Anothony Doesburg: Faster, wider bandwith- but what will we do with it?

As the Government inches ahead with its $1.5 billion fibre-to-the-premises plans, the issue is going to become what to do with all that internet bandwidth.

The long-awaited details of the Government's UFB (ultra-fast broadband) initiative were released last week. By late next month a Crown-owned company, Crown Fibre Holdings, will be set up to oversee the work of local fibre companies (LFCs) in building optical fibre networks that will reach 75 per cent of the population within 10 years.

Priority in the first six years will be given to business, schools, health services and new developments.

"Ultra-fast" means 100 megabits a second (Mbit/s) downstream and 50Mbit/s up. And what's more, the connections will be upgradable to be 10 times faster - 1Gbit/s downloads.

That's a lot of bandwidth - much more than is needed by any existing application in use by residential internet subscribers. What, then, will we use it for?

For a start, the Government's $1.5 billion won't cover the cost of connecting premises to the local fibre networks. The LFCs, in fact, will merely own and operate the fibre; service providers will have to come up with end-user offerings, including the equipment and charges for connecting to the fibre.

There is little precedent for this kind of service in New Zealand.

However, John Nixon, an Auckland consultant, has some experience of fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) projects near Taupo and north of Auckland.

Nixon was involved with Kensington Properties developments at Huka Village and Orewa, where it was intended to provide FTTH connections to hundreds of new dwellings. That came to grief when the developer went belly-up a year ago.

The services possible using the UFB initiative's promised bandwidth are unclear at this stage, according to Nixon.

"You don't need it today to send email and do a bit of web browsing ... but there will be unimagined new services available through fast connections and you'll be at a huge disadvantage if you don't have access to it.

"I'm talking about health care and access to government databases and things like that."

Nixon says fibre connections direct to homes, businesses and institutions open the way for direct access to government servers, with the ability to do electronically much of what still requires face-to-face interaction with State agencies.

"I'm talking five or 10 years out. There will be a lot of medical applications, home consulting with webcams - it all sounds a bit dreamtime, but it is coming."

The promised connection speeds sound fast in today's terms but won't seem so by the time they're delivered, Nixon says. Equally, fibre-optic data transmission rates are continually being pushed higher.

"I jokingly compare it to the old phone with the two jam tins and a piece of string. Once you put the fibre in the ground, it's like the piece of string - you'll never have to change it.

"But you can change the jam tins - the electronics at each end - easily."

A pair of "jam tins" is good for five to seven years before an upgrade is warranted, but the technology is such that the sky's the limit in bandwidth terms, Nixon says.

Using today's lasers, the device that translates data into light pulses, three wavelengths of light can be sent simultaneously along an optical fibre. But experiments are being done in labs transmitting up to 100 wavelengths at a time.

Although doubts have been raised about the need for a national fibre network when internet speeds of up 50Mbit/s are possible over copper phone lines, Nixon doesn't question fibre's worth.

"It's really a logical progression because the copper pair has run out of steam - it doesn't matter how you tweak it, there are finite limits to how much bandwidth you can push over copper."

Faster speeds over copper can be attained by increasing signal frequency - as with VDSL - but at the cost of distance. Telecom is pushing ahead with delivering VDSL services from new street-side cabinets.

"With VDSL we're down to 300m to 400m, which means that all along the street you've got these little boxes that dogs can pee on," Nixon says.

VDSL and its predecessors have been useful stop-gaps, he thinks. But fibre is the future, a message he delivers to anyone who'll listen as a member of international not-for-profit lobby group, the FTTH Council.

Nixon, originally from Sydney, shuttles between there and Auckland. While the $1.5 billion committed to a national fibre network is a lot in our terms, the Australian Government has promised to spend 10 to 20 times as much.

"They're throwing money at it like there's no tomorrow," he says, and have hired half a dozen "world-class executives" to head the country's fibre rollout. He thinks both countries could benefit from swapping notes on their efforts.

"If modern, developed countries like New Zealand or Australia don't push people into this new technology, then they will fall way behind others."

HOW FAST?

* 5 megabits a second: Current average download speed for national broadband traffic. (June Epitiro/IDC survey)

* 100 megabits a second: Minimum download speed required under Government's ultra-fast broadband plan.

Anthony Doesburg is an Auckland technology journalist