Universal Service & Access: We’re doing it wrong
(This post first appeared as written below in March 2012)
Universal Service and Universal Access
Universal Service is the concept of universal availability of connections for individual households to public telecommunications networks. (ITU)
Universal Access is the concept of providing every person a reasonable means of access to a publicly available telecommunications. (ITU) This could be by payphones, community centers, computer rooms at schools, or free wifi hotspots.
Universal Service: We’re doing it wrong
The European Commission and the United Kingdom’s Ofcom take a broad view of Universal Service.
Ofcom requires “telecommunications services which are used by the majority, and are essential to full social and economic inclusion, are made available to everybody on reasonable request and in an appropriate fashion and at an affordable price”.
The EC takes a similar view, defining the scope of Universal Service to include voice and data with functional access to the Internet, provided by either fixed or wireless.
In New Zealand, Universal Service is considered access to a copper land line and free local calling at reasonable price. The Kiwi Share Obligations and later the Telecommunications Service Obligations are strictly focused on provision of voice communications, and guaranteeing price equality between urban and rural users.
Universal Access: We’re doing it wrong
Around the world, governments regulate services and subsidize both carriers and individual users to ensure Universal Access. The underlying social objectives met by Universal Access are well recognized: access to telecommunications services is a prerequisite for education and employment.
In South Africa, local telecommunications centers are established, supplied, and staffed on an ongoing basis by a Universal Service and Access Agency. In the United States, Comcast offers and Internet plan providing unlimited low-speed broadband at $10/month for families on a common federal subsidy program.
In New Zealand, Universal Access is rarely discussed, and when it is, the idea is seldom seen in a positive light. Neither the UFB nor the RBI take into account the concept. The Telecommunications Carriers Forum, lobbying against Universal Access, rubbishes the social inclusion factors cited in the policies of many countries. In the eyes of the TCF, a Universal Access policy would be like a policy helping everyone to own a television or a car.
Who is getting left behind?
The urban poor in New Zealand, many having abandoned fixed lines and the associated monthly charges and surprise usage blow-outs, are left with numerous mobile broadband options, but few with reasonable cost structures. Programs like 2020's Computers in Homes initiative provide limited-term broadband subsidies to low income families, but only subsidize ADSL connections - which require land line subscriptions. A full 67% of their constituency doesn't have a land line.
The rural middle class is waking up to the reality that the RBI has them paying huge setup charges for wireless or satellite, then suffering speeds a fraction of those available in the cities while paying three times as much for traffic. While dairy farm owners might not notice, their staff and support networks certainly do.
What should we do in the cities?
Building new, low-cost wireless networks in cities has been suggested by a number of community groups. InternetNZ recently funded such a group in Cannons Creek, Porirua. They’ve been asked to subsidize a far bigger but similar project in Christchurch - to stand alongside seven existing broadband infrastructure networks. It’s not the right answer.
In the cities, existing network operators have the scale and systems to deliver reliable services to large amounts of users at a lower cost than any new entrant can be expected to match. Getting that service to the most needy without upsetting the market is a problem of establishing coherent policy and long-term programs, not more infrastructure.
What should we do in the country?
Building new, low-cost networks in rural areas may be a viable activity to reduce costs to rural users. Centering them around community halls, rural schools, or Marae could be a great way to start. Open-Access RBI towers have been deployed with poorly specified basic 3G service, but have physical space for new service providers. No funding exists for new rural service providers, but perhaps it should - provided they build open-access infrastructure, and they build it in to areas the RBI has missed.
Subsidizing the installation of and use RBI and satellite services is absolutely a step the government should consider. No shepherd, milker, or other low-salary rural worker should have to spend 2-3 times as much as someone in the city for the most basic of broadband connections.
What should we do in Wellington?
The UFB and the RBI now settled, it's time now for a dialogue about Universal Service and Universal Access. Clear public policy objectives need to be established, and plans for meeting them made. If government doesn't want to step up, InternetNZ or Ngā Pū Waea are two obvious choices for leading the way.
Vodafone’s RBI Fixed Wireless Service
The first five of 154 new rural cellular towers funded by the Ministry of Economic Development's Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) and built by Vodafone NZ were officially activated yesterday, as detailed in Computerworld, NBR, and other media.
Is this service speedy enough to meet the needs of the average New Zealand consumer?
The new towers are required by contract to provide peak download speeds of up to 5mbps, and committed speeds (CIR) of at least 0.045mbps at all times. Vodafone has chosen to use their existing 950MHz 3G technology, and with three sectors employed, each tower has a peak download rate of 84mbps. An even distribution of customers near to and far from the tower with varying degrees of line of sight means that efficiency will be no greater than 60%, leading to real world traffic rates of about 50mbps per tower. While only 1.5 times the speed of a basic 30mbps home user UFB connection, it's enough to meet contractual obligations.
A new RBI tower can support 1,120 simultaneous users at the 45kbps CIR.
The Commerce Commission published a paper in December 2011 on technical issues relating to demand for ultra-fast broadband. While the RBI service is by no means an "ultra-fast" service, the study presented a good overview of the current needs of New Zealand consumers, and cited some key facts and figures drawn from Statistics New Zealand. The amount of traffic used by the average New Zealand consumer from 2010-2011 was 9 gigabytes per month. As discussed below, times have moved on, and that figure has increased.
The average New Zealand consumer uses 12 gigabytes of traffic a month.
Unless they plan on downloading Blu-ray videos, the average Kiwi isn't going to be using 12 gigabytes in a day. At 5mbps, they could eat their data cap in an evening, but realistically users are going to be downloading at a rate of 400mb/day, with their highest use between the hours of 8-10PM. Google's Transparency Report allows one to see the surfing habits of users by country, and this week in New Zealand, surfing habits look like the image below.
NZ Traffic to Google
With the above data it can be shown that on average Kiwis consume 18% of their monthly traffic between 8-10PM - at an average rate of 75kbps. This means that in order to provide average service to New Zealanders, during peak hours the RBI towers will need to deliver greater than the 45kbps CIR.
In 2012 a new RBI tower will support 671 simultaneous users between 8-10PM.
Nine gigabytes a month is cited by the Commerce Commission for 2010-2011, but today we're using more. Accepting updated figures as detailed by Dr. Robert Pepper of Cisco during the Commerce Commission's The Future with High Speed Broadband conference, the average New Zealander today should be just over 12 gigabytes a month. That utilization will increase over the next five years at a 34% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).
Traffic Utilization in Gigs Per Month
The chart above illustrates projected traffic growth in gigabytes per month.
In 2016 the average Kiwi will use 39 gigs/month - exactly what users in the US are doing right now.
With a 34% CAGR, the average bit rate per user required during peak hours will increase steadily, and the number of average users supported will decrease as a result. With the equipment being deployed today - both tower based and end user - in four years' time each tower will only support 208 average Kiwi users.
Peak Hour Supported Users Per RBI Tower 2012-2016
In 2016 a new RBI tower will support 208 simultaneous users between 8-10PM.
LTE in 700MHz is touted by many as being the solution to adding capacity to these new Rural Towers. Unfortunately it requires new equipment at both the towers and the end user locations. Considering the 154 new towers, and 103,334 users they could support today, just to maintain average speeds to users each tower will need to be upgraded and two thirds of the end users will need new antennas and CPE. At $100k/tower and $300/user for CPE and antenna upgrades, the additional cost to maintain average service to rural users users will be in the order of thirty million dollars in the next few years.
A huge cash investment will be required just to maintain average levels of service.
While Vodafone is easily able to meet their contractual obligations with the RBI Fixed Wireless Service, the reality is that if any significant number of users take up the service, the quality they will experience will quickly fall below that of the average New Zealand user unless the RBI program receives a significant capital top-up.
On Peering in New Zealand
Across all countries in the OECD, New Zealand is unique in its problems of connectivity to the outside world. A single modern cable system links the country to the outside world. Australia, further away from the United States and its wealth of content, connects to the world via New Zealand, Guam, Papua New Guinea, and Indonesia. Iceland, alone in the Norwegian sea, connects to the world via Canada, Ireland, the UK, and Denmark.
CMAR: Multi-Access Radio for Remote Telephony
Around ten thousand of New Zealand's most remote households connect to the public switched telephony network (PSTN) via customer multi-access radio (CMAR). Although copper loops connect up these neighborhoods of between ten and sixty houses, the loops are disconnected from major fibre optic backbones because of the cost of running cable across rough territory. These systems provide excellent voice service, but data service is limited to 14,400 bits per second - or around 0.1% of the capacity of a modern ADSL connection.
In the recent demerger of Telecom New Zealand, the CMAR network has gone to Chorus, as indicated the Asset Allocation Plan (PDF).
The diagram below illustrates a typical CMAR topology. It shows a local copper loop linking houses, an outstation linking the loop to a radio tower, and a radio linking network connecting the system back in to a regional centre with fibre optic network access.
Digital Divide: Three Classes of Internet Citizens
The government's Ultra Fast Broadband (UFB) and Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) programs will greatly improve broadband across the country, but over the nine year long process will create three classes of Internet citizens.
75% of households will eventually have access to ultra fast fibre, with an unlimited potential for speed and traffic utilization. Plans starting at 30mbps download and 10mbps upload (30/10mbps) and faster with 150 gigabytes per month (150GB/month) of traffic are on the market today, and users should reasonably expect to be able to download up to a terabyte of traffic a month at 100mbps as new plans come on the market.
RBI: ADSL2+ Upgrades Where & When
The Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) will bring new fibre optic powered broadband to around 750 schools across New Zealand. Along the way, RBI grant winners Chorus and Vodafone will be upgrading their existing networks to improve connectivity to surrounding communities.
Chorus is the infrastructure division of Telecom New Zealand and is likely to be its own company soon, as a result of the voluntary demerger of Telecom. After the split, Chorus will be responsible for providing ADSL service on a wholesale basis to more than 900,000 New Zealanders, via retail providers like Telecom, Vodafone, Orcon, Snap, and many others.
The Police, PPDR & The Digital Dividend
PPDR is an acronym for Public Protection and Disaster Relief, and in the context of New Zealand's Digital Dividend spectrum, it stands for a new cellular data network that New Zealand's Police want to build alongside existing commercial carriers 2° Mobile, Telecom, and Vodafone. The Police have been interested in such a network for several years, and a government working group for the issue has existed since 2006.
The network proposed by Police for the 700MHz Digital Dividend band is separate from and in addition to the Tait-supplied digital mobile radio network based on the APCO P25 standard. The Tait P25 network is being put in to upgrade Police radios, while the Digital Dividend PPDR network is intended to provide high-speed data communications to First Responders.
Digital Dividend Discussion Submission
In August of 2011, New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development Radio Spectrum Management group published a discussion paper entitled "Digital Dividend - Opportunities for New Zealand". The Digital Dividend is defined as the part of the radiofrequency spectrum that is able to be freed up following the switch from analogue to digital television, however this discussion paper only considers the "700MHz band" of spectrum and its most likely repurpose for use by cellular telephone and broadband providers. I discuss the Digital Dividend in some detail in an earlier blog post.
This discussion document is part of a consultation process kicked off by the Ministry in April 2011, with an Auckland meeting of industry participants held under Chatham House Rule. A public workshop was held in September to discuss the paper, and written responses were due for submission on Friday the 7th of October. These submissions, including the one below, will be published by the MED, as the initial positions of various industry participants. Comments on submissions will then be sought in a cross-submissions period, with responses due the 9th of November.
700MHz and The Digital Dividend
As the process to release Digital Dividend radio spectrum kicks off, media outlets have started covering the issue with enthusiasm. Computerworld, The Dominion Post, NBR, and TUANZ have all featured articles on this spectrum in the last week. There's plenty of fodder for the news, as matters of contention are both technical and market driven.
From a technical standpoint the most likely bidders (Telecom, Vodafone, and 2Degrees Mobile) agree the spectrum should follow the APT Wireless Forum's Region 3 Harmonized FDD Arrangement, which divides the 108 MHz available into a pair of 45MHz blocks, separated by guard bands at the bottom, middle, and top of the block. This plan assumes the use of "LTE" or Long Term Evolution technology and allows for subdivision a number of ways, into spectrum for three, four, or five national cellular carriers.
IPv4 in NZ: This Is All We Get
IP Addresses are the foundation of the Internet. IPv4, the version used by the majority of devices on the Internet today, was defined in the late 1970s and allowed for a global network of more than four billion unique devices. Design principles stated that with TCP/IP, end to end connectivity could be established between any device on the network.
By the mid 1990s, over half of the four billion available addresses had been assigned to telecommunications providers, research and educational institutions, governments, health care providers, and commercial organizations. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), sensing impending exhaustion, ratified the replacement for IPv4, a new system called IPv6. This new system provides for an entirely new set of numbers and a network with the potential for 2^128 unique devices. IPv4 utilization however carried on, and in April of 2011 APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry servicing the Asia Pacific, exhausted the majority of its IPv4 space and entered a technical lock-down period, preventing any organization from requesting more than 1,024 new addresses for their network - full stop.