Is New Zealand Broadband Internet too EXPENSIVE?

[international 0]

Its a simple question...

Do you think you are getting ripped or not?

[jimbo01 0]

Its a simple question...

Do you think you are getting ripped or not?

(1) Our broadband would seem less expensve if we were paid more (thats right - we languish in the bottem end of the OECD for wages).

(2) Our broadband would be cheaper if we had more people / packed more densely into samller area, or a more compact country (not going to happen anytime soon)

(3) Our broadband would be cheaper if there was more investment by private industry (other than those based here already), except points 1 & 2 make it a poor investment from an overseas investor point of view. A good investment from ours, but then we don't want to pay that much so it's a bit of a catch 22. They will make more money investing in countries:

where the citizens are packed like sardines in appartment tower after appartment tower, or concentated mainly in a few urban centers (thats not NZ folks, although give urban drift a few more decades and it may be).

where the citizean are paid a lot better than they are here. So as a % of their countries GDP boadband cost less - however the cost ogf broaband equipment is not priced as a %. The companies selling the equipment want to make a profit (how strange), and won't discount just because NZ has a low GPD.

If cheaper, faster broadband is really really important South Korea could be the go - some appartment building have a 5 star broadband rating - you can get 1Gig a second. It's also cheap. Not sure what they use it for - the highest peak bit rate of any service liekly to be avialble is 1080 high definition streaming TV, and thats only 50Meg a second. Personally I'd rather live here - but thats just me!

So when we buy a used BMW, because thats what we can afford, do we thing we were ripped off becasue it isn't a 2007 M3? We may wish the M3 was cheaper, we may really really want an M3, other people may be able to afford an M3 - fine points - but it doesn't mean you have been ripped off on your used BMW.

Edited August 3, 2007 by jimbo

[martyyn 2]

Id like to know who voted 'no' and why ?

NZ has some of the most expensive and slowest broadband in the world and yet some people are happy ?

[*sic 1]

i voted no..

pay more bitches.

[martyyn 2]

[cainchapman 0]

I voted No. Slowest yes. But it's still not unreasonable pricing IMO.

Having said that, I don't pay for the unlimited Xtra service I have. So maybe I am biased.

As Telecom built the network, I struggle to understand why they should make it available to start-up companies who have no infrastructure and never will.

At least Vodafone built a cellular network to compete and did a better job of selecting technology and delivering the service to the masses.

So until someone builds a high-speed network. Telecom have no reason to upgrade the copper in the ground.

If it was an economic proposition, one of the large global Telco's would have come here. Strange none of them have. Why? They won't make money.

Edited August 4, 2007 by Cain

[kiwi535 538]

i vote no because i dont know any better.

[jimbo01 0]

Id like to know who voted 'no' and why ?

NZ has some of the most expensive and slowest broadband in the world and yet some people are happy ?

See my post, I voted no and said why.

I bough a new modem and my Xtra line test speed jumped from about 600kbps to 3,200kbps.

People can request and pay to have an installer add a proper filter at their home (rather than the filters which are cheap but not as effective) - that can improve speed.

The DSL2 technology is being rolled out now which will improve speeds, if you have a DSL2 compatible modem

The caps on most plans were lifted with no increase in costs recently.

Why have some speeds decreased since speed restrictions were removed?

Broadband equipment running at lower speeds runs at lower power. What this means is that all the broadband equipment now runs at full power, all the time. This means there is more electical energy being pumped into the copper wires, which are great conductors, which run beside other copper wires in big cables under the ground. The longer the cables, the more energy, the more electromagnetic interference. So if you have a short cable to the Broad band equipment, great, your connection to the exchange may go faster, however someone else on the same cable further away is going to probably get slower speed now because his modem and the one a the other end are having to deal with all the interference.

Previously the power of those on longer lines could be set to full, thus giving them a stonger signal, and as those closer were at lower power, there was less interference. Think of being in a large room with people talking, you can hear thos eclose to you, and the ones far away can yell out, and you can hear them too. If those near you start yelling you will struggle to hear those far away.

Edited August 4, 2007 by jimbo

[international 0]

I dont think New Zealand internet is expensive but damn slow it is...We think it is expensive because we aint getting the most out of what was promised to us by our ISPs on paper...

The service of ADSL does vary depending on how far the connection is to the ADSL system servers. The recommended service range is 5,460 metre for ADSL. At further distances, ADSL users may find their internet speeds much lower than that promised by their ISPs while users closer to the ADSL system servers may find extremely fast internet connections. New Zealand being a pretty spread out country geographically so this slow ADSL problem seem to occur...

[jimbo01 0]

I dont think New Zealand internet is expensive but damn slow it is...We think it is expensive because we aint getting the most out of what was promised to us by our ISPs on paper...

The service of ADSL does vary depending on how far the connection is to the ADSL system servers. The recommended service range is 5,460 metre for ADSL. At further distances, ADSL users may find their internet speeds much lower than that promised by their ISPs while users closer to the ADSL system servers may find extremely fast internet connections. New Zealand being a pretty spread out country geographically so this slow ADSL problem seem to occur...

Hi international

I think you will find the ISP's pretty mcuh don't promise much at all when it comes to broadband speeds -theres lots of up to, which is like saying my BMW740 can do upto 250kph, in theory possible, but god help us if everyone tried to do it at the same time.

Someting thats easy to do is check your line sync speed from your DSL modem to the exchange DSLAM (the other modem that connect to the IP Network (you need to log into your DLS modem stup). In my case it's about 7,000kbps - which is pretty much the top spped DLS will support (DSL2 will go faster). However the line test to Xtra shows my overall connection speed is about 3,000kbps. A line speed lest to an overseas line test service gives a slower result again.

What people forget is that the internet is much like a motorway, and so how fast you can get to the motorway doesn't have much impact on your driving time if it's peak traffic time - it will be slow. The other factor that affects speed is the sites you are interacting with - many of them have a limited speed, andf the more peole downloading from them , the slower each connection will be. When many of the site we visit are off shaore, and go through international internet gateways, this can further impact.

Also things like YouTube, Bit torrent peer to peer trafic, etc have massively increased the amount of traffic on the net. No one predicted these - and so they use up capacity that otherwise would have been way more than enough.

[Nobimmer 694]

I voted yes.

Argentina gets free WIFI all over the country

[jpp 0]

I vote YES as we are paying the same dollar [if not more for a slower speed internet then other similar countries to New Zealand.

But hey, our chocolate tastes better...

[bravo 35]

Yes. The internet is not a truck.

[jimbo01 0]

I voted yes.

Argentina gets free WIFI all over the country

Free WiFi is available here too for those who have Xtra Broadband - check out the WiFi hotspots. It's also free in a lot of NZ suburbs as most people don't enable the encryption.

There is a saying "There is no such thing as a free lunch". Some one somewhere is paying for the equipment, maintaining it, and someone else is paying for it. If it stays free, and no one pays, it will eventually break down, and become obsolete. Private comapnies may loss lead on a product to gain market share, they may do it to distroy the income of another company, hoping the other comapny will fail, allowing them to dominate.

It's like Skyp - free voice calling (yay) - but for how long if it distroys the business model / income that funds the investment in the seriously expensive equipment and under sea fibre optic cables, land based cables etc. In the end if the traditional Telco companies go bust who will replace them? Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, possibly - but think about it - if you have the world to worry about, and huge emerging markets in Aisa etc, would you have a lot of incentive to invest in a small country producing food, wool, and logs?

Anyway there is no way I'm ever going to persuade people that think the current broadband is a rip off that they have the service that the country can afford. Unless someone, perhaps the government (funded by higher taxes perhaps, or less health care), Bill gates (get him to retire here), someone, decides to inject a whole heap of cash (with little prospect of making the same return as the investement would return elsewhere), then NZ will never lead in broadband. Just like we will never lead in wages, or GDP.

[jimbo01 0]

quote name='EFURSTY' date='Aug 4 2007, 08:00 PM' post='131958']

I vote YES as we are paying the same dollar [if not more for a slower speed internet then other similar countries to New Zealand.

But hey, our chocolate tastes better...

Just because some Australians living within 1km of the DSL equipment can get 20Mbps line Sync speed doesn't mean they all enjoy this sort of speed. Check out the graph from TCPIQ.com - they have a freeware line speed test app. They record the average results for all countries. In NZ it's best to use Xtra as it uses a local server - they don't have a local test server here - however this is good to see what sort of speed you get going out of the country and into the wider WWW.

By the way our averages are dragged down by the long copper loops that were put in to give people good voice service in some of our more remote area - people in most of our cities enjoy broadband speeds a lot better that whats on this graph.

Edited August 4, 2007 by jimbo

[international 0]

I dont understand how we can get this kind of internet in New Zealand???

Its totally insame because its FIBRE OPTIC!!!

[M325is 0]

Who gives a crap, everyone should just be patient. Remember how long ago NZ got internet? Not long. Imagine what our kids (if we ever have any) are going to be like... little shits I bet! If we cant even stand waiting 10seconds for a screen to change or an extra 2mins for something to download they are going to be uncontrolable irritant little bastards! lol Chill out and put it down on your time sheet - 8.00-8.10am waited for form to download, while you lax out in your executive swivel chair.

Arrrrghhh... my rant for the day.

[Andrew 30]

Who gives a crap, everyone should just be patient. Remember how long ago NZ got internet?

1990?

[M325is 0]

Very good Now do you know how long it took for us to get rid of TV licences?

[Carl 3]

Me vote no.

Firstly, it's not internet speed, it's bandwidth and for the infrastructre NZ has we have damn good internet and for those lucky enough to live in the fine capital we have the luxury of cable. Sure the top end packages are pricey but do you really need it? Live in your means and don't expect to get continental performance from a small sparsely populated country. Who gives a crap about all that sh*t BBC stuff we don't get here anyway?

My only beef with NZ's internet is the lack of VoIP options, we don't need landlines anymore, get rid of them and go VoIP - far better call quality.

And you're a muppet if you think NZ has the best tasting chocolate in the world.

[bravo 35]

Very good Now do you know how long it took for us to get rid of TV licences?

About 2000 because they tried to extort one from me in 1999 when I was living in a ac ommunal accomodation and had a tv in my room. Told them to feck off. Surprisingly they did. I think the year after they were canned.

[M325is 0]

Yep, 1999.

[Carl 3]

Off topic but after getting fed up with Ihug's interleaving (causes latency constantly over 200ms although not as bad as xtra's 2000ms) we're switching to Telstra's high speed triple package (phone, inet, sky)...actually saves us a packet and being close to the Seaview exchange will give response times closer to 15ms - [borat]very nice[/borat]

[Andrew 30]

Off topic but after getting fed up with Ihug's interleaving (causes latency constantly over 200ms although not as bad as xtra's 2000ms) we're switching to Telstra's high speed triple package (phone, inet, sky)...actually saves us a packet and being close to the Seaview exchange will give response times closer to 15ms - [borat]very nice[/borat]

Ihug doesn't interleave - telecom does.

Ihug and all other Telcos have no control of the DSLAMs.

[Carl 3]

Should just say the lag then - i'm sick of 200ms+ lag it makes online gaming impossible - or at least makes oneself an easy target. I don't want to turn off interleaving as you need it for error correction - but it doesn impede VoIP and gaming.

Edited August 9, 2007 by Carl