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> The NZ model, by comparison is gold: structural separation. Crown holdings for the fiber. A pot of money, re-circulating to deploy to the cities, each region

> The NZ model, by comparison is gold: structural separation. Crown holdings for the fiber. A pot of money, re-circulating to deploy to the cities, each region re-fills the pot to move to the next town. Far simpler. And.. fibre to (most) homes. Only after A LOT of pain. Broadband uptake was pathetic in NZ until Telecom, formed out of the NZ Post Office and sold to overseas buyers in 1990, was split up into retail (Spark) and infrastructure (Chorus) ten years ago. It's smooth sailing now, but it could have been so much easier.

kurthr 9y ago
Wait... are you saying that dialup internet was slow until 1990 when ISDN came out? Or that broadband uptake was pathetic until 2007 with the Spark/Chorus spilt? One of those is really early for any internet, and the other 17 years later, is really late!
- rangibaby 9y ago
  The latter. I think there was literally one overseas internet connection in 1990. For years Telecom managed to get away with doing nothing other than charging exorbitant fees. It's just a coincidence the decision to unbundle came immediately after these comments in 2006: > What has every telco in the world done in the past? It's used confusion as its chief marketing tool ... customers know that's what the game has been. They know we're not being straight up. – Teresa Gattung, Telecom CEO
  - phire 9y ago
    In my option, New Zealand internet didn't really get good until 2011. That is when Chorus was finally 100% separated from telecom. From 2006-2011, Chorus were inducing congestion in the ADSL backhaul to put non-telecom ISPs (particularly ISPs with all the high-bandwidth power-users) at a disadvantage. An ISP could buy unlimited bandwidth to the outside world, and give each customer ADSL 2+ connections of upto 24Mbit, but the backhaul between Chorus and the ISP to terminate all those ADSL connections was rate-limited to roughly 64kbps times the number of connections that ISP had. If all an ISPs customers went online at the same time and started downloading, everyone's throughput would drop to 64kbps. And Chorus would absolutely refuse to sell any extra backhaul bandwidth. It was in the best interest for all ISPs to have a healthy base of non-skilled users who barely used their ADSL connections, just so the rest of their users wouldn't get too congested. It was also around this time ISPs implemented various perks to encourage power-users to only download at night time. This all stopped in 2011, and the bandwidth caps that all ISPs were offering suddenly shot up.

kurthr 9y ago

Wait... are you saying that dialup internet was slow until 1990 when ISDN came out? Or that broadband uptake was pathetic until 2007 with the Spark/Chorus spilt? One of those is really early for any internet, and the other 17 years later, is really late!

rangibaby 9y ago
The latter. I think there was literally one overseas internet connection in 1990. For years Telecom managed to get away with doing nothing other than charging exorbitant fees. It's just a coincidence the decision to unbundle came immediately after these comments in 2006: > What has every telco in the world done in the past? It's used confusion as its chief marketing tool ... customers know that's what the game has been. They know we're not being straight up. – Teresa Gattung, Telecom CEO
- phire 9y ago
  In my option, New Zealand internet didn't really get good until 2011. That is when Chorus was finally 100% separated from telecom. From 2006-2011, Chorus were inducing congestion in the ADSL backhaul to put non-telecom ISPs (particularly ISPs with all the high-bandwidth power-users) at a disadvantage. An ISP could buy unlimited bandwidth to the outside world, and give each customer ADSL 2+ connections of upto 24Mbit, but the backhaul between Chorus and the ISP to terminate all those ADSL connections was rate-limited to roughly 64kbps times the number of connections that ISP had. If all an ISPs customers went online at the same time and started downloading, everyone's throughput would drop to 64kbps. And Chorus would absolutely refuse to sell any extra backhaul bandwidth. It was in the best interest for all ISPs to have a healthy base of non-skilled users who barely used their ADSL connections, just so the rest of their users wouldn't get too congested. It was also around this time ISPs implemented various perks to encourage power-users to only download at night time. This all stopped in 2011, and the bandwidth caps that all ISPs were offering suddenly shot up.