Tuesday, June 8. 2010How Many People Will Choose Fibre?John Linton Despite the latest poll saying that Labor and Rudd continue to lose 'market share' in polling and if it continued that way there would be a change of government - we signed the NBNCo contract yesterday on the basis of whatever happens in the upcoming election the Tasmanian fibre roll out will continue and that it will provide an alternative to ADSL1 which is all that Exetel can provide for Tasmanian users at the moment (neither Optus nor AAPT have wholesale ADSL2 in Tasmania). Before we signed the contract we had a smile at this: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/just-16pc-tipped-to-take-up-nbn/story-e6frg6n6-1225876225571 with the usual sub editor's 'head line' and the usual mis-representation of the 'facts' by the journalist. It's a good question as to how many people will select fibre over ADSL2, wireless or even ADSL1 and I certainly don't know the answer. What I do know is that in 4 weeks we have received more applications for fibre services based on Telstra's fibre roll out in Point Cook than we have ADSL customers acquired over 4 plus years. Now, not being the complete fool some people assume I am, I understand that a one off pilot against slow moving opposition is not indicative of anything other than a general trend. This general trend is pretty hard to misread though - whether it's novelty, early to market advantage or the peculiarities of the particular area there is a lot more than 'idle interest' in a fibre service by Point Cook residents.....even at prices based on Telstra costs to wholesale customers. We will 'go live' with the Opticomm fibre services in their NSW and Victorian 'estates' later this week and we are well behind other ISPs offering fibre services in those locations. So we will have no advantage of 'early to market' in those areas and obviously the 'novelty interest' will have been well and truly gone by now so we will get a much better idea of the sort of take up that may be possible in a more competitive market place. However, like Point Cook, I am assuming that the wholesale buy price for Exetel is similar to the wholesale buy price offered to other customers and therefore, for the first time, Exetel is not at an immediate cogs disadvantage. That may well be naive of me but we were assured that was the case and, naturally, I always believe what suppliers tell me. Anyway - time will tell and it will be an interesting exercise. After wasting so many years trying to make peak/off peak a benefit to our customers and, no matter what we did, failing to make 100% of our customers 'happy' all of the fibre plans are based on the pay for what you use basis.....in theory....no customer can ever be unhappy....though we will now 'waste' the opportunity of giving sensible users the benefit of the lightly used hours of the day and therefore waste the money that pays for having 'idle' bandwidth. However, if we couldn't get it right after six and a half years of trying there is no reason to expect it can be got right (by us) with the far less well (less overall bandwidth for the links to and from the customer) provisioned fibre circuits. Irrespective of what happens over the coming months there is one thing that is absolutely certain and directly contradicts the head line in the Australian article - the take up of fibre will far exceed 16% of the market available to it....if the early results of the Point cook trial are in any way indicative the MINIMUM take up of fibre will be 50% within a few months of fibre becoming an option and it will move to something greater than that over time. What any 'final' percentage will be is dependent on how wireless broadband develops and how the 'real' price of installation changes once the various trials are completed...and, of course, what Telstra decides to do in terms of selling whatever to the NBNCo and therefore what its own future fibre offerings will be. As always, there are more unknowns than knowns. Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010 Trackbacks
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Hi,
Sorry for this dumb question but will a fibre service degrade over a distance like adsl2 does over copper line?. I am 3.5 klms from my exchange & my connection is around 5.5 mbps [faster enough for me] from a theoretical 18 mbps. Stability is great though, currently at 70 days without a drop out [knock on wood] Thanks Joe Comment (1)
Fibre has a far longer 'reach' than copper.
It also has a lower latency. Comments (4)
Reach - because of less interference.
Latency - because of a higher signal speed. In its simplest form, fibre is faster because signals can be sent at the 'speed of light'. If you think of a thunder storm, you see the lightning - then hear the thunder some time later. The light travels so much more quickly, than sound, electrons along a copper line etc. Also, the signal (light) inside a fibre travells along 'bouncing' off the edges of the tunnel its effectively in; and is not very succeptible to interference. Weheras copper and the signals along it can be effected by electrical, magnetic signals completely outside of the line itself. In answer to your question. Fibre would not degrade anywhere near as much as your DSL connection, it traverses longer distances and at a higher speed. There are many other factors (you can send several colours of light at the same time, whereas thats much more difficult with copper/electrons) and all sorts of other complexitis. Thats a very simplified overview though. Comment (1)
I think you'll find that copper/coax signals are anywhere between 96% and 66% the speed of light.
Comment (1)
All is mostly true except for that light travels down fibre cable at 0.3 of light speed in a vacumn. The reason for that is light is not travelling in vacumn but in silicon hence the slower speed. Whereas electrons travel at 0.7 of light speed in copper cables.
Comment (1)
Regarding off-peak and peak, I liked it best when you had PAYU plans and there was a difference in the usage charge rates for each time period.
Getting "something for nothing" always seems to attract somebody who then uses the benefit excessively! Have a great holiday later this month, John! Regards, Harry. Comment (1)
John, I am curious as to why 'leecher pools' don't work. Give them unlimited, just make the contention ratio more in Exetel's favour.
Other than that, hurry up fibre to Canberra (Transact are rort) Comments (2)
That could be done but, after six plus years of trying the sad truth, at least for Exetel, is that such customers simply aren't worth having - under any circumstances.
Comments (4)
Not even at a pointless ratio (ie no matter how much they take it's still profitable ?)
what about dynamic bandwidth channeling at idle times ? (or simply it's 1k per month for 10mbit eg - sell that to 10 1.5 users @ 120 a month) oh well, let them sink tpg instead. I am impressed at the offerings made available via the new fibre, is this likely to be an end game trend or is this just the government sweetening the coffers for take up ? I mean how can anyone make any money if a 25mbit fibre line in their house is free ? I also noted you made comment to zdnet saying the ip costs are as much as 5 times higher in tassie as mainland aus, any chance that will translate to less than a $1 a gig (but higher enough to subside Tasmania so the pricing is uniform across australia) sorry for sounding like I am a download junkie, curious as an agent what's coming down the (insert some ip transit term as a pun) Comments (2)
You need to read the comments made by Internode when they 'announced' their Tasmanian pricing to see if that tells you what is happening with NBNCo 'trial' pricing for Tasmania.
What fibre pricing may be in the future will be determined by politics, what transpires in the Telstra/NBNCo discussions and some less important factors. There is no way, at this time that Exetel could provide data at $1.00 per gb - it costs us more than that - much closer to $2.00 per gb than $1.00 per gb. Aurora charge an 'arm and a leg' for intra Tasmania transit and the Bass Strait transit is more than three times (to us) expensive as trans Pacific transit. The combination of the two monopoles makes the cost of delivering data to Tasmanian users 5 times the cost of delivering it on the main land. However the current fibre services are more attractive than those on the main land so be grateful for that. Large downloads? Not something that Exetel can do - and really - it's well past time for people to stop illegal downloads and get an ethic implant. Comments (4)
"Off Peak Bonus"
I was thinking about your comments about the PAYU idea which will leave the light hours with underutilised bandwidth. This is weighed against the problem that off-peak has been mistreated by a percentage of users. What if you offered an off-peak period corresponding to the true light hours (ie after a period analysis of the pure PAYU plans) with a bonus of the PAYU amount used in a 1:1 ratio. This would mean that the users are funding the bandwidth provision for the paid hours to their own budget, ie PAYU. They are then given a bonus of equal to their previous month's paid usage (or 3 month rolling average or whatever) to use as they desire in the 'off-peak' hours. This will stop the people who sign up to the cheapest plan and use extraordinary disproportionate amounts in the off-peak. Comment (1)
You are probably correct that PAYU plans would not attract the thieves and that could be done.
We will continue to develop that concept with the fibre plans. Comments (4)
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