New Zealanders would only waste proper broadband – TelstraClear
Today on Radio New Zealand National I responded to the extraordinary comments of TelstraClear’s Chief Executive, Alan Freeth, that there is no point of providing fast broadband in New Zealand because we’d only waste it. And he doesn’t like Hokitika. His views can’t be anything to do with trying to protect his existing network in the main cities, can they?
Read on for my speaking notes, or listen to the audio download in mp3 or ogg.
You could hardly have missed Telstra’s advertising blitz at the moment. You know, the shiny robotic-looking guy kicking a soccer ball while the stuffy old telephone next to him sweats?
I’m sure that’s the image Telstra would like us to have of itself compared to its opposition. But let’s remember that, in its native Australia, Telstra is seen by many as part of the problem, not as they would have you believe here, the solution.
Now, Alan Freeth, the CE of TelstraClear, the New Zealand company which is wholly owned by Telstra, has just come out and said some extraordinary things about getting better broadband in this country.
Q: What has he said?
A: That the main result of faster broadband links to the home may be more downloads of pornography and movies rather than improvements to productivity.
Q: You don’t think he’s right?
A: This is like saying, back in the 1980s, that no-one would ever use more than 640 k of RAM in their computer. Bill Gates said that, by the way, and computer designs paid the price for a decade. These days a basic computer has several thousand times more storage than what he could he could imagine.
Or remember Ken Olsen, the head of a then-great computer company called Digital Equipment, who asked who need a computer on their desk?
And it’s not just technologists like me who disagree with him. The New Zealand Institute, hardly a great bastion of socialism, has said that fibre to the home in New Zealand is economically justifiable and the right thing to do. And, of course, the National Party seems to have had a Damascus Road experience about intervening in the broadband market and they want to put a cool one and half billion into getting fibre to the home. So the desire to get fibre out there isn’t just some wild hippy ideal.
Dr Freeth also had a little snap at Hokitika, saying he didn’t believe people there wanted fast broadband and he couldn’t se how giving it to them would help the economy. Assuming he’s not just blind prejudiced against Hokitika, he’s effectively saying – if you live in small town, don’t bother trying to get decent Internet because we aren’t going to help you and we’ll criticize anyone who tries.
Of course Telstra don’t want people to have fibre to the home. It causes a problem for them – Telstra would rather sell you access to the Internet by the cupful, there’s no way they want you have it delivered via the mains. That’s what you are seeing here – a bit of naked self-interest by a business that makes its money restricting what people do then charging to lift restrictions. I never thought I hear myself say this, but Telecom are finally beginning to get this. Telstra seem very much to be stuck in last century on both sides of the ditch.
The message here for Telstra Clear, is stop trying to protect your own network from competition and get on with delivering bandwidth like you are supposed to. We’ll work out what to do with it, thank you very much. Our broadband is already way behind most of the OECD in terms of capacity.
Q: Aren’t Telstra selling mobiles now?
A: Not as such…they are giving a basic model, just one phone type, as a captive phone on a plan. They are reselling access to Telecom’s old CDMA network – that’s the one that won’t roam and that Telecom are trying to get rid of. So, if you if you get one of these Telstra phones you won’t be able to upgrade it or take it overseas with you.
Links
As always, you can discuss this broadcast at it.gen.nz.
The head of TelstraClear doesn’t think we need broadband, or Hokitika.
The New Zealand Institute says fast broadband is vital for our future.
The elephant in the room that you failed to mention is the difference between theoretical and actual throughput of ADSL 2 over copper. I live in Mt Eden and use Orcon as my ISP. My line attenuation is 25.5dB which would place me about 1.85 km from the exchange and should give me a download speed of about 18,000 kbps. My actual download speeds vary between 5,600 and 6,500 kbps according to the speed test at nzdsl.co.nz. I don’t have a splitter installed so some of the loss may be premises related but I have no doubt that some of it is down to copper wires and connections that have been poorly maintained over a long period of time. Fibre to the home would resolve these problems and is, IMO, an essential infrastructure upgrade, if we are to move to the weightless economy that David Skilling envisages.
Comment by Kublai Kahn — 4 September 2008 @ 11:32 am
Kublai Kahn, you’ve measured your achieved download speed through all of the elements in the network not the speed you are getting over copper. You could have fibre and still get the same results if your ISP has other bottlenecks.
Alan Freeth knows that fibre to the home costs much more money than hybrid methods and there’d have to be demand on day one to pay for it.
Rural NZ would like some of this money and speed to actually do some productive things on the net.
Comment by PaulD — 4 September 2008 @ 11:50 am
PaulD :- you’re obviously much better informed than us plebs from suburbia. Perhaps you could share the data you have that document these other bottlenecks and explain what Alan Freeth is doing to address them because I really need my porn to download faster.
Comment by Kublai Kahn — 4 September 2008 @ 2:10 pm
If you can get your line attenuation from your modem you should be able to see the line speed. I’m on 28dB down and get 11200kbps. You could be getting 12-13000kbps so speedtest results half that mean that at the moment copper isn’t the problem. It could be that ISPs including the one that your favoured pron merchant uses buy as little network bandwidth as they can get away with :)
Comment by PaulD — 4 September 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Well grumped, that man!
Comment by Mark Harris — 4 September 2008 @ 5:15 pm
I agree 100% with your comments re Dr Freeth’s outburst (in fact, I’m yet to talk to somebody who agrees with him) but I have to pick you up on the “no-one would ever use more than 640 k of RAM in their computer. Bill Gates said that, by the way, and computer designs paid the price for a decade” comment because it’s not true. The links below spell out the reality fairly clearly.
I would humbly suggest that any computer design issues you perceive were somebody else’s doing :-)
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates
Comment by Brett Roberts, Microsoft NZ — 5 September 2008 @ 9:40 am
In 2006 Alcatel wrote a report for Telecom entitled “Increasing ADSL Line Rate Speeds
in the New Zealand Network.” (easily Googled)
In it they said:
“It is important to realise that Telecom’s present copper loop networks were designed and
optimised for voice frequencies (DC – 4KHz). The later arrival of DSL, with its use of
frequencies beyond 1MHz, means that many of the copper loop networks operated today are
not necessarily optimised for DSL performance and will provide varying levels of performance.
Thus, merely increasing the line rate of ADSL services in these networks will not guarantee
performance and speed improvements for customers.
Copper loop access networks vary from country to country. For example New Zealand has on
average longer loops compared to the UK.””
Comment by Kublai Kahn — 5 September 2008 @ 1:07 pm
I love a good flame war… I see things here are warming up nicely. :-)
Comment by Brian — 6 September 2008 @ 10:18 pm
Kublai Kahn quotes from an Alcatel report “Copper loop access networks vary from country to country. For example New Zealand has on average longer loops compared to the UK”. At the time Alcatel were accused of coming out with a patsy report that suited Telecom’s stance of the day. Currently Telecom and Alcatel are cabinetising the network in major urban areas so the maximum copper loop length is reducing to about a third of the previous limit.
Comment by PaulD — 7 September 2008 @ 10:51 pm
[…] NZ would only waste proper broadband telstraclearAdded on 09/04/2008 at 07:47PM […]
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