Guest post: Researcher evaluating the UFB deployment

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Marlies Van der Wee is a student at the Ghent University in Belgium and she’s here studying with the University of Auckland School of Business looking at fibre deployments to compare the New Zealand approach with similar but different European models.

Marlies needs input from those in the industry who are involved in the UFB project to better understand the characteristics that surround the deployment.

More information on the project can be found here and contact details for Marlies are at the bottom of the post.

 

Evaluating the UFB deployment?

In New Zealand the government is investing $1.5 billion in the Ultra-Fast Broadband deployment, giving the possibility to 75% of New Zealanders to have a Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connection by 2019. This nationwide project however contrasts sharply with the local and regional initiatives taken in Europe. Most FTTH deployments there are managed on a town or city-level, and frequently steered by local stakeholders, such as utility companies, municipalities, housing organizations, etc. 

Good examples of European cases include Stokab, a publicly-owned company that deployed dark fibre in Stockholm, Sweden, and leases this passive infrastructure to all interested parties (telecom operators, but also large businesses, media companies, health institutions, etc.). Another successful deployment can be found in The Netherlands, where third party operator Reggefiber (established by the private equity firm Reggeborgh) deploys FTTH in all areas where sufficient demand is guaranteed. Private initiatives are mostly driven by competitive networks, as is the case of Portugal, where the national incumbent is deploying FTTH in order to compete with the TV offer of ZON Multimedia, and stimulated by the regulator, who did not introduce any unbundling obligation.

Although all initiatives are striving towards the same goals in the end, the paths taken differ strongly and lead to varying degrees of influence on the performance of the different deployments. The question now arises if a relationship can be found between the characteristics of these different initiatives and their performance in terms of speed of deployment, coverage and uptake.

Evaluating and comparing FTTH deployments in New Zealand and Europe is exactly the topic of the research project performed by two researchers: Fernando Beltran (University of Auckland, Business School) and Marlies Van der Wee (Techno-Economic Research Unit at Ghent University, Belgium). Marlies arrived in Auckland last month, and will work at the University of Auckland until the end of February.

The project looks into the interaction between technology, policy and the market, covering a range of issue areas such as the financing structure and economic investment model, the operational business model including open access or unbundling obligations, the wholesale regulation on both copper and fibre, the impact of retail pricing schemes and the development of competition both at the infrastructure level (inter-platform competition) and the retail level (intra-platform competition).

The goal is to analytically compare these different FTTH deployments while linking the analysis to measurable performance criteria such as speed of deployment, coverage and uptake, which will allow the researchers to assess the deployments on the basis of their efficiency and effectiveness. 

In the end, the project aims to draw conclusions on the most important influencing characteristics driving FTTH deployment and uptake. The comparison of New Zealand and Europe furthermore brings the added value of broadening the view into different political, technological and market structure background settings.

Although this project is initiated by the academic community, the best outcome can only be achieved if the major actors in the field are willing to discuss, contribute and share relevant data. 

With this post, we would therefore invite all interested partners (telecom operators, service providers, user organizations, authorities, etc.) to contact us and support this analysis from their own perspective and with the information they can provide.

Contact info:

Fernando Beltrán

DECIDE: University of Auckland Business 

Decision Making Lab, Co-director

PING Research Group, Director

ISOM Department

The University of Auckland Business School 

New Zealand 

+64 09 923 7850

+64 021 3502282

f.beltran@auckland.ac.nz

 

Marlies Van der Wee

Techno-Economic Research Unit

Internet Based Communication Networks and 

Services (IBCN)

Department of Information Technology

Ghent University – iMinds

Belgium

+64 021 2930267 

marlies.vanderwee@intec.ugent.be

m.vanderwee@auckland.ac.nz

A detailed description of our project can be found here. 

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Will Telecom unbundle?

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The Ernst & Young Australia report into Chorus is not a review of Chorus’s financial position, despite some media reports that would suggest that’s what’s happening. Rather it’s a review of the impact the Commerce Commission’s UBA and UCLL determinations will have on “key Chorus financial indicators”.

The short answer is, naturally enough, yes it will.

I know of no business, regulated or otherwise, that wouldn’t have some impact with a reduction in its incoming revenue.

On top of that, the review is explicitly barred from looking at Chorus’s own “strategic choices” especially those that “may have led to higher capital expenditure than initially forecast.”

That’s quite a limiting factor – especially if you think that Chorus’s problem is largely nothing to do with the Commission’s determination but rather is a matter of cost blow-outs in the rollout itself.

So what will the review look at, because without all of that it’s going to be hard to come up with any result beyond “OMG, the ComCom is to blame”.

One of the main factors in the report will have to be the counter-factual Ernst and Young comes up with.

The counter-factual is the “what if?” scenario. What would have happened if the Commerce Commission hadn’t reduced the price? With the counter-factual to hand, we’ll be able to determine the net difference in pricing regimes.

Incidentally, the government isn’t waiting for this and has already directed Crown Fibre and Chorus to sit down together to renegotiate the UFB deal.

That may be the right thing to do at this point. I’m hard pressed to support yet another closed-door secret back room deal (they tend to have severe unintended consequences for the industry and the users, to put it mildly) but given the government isn’t looking to reduce its requirements or increase the money being paid out, I presume the discussions will revolve around payment schedules, bank guarantees and the like.

I trust any such agreement comes with severe caveats around both the Final Pricing Principle review and the high court legal action Chorus is taking, not to mention certain performance criteria and a new dividend policy, but that’s just me.

Let’s look at the counter-factual and the elephant in the room that nobody has mentioned.

On December 14 next year, Telecom will be allowed to unbundle Chorus’s network.

(EDIT: An earlier version of this post said Telecom could unbundle at the end of the year)

As part of the separation agreement, Telecom has been excluded from being able to unbundle Chorus’s network.

Telecom retains the lion’s share of the fixed line broadband market and the belief was that Telecom would be able to sweep in, unbundle on a massive scale and undermine Chorus’s ability to earn any money from the UBA component of its copper network.

The issue of whether Telecom wants to unbundle or not remains a key consideration for both Ernst and Young and Chorus.

If the UBA price is too high, Telecom will spend the money and unbundle, dramatically cutting Chorus’s earnings. Never mind the impact of the Commission’s determination, if Telecom took its 50% market share to an unbundled service, Chorus would lose everything.

Telecom doesn’t necessarily want to blow $50m or more on the copper network when it’s gearing up to fight a fibre war. It would rather spend its money on content and services that drive customers to the fibre network and reap its rewards in the longer run.

The question for Ernst & Young is: how high is too high? At what point would Telecom have moved to unbundle? It will have to work that out to produce a counter-factual that actually makes sense. If it just takes the existing regime and compares that with the new UBA price, it will have failed in its mission to provide a comparable counter-factual because despite the rhetoric from both Chorus and the government, there’s no going back to the old numbers.

The retail-minus model has always produced results that mean New Zealanders pay too much for broadband. Moving to a cost-based model was always going to be a shock to the system but nothing like the shock that could still come from half the market moving to an unbundled provider.

The report is due out shortly and we’ll be able to see what E&Y make of all this. Hopefully the negotiations between Crown Fibre and Chorus will result in an amicable agreement and we can put this sorry year behind us and get on with rolling out the future in a more rational, sober way.

Media release: Adams wrong on retail pricing issue

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ADAMS WRONG ON RETAIL PRICING

The Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing is disappointed Communications & IT Minister is continuing to make inaccurate statements about retail pricing of copper broadband and voice services, and has repeated its commitment to work with her constructively to help fast-track the government’s ultra-fast broadband (UFB) initiative.

Speaking to reporters at parliament today, Ms Adams attacked the coalition and invited retail service providers (RSPs) of copper broadband and voice services to “admit” they won’t pass wholesale price cuts on to consumers.

Ms Adams’ comments follow her extraordinary attack on the telecommunications industry yesterday, in which she denied lower prices for copper broadband and voice services in the monopoly wholesale market would lead to lower prices in the highly competitive retail market.

Last week, she also declared that ‘[a]nybody who believes that the wholesale price drop is going to be passed on in full to consumers probably also believes in the tooth fairy’.

A spokesman for the coalition, Paul Brislen, also chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand (TUANZ), said Ms Adams’ comments were unfortunate in that they seemed to deny basic economic theory as well as empirical data since the telecommunications industry was regulated in 2001.

“We are surprised that a minister, and a National Party minister in particular, would have such little confidence in the power of competitive markets to reduce prices and improve quality,” Mr Brislen said.

“While the wholesale market for copper broadband and voice services is a monopoly and is therefore regulated by the independent Commerce Commission, the consumer market is highly competitive, with nearly 50 retail service providers, including the two giants, Telecom and Vodafone.

“Anyone with any confidence in competitive markets would accept this means prices will fall in real terms over time, especially with two of the mid-sized market participants already publicly committed to lower prices.

“Those two participants – Orcon and CallPlus/Slinghot – were described by the Commerce Commission as ‘aggressive price leading competitors in the market’ when it approved Vodafone’s purchase of TelstraClear,” Mr Brislen said.

“There can be no doubt that if they drop their prices, as they’ve promised to do, Telecom and Vodafone will be forced to follow suit.”

Mr Brislen said ongoing price cuts were exactly what had happened in the retail telecommunications market since 2001.

“Since the Telecommunications Act 2001, retail telecommunications costs have fallen by a massive 34%.   Most consumers would also agree that the quality of services has likewise dramatically improved over that time,” he said.

“New Zealand telecommunications consumers have had a big win with news last week that parliament will not over-ride or delay wholesale price cuts that will come into force on 1 December 2014.

“As Telecommunications Minister, Ms Adams should be welcoming the lower prices that are on their way and use her influence to drive them down even further.

“There is no bigger supporter of the government’s UFB initiative than the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing and we would like to work with Ms Adams to help make it happen faster and more efficiently.

“It would be useful for Ms Adams to desist from making gratuitous and inaccurate attacks on the industry she is responsible for. 

“We very much hope she will instead commit to working constructively with the coalition and all participants in the industry to make UFB happen even faster than planned.”

Will Chorus go for the nuclear option?

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How’s your broadband?

If you’re on copper, it’s probably “OK”, if mine is anything to go by.

I get about 12Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up, which is tedious but it is a residential area so what can you expect?

Because I’m on an unbundled line I don’t get that dramatic drop off in capability when the kids all arrive home from school and that’s just as well. I do get chucked off the computer by my own kids but that’s another story entirely.

But what if your copper line becomes fully contended and fully utilised all the time? What if your line ran as well as it does (or as poorly as it does depending on your view) when the kids come home from 8am to 8pm every day?

The key to this is contention – how many customers are allowed to use the line at any given time and the minimum rates set by the provider of the service.

With Chorus, the minimum speed for UBA is a handover of 32kbit/s.

That’s not a misprint – it’s kilobits per second. Dial up speed, in other words.

If you’re paying for broadband you might think you have a right to expect broadband speeds constantly, but unfortunately our system in New Zealand doesn’t really work like that. We’re all sharing the line and so when someone uses a lot of capacity, we get cut down to size. Sadly, that size is miniscule.

This is one of the key differences between copper and fibre. The handover speed of UBA is 32kbit/s. On the entry level fibre plan it’s 2.5Mbit/s.

That’s a world of difference and that alone means it’s worthwhile making the change from copper to fibre.

However, I’m not telling you all of this to encourage you to migrate.  No, I’m telling you this because I’m hearing a growing concern from ISPs that Chorus will begin enforcing this handover rate as a way to get more money out of the ISPs.

Currently, Chorus doesn’t enforce the handover at that speed. There’s bags of capacity, and this is a minimum remember. At worst, your service could run as slowly as 32kbit/s and still be called broadband.

Picture this – on the day Chorus switches everyone on UBA over to its bare minimum 30kbit/s, every customer in the land will ring their ISP. The call-centres will melt under the volume, the newspapers and radio will get involved, everyone will want to know where their broadband went. Simple, says the ISPs, Chorus took it off you. Chorus will say but we’re meeting our service level agreements so there’s no problem. If your ISP hasn’t bought a better service off us, that’s its fault. Talk to them.

ISPs would be forced to buy a more expensive product to service the angry customers but would either lose money on every connection or pass that cost on to customers. It’s the copper tax by a different route.

At the UBA conference earlier this year, the issue was raised and caused much alarm. The Commerce Commission directed Chorus and the ISPs to meet to discuss the matter, and they did so in early July. At that meeting, Chorus said it had no plans to introduce such a limit but it couldn’t rule out doing so in future.

One wag called this Chorus’s “nuclear option” because once you’ve done this to the industry and the customers there’s really no going back.

If this is how Chorus intends to solve its funding shortfall, by crippling copper services, then this fight is far from over. I trust saner minds will prevail.

The Chorus Conundrum

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Common sense has prevailed and we won’t see the government overrule the independence of the Commerce Commission any time soon.

While that’s good news for the long-term interests of both customers and the industry alike, it leaves us with the question of what to do about Chorus.

First, we have to determine whether there is a problem that needs fixing.

So far, we’ve been told that Chorus “could go broke” if the price of copper wholesale comes down.

I don’t buy that, and I’ve seen little evidence of that.

The numbers we’ve run are similar to Chorus’s own pronouncements in this area – that it will reduce profit (profit, not revenue) by about $80m to $100m a year. Coincidentally, Chorus pays out about $100m a year in dividend share.

To my mind, any infrastructure company that is rolling out a once-in-a-generation network wouldn’t expect to also pay a dividend at the same time. That money could and should be ploughed into the network in the interests of long term sustainable dividend payments in the years ahead.

My first preference, in that case, would be for Chorus to concentrate on the job at hand, get on with deploying the network and worry about dividend payments once the network is in place.

But Chorus has hinted darkly that there may be more afoot. If the final determination is allowed to stand, Chorus CEO Mark Ratcliffe says there will be two outcomes:

“We would have much less cash every year to invest and we simply will not be able to borrow the sums of money we need to make up to a $3 billion investment in UFB.”

This is an extraordinary situation. How can Chorus have bet so heavily on little or no change in the regulated price of its copper lines? How can they, and their investors, not have seen the writing on the wall when Minister of Communications Steven Joyce gave them a three-year delay to the introduction in order to get their house in order? That they’ve not used that time wisely is shocking and surely won’t go down well at the next board meeting, let alone the annual general meeting.

If that’s the case, the government must do something because the UFB deployment is too important to New Zealand to allow it to founder at this point.

Option 1: Do nothing.

If we do nothing, Chorus fails to deliver on its contract and defaults.

The Network Infrastructure Project Agreement (NIPA) between Chorus and the Crown is quite clear on this – default and there are penalties in terms of cash and repayments and an agreement that Chorus will relinquish control of the project to Crown Fibre Holdings, the government agency charged with overseeing the UFB deployment.

CFH would take direct control of the company and its contractors in order to see the project through to completion.

Option 2: Give Chorus more money directly.

I would need to see some clear evidence of Chorus’s problem before even countenancing this. Chorus is a private company that has bid for a contract and won. If it’s underbid, if it’s failed to secure adequate funding, if it’s failed to consider the obvious regulatory impact, then that’s it’s problem.

If we are to give Chorus more money we would be rewarding it for poor performance. That money would have to come with serious caveats on spending and should include a radical change in management, dividend policy and possibly the board as well.

Option 3: Go back out to market.

Chorus isn’t the only game in town in the fibre deployment world. If Chorus can’t do the job, perhaps Vector might like another shot at the title.

Vector missed out to Chorus on the Auckland bid – perhaps taking Auckland off Chorus and giving it to another provider might be the answer.

If Vector isn’t keen, what about the other LFCs? They’re cracking on, doing the job quickly and within budget. You don’t see them complaining that they need hundreds of millions of dollars more each year. Maybe Northpower Fibre could extend its network deployment capability down country and run the project for CFH.

Option 4: Provide bank debt assurance.

Probably the easiest thing for the government to do now is to guarantee Chorus’s debt to the bankers. I’m no financial guru, to put it mildly, and have no idea how any of this works but I’m told it’s the simplest thing the government could do with the least risk to the country. If Chorus can’t continue and make things work from there, we own them.

Option 5: Nationalise Chorus.

The share price is at its lowest point – perhaps the government should buy the company and run Chorus’s network as an open access national network, delivering service far and wide and without prejudice.

Potentially we could see one network across most of the country delivering service to ISPs and then on to users without too much overhead and red tape.

What am I saying, governments live for red tape. Much as I would like New Zealand to own its own infrastructure, I just can’t see this working. It’s in the list as a potential option but I suspect it’s unworkable.

Option 6: Cancel the UFB.

It’s all too hard, nobody really wants it, let’s walk away from the commitment. There you are, you “user groups”, you’ve got what you wanted, we’ve canned the UFB. On your head be it.

This would be a catastrophe for the country and is the furthest thing from “what we want” as users.

The UFB is essential to both New Zealand’s economic future and our social well-being. In ten years’ time, when it’s built and we’re looking at extending it into rural areas, the UFB will be a glittering jewel in our national crown and all this discussion will be dismissed as teething troubles and that’s as it should be. To abandon the project now is unthinkable and besides, I’m sure the opposition parties would have a field day and would make building the UFB into an election issue all over again.

 I don’t know what the government will decide from here. Much of it rests on the Ernst and Young report which comes out next month. From there we should get a better picture of whether there is a problem to solve and if so just what that problem is.

There is another option of course. Chorus can stop wailing, get on with the project at hand and cut its costs to be in line with international best practice and the kinds of costs we’re seeing from the other fibre companies. They can get better at digging ditches and stringing fibre from poles and concentrate on driving cost out of the business.

We can help with that – a major part of the rollout cost is eaten up in consents and legal fees, not to mention the delays, inherent in seeking permission to connect the network to each property.

This is a national upgrade programme that replaces an old network. Telecom used to have rights of access to property to deploy and replace network gear – we should make it easier and quicker for all the LFCs to do the same.

Rights of way, driveways, easements, multi-dwelling units, gated communities, new subdivisions, apartment blocks, business parks. All should be accessible by default. That would strip a huge amount of cost out of the business of deploying the UFB and that’s clearly not a bad thing.

RELEASE: Govt must resist Aussie corp bullying

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COALITION FOR FAIR INTERNET PRICING

MEDIA RELEASE

26 NOVEMBER 2013

GOVT MUST RESIST AUSSIE CORPORATE BULLYING OVER COPPER TAX

Prime Minister John Key must resist attempts by Australian-based fund manager Investors Mutual Ltd (IML) to bully his government into imposing a copper tax on every Kiwi household and business, the Coalition for Fair Internet Pricing said today.

In a letter last week to Mr Key, leaked to the National Business Review, IML’s senior portfolio manager, Simon Conn, says his fund will invest no more in New Zealand companies unless parliament legislates to override the independent regulator, the Commerce Commission, and imposes a copper tax on every Kiwi household and business.

IML’s website claims it had more than NZ$4.4 billion under management in February 2013 but it is not one of Chorus’s top twenty shareholders meaning it has less than NZ$5 million invested in the New Zealand copper lines monopolist.  Nor is IML reported to be a top twenty shareholder in Telecom New Zealand or any other Kiwi telecommunications company.

“Mr Conn seems not to know that in New Zealand, unlike other countries he may be familiar with, governments have traditionally respected the role of independent regulators and have not rolled over in the face of special-interest pleading from foreign fund managers, especially ones with so little invested in our country,” a spokeswoman for the coalition, Sue Chetwin, also chief executive of Consumer NZ, said today.

In his letter to Mr Key, Mr Conn said IML invested in Chorus because it was ‘attracted to the highly recurrent cashflows’ it generates from its copper monopoly, which ‘would enable Chorus to pay a regular and consistent dividend to shareholders’.

Last year, Chorus made monopoly profits of $171 million and paid $95 million in dividends to shareholders, of which up to $600,000 would have been paid to IML.  At the same time, Mr Key has told parliament that Chorus chair Sue Sheldon privately provided him with confidential information that indicated her company was at risk of going broke.  Despite this, the copper monopolist planned until recently to pay another $100 million to its shareholders in 2013/14 dividends.

Mr Conn’s letter also slammed the New Zealand Commerce Commission, saying it was acting unlawfully.  The NBR says he went on to attack Mr Key’s government, saying he had thought Mr Key’s election ‘heralded the return of sensible government where investments are not subject to adverse regulation and the rule of law is upheld’.

He criticised Mr Key and Communications & IT Minister Amy Adams for not immediately over-ruling the Commerce Commission and instead making ‘ambivalent’ statements about Chorus.

Ms Chetwin said Mr Conn’s letter and public comments were “arrogant and uncalled for, especially from a fund without a major stake in New Zealand or its telecommunications industry”.

“We don’t need an Australian fund manager like Mr Conn falsely claiming that our independent regulators are acting unlawfully and then going on to demand our prime minister and parliament impose extra costs on every Kiwi household and business to support his dividend flows,” she said.

“Kiwis have rejected the copper tax because it is unfair, inequitable, totally unnecessary to the completion of our new ultra-fast broadband network, and would simply be paid in dividends to people like Mr Conn.  Mr Key must resist this Australian corporate bullying,” she concluded.

Cash versus competition

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Say what you like about the mobile market in New Zealand, but competition has finally arrived and it’s been worth the wait.

With 2Degrees joining the fray, we finally have a market that’s beginning to deliver results in favour of the customers.

Roll over minutes, shared data, more realistic pricing for roaming – all of this has come as a result of 2Degrees entering the market.

Having three network operators has meant a healthy tension between parties. With one player you get ripped off. With two you get the cosy duopoly, but with three you have a natural balance that means the telcos can never sit back and relax but instead must always fight for market share.

So why has the government decided to give all that away in favour of raising a few million dollars more for the consolidated fund?

One of the key bedrock components of a mobile network is radio spectrum. If one network has a lot of it, they can jam more customers onto your network than a network that doesn’t have a lot of it.

It’s simple really – more customers or more speed or, if you’ve got enough of the stuff, both.

Currently the 4G wars are just starting out. Vodafone launched first, and Telecom has just jumped in as well. Both offer 4G services on existing spectrum, but both they and 2Degrees want to move to the holy grail of spectrum, the 700MHz range, as quickly as possible. Most of New Zealand would be considered “rural” in any other developed country and the lower the radio spectrum range, the further the signal propagates. That means 700MHz is much better for 4G than 1800MHz or 2600MHz or any of the other bands the telcos have bought.

Spectrum is sold in pairs and Vodafone and Telecom have both bought the maximum they could – 2x15MHz each. Newcomer 2Degrees has only bought 2x10MHz, which leaves 2x5MHz sitting there.

Instead of waiting till later to sell the chunk, the government has decided to allow Vodafone and Telecom to cage fight until only one is standing. And it will be a fight, because neither company can afford to allow the other one to have that advantage in the market.

Currently both have paid $66m for their chunks. Whoever wins this fight will have to pay considerably more per megahertz for the next block and that’s just stupid. That’s money that is better spent on the network itself not on a piece of paper.

Telecom has already said it would rather not fight over the remaining spectrum and supported putting it on the shelf. Vodafone, however, was happy to remain in the competition and since Vodafone has said it will bid, Telecom has kept its options open by saying it will as well, if forced to.

It means this government is quite happy with a 4G world where one player has double the spectrum of another player, with all the downside that means for the third entrant and for the customers as a whole.

Another way to look at the spectrum share is to consider the entire sub-1000MHz category. Telecom and Vodafone both have a huge chunk of the available spectrum and 2Degrees is battling along with only a fraction. This extra auction does nothing to address that imbalance, instead it exacerbates it.

It will be very difficult for 2Degrees to challenge the big two in the 4G world now. It was always going to be difficult because it’s late to the 4G party, has a smaller marketing budget and still needs to build out its network coverage. Now it has to win market share with a lesser allotment of spectrum as well.

From a competition point of view this is the worst outcome on offer.

Chorus 2.0

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The Terms of Reference (ToR) for the review of Chorus’s financial situation are out and Ernst & Young has been appointed to undertake the review.

The ToR are brief and to the point. The review will focus on the impact of the Commerce Commission’s UBA price determination on Chorus and its ability to take part in the UFB and RBI projects.

The review will also look at Chorus’s financial capability to deliver the TSO and abide by any standard Terms Determination (STD) that has been decided by the Commission.

Then the review will look at what Chorus could do to increase its “financial flexibility” including making changes to its costs, its debt facilities and any change to its dividend policy that may or may not take place.

The second half of this review is the key to this whole issue and to my mind it needs beefing up somewhat.

I don’t for a second believe that reducing the earnings from one part of the wholesale regime will cause the company the kind of trouble it claims. The numbers just don’t stack up and Chorus simply should have known this was coming. If it’s claiming that it didn’t expect the drop, questions must be asked about management’s ability to run the company. We all saw this coming, and by all I do mean all – even the Minister of Communications who introduced the bill knew the impact would be severe, and so built the three-year delay into the Act.

It’s not revenue coming in that’s the problem. If there is a problem,  it’s the costs going out at the other end of the business that is driving Chorus’s actions.

Currently, Chorus is paying more than double the amount it expected to connect each property and that’s after a project to reduce its spend.

Each property costs around $3000 to connect. By contrast, the OECD tells me that in Europe, fibre to the home costs tend to run at around EU1200 each, while B4RN in the north of England (a community-led project running fibre to rural and remote communities) spends around GBP1000 per premise connected.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of UFB connections that take days if not weeks, that involve teams of contractors standing around wondering what to do next. I’ve seen pictures of holes drilled in walls, of drive ways dug up and then re-dug. I’ve heard failure rate figures of up to 80% even after the connection is made, and that all adds up to two things: unhappy customers and huge cost overruns.

This is the problem that needs resolving. Forget about the Commerce Commission’s look at copper pricing, Chorus’s spend on fibre is the problem.

I’ve seen Chorus installations, and I’ve seen Enable and Northpower installations and there’s not a lot of difference on the surface.

Enable was drilling in a line down a drive way when I visited and the team of three were working efficiently and well.

Northpower was connecting via overhead lines and each two-man team can do three properties a day without too much hassle.

So where does the cost difference come from? Why is it that smaller LFCs can complete their builds ahead of schedule and at a reduced cost while Chorus can’t? That’s a question I’d like to see the E&Y review address – perhaps we can compare and contrast Chorus’s build with another company doing the same work here in New Zealand.

One thing all the UFB and RBI contractors would benefit from is a review of the laws regarding access to buildings.

This is a replacement network – it’s a once in a generation upgrade that will result in a new infrastructure for the country. It’s high time we treated it as such and stopped getting in the way of the fibre deployment.

I’d like to see the Telco Act reviewed to make it easier for companies to deploy fibre. Currently roughly half of the costs go towards getting the right stamp on the right piece of paper and that’s just unacceptable. We’re replacing like for like (well, fibre in place of copper) so let’s just treat it as such and stop all this nonsense.

On top of that, I’d like to see some real stats from Crown Fibre on the deployment itself. We get a national average of uptake and how many properties are now able to be connected, but how are the LFCs and Chorus tracking against service level agreements?

I’ve been hearing some shocking stories of delays in getting orders through to the start line (the clock doesn’t start ticking until orders pass through the design phase, apparently, and many of them are delayed at that point for months in some cases) and missed installation dates that are driving ISPs crazy. Remember, the ISPs are the customers here – Chorus and the LFCs don’t work for us, they work for them.

CFH has a major role to play in sorting out the mess at that end of the process and that’s something TUANZ would wholeheartedly support.

Radically changing the regulatory environment to overrule the Commerce Commission to change one price input at the other end of the process is a mistake on many levels, but perhaps most significantly, I don’t think it will get Chorus out of this hole.

Digital teachers

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On Friday I had a taste of the future. Point England Primary School, long a TUANZ favourite, is to become home to ten beginning teachers who are first wave in the new Digital Teaching Academy.

The Academy is run in conjunction with Google and the University of Auckland and graduates will come out with either an Honours degree or a Masters in Professional Studies, with a focus on digital learning environments.

Pt England, and now the broader Manaiakalani Education Trust, has been at the forefront of changing education in New Zealand for as long as I can remember.

The school has achieved so much with such limited resource, in thanks partly to its open source roots and partly to its Energizer Bunny principal, Russell Burt, who would spend his weekends putting up wifi antennas on students’ homes so they could connect to the internet via the school’s connection.

The ten teachers, chosen from over 150 applicants, will spend their time at a number of schools in the cluster – Tamaki College, Stonefields, Glenbrae, Tamaki Primary, Panmure Bridge and of course, Pt England Primary.

As one of the kids said at the launch, “We don’t want to wait for the teacher to learn the cool tools we use” and I couldn’t agree more.

Teachers are expected to wear so many hats today. Web designer, graphic designers, film producers, musicians, leaders, and yes, scientists, historians, literature critics, mathematicians and so much more. It’s important they have the same ability to use the tools as the kids they’re teaching, because otherwise you’ll end up with a classroom of kids who are bored and disengaged at a time when they should be learning about learning and falling in love with understanding.

And these kids really are something astonishing to see in action. I was shown around the school by Tui who is off to high school next year. Maybe I’m getting old, but I don’t remember ever being so confident at that age – and it wasn’t just her, all the kids were the same.

We saw learning environments, not classrooms. Forget the classes of old – these kids learn in huddles, in clusters, indoors and out. I came across two young lads doing something on a tablet sitting outside in the sun because, well, it was a sunny day. I found an entire class hanging out on the decking outside class working with their teacher and thought Mrs Dolbin of Alexandra Junior School in Wrexham would have had a fit, but I bet you those kids take more from their lessons than I ever did.

I also saw a cluster of four classrooms built around a central shared area and while Tui assured me they were doing maths, it didn’t resemble anything like the maths I sat through. No-one was wailing in anguish, for one thing.

Russell and Pt England have found the silver bullet to the biggest problem in New Zealand education – how to engage the long tail of kids, predominantly Maori and Pacific Island – who simply don’t learn well enough at school.

It’s not that they get a cool device (the netbooks they use were chosen because they are exceptionally uncool), it’s not that they get to goof off and sit on the deck, it’s not because they use the internet instead of paper books, it’s because the use of ICT is infused in every aspect of their education.

It’s not a case of a school buying a few iPads and hey presto! the kids are learning more.  Instead, it’s a case of using the tools that are right for the job and not being stuck with books that are 20 years old, with teaching aids that were designed in the 50s and having teachers who are confident and able to use the new tools to deliver the results – kids who learn, rather than kids who sit waiting to be taught.

Once this tranche of teachers comes through and go on to work in our schools the next big challenge will be to ensure that they find schools ready to make the leap and become digital schools. There’s no easy way to do that but up-skilling the principals and boards will be critical.

Russell’s wife, Dorothy Burt, spoke at the launch about her first day teaching at intermediate. Because she was fast-tracked through, she was only eight years out of intermediate school herself, and the books she used in her first lesson were the same ones she used when she was sitting in class.

How far we’ve come.

 

NOTE: Edit to include the full list of schools the teachers will be working at.

The Trans Pacific Partnership, Hurrah

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(with apolgies to Harry Harrison)

There’s good news and bad in the leaked Trans Pacific Partnership IP chapter.

As you may know, the TPP negotiations are not only being conducted in secret, but very few people beyond the negotiating team are allowed to see the various chapters. The IP chapter in particular has come under a lot of flak for having major input from big-name US corporations but which lawmakers around the world are unable to read in detail.

Thanks must surely go, in that case, to Wikileaks for publishing what appears to be a legitimate copy of the text. There’s a story on it in the New Zealand Herald, which is listed as a partner of Wikileaks on this story. Wired UK also has a story, because while the UK isn’t part of the Trans Pacific Partnership, its embroiled in a follow-up free trade agreement that is known as the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) which kicked off in January.

First, the good news. New Zealand trade negotiators are, apparently, standing firm against some of the more extreme measures introduced by the US in particular.

The Americans would like to impose restrictions on pharmaceuticals, so as to dampen down our ability to buy generic copies, increase the duration of our copyright term, revisit our newly revisited Patent Bill with a view to making software patentable and generally foisting what Wired calls “some of the worst aspects of US copyright law” on the rest of us.

Take the ability to make temporary copies of files, for example. That’s not allowed. Quite where that leaves the internet, I’m not sure, but I’d suggest it would make devices like iPads, digital projectors and many others almost unable to function.

What about blind or visually impaired readers? Will they still be able to have transient copies of works made so they can access the written world about them? No, is the short answer. Oh yes, there might be a carve out that allows them to do so, but the tools needed to develop newer versions of the software fall into the category of “circumvention tools” and so are illegal. Surely a trade agreement should allow blind people and others ongoing access to information by default, rather than by exception.

New Zealand is standing firm on a lot of this. We lead a relatively large group of countries that are opposed to most of the asinine clauses the US delegation (supported by Australia, Mexico and Singapore mostly) would like to include.

I find it interesting that Australia is in this position, because of course the Aussies signed their own FTA with America some time ago – and if the news reports are anything to go by have received little or no gain for their troubles. Clearly they’re now required to support the US approach on all of this. Perhaps the Americans will allow them to buy some more ground attack aircraft for their defence force as a result.

What does worry me, however, is that the negotiators will only take this so far. When deadlock is reached, it will all be handed over to our politicians to see it through the final stage and that’s where the bad news comes in.

Politicians may or may not opt to give away some of our intellectual property rights in return for a promise of access to US markets for our dairy industry, for example.

On the one hand, that’s great for Fonterra, great for the economy as it stands today and will surely win whoever signs it the next election. Access to the US market has been something of a ‘get out of jail free’ card for politicians since New Zealand began trading in the free markets of the world.

That assumes the US will actually allow New Zealand farmers access to the US market and that’s not going to be terribly easy. A promise of future access, of staged easing of restrictions will mean we, like the Australians before us, will no doubt sit on the sidelines waiting for the next few years while the cost of the transaction to New Zealand is introduced immediately.

The problem is, most of our politicians understand the benefits of dairying to our economy but haven’t the faintest idea about the benefits of the ICT industry, despite the best efforts of Rod Drury to build his billion dollar business from the beach.

They simply don’t get that New Zealand could become a world leader in terms of ICT production on a scale that would dwarf dairying, if only they got in behind the effort with more than the lip service we’ve seen over the past decade or so.

We could end up giving away our future economic prosperity to prop up our current economic model, and that would be very bad news indeed.