ABOVE, one of Chorus' "Whisper" fibre cabinets, in the Auckland suburb of Mt Albert. Manufactured by Christchurch's Eaton Engineering, each cabinet costs around $150,00 all-told and serves around 200 customers. See more photos below.
ABOVE, one of Chorus' "Whisper" fibre cabinets, in the Auckland suburb of Mt Albert. Manufactured by Christchurch's Eaton Engineering, each cabinet costs around $150,00 all-told and serves around 200 customers. See more photos below.
The future of Telecom’s network division, Chorus, is currently being decided as the company wheels and deals with the government (sorry, Crown Fibre Holdings) behind closed doors.
Chorus may be sold off; partially re-nationalised as the government takes a stake; take full control of a nationwide wholesale Crown fibre network; or get shut out of the process altogether as a bunch of Canadians move in.
But all that fun lies ahead.
Today, Chorus is celebrating a milestone.
The Telecom division is now half way through its government-mandated project to roll-out 3600 roadside fibre optic cable cabinets around neighbourhoods nationwide. Each shortens the distance that data has to travel over an older copper line on its way to a phone exchange.
The aim is to give 80% of New Zealanders access to a 10Mbit/s to 20Mbit/s internet connection by the end of 2011.
Costing north of $1.4 billion, it's the largest telecommunications infrastructure project currently under way across Australia or New Zealand.
Today, cabinet number 1800 went live.
But so far it seems that if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.
The Telecommunications Commissioner recently quoted an Akamai survey that said the average New Zealander connects at a speed of 2.97Mbit/s.
Some are still waiting for Chorus to come to bring a cabinet to their street (see its roll-out schedule here). Others won’t shell out for a maximum speed plan. The commission thinks extra inducements, like bundled TV services, might be necessary.
Meanwhile, Chorus is looking to take it up another notch.
Chief executive Mark Ratcliffe said today that more than 50% of customers connected to our cabinets are within 500m and 90% are within 1km.
That means they can take advantage of the new VDSL2 hardware installed in most Chorus cabinets, which offers twice the speed of today’s fastest ADSL2+ connections (although unlike a fibre connection, VDSL2 bandwidth degrades rapidly with distance, and only offers full tilt in one direction).
Following a recent Commerce Commission ruling, Telecom Wholesale is to offer its first VDSL2 service from August.
The commission ruled that Telecom Wholesale can charge extra for VDSL2 ($20 a month has been mentioned), as long as it bundles an (un-defined) premium service.
Although technically challenging, Chorus' half of the build may well be looked on as the easy part of the project once they political battles over VDSL2 access heat up.
NBR continues to see a medium-term scenario where budding young Local Fibre Companies, offering monthly fibre-to-the-home deals for upward of $180 a month (that is, similar to the first plans announced across the Tasman), have to slug it out against cheaper VDSL2 over copper.
ABOVE: Each cabinet provides space (bottom left of photo) for competitors' gear. But the likes of Vodafone and Orcon have complained it's too much of a squeeze, and that Commerce Commission-set rental rates are too high for them to install their own VDSL2 gear anyway. Each has VDSL2 trials underway regardless, but may end up taking a feed from Telecom Wholesale.
BELOW: At the Mt Albert, Auckland cabinet viewed by NBR there's even a neat little sign proclaiming that an empty space amid the homeline wiring is "Reserved for LLU [local loop unbundling] growth".
Locked up.
