Background Information So Im from New Zealand and currently the government has an initiative to roll out fibre to all existing homes with copper (new homes have it to the doorstep). They are only rolling out fibre to the roads (like outside houses on the footpaths) and when the user purchases a fibre plan the ISP will connect the fibre cable to their home.
So the government has made it so all standard ADSL (copper) cost THE SAME as the equivilent data capped fibre plan. This means if a $100 a month plan would get me ADSL and 100 down 50 up
This seems like a bargain for the end user right? It is and the government is doing this so that people are enticed to switch to the fibre and get it connected to their house.
The Problem It is a sweet deal for people who have fibre outside their house but the problem is most of the country doesn't. This fibre network is limited right now to major centres (and hardly any of that) and New Zealand has some unique terrain like a goddamn mountain range down the whole of the South Island meaning towns down there won't get it until at least another 3-6 years. And in that time they will have to pay extra for crappy internet.
Plus the privatly owned contractor who is laying out the fibre, Chorus, will gain an estimated $600mil (NZD) out of this as they will get the money from the extra kiwi's are paying for existing copper connections.
Thanks for reading it if you got this far :P Please give your solutions/thoughts in a comment. Thanks :)
I am in NZ too and this is pretty normal all over the world. If you live in a "remote" location you will be delayed in fiber. Hell I even know a few people that still cannot get copper to their door. One of the down falls of living outside of a major city. And Chorus will be getting a lot more than that. I am on fiber too, 100 down, 30up for $134 NZD a month, and from the people I am in contact with around the world this is very expensive in comparison. Just got to remember we are a small country and not economically strong at the moment.
Like you guys Im over here too here in Wellington. I was super excited to hear that we were getting fiber. When it was rolled out here however I was told by my provider that because I was on a hill the connection did not reach here. I was so disapoinged and agree with everyone that this should be done better.
Govt creates a national telecomunications monopoly by creating telecom.
Govt(left-wing) sells the monopoly which they ran into the ground making it provide services where it isn't profitable.
Govt blames telecom for the bad infrastructure and accuses it of being monopoly(person who does this was on the board that sold telecom) that makes alot of money and doesn't invest into network (which they were not really doing, but had started serious investment already by that stage)
Govt passes regulation to run the monopoly into the ground (unbundling the local loop) forcing them to let retailers install their equipment in exchanges and made them deploy cabinets (which they were already doing). Massive ammounts of money were siphoned out of the actual telecomunication company to service resellers.
Govt decides it needs to deploy its own telecomunications network (called UFB) covering the last mile, divides it into regional monopolies and awards contracts to giant companies (some of which are not paying their subcontractors!). I believe the govt pays for half of it (and retains half ownership?) with the rest being done by the companies, most of which is chorus (which was spun off from telecom).
Sadly few people see the irony in this..... They create and sell of a monopoly, blame it for the bad services and lack of investment (which is what monopolies do), call it a monopoly then run it into the ground(depriving them of capital to improve the network). Then they undertake a plan to create a series of new regional monopolies to deal with the outdated infrastructure (at the time I think I was on like 512Kbps CAPPED 'broadband' or something like that which was fast), it is still 3 years before I can get this UFB and I can get almost as fast VDSL now for much less.....
I know, where I used to live in Wollongong NSW was right in the middle of town and we couldn't even get a land line, let alone copper internet, we where stuck on a 6gb wireless dongle that cost about $70 a month and was so slow you couldn't hit the data cap and cellphones the entire time we lived there. Honestly its so backwards its shocking and you pay extra for the privilege, but that's normal its Australia.
I live in the Wellington Region and on ADSL I get 1.6 MegaBytes per second down and 120 Kilobytes up, Now where I live I have to wait till 2014 (around September or june or something) to get Fibre, my current connection is with Slingshot and it's unlimited with interleaving turned off for lower latency.
Current unlimited connection cost: $120 including the phone per month
New Fibre 100mbit connection: $130 per month and that's Unlimited with Orcon.
I can't wait and actually now that I think about it I said around september because of our contract with Slingshot at the moment and the cancellation fee is $170 ;_;
Yeah I get ADSL2+ (16,000Kbps D, 1,000Kbps U) with like 500GB CAP for like 115NZD. I am skeptical about these 'unlimitted' plans, I know that there has been alot of improvement and investment in caching for example. I would just be skeptical about the bandwidth they have available.
Yeah I get throttled down to about 70Mbs down and 20Mbs up (normally 100Mbs down 30Mbs up) between 6:30pm - 8:30pm while being on fiber unlimited. But yeah I wasn't aware about being throttled down in "peak hour" times until I complained about it a few a weeks after signing up. But I guess it is a small price to pay to not worry about when/if you will hit your cap. I average between 650 - 750gigs a month though and it's great to not have to watch your friends like a hawk when they come over and ask if they can connect through wi-fi on their laptops etc.