in a lot of places, also expensive (~$700 for 5m/bit without buying any international data). Fibre is also available, in fact I can get it at my house for a one-off $200 install fee. It's just it's $800 for 1m/bit, $1000 for 2m/bit and if I want "speed" $1200 for 5m/bit. Funnily enough, I'm a few K's from my exchange and I currently get 4.4m/bit on ADSL2+, let alone when the roadside cabinet is deployed here in Sept 2011, I'm expecting if it's anything like the other people I know on the Cabinets, I'll probably be getting around 15 -> 20m/bit. So we've determined that if you really have symmetrical bandwidth requirements, you *can* get Fibre ( broadbandmap.govt.nz ), it's just expensive ... But will this Fibre rollout decrease the cost per-gig for the consumer? I highly doubt it! People will simply end up using their already pathetically small bandwidth caps even FASTER. Is it just me, or could the few billion from the Govt be better spent elsewhere? Having previously been the minister of finance, and then the minister of transport, you can see that IT&Comms is not his strongest point, so has he simply cottoned on to a nice "catch phrase" and decided to run with it? I see so many people just writing comments on the Vector Fibre-to-the-Home website saying "Moar speed!!!!", but I fail to see what more speed will do. Surely a well QoS'd line would do infinitely better than a line with no QoS and a higher burst speed? I'm not saying that Fibre is specifically bad, but why have the Govt fund it? Why can't other providers simply do the job themselves in their own time, as requested by the public? Anyway, I'm keen to stir up some healthy discussion around the topic, preferrably from the technically minded who can provide some solid rebuttals or agreements but I'm open to any discussion ;) Chill. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 873024 | 2010-04-05 04:08:00 | Fibre to the door is essential. We've proven many times that sending anything to Windows is inviting big trouble ;) | R2x1 (4628) | ||
| 873025 | 2010-04-05 04:14:00 | Will our current hardware run on fibre? I don't know if the current batch of routers will or not and a lot of in house infrastructure would need to be upgraded to run at gigabyte speeds surely | gary67 (56) | ||
| 873026 | 2010-04-05 04:27:00 | Nope, new routers needed, new fibre to the home, so it's a totally new infrastructure. It's also quite doubtful we'll be getting gigabytes per-second, but more realistically symmetrical 5, 10, 25 or 50m/bit... So I got thinking, lets tackle this a few at a time from the fibretothedoor.co.nz website: www.fibretothedoor.co.nz -- Businesses -- Argument: Fibre will allow Video Conferencing & working from home My thoughts: You can do all that already. If you're doing a Video Conference or VoIP and somebody loads up a download, regardless of if you've got a 5, 10 or 100m/bit fibre line, it's still going to mess with your video conference and turn the voice to custard unless you've got QoS on your router. That requires education of the masses, and the right CPE, not a faster connection. Summary: Not good enough reasons in my opinion. We need better CPE & education -- Education -- Argument: Our kids are missing out because they don't have Fibre. It allows greater learning opportunities, and video conferencing so we can learn a foreign language like spanish by a spanish teacher overseas My thoughts: We need to be keeping jobs in NZ, not outsourcing. Again, video conferencing will suffer if there's not the right QoS on the line, that's going to happen if they have fibre or not. On top of that, schools can already get Fibre, but from my experiences when I went to Unitec, the actual internal infrastructure sucked ass so badly, poorly setup wireless system done by students in the previous years that was flaky at best, a useless DNS setup that always fell over, amongst other things. Seriously there's nothing wrong with 40 -> 50 students sharing a single DSL connection for general browsing / use. We were all QoS'd to 15KB/sec at Unitec, and when it worked, it was more than sufficient. Summary: Again, not good enough reasons in my opinion, but the best reasons potentially thus far. -- Family use -- Argument: People need HD Video conferencing, and HD TV / Movie streaming, as well as 40MB per-picture (uncompressed???) of your dog My thoughts: Wow lots of arguments for video conferencing, yet very few people actually do it, and when they do nobody really cares if it's in HD or not. HDTV is still a long way off in NZ. YouTube has only *just* brought out HD video, but we receive our TV through Freeview, not through Cable. Again, if you want HD movies, at approx 4m/bit for a 720p video, you could *still* have two downloading, while you're on the phone, browsing, gaming and more ... but you've got to have QoS or no matter what it's going to suck and affect everything else (Like the HD video conference you're doing while watching two HD movies). Besides, we don't have the bandwidth caps to do anything like that. At around 4 -> 12GB for a High Def movie, most people are apparently on a plan of 5GB or less. That's their whole bandwidth cap gone on a single movie. Fail! Summary: Poor argument, we need bigger monthly caps, not faster lines, ADSL2+ will be far more than sufficient -- Healthcare -- Arguement: You won't have to go see the doctor, and operations can be performed by surgeons while they're at home My thoughts: I've seen Go Virtual Medical, they're doing some cool stuff, but they already have Fibre. If I've got Fibre, it's not going to allow me to self-diagnose any more than it already does. A doctor is still going to need to use an iceblock stick pressed on my tongue to see inside me, a webcam just won't do that. Summary: Crappy argument, those who need Fibre already have it, the rest of us won't be self-diagnosing our illnesses any better any sooner. If a pharmacy is receiving prescriptions online, it's likely small text, and you could probably even do that via dial-up if you had to. Basically they seem to think the only reason people will need faster connections is for HD video. Crappy reasoning and Fibre won't be any better over ADSL2+ or VDSL2, if you're still saturating your line, your VoIP call and online game will still suffer regardless. |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 873027 | 2010-04-05 05:10:00 | OK, we've seen a lot of good reasons for no. How about some of these; Rural comminuties; while most people live in cities, and can get ADSL2+ over somewhat new copper, people like me out in the middle of nowhere are stuck on 40 year old cable, lucky to get broadband within 1km of the exchange. Also, when it rains out here, the phones go out. Fibre is a bit more reliable than that. Signal doesn't degrade like it does over copper, either over distance, or on old fibre. Also, with fibre, you can essentally multiplex it, by running two, three, hell I've seen 128, different wavelengths of light. That means upgrades are nice and cheap and easy as pie. Show me a 1Tb/s connection running over copper. Even on a single wavelength, it's easy to get 1Gb/s out of it. As for the 'new equipment' argument, well, the backhaul sucks major ass as it is. But as for the end user, 99% run either a home router, or maybe a USB dongle. It's not hard to swap round from ethernet/wifi to... ethernet and wifi. Once it's built, it's there forever (or at least a hundred years), with things like IPv6 inevitable, this would be the perfect chance to migrate consumers over to IPv6 routers. As for the streaming HD argument, you're forgetting about 1080p. That's a good 17Mbit/s at least, even then that's quite low. Even your 720p bitrates seem quite conservative, I'd pick around the 8Mbit/s mark. Normal DVD's are encoded at around 4-6Mbit/s IIRC, and that's at 576p. |
ubergeek85 (131) | ||
| 873028 | 2010-04-05 05:23:00 | Chill. I believe we had a PressF1 debate about a Government funded fibre to the door issue recently. If you were all that fervent about your beliefs I have to ask why you did not even bother to vote on one side or the other? |
Sweep (90) | ||
| 873029 | 2010-04-05 05:31:00 | On top of that, schools can already get Fibre, but from my experiences when I went to Unitec, the actual internal infrastructure sucked ass so badly, poorly setup wireless system done by students in the previous years that was flaky at best, a useless DNS setup that always fell over, amongst other things. Seriously there's nothing wrong with 40 -> 50 students sharing a single DSL connection for general browsing / use. We were all QoS'd to 15KB/sec at Unitec, and when it worked, it was more than sufficient. Summary: Again, not good enough reasons in my opinion, but the best reasons potentially thus far. Not all schools can get fibre and even if they can its highly expensive (the government only funds part of the initial physical connection). Yes 50 students maybe fine on DSL but what happens when you get secondary schools with 200 students all wanting a piece of the bandwidth at any one time? |
stormdragon (6013) | ||
| 873030 | 2010-04-05 05:45:00 | Chill. I believe we had a PressF1 debate about a Government funded fibre to the door issue recently. If you were all that fervent about your beliefs I have to ask why you did not even bother to vote on one side or the other? This topic has really been thrashed to death. The key arguments on the "for" side for FTTH are (and as yet, don't appear to be answered by the "against" side on this forum): - Symmetrical connections - fast download speeds are great, but without fast upload, we will always be content consumers, rather than content creators. Creating content and adding value is how you get economic benefit, not simply watching YouTube etc. - Investing for the future not for now. In the early 20th century when the electricity grid was rolled out in NZ, supplying electricity to farms and rural communities was questioned in much the same way - why was it needed, isn't there better things for the govt. to spend money on? It's thanks to those investments that utility we consider essential today is available to so many people in rural areas. Likewise, when the post and telegraph office laid phone lines, they put in far more capacity than was initially needed (I don't have the exact number off hand, but it was something like 2x the number of lines they estimated would be required in subsequent decade or so). It wasn't needed then, but fast forward to the end of the 20th century and nearly all homes and businesses have a phone line, with some having two or more. Rather than having to dig up the roads again, that infrastructure was all there, and some of those lines are now being used to supply broadband internet today. |
somebody (208) | ||
| 873031 | 2010-04-05 05:57:00 | Not all schools can get fibre and even if they can its highly expensive (the government only funds part of the initial physical connection) . Yes 50 students maybe fine on DSL but what happens when you get secondary schools with 200 students all wanting a piece of the bandwidth at any one time? The way I see it, currently, it's still cheaper to have 4x ADSL2+ connections than a single Fibre connection . Still, schools are probably more of an exception than the rule, they can definitely use a cost-effective fibre solution . Chill . I believe we had a PressF1 debate about a Government funded fibre to the door issue recently . If you were all that fervent about your beliefs I have to ask why you did not even bother to vote on one side or the other? I was busy over the period that it was being held and didn't have enough time . OK, we've seen a lot of good reasons for no . How about some of these; Rural comminuties; while most people live in cities, and can get ADSL2+ over somewhat new copper, people like me out in the middle of nowhere are stuck on 40 year old cable, lucky to get broadband within 1km of the exchange . Also, when it rains out here, the phones go out . Yet the Chorus rollout will hit 80% of NZ by the end of 2011 . The proposed Govt Fibre rollout will only reach 75% of NZ, by 2021 . That's a 10-year difference for 5% less . Seems those rural communities are better off with hoping for ADSL2+ than Fibre . Fibre is a bit more reliable than that . Signal doesn't degrade like it does over copper, either over distance, or on old fibre . Also, with fibre, you can essentally multiplex it, by running two, three, hell I've seen 128, different wavelengths of light . That means upgrades are nice and cheap and easy as pie . Show me a 1Tb/s connection running over copper . Sort of but not quite . You're not going to be getting those speeds to your home at all . There's a good chance of single-mode 100mbps fibre being used from what I understand, and while I'll freely admit I don't understand the full technical side of fibre, I know you're not going to have the degrading performance with distance . However, with 80% of the country being within 2KM of a roadside cabinet equipped with ADSL2+ and in many cases also VDSL2, you're still going to be getting a pretty damn good speed . Again, not the sort of speeds to run a University or school off, but still, fast enough for a probably 99% of businesses & homes . Even on a single wavelength, it's easy to get 1Gb/s out of it . As for the 'new equipment' argument, well, the backhaul sucks major ass as it is . But as for the end user, 99% run either a home router, or maybe a USB dongle . It's not hard to swap round from ethernet/wifi to . . . ethernet and wifi . Once it's built, it's there forever (or at least a hundred years), with things like IPv6 inevitable, this would be the perfect chance to migrate consumers over to IPv6 routers . Yes it's likely, but none of our ISP's support it . Right now Google has just setup YouTube to support IPv6 . Yes, it's a long way off, but rolling out fibre is not the way to prepare a country for it . As for the streaming HD argument, you're forgetting about 1080p . That's a good 17Mbit/s at least, even then that's quite low . Even your 720p bitrates seem quite conservative, I'd pick around the 8Mbit/s mark . Normal DVD's are encoded at around 4-6Mbit/s IIRC, and that's at 576p . DVD is MPEG-2 video, not h . 264 which almost all of the HD content is (If it's not, it's going to be either Ogg Theora or RM) . I've done quite a bit of stuff with HD video, and 4mbps isn't all that conservative . Generally speaking Full HD (1920x1080) won't go over 18mbps, but sits more between 8 and 14mbps . Still not convinced :-/ |
Chilling_Silence (9) | ||
| 873032 | 2010-04-05 06:04:00 | Some initial thoughts below (disclaimer: I haven't read the content on Vector's website particularly thoroughly) . So I got thinking, lets tackle this a few at a time from the fibretothedoor . co . nz website: . fibretothedoor . co . nz/why-fibre-to-the-door" target="_blank">www . fibretothedoor . co . nz -- Businesses -- Argument: Fibre will allow Video Conferencing & working from home My thoughts: You can do all that already . If you're doing a Video Conference or VoIP and somebody loads up a download, regardless of if you've got a 5, 10 or 100m/bit fibre line, it's still going to mess with your video conference and turn the voice to custard unless you've got QoS on your router . That requires education of the masses, and the right CPE, not a faster connection . Summary: Not good enough reasons in my opinion . We need better CPE & education Video conferencing is just one use case, and putting in QoS isn't going to solve the problem if you are maxing out your ADSL or VDSL connection . Also, see the symmetry comment in my earlier post - xDSL technologies are great for download, but not so great for upload . If you want to be a consumer of content, great, but you don't make money doing that - you need to be a creator of content, and be able to get that out to people . -- Education -- Argument: Our kids are missing out because they don't have Fibre . It allows greater learning opportunities, and video conferencing so we can learn a foreign language like spanish by a spanish teacher overseas My thoughts: We need to be keeping jobs in NZ, not outsourcing . Again, video conferencing will suffer if there's not the right QoS on the line, that's going to happen if they have fibre or not . On top of that, schools can already get Fibre, but from my experiences when I went to Unitec, the actual internal infrastructure sucked ass so badly, poorly setup wireless system done by students in the previous years that was flaky at best, a useless DNS setup that always fell over, amongst other things . Seriously there's nothing wrong with 40 -> 50 students sharing a single DSL connection for general browsing / use . We were all QoS'd to 15KB/sec at Unitec, and when it worked, it was more than sufficient . Summary: Again, not good enough reasons in my opinion, but the best reasons potentially thus far . Schools "can" get fibre, but they have to pay a premium for it . More often than not, schools are too far away from the nearest tie-in point for existing fibre networks passing through their cities . There are also very legitimate cases for having good quality, low jitter connections around the country, and internationally, to further the education of students . To take an example from the Wellington Loop initiative (http://www . wellingtonloop . net . nz/ ), the high definition video conferencing capability allows students who are learning more obscure musical instruments gain access to international experts - e . g . if someone wanted to be assessed for for Grade 7 bagpiping, and there was nobody in the country qualified to do the assessment, you could do a high-def video conference to someone in the UK who could do the assessment . There is also (I don't know if this is on the website) now a centralised way for teachers to get access to (legally), and share educational television content . Tie-in with the KAREN and international research networks allows access to a vast amount of resources . I think Nelson has an equivalent (pilot) network . -- Family use -- Argument: People need HD Video conferencing, and HD TV / Movie streaming, as well as 40MB per-picture (uncompressed???) of your dog My thoughts: Wow lots of arguments for video conferencing, yet very few people actually do it, and when they do nobody really cares if it's in HD or not . HDTV is still a long way off in NZ . YouTube has only *just* brought out HD video, but we receive our TV through Freeview, not through Cable . Again, if you want HD movies, at approx 4m/bit for a 720p video, you could *still* have two downloading, while you're on the phone, browsing, gaming and more . . . but you've got to have QoS or no matter what it's going to suck and affect everything else (Like the HD video conference you're doing while watching two HD movies) . Besides, we don't have the bandwidth caps to do anything like that . At around 4 -> 12GB for a High Def movie, most people are apparently on a plan of 5GB or less . That's their whole bandwidth cap gone on a single movie . Fail! Summary: Poor argument, we need bigger monthly caps, not faster lines, ADSL2+ will be far more than sufficient You're right - for families, content consumption is the main use case . Fibre on its own won't bring about new content delivery models, but the availability of the bandwidth can allow local on-demand services to be created . The TiVo (Caspa???) service is just a tiny example of what could be possible . -- Healthcare -- Arguement: You won't have to go see the doctor, and operations can be performed by surgeons while they're at home My thoughts: I've seen Go Virtual Medical, they're doing some cool stuff, but they already have Fibre . If I've got Fibre, it's not going to allow me to self-diagnose any more than it already does . A doctor is still going to need to use an iceblock stick pressed on my tongue to see inside me, a webcam just won't do that . Summary: Crappy argument, those who need Fibre already have it, the rest of us won't be self-diagnosing our illnesses any better any sooner . If a pharmacy is receiving prescriptions online, it's likely small text, and you could probably even do that via dial-up if you had to . That whole "you won't have to see a doctor" argument does sound a little bizarre, but the real opportunities (in my view) is tapping into a nationwide (and international) pool of experts in a more meaningful way . It might not mean sitting in your home and having your illness diagnosed, but it could mean that your local GP could conference in an international expert on your illness and they could do some diagnosis through high def video and other means . |
somebody (208) | ||
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