[AusNOG] Complexity is not an excuse for an industry-wide cop-out (was Re: Conroy quit.)

[Alan Maher]

Anyone who has visited NZ might have a clue that the topography ensures that
the cost of dragging any kind of cable internally is expensive. 
Mountains, hills,
rivers and valleys etc. There are not the great rolling plains of Australia.
Add in some earthquake proofing for potential points of failure, and you 
have
some idea of the cost of infrastructure.
Having said that, the cost of the last mile is a bit of a joke, with so 
many companies
vying for a slice of the Govt.(taxpayer) dollar to run a cable up the 
driveway.
We are importing all kinds of foreigners to do this work, and some have 
a clue
and some don't. Either way, it is the auction/tender system employed by 
the Govt.
that ensures that this is a race to the bottom for all concerned.
Who ever is cheapest wins the job, and whether they perform, or screw 
up, is something
that is not visible to the consumer. Other than the road cones, and 
sometimes a new plastic
conduit along their fence.
The horror stories of fibre laid on top of driveways, and so on, are 
illuminating.
The contractors doing horizontal drilling are like chameleons. They go 
broke this week
and re-appear next week in a different form.
Its a cut throat game with no winners.



On 20/09/2016 7:09 p.m., Jared Brown wrote:
>> From: "Matt Palmer"
>>
>>> Excluding overseas bandwidth, is there some reason New Zealand can't have
>>> good broadband for $55 per month?  Several north European countries with
>>> similar land and population sizes seem to manage.
>> That's *the* reason why the Antipodes can't have nice things.  Excluding it
>> somewhat defeats the point of having the discussion.
>    I don't agree with that assessment. Excluding overseas bandwidth costs focuses the discussion on the costs which are incurred locally. Those are usually 80-90% of all costs for an ISP. Furthermore I'd like to know why good broadband can't be done for $55 (plus overseas bandwidth costs) in New Zealand, as I'm not that familiar with that market.
>
>    All things being equal, New Zealand should be able to have good broadband for $55 per month, as other countries of similar size and population manage. Perhaps there should be a (reasonable) premium to account for the additional cost of overseas bandwidth (in the order of average overseas bandwidth per subscriber time cost of transport to international hubs). Regardless of that, local bandwidth should be cheap and abundant, and thus not a factor raising prices. You could even have a two tierd structure with full speed, line rate access to local service and more modest speeds to overseas services, further driving down costs. Once you load up on local peering and/or content caches to the large content/online service providers, you should account for most of your traffic locally. This brings us back to the original question, excluding overseas bandwidth, which things are not equal in New Zealand?
>
>    As to Australia, it's fairly obvious why we can't have nice things. No peering with the Gang of Four, high/inflated cost of domestic transport/backhaul/tails, various anti-competitive practices, regulatory uncertainty and the NBN. And all that is before we even get to the cost of overseas transport or IP transit.
>
>    Are the reasons similar in New Zealand?
>
> Jared
>    
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