

75% of New Zealanders to get 100Mbps fiber by 2020 - MikeCapone
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/06/75-of-new-zealanders-to-get-100mbps-fiber-by-2020.ars

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mdasen
So, I don't think that's so unlikely for the United States - hear me out ;-).
2020 is 10 years away. By the end of this year, around a third of Americans
will be covered by 4G technologies. 4G technologies (in order to be considered
such) must have a theoretical peak exceeding 100Mbps for mobile usage and
1Gbps for fixed usage (ie. home broadband). Now, initially, these 4G
technologies won't get anywhere near those speeds. It will be very much like
3G where 300-400kbps was the norm, but now 1Mbps is more the norm.

When talking about what people see in the real world from these theoretical
peaks, we can look at Verizon and Sprint who are offering a theoretical peak
of 3.1Mbps and AT&T who is offering a theoretical peak of 7.2Mbps. In real
life, tests show:

    
    
                Sprint  Verizon  AT&T
      PCMag     0.99M   1.01M    1.79M
      PCWorld   0.8M    0.88M    1.41M
      Gizmodo   ~0.9M   ~1.3M    ~1.4M
    

With that data in hand, it looks like average real-world speeds come out to
about 28% of peak theoretical speeds. If that holds true in the 4G era, that
would be 280Mbps of real-world speed wirelessly. Even if they only achieve 10%
of 5% of their theoretical peak, that's still 100Mbps or 50Mbps (and I think
that 5% is being very conservative).

Now, that is clearly years away. What wireless companies will be pushing in
2012 will likely be in the 10Mbps range for mobile devices. However, I think
it's reasonable that we might see 100Mbps broadband to more than 75% of the
American population by 2020. Some companies like Clearwire are counting on
home broadband as an important source of revenue. As customers start getting
increased choice in home broadband (likely from 2 or more wireless providers),
cable companies and local telcos will have to enhance their offerings to stay
competitive (or maybe the economics is such that wireless makes more sense
given American geography).

2020 is a long time away. 4G wireless technology is exciting and is promising
to reach very high speeds for fixed wireless. Wireless companies are much more
competitive than telcos and cable companies with most Americans having the
choice between at least 4 (and MetroPCS has been coming on strong in many
urban areas to create a fifth). Companies like Sprint/Clearwire are even
thinking about making their own microwave backhauls which would eliminate a
huge cost in network rollout (fiber to the site). There's a good decade for 4G
to really ratchet up the speeds before 2020 is here. I'm hopeful. At the very
least, the competition will give a swift kick in the pants to wired providers.

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jcsalterego
Do Kiwis even have >100Mbps _leaving_ New Zealand? :(

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brc
I wouldn't count your Mbps before they hatch.

The australian plan was announced in a somewhat similar fashion. The original
estimate soon blew out to 40 _billion_ dollars. The government admits that
they don't have the money, and that there will be no commercial return for at
least 20-30 years. They, so far, have spent $17 million dollars in studies and
reports by consultants, and have delievered a pitifully low amount of
Broadband to Tasmania, the smallest (by an order of 10) state (think Rhode
Island vs Alaska). Already it is covered in scandals and rorts, the head of
the project gets a $400k salary and is an ex-union hack who was given the job
on the basis of being friends with the minister responsible. The main
opposition party has promised to scrap the entire project for fiscal
responsibility reasons and turn the market back over to private competitors,
with government backing for rural areas, as was the original plan. The
opposition are currently polling better than the government with under 6
months to go to the election. I think it is fair to say that the National
Broadband Scheme in Australia is a dead project walking. Thankfully the
overturn of the government will also spell the death of the proposed internet
filter.

These projects sound good in theory but are terrible in execution because
Governments just cannot understand commercial returns, and as such are a giant
sink hole of money and rorting. It's like the Concorde : neat idea and great
tech, but an absolute financial disaster area.

~~~
jstevens85
>The government admits that they don't have the money

As with all large government infrastructure projects, the government will
borrow money to fund development. This isn't a problem considering that
Australia has the lowest public debt of any Western country, and net debt will
peak at _6%_ of GDP in 2012.

>I think it is fair to say that the National Broadband Scheme in Australia is
a dead project walking.

Centrebet 2010 Australian Federal Election

Labor $1.46

Coalition $2.65

It's likely that Labor will win the next election and continue with its plan
to build a national broadband network.

>These projects sound good in theory but are terrible in execution because
Governments just cannot understand commercial returns

I would say that China is an example of a Government that's been able to roll
out a significant amount of infrastructure in a small amount of time.

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melling
We'll have gigabit fiber by then. 100mps will be wireless.

Think back 10 years. How far have we come in a decade?

~~~
veemjeem
I think 10 years ago, the best I got was GPRS data on tmobile on my cell, but
it was uncapped! I had a high end "gold" orinoco 802.11b card that only worked
at 2 places on campus. I also bought a new low-end laptop that year, a Dell
366Mhz celeron -- cost me $2000 and I worked all summer to save that much.

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mwilcox
Yup, complete with 20gb bandwidth caps because we only have the one pipe out
of the country.

~~~
Devilboy
You do have 2 pipes - one to Sydney and one to Hawaii.

~~~
mhansen
Here they are: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Cross_Cable>

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tjpick
with 72% of population in 16 main urban centres, I hope there's some emphasis
on rural locations too.

~~~
sigstoat
hm, 16 metro areas growing from 72% to 75% of the population in the next 10
years... sounds like that would explain how they decided on 75%.

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utunga
yay .. except I have '40Mbps' now which works fine as long as I connect to a
server here in NZ. Soon as its offshore (ie just about anything on the net)
I'm back to nasty old half meg connections. I can barely stream the daily
show.

I far prefer the experience of a 2Mbps connection when traveling in NYC to the
sorry ass excuse for '40Mbps' I have at home in NZ.

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mkramlich
That's nothing. I predict 80% of humans will have 1 Tbps fiber by 2060. I have
it on good authority. From the same man who stepped out of a Time Machine as
the one who gave them their New Zealand numbers.

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vrikhter
The only unfortunate point is that its a government project.

~~~
bloodnok
I don't think you understand how things work down here.

\- The current government will build this at a cost to the taxpayer of (say)
$300m. \- The next government will sell it for $100m to raise some cash and
create an effective monopoly owned by one party with a verbal contract not to
screw everyone over, at least not initially. \- The government after that,
under pressure due to the relentless screwing of NZers by the monopoly
company, will buy back the network for $600m. \- The new state-owned company
will hire consultants for $50m to design a new logo. The logo will resemble a
puppy shitting on a Rolex. \- Due to ineffective management, the company will
be split up into chunks and sold for a fraction of the original cost. The
chunks will immediately merge into a monopoly.

~~~
vrikhter
haha, this is brilliant. I believe its called Corporatism? Its not quite
socialism, because well like you said it'll be owned privately at some point.
And its not quite capitalism, well because the government will own it at some
point.

The only defying factor of all of this is that in every transaction inevitably
the same people will be involved making money off your money. Sometimes
they'll be in government and other times they'll be in the 'private' sector.

~~~
bloodnok
We did it with our rail network.

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theoden
Seriously, that's TEN YEARS from now. I had a 100Mpbs up and down connection
almost TEN YEARS AGO. It surprises me to no end how backwards some countries
are.

