Let’s go shopping

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The Australian government has released its parliamentary
inquiry into IT pricing and it confirms what we’ve always known – US companies
charge us foreigners more for the same products, regardless of cost of
delivery.

Any business owner will tell you, you don’t base your
product’s price on how much it costs to make the product but rather on what the
market will pay for the product.

In the case of some big-name US brands, they’ve followed
that remit to the letter. Goods both physical and digital have been priced
according to what they think the local market will pay, and typically that’s
meant paying more.

This is a double-edged sword. I know of at least one UK band
that refused to tour in New Zealand because they were told that UK rates for
concerts converted into New Zealand dollars made the concert too expensive.
Better to have a local price point that would mean money would still be made
but which wouldn’t result in New Zealand fans mortgaging their houses in order
to see the show.

On the other hand, charging locals more for a product
because you can has led to some companies coming a cropper. Adidas, you’ll
remember, figured out that Kiwis would pay a lot more for an All Black replica
jersey than, say, Germans would and so priced its products accordingly.

These days we have the internet and we can compare and
contrast pricing. The world of regional variation is all but dead and global
prices are the new standard, yet still we find US and European companies in
particular willing to engage in dubious pricing practices “because they can”.

I know of at least one New Zealand corporate which buys all
its Microsoft licences through a US subsidiary because it saves between 30 and
50% on the price and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So what has the Aussie report recommended? Well, the
parliament is going to monitor pricing for the foreseeable future to monitor
the situation. It’s also looking to aggregate educational institutions’ needs
to buy at a better price and will consider introducing an all-of-government
model if the educational piece proves useful.

But most interestingly, the report recommends broadening and
strengthening Australia’s parallel importation laws “to ensure it is effective
in allowing the importation of genuine goods” and to revisit the copyright laws
with a view to “clarify and secure consumers’ rights to circumvent
technological protection measures that control geographic market segmentation.”

That’s right – government mandated circumvention of DRM
protection measures like region locking and the like.

But wait, there’s more. 
Recommendation six says:

The Committee further recommends
that the Australian Government investigate options to educate Australian
consumers and businesses as to:

the extent to which they may
circumvent geoblocking mechanisms in order to access cheaper legitimate goods;

the tools and techniques which
they may use to do so; and

the way in which their rights
under the Australian Consumer Law may be affected should they choose to do so.

There are even more  recommendations that go a long way towards
strengthening the user’s rights, even up to the point of considering outlawing “geoblocking”
should it come to that.

If you’re sitting there with your mouth open at the extent
of all this then you’re doing so in good company. The idea of a government doing
all of this is quite astounding. Here at home we’ve got is NZ Post and its You
Shop service (giving customers a US postal address so as to get round shipping
restrictions) and Slingshot with its Global Mode allowing “visitors” to access
US content as if they were in the US. Ahem.

Sadly, the New Zealand response on all of these points is
underwhelming. We’ve decided to push back any decision on parallel importing or
the review of copyright laws until after the Trans-Pacific Partnership secret
deal is concluded.

Given the US is pushing a hard line on copyright,
intellectual property and parallel imports, I doubt that means good things for New
Zealand users. Unlike our Australian counterparts, we have no such support at
government level beyond Minister Craig Foss telling TUANZ that he has written
to the Australian government asking if New Zealand consumers can be tacked on
to the side of the Aussie inquiry. I’ll find out if they ever replied and what
outcome there has been, if any.

The Australians aren’t too worried about offending the US
with their actions. They’ve already secured a free trade agreement and know
that it’s not paid dividends to Australia’s economy at all. Far from it – the prevailing
consensus appears to be that Australia has given up far more than the US has
and gained very little from it.

Well done, Australia. Wellington – have a look at what could
be gained for New Zealand users and remember: we get to vote. The Americans don’t.

 

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Electronic McCarthyism

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The government’s committee looking after the GCSB bill has
reported back and made very few changes in light of the overwhelming opposition
to the law change.

Currently opposed to the bill are the Privacy Commissioner,
the Human Rights Commission, InternetNZ, the Law Society, dozens of individual
submitters, the Labour party, the Green party, possibly NZ First and of course
TUANZ.

In favour of the bill is the government and, presumably, its
security allies the US, Australia, the UK and Canada.

Increasingly, New Zealand trades with China, yet it is China
that is specifically listed as a potential threat from what we can read of the
advice to government over this bill and its sister, the Telecommunications
(Interception and Security) Bill which is still proceeding unhindered through
the political process, albeit “under urgency”.

We have a number of issues with the two bills, not least of
which is the cost it will impose on the industry and which will, inevitably, be
passed on to customers.

Under the bills, not only will the telcos be required to
store information they normally wouldn’t bother with, but they’ll also be
required to consult with the GCSB over changes to the network up to and
including which vendors they wish to use.

Assume for a moment that Chinese company Huawei is making
huge inroads into network deployments around the world and that US companies
are upset by this. Assume that Huawei is providing a better product at a
cheaper price and is currently engaged by all our major telcos in one form or
another. Assume that the GCSB still thinks China is the enemy and that Huawei
is a puppet of the Chinese political system.

What will that mean for our future network deployments?

Will Telecom, Vodafone, 2Degrees, Orcon and Slingshot and
all the rest be forced to use non-Chinese technology?  Will they be required to only use “friendly”
technology providers, even if the cost is 20% more and the deployment that much
slower?

Will the GCSB balk at a request from a telco to move to technology
that passes email and TXTs through the network rather than decrypting and
storing them for future retrieval?

Will the GCSB ban Apple or Google or any other provider from
selling certain “uncrackable” products in New Zealand or ban New Zealand companies
from developing similar products for sale overseas?

In decades to come, will the GCSB be able to trawl through a
political leader’s entire online history looking for signs of being a teenager
in order to embarrass or block that person from office?

If all that seems unlikely to you then you’ll have no
problem with the bills as they stand. But even then there’s a problem.

The US Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)
specifically excludes US-based companies from providing the kind of support the
GCSB and TICS bills demand. Under this law it is illegal for US-based companies
to provide foreign intelligence services with access to such customer data.

So even if these bills are introduced, Google and Apple,
Microsoft and all the rest will be unable to comply without facing legal action
in the US, presumably from the US government itself.

We’ve not been shown any pressing need to change our laws,
and most New Zealanders it seems are unhappy about the level of intrusion into
their lives these bills represent.

Just as difficult is the position it puts New Zealand in
with regard to both our trading partner, China, and our security partner, the
United States.

We don’t need to rush into a decision. There is no “clear
and present danger” that requires New Zealand to enact these laws without first
considering the obvious ramifications both at home and abroad. We need to get
this kind of thing right, because the consequences are grave indeed.

 

A snapshot of our ICT industry

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Originally posted over at NBR. 

 

The government’s newly released ICT sector report gives us a great snapshot of the broader ICT (information and communications technology) industry, how it’s doing and how much it’s worth.

It’s really the first time we’ve had such a comprehensive look at the sector and assuming we get an annual update (at least) it’ll be very useful in benchmarking how we’re progressing.

The report focuses on the three main segments of ICT – manufacturing, services and telecommunications itself.

First, the good news. The sector is growing and is now worth 5% of GDP. Wages are running at double the national average (you’ll be pleased to know you can expect $103,563 as your midpoint in 2011) and growing faster than the national average as well – 4.5% growth year on year instead of 3.2%.

If you want to work in ICT you’ll have to live in Auckland. One third of all ICT jobs are based in the City of Sails – not surprising given the country’s population spread, but more than half of all “computer system design jobs” are Auckland based. Interestingly, Christchurch is second with 9.6% of all ICT jobs and Wellington third with 7.3%.

You’ll probably be working for yourself – fully 75% of the industry is self-employed (zero employees) – but that’s no bad thing. It means we as an economy really need to bear in mind the cost of doing business versus the cost of being an employee as an issue.

Best of all, we’re exporting. “Computer and information services” has grown from $288 million worth of exports in 2006 to $531 million in 2012 – a compound annual growth rate of 11%. Imports, by way of contrast, are still increasing but at the lower 8% CAGR.

The day will come in the near future when our exports exceed our imports and we can rightfully take our place as one of the creators in the digital economy instead of a consumer.

Which brings us to the bad news, not that it’s going to be news to anyone in the sector. We simply aren’t turning out enough graduates to fill the roles on offer. Finding new employees with skills is still the most difficult issue raised in the report.

Today, 62,000 workers are employed in ICT roles (as opposed to working for ICT firms), and that’s up 11,000 in the past decade, but half of all ICT firms report difficulty hiring staff.

The figures can be traced back to the education sector and the lack of ICT graduates coming through the system. Although the number of graduates has increased, there were only 1200 graduates in 2011. We might get to 1900 graduates by the end of next year, but even so that’s a drop in the bucket. We could never attract a big-name ICT multinational to set up a development venture in New Zealand with that small a graduate pool.

We need to encourage our kids to consider ICT as a career option. It pays well, you can travel the world, you don’t have to dig up a national park and these skills are highly desirable, yet all too often we see good quality candidates going into accounting, law and management – three areas that have trouble placing graduates because of the oversupply of talent. The skills aren’t dissimilar – maths, logic, a flair for process – and the chances of being gainfully employed are a lot higher.

It’s great to see the government looking in this much detail at our sector. I’d hope to see more of this kind of data come through in the years ahead so we can track our progress, but that’s really only the start of it all. We shouldn’t just be tracking, we should be driving this sector forward and that means a concerted effort from both sides of the fence – industry and government alike – to make it easier for ICT to bloom.

 

Essential Services

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The news coverage of the weekend’s swarm of quakes in central New Zealand has included plenty of advice on disaster recovery kits and as ever, we’re now including information on cellphones and staying in touch.

Send TXT messages to keep the lines clear for emergency phone calls. Update your voicemail message or post on Facebook to tell everyone you’re OK – that way if you can get word out without tying up the phone lines.

Phone lines. It’s one of those phrases that rolls off the tongue but doesn’t really relate well with what we’re talking about. It’s a left-over from those years when the primary form of communication was a voice call from the phone attached to the wall.

Today of course we’re mobile. We rely on these phones to connect to the network so we can call for help, check on loved ones, update friends and family, talk to colleagues.

They’re an essential service. We simply couldn’t get by without them.

So why is it that mobile phone companies have such a hard time building the infrastructure we have all come to rely on?

Cellphones don’t work in isolation. If there’s no network coverage, there’s no connectivity. What provides network coverage? Cellphone towers, and (these days) fibre cable backhaul and of course electricity.

There is a lot of fear about cellsites. Radiation concerns, based largely on poor information about just what radiation is, seem to be the primary problem. Local residents oppose cellsites for health reasons, for property value reasons, all of which have been proven over and over to be unfounded, but still the opposition continues.

This puts local councils in a very difficult position. The evidence says there’s no problem – the rate payers say otherwise and any council which ignores its rate payers can end up looking for a new career.

So we have public consultation meetings that please no-one. There’s shouting, swearing, crying, threats, NIMBY anger and fear and no-one goes away happy.

We have prolonged and costly resource applications that demand the sites be put somewhere, anywhere else, and much mapping and planning to determine just where that could be.

If you want cellphone coverage, you have to have cellsites. There’s just no way round that – you can’t have one without the other. Councils need to do more to ensure cellsites are included in any new greenfields deployment. They need to do more to make sure the sites work for both telcos and residents.

And yes, once again, we’re calling on central government to make a change to its model as well. The Resource Management Act should include a set of national, standardised processes that guide local councils and developers whenever they build something new. That should come from central government and it would take the heat off councils and ensure we have coverage where people live and work.

The simplest and easiest thing to do is also the most effective. We should change the way roadside reserves are governed so councils can allow telcos to put the cellsites on council-managed property. That way the cost of building the network comes down, the council can manage the process more smoothly for all concerned and the site itself will be as far away from residents’ front doors as possible, while still providing coverage.

It’s events like these we’ve seen this past weekend that make us realise just how much we’ve come to rely on cellphones and the networks that support them. Let’s make sure these devices are there when we need them the most.

Guest post: Education System part two

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In New Zealand education policy, the failure of Talent2 and the Ministry of Education to build and deliver the Novopay payroll system has been widely covered in the media. This failure occurred for a number of technical and contractual reasons, many of which have been laid out in reviews.
The recently released Ministerial inquiry lays the blame for failure in a range of places. But in reading some of the Novopay timeline details, and the technical review, you get the sense that during the process, failure was not tolerated or accepted.

Despite concerns,  and reports detailing “147 software defects and 6000 errors“, the contract was still signed off, and the project went ahead. The Minister of
Education, the Associate Minister of Education and the Minister of Finance all
signed off on the project, despite knowing there were defects in the system.
Four independent advisors gave the system the go ahead, despite, we can only
assume, having a similar level of knowledge about the weaknesses in the system.

On the face of it, it appears, the possibility of system failure was almost willingly ignored and was quite literally, not an option. Why if everyone appeared to know that the system was faulty, was it allowed to be launched? After the fact, it’s easy to say that remedial work is being done, and Talent2 is learning from each cycle of errors, and that more people are on the help desk, and the Ministry is addressing faults in internal systems and staffing, but it’s difficult to avoid the fact that it appears a fear of
non-delivery meant a failed delivery from day one.

Obviously hindsight allows us to critique the Novopay implementation process and the technical aspects. I do wonder how and who within the Ministry of Education has learnt from the failure. I wonder how schools have learnt from the failure, and have changes
been made to some of their processes? I wonder if their have been any measurable gains or successes provided by the Novopay system, for schools and the Ministry?

The Network for Learning, (N4L) one of this government’s flagship initiatives is another example of where it is arguable, the “failure is not an option” culture is in play. Touted as “unleashing learners” and with a promise to not deliver any school, less than it currently has access too, the Network for Learning has been almost crippled by huge levels of expectation and in some quarters, entitlement.

After the failings of the Novopay process, the government and the N4L itself is moving quite slowly through the procurement and implementation process. Is this to avoid being seen as a failure, and to avoid failing to deliver? This slowness and at times lack of communication has been criticized by some in the education sector. An education sector that can be notoriously demanding. Will high and entitled expectations mean the N4L is regarded as a failure when it finally arrives? Or even before it finally
arrives.

Will it be a success if the network and services can be built and delivered, but be unaffordable for the schools that need these the most? In the quest to create a “something” that will raise student achievement, will the N4L be defined and by test scores and measurements that it has little to no quantifiable way of affecting?  Or will the assessments be designed to measure the N4L’s services, rather than the
student’s abilities and needs that we actually want to address.

At its heart this Network for Learning is just a collection of wires and boxes, that allow schools to connect. What those connections allow are varied and exciting, but the network cannot make change of itself. How schools actively and critically choose to use those connections to meet the needs of their students will make the most difference.

I do hope the premise and promise of the Network for Learning succeeds, but I’d rather call it a ‘Network for Education’. It’s a provision to support the delivery of education in New Zealand. What learning emerges from that network could be amazing, can be plain and useful, but ultimately should just be a part of how we in Aotearoa provide for our young people.

Lest anyone think that I’m defending teachers or schools that display signs of failure, I am not. I’m conscious that there are poor practitioners in the education sector, and poor administrators, and that students can be letdown by the choices of those who we entrust to guide and support them.

But I don’t believe any teacher or school leader actively sets out to fail their students. By stating “failure is not an option”, the Minister sets up a false assumption that anything less than constant success, means our teachers and schools are failing, and thus changes must be made.

So let’s change this conversation in which we are constantly defining success and failure points, and measuring to meet those standards. Let’s have broader conversation that starts with saying “In education, success and failure are part of the process of learning.” While we don’t aim for failure, we don’t deny that it may occur. That will we constantly look to build on our failures and successes, to refine and make ourselves and our places better.

If as adults, we’re OK with both success and failure, neither too emotionally distraught, nor enthusiastically hyped, our students may come to see that gratitude in the face of success, and resilience in the face of failure, are what determine our well-being in this life.

And this will be worth celebrating.

Guest Post: Yes (please) Minister

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Paddy Buckley is the Managing Director of Quickflix, the challenger in the online television content delivery game.

The rise of video on demand (VOD) is exciting for consumers.  Coliseum’s high-profile
acquisition of the English Premier League football rights has brought into focus the rapid worldwide transition from linear (scheduled) broadcasting to VOD. 

A few things are increasingly clear: we have less free time for aimless channel hopping.
We want to binge-watch TV two or three episodes at a time.  TV ads now feel like bizarre intrusions into our viewing time.  These changes have shown up first in the US, where the VOD leader Netflix generates 30-40% of all peak-time internet traffic.

Closer to home, technology is improving and the ultra-fast broadband fibre rollout is underway.  UFB isn’t exactly needed for VOD to work, but it will seriously improve the experience – content will be delivered fast, in high definition, across multiple devices at the same time, and it will be ubiquitous.  Well, nearly.  The rural broadband initiative will hopefully be enough to satisfy those that generate most of our national wealth. 

All good?   Moving boldly towards an exciting new world of convenient on demand viewing, on the device of your choice, wherever you are?   Actually there’s a problem. 

Let’s leave access to content to one side – at least until the Commerce Commission reports back on its current investigation – the problem is wider and more fundamental.

Before we launched Quickflix last year, I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the contradictions in the legislation that would apply to us: the telecoms sector is regulated, but broadcasting is not.  It wasn’t clear to me precisely where VOD fitted in.  Fast forward to today and I’m none the wiser.  This uncertainty is leading to some strange things going on out there.

It turns out that on demand viewing is not covered by the Broadcasting Act because it’s not a broadcast to the public at large – each stream is to a single viewer or household.  This puts the broadcasters in a tricky spot with their ‘catch-up’ services which are technically VOD (and therefore not broadcasting) but which they are forced to treat like broadcasting in the absence of more suitable legislation.  There’s a similar story for online DVD retailers – they no doubt want to comply with the legislation but how can they when it can’t easily be applied to them?  The legislation we’re talking about was
drafted in the 1980s and 90s so it’s hardly surprising that it doesn’t envisage
VOD and other online services.

Technology and the development of these new services always move faster than regulation, so I’m certainly not finger-pointing. Nevertheless, our broadcasting and
telecoms legislation is contradictory, outdated, and gives the lie to any claim
that our public policy is keeping pace with the convergence of digital delivery
systems and content.  The whole thing needs a review.

In February, Amy Adams announced one: a review of the policy framework for regulating telecommunications services.  According to Ms Adams “regulatory certainty is an important factor in the ability of New Zealanders to have early access to high-quality communication services based on new technologies”.

The Minister will announce the terms of reference and timetable soon.  Let’s hope they deal with some public policy questions right from the start.

Can we agree on the technology neutrality of delivery systems and that content is still
content whether viewers get it by digital terrestrial, satellite or over IP?  Can we agree a coherent approach that takes in telecoms and broadcasting?  And can we agree that convergence has already happened and now needs to be reflected in legislation?

InternetNZ’s well-considered discussion paper on convergence is here and asks
all the right questions.  Those committed to the success of the telecoms and broadcasting sectors, and the taxpayers’ $1.3 billion UFB investment, should respond to it as well as to the Minister’s review.

Here’s another example of Alice in Wonderland that illustrates the need to think deep.   Quickflix will launch a channel on the Freeview platform later this year.  We’re very excited about it and it’ll mean that a viewer can be watching a free-to-air broadcaster and then change to channel 200 to watch Quickflix’s VOD.  

That’ll be a great experience for the viewer but the unforeseen consequence is that there will be different legislative regimes governing different ends of the EPG – broadcasting for the traditional channels and then, well, “not broadcasting” for the VOD channels.  In other words, a quick change of channel is all it will take to change regimes – surely not the “regulatory certainty” that we are striving for.

Copper pricing shouldn’t be the only priority issue for Amy Adams.  Convergence of digital ntworks and digital content has already occurred.  She has the chance
to save the Government from the embarrassment of outdated and contradictory
public policy.  And the parliamentary draftsman can be relieved of the task of nit-picking to take account of a future that everyone else has noticed is already here.

Over to you, Minister.

Guest Post: Fear of failure and the education system

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On Saturday I watched TV3’s The Nation’s piece on the
current Minister of Education, Hekia Parata.

I was struck by the Minister’s phrase, from her maiden
statement to parliament,
in particular her comments directed at education.

“We must adopt an uncompromising attitude that
failure is not an option. All our other aspirations for economic growth,
raised standards of living, and national confidence and pride will flow from
getting these basics right.

“Failure is not an option.”

It is, on the face of it, a fine statement, that speaks to
conviction, emphatic-ness and a desire to accept nothing less than the very
best.  All laudable sentiments from a politician. 

And I don’t deny that this is just one sentence from a wider
speech, but language matters, and I believe a statement like that helps to
frame the culture of practice that a politician leads. Can we actually frame a
society wide conversation about public education with that blunt rejection of
failure? What happens to our systems if we reject failure as an option?

Instead of stating that “Failure is not an option”, and living by
that dictum, should we as @therepaulpowers tweeted, consider that “Failure
is quite clearly an opinion.” With that perspective, can we allow
considered and critical opinions to shape our conversation about what failure
actually is and means in practice?

As a culture, we celebrate moments of success, gold medals
and world records. But behind each of those moments are effort, toil and
setbacks. Those setbacks are a series of failures, that when persevered through
and built upon can lead to success. But as a culture, we don’t often reflect on
that effort and that long progression of failure, nor do we celebrate it. 

In sports there are many examples of failure being a
reality. These excellent basketball players have never held aloft an NBA championship, while these footballers never even
made it to the World Cup. 

Would we consider them failures?

The 2011 All Blacks were rightly hailed as successful as
they won the Rugby World Cup. That victory salved the reminder of 25 years of
incessant failure. It’s possibly useful to consider that in that same time
period France, competed in three finals, while the All Blacks only two.
Naturally we see the All Blacks as more successful, because they won the two
they were in, but France have arguably a more successful RWC record than the  All Blacks. 

It’s just that possibly, as a nation they don’t base their
entire cultural worth or success on their national rugby team.

Consider also, that in those 25 years, rugby fans were
privileged enough to witness the feats of some of the most outstanding players
to ever play the game. Christian Cullen, Tana
Umaga, Andrew Mehrtens, Jonah Lomu,

Did these players fail? Depending on the criteria, absolutely. 

Were they successful players who achieved highly? Obviously. 

Steve Jobs is lauded as one of the pioneers and visionaries
of personal computing and consumer electronics. But not only was he let go by
the very company that he helped to found, he continued to make
mistakes after his return and
not all of Apple’s products have been successful.

Richard Branson has had over a dozen major ventures that
have gone bust under his watch,
and yet is widely hailed as a success and a entrepernurial leader.

James Dyson’s award winning bag less vacuum cleaner
“took 5,127 prototypes and 15 years to get it right.” Even after the
success of that original product in 1993, Dyson has continued to refine and
continuously improve his product.  

All of their failures were a part of the successes these
three business leaders went on to create. As Dyson discusses in this article
from The Guardian, in business “Failure can be an option“. 

Sometimes though, we rewrite the rules, and despite failure
being the absolute state of reality, and being aware of the process by which
that point of failure was reached, we choose to define some things as “too
big to fail“.

We didn’t allow the banks to fail. The results would have
been catastrophic we were told. But five years on from that financial crisis,
are we any better off? Have those institutes learnt from that failure? Did
declaring them unable to fail cause them to change their methods?  Have
our economies become more effective, balanced and useful as a result of not
being allowed to fail?

I find it interesting that the World Bank now hosts a Fail
Faire, to
celebrate “innovation and risk-taking”. 

Are we doing that in New Zealand. Politicians often call for
innovation and risk takers, but do we allow for and explicitly let failure
happen, so that we can innovate as a result. Do our public sector environments
allow for risk-taking and the possibility of both success and failure? Do we
have a public sector culture that lets the individuals within it learn from
their mistakes.

 

Part Two of Tim’s post goes online on Thursday.

Guest post – UK broadband goes mobile

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UK mobile broadband infrastructure

The UK was
among the first countries in Europe to receive a consumer level 3G network,
launched by the mobile wing of British Telecom in 2003. Up until that point we
had, like everywhere else, struggled along with a 2G service – fine for voice
and texts but internet access could be painful even compared to dial-up.

It wasn’t
until 3G went live that mobile broadband became a real possibility, and it’s
proven popular: the UK telecoms regular Ofcom
estimated in 2012 that 13% of adults in the UK had a mobile broadband connection.

Mobile broadband not-spots

Despite the
enthusiasm with which UK net surfers have taken to mobile internet access,
coverage and performance remains an issue. The UK is not a big country and
we’ve had 3G for ten years so it would be reasonable to expect almost complete
saturation of mobile network signal, but in fact many gaps remain.

In towns and
cities you can generally rely on access to 3G, but it’s still not uncommon to
find ‘not-spots’ where the signal falls back to 2G or drops out entirely. And
once you’re out into the countryside the coverage becomes very patchy.

The network
operators claim to offer in excess of 90% coverage. In 2011 the BBC conducted a crowd-sourced experiment to explore mobile signal
throughout the UK and discovered that when a data connection was available
users were only able to get 3G around 75% of the time. The resulting map
revealed a large number of not-spots throughout the country.

That was two
years ago of course, but our own testing confirms that mobile broadband still
has a long way to go. In May we conducted our annual mobile broadband Road Trip, travelling from London to
Edinburgh while recording the performance of all major network providers.

With speed
tests, downloads and uploads and media streaming we were able to see how mobile
broadband handled practical tasks in a real situation.

Several
networks – notably Three, EE and T-Mobile – completed a large number of tests
and returned some excellent speed test results, some as high as 8Mb.

However
several networks failed to perform to a reasonable standard, with the weakest
managing to complete just 13% of the tasks. All the networks struggled with
streaming media, particularly video, none of them managing more than half of
the attempts.

This adds up
to a frustratingly inconsistent experience when using mobile internet on the
move. Provided the signal is available the connection can be incredibly fast,
particularly with the latest DC-HSDPA 3G networks providing 20Mb or more, but
all too often you’ll wander into an area with no connectivity and it will cease
to function.

The next generation

We are
hopeful this situation will improve, however, thanks to the recent introduction
of next-generation 4G mobile broadband.

The first 4G
network was launched by EE in October 2012 and is still fairly limited, but the
spectrum auction which doled out 4G frequency to the remaining providers came
with a requirement: they must commit to providing indoor coverage to 98% of the population

This should
mean that within the next couple of years we’ll see a significant improvement
in mobile broadband performance as the networks compete to offer the best
mobile internet. Not only will 4G bring much faster speeds but this caveat to
offer a minimum level of service will help reduce not-spots.

And
Britain’s Rural areas – currently poorly served by both fixed and mobile
broadband – may see the benefits too as mobile internet fills the gaps left by
our ageing telephone network.

Author Bio: Matt Powell is the editor for the UK broadband
comparison site Broadband
Genie, where he blogs on the
latest broadband and mobile broadband topics.

 

Overbuilding networks is not on

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Let’s talk about overbuilding of networks.

Several years ago I visited the telco regulator in Hong
Kong. His biggest challenge was keeping out of the way of telcos, because over
there the market really does rule the roost. Why? Because with six or seven
copper networks, three or four fibre networks, six or seven 3G networks and at
least four proposed LTE networks, there was plenty of competition at the most
basic level.

Overbuilding is good.

However, as he said to me at the time, that’s fine once you’ve
got build out to every customer. Prior to that, overbuild is a waste of time
and resources.

New Zealand is not in that situation. We don’t have a
ubiquitous network built out to cover every building or every customer. We don’t
have competition at the lowest level, and indeed the government’s decision to
fund what are, in effect, four regional monopolies would suggest there’s little
chance we’ll ever have the population to support multiple networks overbuilding
each other. With only four million customers (in a variety of guises) the costs
far outweigh the benefits.

Except that we are already overbuilding.

In central Auckland I have my pick of fibre providers for
business grade, point to point fibre. There’s FX Networks, TelstraClear fibre
(now owned by Vodafone), Vector and of course Chorus to name the first four
that come to mind.

In Wellington there’s CityLink as well, plus there are any
number of other providers.

They’re typically not offering the same kind of fibre
service that the Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) project will build. It’s very fast,
it’s uncontended (that is, it isn’t shared in the way the UFB’s G-PON network
will be shared) and it’s expensive as a result.

For most CBD dwellers (I’m thinking businesses here, not
residential) the move to UFB will be a cost-reduction move that means more
contention for a lesser charge. They’ll figure out what that looks like in
terms of their own risk profiles and everyone will get along.

However, there are pockets of fibre deployment that are
already in service and which Chorus and the LFCs should be taking into
consideration as they build out the UFB.

Nelson, for example, has had The Loop for around a decade
now, and at the launch of the Chorus UFB deployment the mayors of both Tasman
and Nelson were at great pains to ensure everyone knew about it. It certainly
came as something of a surprise to the Minister whose speech revolved around
bringing the future to a corner of the South Island. We’ve got the future
already, Minister, they told her.

The explanation from Crown Fibre and Chorus at that point
was that the UFB requirements wouldn’t be met by the fibre network in Nelson
but that hopefully the UFB pricing would help reduce the cost of The Loop’s
fibre to its customers as well. Competition is good and healthy, but there’s no
overbuilding going on, I was told.

The Loop tells me its prices are already lower than the UFB
prices, and that yes in fact overbuild is going on.

Inspire.Net is another ISP that’s been laying fibre for many
years in the lower North Island. Because it’s not a national provider,
Inspire.Net wasn’t considered for the UFB or RBI deployments, but it already
has a large tract of the country fibred up and operating today.

Surely there won’t be overbuilding going on there, right?

Sadly, that’s not the case. UFB fibre is being deployed in
Palmerston North right over the top of existing Inspire.Net fibre and alongside
TelstraClear/Vodafone fibre. The UFB and RBI fibre is required to be deployed
to schools in and around the country so they’ve gone so far as to put a pit
outside a school which already has fibre delivered by one of the existing
operators. This despite Chorus telling an audience in Whanganui that fibre won’t
be deployed to the farms because the cost of putting a pit in and breaking out
the fibre is just too expensive, despite promising just that a year ago.

The UFB project is supposed to provide fibre to 75% of the
population. Chorus has won the lion’s share of the project and is claiming to
be overspending to the tune of around $400m. Something’s got to give, and
apparently that pressure means the government will run over the top of the
Commerce Commission decisions around copper pricing so as to make sure Chorus
doesn’t lose any more cash.

I have an idea. How about we not overbuild existing
networks. How about instead of trying to squash these smaller players we
require the UFB fibre network companies to work with existing fibre operators
and so avoid spending money to deliver a second or even third fibre network to
these places where existing services already operate.

Instead, why not lease capacity from these existing network
operators? Why not work with the other network providers, instead of
overbuilding them – at least until we have full coverage.

Chorus, UltraFast, Northpower and Enable could then get on
with building fibre to new parts of the country, places where there is no fibre
today and where new customers will be able to connect up. It will cost less to
deploy and we’ll save Chorus its $400m, or a goodly chunk of it, without having
to favour one operator over another.

Once we have the whole country covered we certainly can look
at overbuilding. In the long run I’d be more than happy for
infrastructure-based competition to take off. But publicly-funded network
deployments should not be used as a way of quashing competition and certainly
not at the expense of operators who have already put in the long hours and hard
yards delivering the service. I don’t want my money being spent on that – quite
the opposite.

 

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Wanganui – city of the future

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Last weekend I went to
Tech Ex 2013 in Wanganui to talk broadband and other matters.

Tech Ex is organised
by the Wanganui District Council – Marianne Archibald, to be more exact, who
also happens to be on the TUANZ board – and aims to showcase the best of
broadband and technology to the region.

We had a very
interesting discussion about why broadband is necessary in modern life. I say
discussion – pretty much we all agreed on all points (and as the saying goes,
if you didn’t agree we certainly couldn’t explain it to you). The demand for
broadband is so great in the region that Inspire Net is working with some of
the locals to put up fixed-wireless masts all over the region. Tex Matthews,
head of the Rural Community Board, showed us what it looks like and by crikey
they’re doing a good job of it.

The countryside around
Wanganui is incredibly steep and the bits where the masts would go are
typically quite inaccessible, yet somehow they get solar panels, battery packs,
concrete, cables and all the rest up to these points and built. It’s all
community labour, on some farmer’s land and the farmer then typically becomes
the tech support for that site.

Connecting power can
mean running a lead to the wrong property (involving a complicated arbitrage
system run by someone called Jim Beam, or so I’m told) but getting the fibre up
to the mast itself is a genuine “number eight” solution.

Tex had a fishing rod
with a lot of heavy duty line for sea fishing. Keen to upgrade both rod and
reel, he fashioned some kind of probe for the end of the line, poked it into
the conduit, hooked up the hose and flushed the line through the pipe. He then
pulls the fibre through and bingo, fibre to the farm.

My hat is off to them.
The rural community of Wanganui is doing the job the hard way but doing it
well. We need to support them in these efforts and show off their good work to
other communities around the country.

We also heard from
rural broadband specialist Jonathan Brewer (I’m pretty sure he’ll kill me if I
call him a guru) who talked about cognitive radio and the potential benefits to
remote areas of deploying this kind of technology.

It was fascinating
stuff. By using the “white space” of radio spectrum (basically the bits where
spectrum isn’t being used because of interference or access issues), Jon says
we could increase coverage and capacity without having to spend a fortune on
new spectrum rights.

I’ve linked to Jon’s
blog for more detail, but it sounds like something we should absolutely
be championing in New Zealand. It’s an emerging standard at this stage but
there are some big names behind it, including Google, so we should expect to
see some hardware in the not too distant future.

All told it was a
great weekend. There’s a high level of demand, a lot of interest in the issues
that might prevent deployment and a keenness to get things done.

Because of the
horrendous storm the day before, Wanganui was in clean-up mode and
unfortunately numbers were down somewhat on last year’s event. That’s no
reflection of the topics or the interest, more about the weather and having to
sacrifice a weekend to sorting out the roof I suspect.