Chorus is testing Nokia's WiPON. It's a wireless technology that connects the fibre network in a street to a home or business when a direct physical connection isn't practical.

Among other places WiPON solves many of the problems with apartment buildings and other multiple dwelling units. It also bypasses obstacles like installing fibre along rights of way or getting past difficult neighbours. Chorus also sees it being used for places like business parks.

Nokia's WiPON, or Wireless Passive Optical network, uses the WiGig standard. That's 802.11ad. The same technology is sometimes used to extend the performance of indoor WiFi networks.

Telephone poles and lampposts

A WiPON access point can be attached to an access point on an existing telephone pole or lamppost. This connects direct to the fibre running in the street. Customers need an outdoor antenna connected to their indoor router by an Ethernet cable.

The system uses unlicensed frequencies in the 60 GHz spectrum. This is the mmWave or V band. Typically radio waves at these frequencies are absorbed by the air and can be subject to rain fade. They are often blocked by trees. While communications in this band are line of sight only, the distances are small, a few hundred metres at most which minimises the disruption from air or water molecules.

Chorus says that in testing WiPON manages a speed of around 1.6Gbps over 150m. The theoretical maximum speed is 3 Gbps. In other words it can work with any exisiting UFB fibre plan although, as things stand, it is not suitable for the 10 Gbps service that is now being tested.

Ed Hyde, Chorus chief customer officer, says WiPON is a useful tool in his company's toolbox and builds on other recent innovations such as 10 Gbps services and lower price gigabit services.

Vocus, Vodafone demonstrate unbundled fibre, talk innovation

On Thursday Vocus and Vodafone used a virtual reality set-up in a Parnell home to demonstrate what an unbundled fibre connection might look like. They showed a 10 Gbps down, 5 Gbps up service running over a Chorus 'dark fibre' connection.

Last year the two telcos started a joint programme that aims to offer customers unbundled fibre services early next year. That's when legislation says Chorus, Enable, UFF and Northpower have to offer unbundled fibre services.

It's potentially a big project. Between them, Vocus and Vodafone account for about 40 percent of New Zealand's non-mobile broadband. Vodafone is New Zealand's second largest internet service provider behind Spark. Vocus is number three.

Unbundling means customising

Vodafone CEO Jason Paris says: "The cool thing about the unbundling that Vocus and Vodafone are investing in is that it will speed up innovation, quality of service and the ability for us to customise the services we provide for New Zealand businesses and homes. This is based on what they (the customers) want as opposed to what a technology company forces on them."

Paris says the two companies are looking for 'certainty' from the fibre companies on unbundled pricing.

He says: "We want to scale from January 2020. We're investing tens of millions of dollars. A big part of how quickly we can scale and what the commercial model looks like depends on the price the LFCs give us".

Innovation

Mark Callander, Vocus' New Zealand chief executive says unbundling means innovation. It will make it easier for his company to control and tag traffic. He says customers will see better gaming experiences.

He says; "If you go back to copper, we could see noise or attenuation on the line. There are lots of things we can do to fundamentally change the customer experience and that has driven innovation."

Callander says it's about removing all the bottlenecks, tagging and controlling the traffic. He says; "Once it goes upstream we look after national networks and international networks but it all starts at the innovation layer in the last mile access".

Dumb pipes

"At the moment we just get a dumb pipe. The traffic gets handed over to us, but we don't know what happens between the physical point at the house and where it gets handed over to our network".

For all the talk about innovation, price is the most important aspect of unbundling. Unbundled access prices are not being regulated at this stage, retail telcos are left to negotiate prices with fibre companies. However, the regulator may step in later if this doesn't work out.

Vocus and Vodafone are looking for a substantial discount from today's UFB prices. Those prices are contracts between the fibre companies and the crown. If everything goes to schedule, from 2022 prices will be based on the Commerce Commission's valuation of regulated assets.

Which means the negotiations are likely to come down to arguments about the gap between the cost of regulated assets needed to run a layer two network, the current arrangement, and a layer one network, in effect, unbundled fibre.

IPTV subscriptions took off in 2018

Television over the internet grew 14.3 percent worldwide in 2018. It's the fastest growing pay TV technology. The numbers come from Kagan, a media research business that's part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Cable TV remains bigger worldwide, but Kagan says its numbers are expected to drift down in coming years while IPTV will continue to grow.

Qrious analytics for NZ Cricket

Spark's Qrious data analytics business says it has worked with New Zealand Cricket to provide game and player performance analysis in preparation for the ICC World Cup. The company's tools assess the performance and strategies of international sides’ previous matches. This helps New Zealand Cricket predict future performance and tell players what to look out for.

Huawei mounts ad campaign

On Wednesday Huawei took full-page newspaper ads. The company is also using billboards to push its argument that banning Huawei from networks is like a rugby tournament without the All Blacks.