Comments on: New Zealanders would only waste proper broadband – TelstraClear

By: ProjectX Blog » Blog Archive » Xlinks Digest - 08 / 09 / 2008

ProjectX Blog » Blog Archive » Xlinks Digest - 08 / 09 / 2008 — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 22:32:01 +0000

[...] NZ would only waste proper broadband telstraclearAdded on 09/04/2008 at 07:47PM [...]

By: PaulD

PaulD — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 10:51:15 +0000

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.

By: Brian

Brian — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:18:04 +0000

I love a good flame war… I see things here are warming up nicely. :-)

By: Kublai Kahn

Kublai Kahn — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:07:52 +0000

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.”"

By: Brett Roberts, Microsoft NZ

Brett Roberts, Microsoft NZ — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:40:13 +0000

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

By: Mark Harris

Mark Harris — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 05:15:34 +0000

Well grumped, that man!

By: PaulD

PaulD — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:02:12 +0000

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 :)

By: Kublai Kahn

Kublai Kahn — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:10:12 +0000

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.

By: PaulD

PaulD — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:50:12 +0000

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.

By: Kublai Kahn

Kublai Kahn — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:32:21 +0000

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.