https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1706/S00003/rbi2-bidders-at-rural-connectivity-symposium.htm
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RBI2 bidders at Rural Connectivity Symposium |
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The second stage of the government's Rural Broadband Initiative was centre stage at the 2017 Rural Connectivity Symposium in Wellington last week.
In his keynote address Communications Minster Simon Bridges put the project into the broader context of government telecommunications policy.
He says the goal is for 99 percent of New Zealanders to be able to download at 50 megabits per second by 2025. The ministers says the remaining one percent will get downloads of at least 10 mbps.
Bridges says planning has started on the second stage of Rural Broadband Initiative. This involves $150 million of funds pulled from the Telecommunications Development Levy. In effect, this is an extra tax imposed on the big telecommunications companies.
Tenders closed last month. Crown Fibre Holdings
is now assessing the responses. Bridges says the goal of the
second stage is to extend fast broadband to the greatest
number of homes possible.
Bridges says: “I’m pleased with the strong engagement and response to the tender process”. The minister says he encouraged regional operators to take part in RBI2. While technologies have not been specified, he says there is a preference for open access.
He says based on what he has seen so far, it looks like the proposals submitted mean the government will be able to “do far more than we anticipated”. In other words, the RBI2 funds will stretch further into the bush. After it is done, there won't be many New Zealanders left behind.
Bridges hinted that decisions would be made soon.
He told the Wellington audience they won’t have to wait
long to find out what happens. Officially an announcement is
due in August.
The RCG argues that fixed wireless broadband is the best way of connecting rural New Zealanders. It says it will invest many more millions of its own money should it win the RBI2 tender.
Sherriff says: "We're certainly not going to make a lot of money out of it. But we believe this is the best option to get the best bang for the buck. We also think we can do some good for New Zealand."
He stresses that the RCG bid is both a mobile
and a wireless broadband infrastructure play. "Mobile is
becoming more critical than broadband in our opinion.
Farmers need access beyond the home. They need it in the cow
shed, they need it on the quad bike", he
says.
Sherriff says that despite co-operating to build a rural network, the three carriers will all continue to compete. "We'll compete on retail and we'll compete on the wholesale level", he says.
"The plan is to set up an independent joint venture to run the network. That means one set of towers, one set of antenna, one power system and one backhaul. These will all be shared. This business case doesn't stack up with one operator. It barely stacks up with three".
In effect the three will operate a mobile virtual network.
Sherriff says
it will be an open access infrastructure so that other
services such as wisps (wireless internet service providers)
and emergency services can also use the network. While the
towers are designed for co-location, the focus, for now, is
on wholesale fixed wireless broadband.
Sherriff
says the group plans to deploy 520 cell sites. He says:
"This gives us 20 percent more coverage in New Zealand. It
takes the coverage from around 50 percent to 62 percent in
terms of the geography. That's 20 percent more mobile, 20
percent more IoT and 36,000 more connected households. More
than 1200 extra kilometres of state highway will be covered.
It will cover 67 percent of mobile
blackspots".
Their fixed wireless service is not the same as the fixed wireless broadband based on the Spark and Vodafone mobile networks.
Each of the wireless ISPs is making its own tender to CFH for the funding. Many will ask for less than $2 million. This is a cut off point. A condition of the tender is that to receive more than $2 million, you have to build an open access network. That's asking a lot of small operators.
Lightwire founder, Murray Pearson at Rural Connectivity Symposium 2017
Lightwire founder Murray Pearson made the case for local wireless ISPs to win CFH funding for RBI2. He spoke as a Wispa representative, not as Lightwire, a Waikato based ISP.
Pearson says a reason to choose wisps for the RBI2 project is that they are innovative and show technology leadership. "Most wisps have been born out of a need to solve a problem. They've grown from there into businesses that have evolved to serve their community.
"They focus on appropriate technologies. What you need to service a valley with five users is different to what you need to serve somewhere like the Hauraki Plains where you can see 5000 house from one high site. Most wisps use a variety of tower types to cover a broad range of requirements".
Wisps
have been around now for 10 years. Pearson says they have
shown they are both reliable and resilient. "During that
time they have demonstrated some very reliable networks.
Most build in redundancy so if one site goes down, it's the
only one affected", he says.
Local customer focus is important. Pearson says wisps have tended to grow out of the communities they serve. Many of the people working in wisps grew up in the communities they serve. This focus means that the people involved have very good knowledge of local geography.
Pearson says wisps are good at working with others. Some work with lines companies to string cables, others work with organisations like Chorus to use fibre backhaul.
Wisps have some great stories to tell about how they have delivered in difficult conditions. Pearson gives the example of Canterbury-based Amuri Networks which was able to make a huge difference after the Kaikoura earthquake. Not only was it able to respond quickly, but its equipment proved resilient.
The weakness in the wisps case is that many of the businesses are so small they have little support depth. Some may rely on one or two key people to handle the technical work and installations. Who takes over if they get sick or incapacitated? It's a version of the single-point-of-failure problem.
This can be fixed from a
business point of view with insurance policies. But there
may not be enough skilled engineers to plug the gaps even if
there is money available to pay them. Having the wisps band
together in
Kurt Rodgers,
Chorus.
In RBI1 Chorus built the fibre part of the network. It ran fibre to schools, hospitals and connected 110,000 homes and businesses in rural New Zealand. That meant building 1,000km of fibre and upgrading 1200 cabinets. It also ran fibre to 157 cellphone towers.
Rodgers says 80
percent of the 110,000 cabinet connections can get VDSL, but
only 20 percent do at the moment.
He says fixed broadband works best where there is "a modicum of population density. The other places are where the other technologies fit in set".
Rodgers says: "It's all about taking fibre closer to people.
Because Chorus is
a wholesale-only business, it's fibre-to-the-bush strategy
dovetails with other rural broadband approaches. It would,
for example, be able to provide the Wisps with fibre
backhaul.
Phil Cross,
IPStar
"Satellite often doesn't get a good rap, but the economics of delivering broadband to remote areas doesn't give you much choice".
Cross says fibre and microwave technology will always be preferable, but they are not always practical.
He says one benefit of satellite technology is rapid deployment. He says: "It takes less than a day to get a connection. Often a lot less than a day."
IPStar has a good New Zealand case study to draw on.
It has provided affordable broadband to the Chatham Islands
since 2012.
Some homes and farms will get the same fibre connections as people in urban New Zealand. It's not clear if they'll get the same prices, but they will get the same services.
However, fibre won't reach all the way. It means
Chorus will need to use copper to reach a lot of people.
There's not much wrong with copper in itself. It can be
fast, VDSL2 is capable of fibre-like speeds when connections
are within a kilometre or so of a cabinet.
The idea of Chorus taking land-based broadband up to say, 90 percent or thereabouts of the population, wisps extending that to 99 percent and satellites serving the last one percent makes a lot of sense.
Although wisps and even satellites could, in
theory, help fill the mobile blackspot, that job is best
left to the mobile phone companies.
It worked better when Vodafone upgrade the towers to 4G. On a good day, in the right conditions, users can get fibre-like speeds. The downside is that wireless bandwidth is shared, so there's a huge congestion penalty at busy times. Peak hour speeds are slower than quiet times.
The
Rural Connectivity Group's plan will work well for some of
users.
IPStar's Phil Cross nailed the problem when discussing satellite broadband delivery. He talks of the choices you have when delivering broadband to remote areas. Crown Fibre Holdings has $150 million to spend. Private investors will tip in more money, at least as much again as CFH.
We could fix New Zealand's rural broadband with a world class network. It's within our grasp. At first sight, the best option would be to use a mix of the technologies discussed above. All have a role to play.
Yet there is a fishhook. The RCG says it is not interested in building towers for the mobile blackspot unless it gets the whole rural deal.
That leaves CFH in a tricky position. Caving in to the RCG means great mobile blackspot coverage, less than ideal rural connectivity and a slap in the face to local wireless ISPs who were officially encouraged to tender. Turning down RCG will leave those mobile blackspots. Presumably one of the cellular firms will pick up the $50 million and fill some of the gaps.
Bill Bennett currently edits The Download magazine, website and newsletter for Chorus as a freelance consultant.
RBI2 bidders at Rural Connectivity Symposium was first posted at billbennett.co.nz.