What Hyperfibre says about fixed-line broadband
Early next year Chorus will roll out Hyperfibre, that is, faster fibre services of up to 4Gbps. Forget whether you might need that speed today and focus instead on what it says about fibre broadband.
Not many countries boast residential broadband services running faster than gigabit speeds.
Soon New Zealand will be one of them.
Government and industry are right when they remind us we have a world class broadband network. It isn’t just idle boasting.
Fibre is fast and reliable. It’s not expensive.
Hyperfibre has scope to go faster
Hyperfibre shows it can go faster still. It’s the Porsche option, although without the price tag.
Chorus hasn’t announced the Hyperfibre wholesale tarrif yet, but it says it will be only a ‘modest premium’ on gigabit prices. That said, early buyers are likely to be business users willing to pay a premium for the extra speed.
At first Chorus will offer 2Gbps and 4Gbps services. An 8gbps service will come later. On paper the XGS-Pon standard being used can crank all the way up to 10Gbps.
Faster fibre is not for everyone. Few people other than movie and TV professionals need Hyperfibre speeds.
That’s really not the point. Having it available as an option is important. It tells us where things can go. If you need more speed, it’s there.
Aspirational
Marketing types might tell us it’s an aspirational thing. Perhaps. Yet it does get us thinking about faster fibre and what we might do with it.
If we’ve learnt one thing about data networks, it’s that what seems like more bandwidth than you ever need soon becomes not quite enough.
When the UFB project started, most users took 30mbps down, 10mbps up services. That quickly climbed to 100mbps plans. Today the majority of customers have 100mbps, but the fastest growing market is for 1gbps services.
We don’t need to go over the why would anyone need a 1Gbps service argument any more. A family with HD TV, Playstations and other devices can easily make use of the bandwidth.
Faster broadband is a better experience
Faster broadband means a better experience for everyone. If you shop around, it only costs the price of a coffee or two to move up to a faster plan.
Some of the talk after Chorus’ announcement pitched Hyperfibre as a counter to the fixed wireless threat. That’s the angle Chris Keall took for his NZ Herald story.
There’s no question that Spark and Vodafone will attempt to sell fixed wireless broadband as a fibre alternative. Yet few, if any, customers are going to make a choice between fixed wireless and Hyperfibre.
Fixed wireless is best for people who either can’t get fibre, have a difficult-to-connect home, or are happy with a basic, bare-bones and sometime slightly cheaper alternative1. Hyperfibre is for people bumping up against the limits of today’s 1Gbps fibre plans.
- Not much cheaper. The lowest cost 1Gbps fibre plan is $5 more than Spark’s cheapest fixed wireless plan ↩︎