I’m a big time Apple fan, I’ve spent 3 decades using the products of my favourite fruit company and I’ve always been in awe of Steve Jobs. One of my big regrets in life is that I never got to see his famous ‘Reality Distortion Field’ in action, this was his legendary ability to reframe and present a concept such that Apple could own a market.

Jobs did this many times and over time it stretched from the launch of the first Mac, to his return to Apple, the iMac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and iPad and the rest is history.

So I was very curious to see Chorus attempt to build their own ‘Reality Distortion Field’ with a press release this morning saying they wanted the current ‘FPP’ copper pricing review process being undertaken by the Commerce Commission to be based on ‘New Zealand Reality”.

What they actually mean is that they want it conducted according to reality as defined by Chorus. This would then mean that the Comcom would simply base their findings based on Chorus’s books and current cost structures not the process the Comcom are required to conduct which is based on modeling a competitive network benchmarked against similar networks offshore.

Chorus are trying the ‘illusionist’s’ trick of distraction “look over there…” but they have broken the first rule of reality distortion, never, never let your audience know what you are really doing.

Can you imagine Steve Jobs ever saying ‘we want your mobile phone purchases to be based on an Apple reality’ ?

No, instead he painted a picture that was so compelling, you couldn’t see anything other than his reality and did it so well his keynotes became media events and stockmarkets moved as a result.

 

As we count down the last few days of Telecom in its current form, they have just come out with a request that TUANZ can easily get 100% behind – consistent gigabit downloads and pricing from all NZ’s local fibre companies.

It’s time for a ‘Giganation’ says Telecom as UFB coverage hits 100%

Telecom, soon to be Spark New Zealand, says the time has come for Gigabit per second data download speeds to be available across all of New Zealand’s Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) fibre network.

It seems that the idea of a ‘Giganation’ is going to get a lot closer as the largest RSP calls for all the LFC’s to offer consistently spec’d and priced services.

This also shows that Telecom now sees that gigabit residential fibre is the aspirational product for Kiwi homes. 

I was feeling all ‘Giga’d’ out a couple of months ago, Gigatown was grinding on and looked like the only game in town, then we had Telecom talking about ‘GigaWiFi’ then they launched ‘Giganaires’ but the game changer came when the Central North island LFC UFF (Ultra Fast Fibre) declared themselves to be the ‘GigaNet’.

And now its all starting to come together, the largest RSP is basically calling for common sense to prevail in every part of NZ, Chorus need to go beyond Gigatown as the prize is really diminished in value, NorthPower and Enable need to get a Gigabit product out there and UFF are to be congratulated.

This means that real residential gigabit downloads speeds are coming, and its no coincidence that this lines up with Telecom / Spark getting ready to launch ‘LightBox’ their $15/month internet TV service.

Hopefully this marks the beginning of the UFB being marketed as more than DSL on steroids, Telecom will need to update their TVC that currently states that fibre is up to 7x faster and in the future that’ll be up to 7 million x faster.

I can’t wait…

 

 

 

MBIE (the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment) have just announced a review of the Radio Communications Act 1989. Before you yawn and click off, take a moment to think about all the radios that you use every day without even thinking about it:

Wifi, bluetooth, your mobile, your car radio, your baby monitor and anything else thats wireless. 

All of these things work because there is actually a system making sure all the pieces work together without interference or inappropriate uses.

Here’s what MBIE have to say:

Radio Spectrum Management (RSM) in the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is reviewing the Radiocommunications Act 1989.  We are seeking your views on how well the Act is working and what changes, if any, are required to the legislation. 

The key areas of the radio spectrum management regime being considered as part of the review are:

·         interference management

·         competition regulation during spectrum allocations

·         technical definition of management rights and licences

·         regional division of management rights

·         regulation of new technologies such as cognitive radio and white space devices.

You are receiving this email because you have been identified as having an interest in radio spectrum regulation – as a management right owner, licence holder or radio engineer, for example, or due to your involvement in an industry that uses radio spectrum. 

 To download the discussion document, or make a submission, please visit the consultation page on the RSM website. We are asking for feedback by Wednesday 1 October 2014. 

Workshops on the review will be held in mid-September in Auckland and Wellington.  If there is sufficient demand, we will also hold a workshop in Christchurch.  To attend a workshop please register your interest by Wednesday 10 September 2014, using the on-line form on the consultation page of our website.

TUANZ will be participating in the review, if you have any views or input to add, let me know:

chris@tuanz.org.nz

 

Do you think we’ll reach a tipping point where ‘broadband’ stops being a technology issue and becomes a real estate issue instead?

This is a thought that has struck me a few times in the last 15 years or so. The reason is that good fixed line broadband is basically binary, you either have it or you don’t. If you have it then you have a range of options that simply aren’t available if you don’t.

I was very lucky, I had awesome fixed line broadband at the turn of the century (the 21st century) both at home and at my business.

I was a ‘Saturn’ cable modem triallist on the Kapiti Coast and I had a 100mb/s CityLink fibre connection at my office.

And that was when I realised that this would ultimately have to turn into a real estate issue, can you imagine buying a house without power, water or road access? Not likely unless you are after an ‘off the grid’ getaway.

I think good fixed line broadband is now crossing over into being a staple of a modern lifestyle. Yet my experience has been that on the whole the real estate industry is woeful when it comes to the knowledge of available connectivity.

I once briefed real estate agents and was quite specific about being on the Saturn network was a mandatory condition, for me connectivity trumps the view. I have had the same experience with commercial letting agents who didn’t understand what a ‘fibre’ connected office was!

So I was intrigued when I recently read an article on the woes of the internet in the US, its good to see that we’re actually doing somethings right. But on piece struck me:

Fiber is actually one of the best investments a homeowner can make. While it may cost up to $3,000 to bring fiber to your home, studies have shown that the value of your home will rise from $5,000 to $10,000. You will not get that return from remodeling a kitchen or adding a new deck.

This is actually a good sign and one that I hope CFH and the LFC’s pick up on, local councils too as this will lead to increased rates income. At the moment all our homes aren’t smart or truly connected but that is starting to change, as things like UFB connections become the new normal we will want our houses to be smart.

It’s hard to imagine not having electricity, well its going to be the same for bandwidth, when architects, developers, councils, builders and electricians all plan a homes connectivity (both external and internal) as part of the core systems and not an add on.

We hear that consents are holding up the UFB, MDU’s (multi dwelling units – flats & apartments) are a nightmare and I think this is because we still see the fibre upgrade as a luxury or a discretionary choice.

30 years ago it was simple, phone, power and water were basic utilities, whats changed?

Readers of this blog will remember the so called ‘Copper Tax’ campaign from the end of last year. Things may have seemed a little quiet on that front lately, but behind the scenes there’s quite a bit going on.

The latest skirmish to surface burst onto the scene with a press release from the Commerce Commission, then the story has started to grow, CallPlus have come out and shared their submission and the Telecom view is out there too.

The InternetNZ submission is now online here, the legal opinion by Michael Wigley is worth a read as it takes the issue apart in a clear logical sequence.

Its interesting that the issue is seen as a Telecom complaint to the commission as it is wider than that and pretty much involves everybody except Chorus including InternetNZ, Consumer NZ & TUANZ.

At stake is the integrity of our regulatory system and the future of copper (DSL) based broadband in New Zealand along with quite a few global trends as well.

It’s easy to get bogged down at this point in a veritable alphabet soup of 3 letter acronyms and deep interpretations of the Telco Act, so here’s my ‘idiots guide’:

The current broadband regulations set up a service called ‘UBA’ or ‘Unbundled Bitstream Access’ which specifies the price and performance of the ‘DSL’ services that Chorus are required to provide to retailers (what we used to call Telco’s and ISP’s).

Chorus has had 3 years to get ready for a change from ‘retail minus’ to ‘cost plus’ pricing for this service. The Comcom has set a new price for UBA which will come into effect on 1 December 2014.

This ‘interim’ price is substantially lower than the current price and will punch a big hole in Chorus revenues. Chorus are understandably not happy about this and have been trying a number of strategies to reverse this situation. I won’t go into all this now but its important to keep this in mind whenever you see anything about Chorus in the news.

In an attempt to use what they see as a ‘get out of jail free’ card, Chorus want to use a loophole in the act to launch some new copper services that because of their innovation and the investment involved are outside of the act and can be prices in binding contracts between Chorus and the individual retailers.

It is now well established that real ‘killer app’ for all forms of fast broadband is on-line video, it started with the growing popularity of YouTube and now extends to iTunes, Quickflix, Netflix etc and is the new battleground.

Telecom (soon to be Spark) have announced they are launching a service called ‘Lightbox’, CallPlus are going hard with their geoblock avoiding ‘global mode’ and of course Vodafone already have a strong relationship with SKY.

Google have recently certified a number of RSP’s as being good enough to receive their ‘HD Verified’ status (remember who owns YouTube). Video is seen as driving future broadband demand and traffic growth.

So along come Chorus with a special video optimised service called ‘Boost HD’ which will be specially tailored to deliver ‘HD’ video content. Sounds great doesn’t it ? the hitch comes when the retailers get the details on HD and quickly learn that it will be priced like todays UBA services, that its performance will increase as investments in the core network come on-line (investments also necessary to meet growing UFB traffic) and because Chorus consider this to be a new and innovative service it would no longer fall under the Commerce Commission’s oversight.

But wait there’s more, Chorus are also proposing that their regulated legacy UBA services, the ones that get cheaper at 1 December and may get even cheaper after the current FPP (Final pricing Principle) process (which Chorus asked for) has been concluded, will essentially be frozen in time at current speeds and they won’t enjoy the benefits of future network upgrades only the ‘commercial’ Boost HD services will.

From a Chorus perspective this all looks pretty good, dodge the regulatory bullet, preserve current copper revenues and get to sound like a player in the booming broadband video space.

However, from the retailers perspective it looks a bit different, they feel it is Chorus trying to abuse the act to in effect get them to ‘contract out of the law’, that Boost HD is simply a continuation of network upgrades that were planned back in Telecom days and that have been getting rolled out progressively anyway until now. And finally they see Chorus wanting to effectively degrade the regulated service that has actually worked remarkably well in improving the urban broadband experience for most New Zealanders.

At its root this issue comes down to money, Chorus want to restore their financial position and get back on track with their investors, this weeks CFH deal is part of that strategy as well. The retailers also want the best services at the lowest prices and see the current Comcom IPP & FPP processes delivering that.

The users groups, ourselves, InternetNZ & Consumer NZ want to see the savings passed onto the consumer and we are committed to preserving the integrity of our current regulatory system because it is actually working.

TUANZ has invested a lot of time and effort in getting the NZ telecommunications market to its current structure, we have a robust regulator and strong multi-stakeholder processes. Boost HD could see an end to all that and it would be a return to the dark old days.

This really is the big game in town.