Unlimited - Being politic or political

Although it seems to devote a lot of time to complaining, the Telecommunications Users Association of New Zealand is by nature an optimistic organisation. Indeed, at its Broadband Reloaded conference in Hastings recently, the leaders of the industry groups that did most of the jawing were specifically asked not to spend their two days belabouring industry politics; to steer clear of grievance mode and try to look ahead and see what it might be like to have an internationally competitive telecommunications environment.

It was a laudable aim, and an understandable one, given that Telecom — which has built up such a head of grievance amongst users that they could spend a week bitching about it — was lead sponsor of the conference. Unfortunately, the scientists and architects of the proposed super-speed Advanced Network had done most of their horizon-gazing by the time the conference assembled. Five and ten-year plans for the Advanced Network have already been written — which left the group with nothing much else to do but argue the politics.

And the Advanced Network is so political. The fun started earlier this year when a Ministry of Research, Science and Technology report recommended that the government fund at least part of the cost (which could eventually total $250 million) of a next-generation internet-like network for science and research use. All other OECD countries have these networks (along with such titans as Slovakia, Venezuela and Costa Rica), which are becoming a precondition for serious work in disciplines such as biotechnology, where huge piles of data are shifted around and computing resources are increasingly shared across distances. The MORST report found there was a serious chance of such research becoming unviable in New Zealand.

Advanced networks are not only much faster than the “commodity internet” (the bottom line is one gigabit per second), they are different in kind. Most of them have deployed Internet Protocol Version 6, which offers huge improvements in security and integrity of service.
But most significantly, they militate against the traditional telecommunications company model, in which telcos sit in the middle of their networks, managing traffic and access, and clipping tickets. The new model is variously referred to as a “stupid network” (because all the intelligence is at the edge, rather than the centre) or “dark fibre”. All its participants want is access to the basic commodity of fibre-optic cable, to run their own services in such a way that once some sort of membership fee has been paid, bandwidth is effectively free and limitless.

Imagine the consternation in some quarters, then, when MORST plumped for a relatively open model for New Zealand’s Advanced Network, in which not only universities and research institutes but private sector companies could stump up to join the club and enjoy next-generation networking.

Since then, the rules of access have been rather radically confined. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that advanced networks in some other countries have fairly tight usage policies — they don’t allow overtly commercial use, so non-research users here wouldn’t be permitted to deliver traffic to them.

But the main reason is that Telecom’s chairman and chief executive have been putting huge pressure on senior cabinet ministers to keep business users off the new network, lest this unseemly public investment damage their private business. The Screen Council, whose film production members have a vital interest in being able to shunt around huge files at a reasonable cost, has begged for a rethink, but will be disappointed.

At the same time, Telecom has been insisting on its willingness to provide parts of the network — Telecom’s way. Its current offer is to provide 200Mbit/s managed services — not only much slower than the Advanced Network requires, but emphatically a telco-in-the-middle model. For Telecom, letting out its fibre as a mere transport commodity is the scenario from hell. Users will take its network management value-adds even if they choke on them.

There are valid questions about the Advanced Network proposal. What will it really cost? Can it really be cobbled together from a scattering of existing fibre installations? Will Crown Research Institutes such as Industrial Research be able to afford to bridge the “last mile” between themselves and the core network? But the biggest issue is the fear and loathing emanating from the incumbent.

One of the opening addresses at Broadband Reloaded came from Bill St. Arnaud of Canada’s Canarie Networks. He listed the terribly politically incorrect things the Canadian government has done in the telecommunications sphere, including regulating pricing based on capital expenditure — meaning operators have been obliged to build out to increase revenue. Canada now has five times New Zealand’s broadband penetration at a third of the cost.

St. Arnaud also outlined the practice where schools, hospitals and government buildings become “anchor tenants” for new community fibre installations. There is the potential for something similar here.

The big geeks behind the New Zealand plan are largely the same people who built and ran this country’s first-generation internet — and then had the good sense to withdraw in the mid-90s and allow it to be commercialised. It would not be a bad thing to let that happen again.
Especially when the alternative is to sacrifice the needs of every other business in the country to the interests of a single incumbent.

Being politic or political

What’s Telecom’s role in the new superspeed network for science and research use?