Telecom denying the truth

Yeah they know why, (heard about that on the radio earlier on this morning)

You know - instead of worrying about speeds etc, I'd be much happier to see broadband available to the whole of NZ. The wireless efforts for rural people are intermittant (unreliable) and expensive so far.

Trying to get a farmer friend onto the net, so I checked whether broadband is available. No. This despite the fact he is only 15km outside Invercargill.

So personally I'd rather see Telecom (none of the other companies are doing anything) put it's efforts into making wired broadband available everywhere.

This is true Winston. Telecom claim 90% of NZ are able to get broadband. What a joke, I seriously doubt that. Even in cities if you are more than 5Km from an exchange you can't. Even where I used to live - theres a dip in the orad near the radio masts - no-one in that dip can get it either.

But it needs both. Not much point in the rural people getting broadband if it then runs at dial up speeds for them.

Public Affairs Manager John Goulter says Telecom has mainly had positive feedback since increasing speeds to two-kilobits per second. :lol: so true

:lol: so true
:)

Mind you the typical newspaper journalist/writer/editor wouldn't know the difference between a kilobit and a kilometre.

In the Dominion Post, they have been repeatedly, by different people, quoting petrol prices in the form, $1.70.90.

They all need to go back to primary school to learn how to write a simple decimal number.

Anyway, we now have the actual speed people are getting, straight from the horses mouth !

You know - instead of worrying about speeds etc, I'd be much happier to see broadband available to the whole of NZ. The wireless efforts for rural people are intermittant (unreliable) and expensive so far.

Trying to get a farmer friend onto the net, so I checked whether broadband is available. No. This despite the fact he is only 15km outside Invercargill.

So personally I'd rather see Telecom (none of the other companies are doing anything) put it's efforts into making wired broadband available everywhere.


Asking for subsidies Winnie, tut tut!

The net can be more than usefull to rural folk, or anyone with a home based or compartively isolated workplace for that matter. The real solution for rural communities is fibre, not copper, which means laying or slinging new lines up.

Of course there is Project Probe (or whatever), but that doesn't seem to have the reach or has had the impact promised. I've heard of communities have got togther with local authorities and businesses to very successfully get their own networks together which are patched in to the net at the local town, although I haven't heard of this happening in NZ to any extent (Palmy North for eg, but I don't think it's reached or intended any rural folk yet)(whats the Fomterra network run on?).

I wonder if both Telecom and the complainers (;)) are both right.

Telecom could well be supplying the new improved bitrate between the exchange and the consumer.

What the customer sees as speed is more controlled by the number packets per second than by the bit rate within the packets. If you are getting fewer packets even though each packet is sent faster, that will give you a lower average bitrate. (Your CPU might run at 4GHz, but it doesn't make you type any faster.)

Perhaps the routers in the Internet are the limiting factor, rather than the bit rate in the last link.

Just a thought.

Well I'm pretty ignorant as to the supply of bitrates and broadband between telecom and the ISPs and what I write next will probably prove that. :dogeye:

However, what I do know from my dial-up experience with my ISP, is that everytime my ISP does a promotion to get more people on Broadband etc, my dial-up speed and use of the internet gets slower to almost non-existant!

afaik my ISP does not have the capacity to provide for new broadband customers, and in the instances in which it does, is done so at the expense of dial-up customers. :(

I pay for the service [and the quality of that service], which they offered a.3years ago. If I was just starting out now, and what I get now is an example of what my money was paying for, I would tell them to #$%@& it.

Regardless of how little Telecom is giving the ISP's, the ISP's have NO right to keep increasing their client number when they know it will be at the expense of their current customers. And I'm sick of them bleating on about Telecom. ISP's are misleading in their promotions. :groan:

MMM, I think you will find it's more Telecoms capacity and/or speed/for want of of reaction that is the issue rather than the ISPs

Who do you think is lying here? Telecom or other ISPs? & would other ISPs treat there customers with slow speeds, when Xtra users can get 3.5M?

Who do you think is lying here? Telecom or other ISPs? & would other ISPs treat there customers with slow speeds, when Xtra users can get 3.5M?
What? The people in my district with speed problems, including me are all with Xtra.

What? The people in my district with speed problems, including me are all with Xtra.

That sounds like your district exchanges has problems that Telecom needs to fix as up here in south/east Auckland I can get 3.5M, with out any speeds issues :)

I can get 3.5M, with out any speeds issues :)
YOU TAFFER :mad:

I consistently get 3300+ kb/s.

Xtra rock

Glad I am not with one of those other ISP's.....

I think alot of it is the amount of money you spend on telecom, you would expect to get a decent service that is fast and robust.

Unfortunately it is not the case at the moment.

I consistently get 3300+ kb/s.

Xtra rock

Glad I am not with one of those other ISP's.....

I am with you here GF :)

YOU TAFFER :mad:

heh

heh

Allow me Stu.




1. Taffer

A word invented by the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios, used as a slang term in their 'First-Person Sneaker' release, Thief: The Dark Project (So named because of the games engine, which is simply called 'Dark' because of it's innovative use of light and darkness in gameplay.)

Taffer, insofar as the game environment is defined--is a bastardization of the word 'Trickster', a pagan deity with druidic tendencies. Much in the same way that the interjection 'Geez' in our English language is a bastardization of 'Jesus', the Christo-Catholic Messiah.

No direct denotation is given to the word 'Taffer', but from it's use, we can take it to be synonymous with many different nouns depending on how it's used. It can also be used as a verb:

Thief, Fool, Jerk, Joker, etc.

Noun(1): "Give that back this instant, you taffer!"

Verb(1): "Quit taffing around!"
Verb(2): "You mean he managed to fit -both- his hands up his gaping asshole?! You're taffing me!"

How's this for Telecom being bastards. Telecom were upgrading a phone thing down my parents' road on Friday. Unfortunately, they screwed up. All the phone lines down their road got disconnected. When they rang up (off a cellphone) to find out what was going on, (this was on Saturday), they got told someone had screwed up, but not to worry it would be fixed soon. So they asked when soon was, Telecom said this Friday. A whole freaking week. Useless.
/rant

Hmm, slightly off topic...

Anyone know where I can get a list of the locations of TC's Phone Exchanges?

Love to see how far away I am from my local one :rolleyes:

You can't get a list of locations.

http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/dmtnormsdown.asp
http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/dmtnormsup.asp

Use those websites, and stats from your router to work out, in feet, the distance from your exchange.

It's in feet, apparantly I'm ~4500 feet from mine. Note, I have no idea how accurate this is, or what any of the numbers mean.

roddy_boy, How do you get 4500 ft? The page you gave seems to be in terms of 0-3000, 3000-6000 etc and the ADSL line rates limited to 1.5M which was common in US.

Just used the "Avg SNR Margin" and "Avg Attenuation" columns for both upstream and downstream, and took the average, which worked out to be about the middle of the 3000-6000 ft. Pretty primitive but I don't really need any accurate figures or anything. Also, apparently if you ring up telecom and hassle them enough, they will tell you your distance to the exchange. But not where it is.

Hmm, slightly off topic...

Anyone know where I can get a list of the locations of TC's Phone Exchanges?

Love to see how far away I am from my local one :rolleyes:

Easiest way is to call Telecom fault service, they will be able to tell you accurate to few meters.

And how much do they charge for that service? :rolleyes:

I was switched over to 3.5 the other day - I used to consistently get 2+ Mb/s downloads, but the improvement I've noticed so far gives me a best of 2.5. Real time use makes it a real why-bother.

And how much do they charge for that service? :rolleyes:
Nothing, I would imagine.

How's this for Telecom being bastards. Telecom were upgrading a phone thing down my parents' road on Friday. Unfortunately, they screwed up. All the phone lines down their road got disconnected. When they rang up (off a cellphone) to find out what was going on, (this was on Saturday), they got told someone had screwed up, but not to worry it would be fixed soon. So they asked when soon was, Telecom said this Friday. A whole freaking week. Useless.
/rant

Not trying to defend telecom, but they may fix it sooner. This was the case when a fault developed that let me listen to other peoples phone conversations through my phone line. They said it will take a week, but it was fixed next day.

That sounds like your district exchanges has problems that Telecom needs to fix as up here in south/east Auckland I can get 3.5M, with out any speeds issues :)
"ComCom investigates faster, cheaper broadband

By Juha Saarinen, Auckland | Monday, 1 May, 2006

The Commerce Commission is investigating a complaint over Telecom’s “Faster, Cheaper Broadband?advertising campaign.

The Commission has acknowledged that it is indeed looking into Telecom’s campaign, and has assigned a part-time investigator to the case, according to communications manager Kate Camp.


However, with download speeds advertised as 3.5Mbit/s, and upload performance of 128 and 512kbit/s, customer expectation was that the new plans would live up to their promise.

High contention rates (or the number of customers sharing the available bandwidth) have been cited as the major reason for current discontent, since they cause peak-time congestion, with severely degraded performance. With Telecom allocating a low 24kbit/s per user per month on its Asynchronous Transmission Mode optical fibre circuits used for the data backhaul, contention rates can soar up to 148:1, according to industry observers.

Stephen Crombie, Telecom’s manager of new technology investment, states that the congestion rate is, in fact, 33:1 on average, which would mean that each 256kbit/s customer has less than 8kbit/s bandwidth during peak hours."


MY district?? Its more than MY district./ Its not that its a rubbish exchange as such, its the contention ratios and lack of additional hardware in it. Telecom are well aware of it.

Some interesting thoughts as reported by Paul Brislen in Computer World (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/NL/ECBD4FBC63F7686FCC25715D007DC4F6), re Telecom's and Xtra's relationship and how it affects network reach and efficiency, from the users pint of view in particular.

Some interesting thoughts as reported by Paul Brislen in Computer World (http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/NL/ECBD4FBC63F7686FCC25715D007DC4F6), re Telecom's and Xtra's relationship and how it affects network reach and efficiency, from the users pint of view in particular.

Regarding the suggestion to split Telecom into two companies and this statement
“Once the board and shareholders see that they’re getting [relatively] low returns from NetCo compared with higher returns from ServeCo, they’ll decide to spin it off into a separate company and sell it to someone else.?br />
Where will the investment in network infrastructure come from if it is left to the lless attractive "Netco"?

Also in another post, if the average contention rate is 33:1 wouldn't users on 256K plans be better off unless they form the bulk of users?

Paul, I think the idea is that, a network run by a service company is not run as well as one run by a purley network/utility company. Different needs, different basic models that are not necessarilly complementary.


I'd take the blather about contention ratios as, well, blather, in a corporate marketing/spin kind of way. It's not something that's new to Telecom or other enitities wishing to push a particular point of view or slant opinion.

""Simple solution to telco problem: break Telecom in two
News
By Paul Brislen, Auckland | Tuesday, 2 May, 2006
Telecom’s current dual role, as both network-owner and retail services company, is destroying shareholder value and reducing the company’s ability to respond to demand, says John Third, managing director of Guinness Gallagher, a Wellington-based consultancy.

Third knows what he’s talking about ?he’s currently helping the Mongolian government privatise and break up its own telco incumbent,
“I live just outside Wellington and the exchange I’m connected to is one of the older exchanges. The phone stopped working one day and Telecom ran fibre out to the cabinet and then new copper out to the households that were affected.?br /> Because of the upgrade, however, Third could no longer receive JetStream broadband at home.

“If that upgrade had been undertaken by a network company, it would have seized the opportunity to put in a mini DSLAM to offer the service. ?quot;

Ah, Third is biased cause he['s already doing it elsewhere. That doesn't mean he's necessarily right.
As for some network co installing a DSLAM, who says they would? Maybe if there was a competitor, but if not, why would they? Lots of companies try to afford expensive new upgrades if they can help it. Hell, F&P wouldn't install new hardware when I was there. The bean counters didn't like the cost.

Yeah, I thought Third could be touting for business, still, it doesn't necessarilly make him wrong either.

Why would a network utility upgrade? Because they understand rolling out improvements and upgrades in stages is better than big bang changes (unless the whole thing is too broken, see next), they also understand the need for ongoing maintenance (their been counters would hopefully have a slightly different perspective on what makes the comapany tick and hence makes money), they would also have more than one (service) customer to answer to in a real sense rather than the lip-service that appears to be the norm for the current situation. Factories/plant is totally different again, and is treated differently.

In most countries that have sold off, or opened up utilites, the service side has been split off from the physical delivery side, water, gas, petrolium products, energy. It works, monopolies that hold both don't work as well as they can.

In most countries that have sold off, or opened up utilites, the service side has been split off from the physical delivery side, water, gas, petrolium products, energy. It works, monopolies that hold both don't work as well as they can.

Er.....yes? Just like the electricity lines companies? You will recall they had to be regulated recently.

Isn't it just possible that NZ is too small to have competing teleco lines companies? What's happening at the moment is that all the noise is being made by city dwellers, who already have broadband, when a significant number of New Zealanders (perhaps a million?) can only get dial-up.

Replying to pctek's final para.
That's my point. The network company will only put in the network that the service companies will commit to paying for. How do the service companies decide where and when the network improvements happen (assuming the cost is too much for any one company)? The small ISPs will probably still be trying to ride the coat tails of the larger ones.

http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/column_article.asp?id=15104&cid=3&cname=Technology

Telecom spokesperson Sean Martin said that the company was "actually a bit mystified" by the Association's comments:

"We’ve migrated over 300,000 customers to the new plans and the feedback we’re getting is that they’re very happy the new service."

sean.martin@telecom.co.nz

pctek, you'd only have the one main lines network company, perhaps the ownership of which would bare looking at. The customers of the nework utility would be the consumers more so than the ISPs.

It has worked very well in countries with similar populations and geology to NZ.

The electricity lines situation in NZ is different in many respects in that we have a plethora of companies, loosly based around the areas divied up from the old Boards, and a complex artificail, regulated, commodoty market and supply issues which are taken advantage of to strip our pockets, various quangos and SOE's that make rules. I'm no expert on it (which is probably abuntantly apparent), but IMO, the electricity industry in NZ is a fractured but, perversely doctored regime of vested interests. What I'm trying to say is, it's all in the fine print, how it is done, how well it is done.


As an aside, will Telecom's/Xtra's customers get better quality when Telecom rolls out it's own, viable, VOIP product? You betcha cotton socks they will, or at least Telecom will make every effort to deliver it, at least. You heard it here first, maybe.

Broardband SUCKS in rural areas! :

pctek, you'd only have the one main lines network company, perhaps the ownership of which would bare looking at.... blah blah blah blahdy blah blah, blah blah blah blahdy blah blah. Blah blah blah blahdy blah blah.......


I meant this as a reply to Winnie, though you can read it too, if you wish pctek :thumbs:

Had a chat with finally - a Manager. One thing to note: it helps if you can give them details of others off the same exchange with the same problem.
Then they bump it up faster.

He did admit that Telecom thought this would happen but with all the hassling they were getting went ahead and did it anyway.
So....the way I see it - they either spend ****loads and upgrade all the hardware or put everyone back how they were. Hmmm.


And Kool2me - its not just the rural areas that have this problem with the new speeds. Its all over the place, certain exchanges smack in the middle of Auckland too.

Yeah I can vouch for that Auckland comment. I'm about as central as you can get, and a speed test done just now showed ~280kbps. I'm supposedly on 2Mbps.

This is kind of off topic but telecommunications minister David Cunliffe announced that local and sub-local loop to be unbunded.

http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=25636

The electricity lines situation in NZ is different in many respects in that we have a plethora of companies, loosly based around the areas divied up from the old Boards, and a complex artificail, regulated, commodoty market and supply issues which are taken advantage of to strip our pockets, various quangos and SOE's that make rules. I'm no expert on it (which is probably abuntantly apparent), but IMO, the electricity industry in NZ is a fractured but, perversely doctored regime of vested interests. What I'm trying to say is, it's all in the fine print, how it is done, how well it is done.



Yeah, I agree Murray. There is a view that a skinny, mountainous, sparsely populated country like NZ should only have one major electricity supplier. That way the whole system is integrated and everyone involved works together.

Still room for smaller generators but the transmission lines and main generators would be integrated. We could call it............oh I don't know.........The Ministry of Electricity? :2cents:

I've got this funny deja vu feeling - think I'll have a lie down. ;)

Before you go to lie down Winnie, what you are groping towards is NZED :thumbs:

And.... whilst we are at it, what with all these floods and weather extremes bring back MWD

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Before you go to lie down Winnie, what you are groping to wards is NZED :thumbs:

And.... whilst we are at it, what with all these floods and weather extremes bring back MWD
Don't forget the railways and DSIR.Bring em all back,oh and lets not forget the spinning jenny.

Don't forget the railways and DSIR.Bring em all back,oh and lets not forget the spinning jenny.

I wonder why the right wing reformists didn't suggest and implement the privatisation of IRD.

Now look at all the opportunities, billions of dollars of income, the CEO could have commanded a sum that would make Gattungs pay look like peanuts :)

I wonder why the right wing reformists didn't suggest and implement the privatisation of IRD.

Now look at all the opportunities, billions of dollars of income, the CEO could have commanded a sum that would make Gattungs pay look like peanuts :)The error in your thinking is that right wingers believe that IRD and government need to be reduced to a minimum,contrary to the pinkie view that the likes of this lot,who know far better than the producer, what they should do with their hard earned.

Well i for one congratulate the government on forcing telecom to unbundle the llu at last the government has pulled out their middle finger and shoved it right up deep inside the telecom fat cat ha bloody ha.I call it EDI extreme deep invader now the fat telecom cat is going on a diet no more lapping up the cream for that fat telco its time to trim down telecom and give the others ago.

I'm going to stick with Paradise Broadband - it is pretty cool now they have doubled the bandwidth allowance - 20 gig a month just about meets my requirements.