Update on this issue…
The Aucklander picks up the Story 27 Jan 2011 on the Hobsonville Point ‘High-Speed’ Con
NZ Herald continues the story on Hobsonville Point ‘Fibre ready homes anything but’ on 19 Apr 2011.
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Hobsonville Point high speed broadband: Yeah Right?
The prices to buy a house in the new Hobsonville Point suburb have been released – and they are expensive. And as the houses are being built on a postage stamp, new owners will expect a high end finish in a well equipped home. One expected feature will be high speed connectivity throughout the home, to the internet. Going forward, such connectivity will be expected from all new home owners and analogous to the growth in wiring of homes for electricity less than 100 years ago. The Hobsonville Land Company (HLC) recognises this and in partnership with Vector are busy promoting High Speed Fibre to your Door. However, I have confirmed that what this actually means is the High Speed Fibre will end at a box in your home – which does not mean high speed access within your home!
I’ve informally surveyed people to ask them what ‘High Speed Fibre To Your Door’ means and am consistently told this means you’ll have high speed throughout the house. The HLC are using the Cafe to demonstrate the technology. ‘Visitors will also be pleased to experience the full force of fibre to the door technology that will provide swift internet access.’ (Aug 2010 newsletter). With all the various snippets and articles being released by the HLC, it is not difficult to see why potential home owners would think they are buying a modern connected home. The HLC can say ‘we said connected to your door, not throughout the home’ and I can’t help think of Bill Clinton’s famous ‘I did not have sexual relations’ dodge. To be fair, I think the HLC have simply missed the significance of not wiring a home properly, rather than attempt to dupe home owners by implying a massive ePipeline within homes, and delivering a trickle.
Think of the impact on you. A modern family will have a central device (Xbox, family computer etc) from which to stream songs and videos to other devices within the house. They will be playing computer games with each, skyping friends on a video call, surfing the internet and even watching sky via the internet (launching tomorrow – tellingly not HD as current broadband speeds will not support HD). Some people will even be working from home and have additional ICT demands. And this is all based on today’s technology use – the IT demands of the future will increase the load. A house hard-wired to stream internet access to every room also forms the backbone to let every room connect to each other. However, wireless access will be quickly bottlenecked. There will be a place for wireless, to support the backbone – but it should not be the backbone.
I asked one of the Hobsonville Point builders who said ‘they’ll be plenty of outlets, and most people use wireless anyway’. The HLC explained that ‘There is no prescriptive requirement in terms of the internal wiring as this responsibility rests with the builders as a normal part of the house construction process… HLC are working together to ensure that optimisation at home level is part of the delivery methodology. ’
Which is not good enough. The HLC have set design standards for the builders to include such features like a rain water tank collector to be used for toilets etc, to help reduce the environmental impact. The point is, the HLC have the mandate to make high speed cabling a requirement throughout a house, if there is the will. The Government has the will, and are paying billions to roll out high speed access , so it is odd that a company set up under the government are prioritising rain water tanks over a backbone of cabling and outlets throughout a house. What about builders? Well, they are after the cheapest option and will tell you wireless is fine – but I’m sure will be happy to upgrade your top-of-the-range house for an additional cost.
The high speed fibre then has simply moved the bottle neck from the copper networks and exchanges, to your door. When you move into and try to use the new capacity, you will become frustrated. And there will be an impact when you come to sell your house, competing with (having hopefully learned) fully wired Hobsonville Point houses. A recent Herald article even pointed to houses in the US being worth 5-10K more – just for being wired for broadband. Your options then will be to knock into the walls and put in the ethernet cable. Which is the key really – install the relatively cheap ethernet cables in the walls now, rather than play catch up and retrofit later.
Where to from here? Come on HLC – deliver on the implied promise of high speed connectivity. Make it a design requirement to cable all public, family and bed rooms. That’s the intent behind Government broadband policy. That’s what home owners need.
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Update
The Aucklander picks up the Story 27 Jan 2011 on the Hobsonville Point ‘High-Speed’ Con
NZ Herald continues the story on Hobsonville Point ‘Fibre ready homes anything but’ on 19 Apr 2011.
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