Spark Wants To Abandon Copper?

“Spark ... [is] not happy with the quality of the copper provided by the wholesale spin-out, Chorus.” Oh, and “The lucky 400 first houses in the trial are in the suburbs of the North Island city of Hamilton.” <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/03/cu_later_copper_spark_is_going_to_get_a_glassing/>

"The lucky 400 first houses in the trial are in the suburbs of the North Island city of Hamilton."
...and those suburbs are... "The initial trial aims to upgrade a neighbourhood of 400 households to fibre, in selected streets in Nawton, Grandview Heights and Western Heights in Hamilton, in mid-November." http://www.sparknz.co.nz/news/upgradenewzealand/ <http://www.sparknz.co.nz/news/upgradenewzealand/> ...so if you live in one of those suburbs, and there's someone banging on your door next week, then you're in a "selected street". It seems that what Spark are trying to overcome with this initiative is... "...the process of getting [fibre] installed is often problematic and can involve lots of hassle. For many customers, that can prove a turnoff as the installation process seems just too hard."

It seems that what Spark are trying to overcome with this initiative is...
"...the process of getting [fibre] installed is often problematic and can involve lots of hassle. For many customers, that can prove a turnoff as the installation process seems just too hard."
Good luck with that... Our fibre installation took from Feb to Oct. First they never contacted me and then we had incompetent people not being able to get a blockage sorted: the 4th callout finally figured out that there was a blockage (time between callouts usually several weeks)! A month later, the next callout finally fixed the blockage and we could at last organize a date for having someone connecting our fibre in the house. Communication was absolutely appalling. You never knew what happened at a callout. Even ringing the company in charge of connecting the fibre couldn't tell us anything, since everything is contracted out (don't know how many levels of contraccting involved). Reliability: yesterday morning, fibre customers in Hamilton had loss of service... The only glitch so far since our switch to fibre. Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/

I'm using a copper/ADSL/wifi broadband. I recently visited someone who had just had fibre installed and I was a little puzzled with one aspect of the install. He had a copper/ADSL/wifi modem. After the conversion to fibre his modem was discarded. For the conversion to fibre he was shipped two modems. One is a fibre modem with 4 x LAN ports and no wifi, the other is an ADSL modem with 4 x LAN ports (one is an up-link) and it has wifi. The fibre from the street comes into the fibre modem. There is a link via ethernet cable to the ADSL modems up-link port. The ADSL modem is setup with its modem disabled, and it provides the wifi as well as routing to its 3 x LAN ports. To me it makes more sense to have just one fibre modem which includes wifi and also has 4 x LAN ports. Anyone know the reason why they ship two modems? Is this standard? Are all the ISP's shipping the two modem solution? My guess is that they get the fibre modems without wifi cheaply, and they are already stuck with 1000's of ADSL modems in their inventory, so this helps clear their stock. Anyone got another theory? cheers, Ian. PS: The location in his house of the new fibre modem and ADSL/wifi modem meant he wasn't getting good wifi signal strength when lying outside in his spa pool. I was able to run a 15 meter cable from his new ADSL modem to his old ADSL modem located in another part of his house. It worked OK as a wifi repeater to give good signal strength at the spa. So there can be a use for the old "discarded" ADSL modem [😉]

On Thu, 03 Nov 2016 09:11:05 Ian Stewart wrote:
I'm using a copper/ADSL/wifi broadband. I recently visited someone who had just had fibre installed and I was a little puzzled with one aspect of the install.
He had a copper/ADSL/wifi modem. After the conversion to fibre his modem was discarded.
For the conversion to fibre he was shipped two modems. One is a fibre modem with 4 x LAN ports and no wifi, the other is an ADSL modem with 4 x LAN ports (one is an up-link) and it has wifi.
The fibre from the street comes into the fibre modem. There is a link via ethernet cable to the ADSL modems up-link port. The ADSL modem is setup with its modem disabled, and it provides the wifi as well as routing to its 3 x LAN ports.
To me it makes more sense to have just one fibre modem which includes wifi and also has 4 x LAN ports.
Anyone know the reason why they ship two modems?
Is this standard? Are all the ISP's shipping the two modem solution?
My guess is that they get the fibre modems without wifi cheaply, and they are already stuck with 1000's of ADSL modems in their inventory, so this helps clear their stock. Anyone got another theory?
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck. Nope. The first device connected to the fibre is an Optical Network Terminal. Basically, it's like a modem, it converts one kind of signal into another kind of signal, flashes of light on a fibre to current in a copper wire and vice versa. That's all it does. Typically only one of the RJ45 ports is active and the device does not contain a switch. https://q.chorus.co.nz/ont A router it aint. The ONT is the property of Chorus. Not the ISP. You can plug one device into the ONT. If you only have one computer, you can plug it into the ONT and you will have internet. But you couldn't plug a switch into the ONT and two computers into the switch, it wont work, because the ONT doesn't route. If you want to connect more than one device, you need a router. Wayne

On Thu, 3 Nov 2016 09:11:05 +0000, Ian Stewart wrote:
For the conversion to fibre he was shipped two modems. One is a fibre modem with 4 x LAN ports and no wifi, the other is an ADSL modem with 4 x LAN ports (one is an up-link) and it has wifi.
The fibre from the street comes into the fibre modem. There is a link via ethernet cable to the ADSL modems up-link port. The ADSL modem is setup with its modem disabled, and it provides the wifi as well as routing to its 3 x LAN ports.
To me it makes more sense to have just one fibre modem which includes wifi and also has 4 x LAN ports.
Anyone know the reason why they ship two modems?
Presumably they have all this stock of ADSL modems that they haven’t fully depreciated yet, so they feel they have to keep on using them.
My guess is that they get the fibre modems without wifi cheaply, and they are already stuck with 1000's of ADSL modems in their inventory, so this helps clear their stock.
I suspect it’s more of an accounting issue--depreciation rather than stock.
participants (4)
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Ian Stewart
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann
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Wayne Rooney