Auckland Wifi

All Apple MacBook & I suppose some Sony Vaio users in New Zealand must be feeling left out of the EVDO using family. Telecom NZ only supplies one EVDO card, and it is PCMCA. Will the ExpressCards for the US & Eauropean markets work down here?

The Auckland Gallery Guide

Beware the WiMAX cul-de-sac By Juha Saarinen, Auckland


When telco incumbents with extensive fixed and mobile data networks start touting rival technologies you know something’s wrong. This is especially the case when it’s a technology that has been on trial for a long time and the incumbents have not invested in it themselves.

I am, of course, talking about WiMAX, the wireless standard that’s been hyped for the last three years as a last-mile data delivery alternative by large vendors such as Intel and Alcatel. Telecom’s chief executive, Theresa Gattung, has also listed WiMAX as a competitive threat — just like she did with Woosh during earlier regulatory talk fests.

Woosh didn’t turn out to be a competitive threat for Telecom and it looks like WiMAX could meet with the same fate unless the government steps in fast to change the regulatory landscape.

The WiMAX standard by itself is far from technically deficient. On the contrary, if the NatCom WiMAX service I’ve trialled is anything to go by, providers could build fast and reliable broadband wireless access (BWA) networks to compete with fixed infrastructure from established players.

For this to happen however, providers need to have better access to the currently underused licensed radio frequency spectrums in New Zealand.

While the WiMAX standard lays out a variety of frequency bands that can be used — as high as 99GHz - the practical ranges are at far lower frequencies. Lower frequencies have advantages like greater reach, better penetration, non- or near line of sight deployment and requiring fewer access points for coverage.

The problem is that much of this spectrum is in the hands of telcos and operators who are “squatting” so to speak, without using the frequencies for anything. There is actually plenty of room in the New Zealand ether for data networks. A discussion paper released by the Ministry of Economic Development points to little usage of the frequency bands that work well with WiMAX, such 2.1-2.3 and 3.5GHz. This is a waste of limited resources, and the paper suggests that unused spectrum rights are rescinded and reallocated.

Allocating more spectrum isn’t going to be enough, however. The configuration of the 3.5GHz and lower frequency bands isn’t appropriate for WiMAX. Many bands are currently sliced up into 7MHz pairs, one for downstream provision and one for upstream. That’s a total of 14MHz which, without going into too much deep geek detail, just isn’t enough bandwidth to keep up with customers’ ever-increasing demands — not even with fancy modulation wringing out the last bit of performance from the allocation.

To make WiMAX succed and ensure scalability, the Government would need to reconfigure bands into, say, 21MHz pairs instead. Currently, providers can aggregate spectrum in the 3.5GHz band through commercial arrangements with one another but the likelihood of bitter competitors doing that is small.

These sorts of regulatory issues were pointed out by the OECD recently as a major hindrance to the success of WiMAX. Even if the Government here creates fatter frequency bands, it would need to happen in the larger overseas markets, too, where similar “spectrum squatting” is rife. Without large-scale deployments in big overseas markets like the US, OEMs won’t get the economies of scale needed to produce affordable customer premises equipment and access points. Without cheap gear, there is no future for WiMAX in New Zealand either.

As telcos are gearing up to provide the next round of high-speed cellular 3G technologies, you have to ask where this leaves providers betting on WiMAX.

Considering that the spectrum changes aren’t likely to take effect until 2010, it looks like they are heading into a commercial cul-de-sac because of slow regulation that has failed to keep up with technology.

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10.00am Friday August 4, 2006
By Simon Louisson

Telecom today announced a $435 million June year net loss, thanks mainly to further haemorrhaging from its Australian unit AAPT.

Telecom was turned upside down by the Government's May 3 decision to force it open its network to broadband customers.

That sent its shares diving from $5.75 to a 13-year low of $3.97 last month. They have since recovered to $4.23 at yesterday's close.

"There are some big challenges to navigate that's clear," chief executive Theresa Gattung said.

"But we have laid out a strategy to deliver for customers in the new environment."

Today, in a move to ready it for a more regulated market, it cut its quarterly dividend to 7 cents per share and said it would cut its payout ratio to 75 per cent of net profit from 85 per cent previously.

Having already written AAPT down by $897m in the second quarter, a further $404m writedown was taken to bring the full year writedown to $1.29 billion.

The troubles with the Australian unit overshadowed a good performance at home where earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) rose 4.1 per cent.

Telecom posted a fourth quarter loss of $191m compared with a net profit of $281m a year earlier.

It said its adjusted full year profit excluding unusual items (mainly the AAPT writedown) was $820m, down 4.3 per cent on a year ago.

The company forecast 2007 net profit of around $820-860m with NZ earnings before ebitda down 1.5 to 3 per cent and Australian earnings static.

Telecom paid more than $2 billion for AAPT during the late 1990s dotcom boom and looked at selling it last year. The second AAPT writedown was unexpected.

Telecom said it would increase capital expenditure by 6.7 per cent to $800m in 2007 as it reorganised.

Chairman Wayne Boyd said the extra investment of $50m would accelerate Telecom's transformation "as we realign the company to meet fast-changing customer and market needs".

On shareholder distributions, Mr Boyd said new dividend policy was post the AAPT writedown.

Telecom will reintroduce a 3 per cent incentive for shareholders who choose to reinvest their dividends in Telecom.

Mr Boyd said Telecom remained committed to its "A" credit rating and associated long run target gearing ratios.

Ms Gattung reiterated comments that Telecom was transforming to meet the new regulatory environment.

"We have separated our retail and wholesale business and made a commitment to sharing technical information, performance statistics and investment plans with the industry."

In the consumer business, Telecom would focus on driving broadband penetration, developing fixed line to mobile convergence capability and simplifying the product mix while improving customer service.

"In business, we are bringing together the New Zealand business market with our Australian managed customers into a single business entity."

The carrying value of AAPT reflected "the challenging operating conditions in the Australian market with retail prices declining and wholesale prices rising".

Locally, mobile, broadband, directories and IT services all performed strongly, "while it was pleasing to see stability in access lines and local service revenue and a moderation in expense growth", Ms Gattung said.

In broadband there were 51,000 new connections in the quarter including 39,000 from retail and 12,000 from wholesale bringing broadband customers to 450,000 -- a quarter of all customers..

Mobile had another good quarter with double digit voice and data revenue growth and this was largely driven by data revenue growth, Ms Gattung said.

The company said its converged fixed-mobile offering had attracted 50,000 sign-ups since its launch in April.

- NZPA

The Auckland Gallery Guide


Vodafone and Telecom pump up mobile broadband

MOBILE BROADBAND technology is making some big leaps ahead this year, and New Zealand is one of the first places in the world to get access to the high-performance upgrades.

GSM provider Vodafone is first. In September the global mobile telecommunications giant is releasing High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which promises 1.8 or 3.6Mbit/s downloads, depending on the device, and 384kbit/s uploads.

HSDPA is in trials at the moment, and I had a go at it over at Vodafone HQ a while ago. In terms of performance, HSDPA seems to deliver, at least on the lightly loaded test network I got to see. Download speeds hit the 1.8Mbit/s mark and, better yet, the latency that is currently very high on the first generation 3G service (at 220ms or higher) has taken a dramatic cut: against local hosts on the internet, I saw round trip times in the 50-80ms region.

Vodafone will release its full range of devices inSeptember: phones, data cards, wireless routers and laptops with embedded HSDPA circuitry.

By the end of the year, Vodafone says it will release data cards capable of 7.2Mbit/s downloads, and in 2007 Nokia intends to roll out the High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSDPA) upgrade. This is part of the full High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) standard and provides peak rates of 5.8Mbit/s, although Nokia estimates the throughput to be only around 1 Mbit/s in practice.

Depending on pricing and data caps, Vodafone's 3G upgrade could be a viable alternative to fixed broadband, especially if it comes with a converged mobile/local calling service so you don't have to pay for a landline as well.

Where does this leave Telecom? The incumbent's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) digital cellular technology actually makes more efficient use of expensive and hard to obtain licensed frequency spectrum thanthe Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) encoding used by European GSM networks, including Vodafone. CDMA provides higher data rates and lets more customers access the network at the same time.

Telecom's response to HSDPA is EV-DO Rev A, and the incumbent has signed a $16 million deal with Lucent to upgrade its current Rev 0 service to the newer standard. On paper, Rev A looks good: downloads are up to 3.6Mbit/s from 2.4Mbit/s and uploads go at 1.8Mbit/s instead of 144kbit/s - faster than Telecom's DSL. Overseas tests show that latency has been sliced to 50-80ms, comparable to HSDPA. Rev A will also have features missing in the current specification, including video calling.

Furthermore, the CDMA coalition and chip maker Qualcomm announced Revision B of EV-DO last year, which can increase the per-subscriber bandwidth to a staggering 73.5Mbit/s down and 27Mbit/s up, by dynamically allocatingradio frequency blocks. Revision C is in the works too, with the goal of 200Mbit/s speeds courtesy of dynamic channel bandwidth aggregation, so that devices can use between 1.25MHz and 20MHz, and advanced multiple aerial and encoding technologies like MIMO and OFDM.

Those are impressive specifications, but will EV-DO survive the onslaught of the GSMjuggernaut? That's looking less and less certain: Telecom won't have Rev A until the end of the year, and has to compete with existing Rev 0 devices until then.

The incumbent doesn't have Vodafone's market clout and depends on devices its US partner Sprint selects. These may or may not be right for the NZ market.

Adding to Telecom's woes, CDMA roaming is pretty rare, and EV-DO support overseas is even scarcer.

That's Telecom's quandary in a nutshell. Like Betamax succumbing to VHS, EV-DO may provide some compelling features for the operator and impressive performance figures, but GSM's HSDPA is good enough, more widespread and has loads of glitzy devices.


Nuthin' but a G thang
lf you're looking to replace your landline broadband, note that Telecom and Vodafone's coming upgrades (maximum download speeds s listed below) will soon equal the 3.5Mbits/s offered by the average JetStream DSL plan today


Vodafone 3G Now: 384Kbits/sTelecom T3G now: 2Mbits/s
Vodafone 3G from September with HSPDA upgrade: 3.6-7.2Mbits/sWith coming EV-DO Rev A upgrade: 3.6Mbits/s
Vodafone 3G with full HSPA upgrade during 2007: 10.1Mbits/sWith coming EV-DO Rev B upgrade: 73.5Mbits/s

Cafe Aqua

Plenty of space,friendly qick service, good food & coffee. Airy & light with huge bifold windows. Telecom Wifi.

The Auckland Gallery Guide