XT Outages

58 comments on “XT Outages ”

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1. BLiP 1

   1 February 2010 at 1:52 pm

   A thousand words.
   • Bright Red 1.1

     1 February 2010 at 2:28 pm

     That’s the first time anyone has sent me a link to Bromhead without including the words ‘how does this man get work?’

     To be fair, it’s one of his better ones in that it isn’t totally stupid or self-contradictory, and doesn’t miss the point. There’s even a bit of wit to it.

     Back in the 60s, Bromhead was drawing anti-feminist cartoons. Saw them at the National Library. They’re pretty weird stuff.
2. Jim Nald 2

   1 February 2010 at 2:08 pm

   John Key sold the idea of ultra fast broadband as part of National’s infrastructure policy to voters when he campaigned in 2008. But now real action and progress feel like they are moving slower than dial-up speed.
3. Lanthanide 3

   1 February 2010 at 2:26 pm

   I’ve always maintained that the broadband policy was a blatant vote-grab for the 15-35 year old males who download things of P2P networks and don’t have any interest in politics. They see National promising faster broadband and so vote for them, regardless of when, what cost or under what terms this broadband would be delivered (eg, new laws that crack down on piracy).
   • Dean 3.1

     1 February 2010 at 7:17 pm

     Yes, because business doesn’t need fast broadband for telecommuting or handling larger volumes of traffic for any reason at all. They’re all quite happy with the current status quo and it’s ALL because of P2P traffic.

     What a moronic thing to say, Lanthanide.
     • felix 3.1.1

       1 February 2010 at 7:35 pm

       Yeah what’s holding kiwi businesses back is the lack of videoconferencing.

       Definitely.
       • Dean 3.1.1.1

         1 February 2010 at 8:43 pm

         Not just videoconferencing, but attachment sizes and the speed of transferring data.

         If you’ve never been in the position of having to have done so, I guess you would think it was pretty amusing.
         • felix 3.1.1.1.1

           1 February 2010 at 8:56 pm

           Oh I understand the importance for the tiny minority companies who give a monkey’s. It’s just that I also understand the relative insignificance to the huge majority of businesses who never need to deal with large file transfers.

           The files I shunt around the place are anywhere from 50 to 150 MB so I’m not unaffected either. I just think you’re vastly overestimating the number of votes to be gleaned from concerned business people in this area.
           • Dean 3.1.1.1.1.1

             1 February 2010 at 9:04 pm

             What’s the attachment size limit most ISPs enforce, felix?
             • felix …

               1 February 2010 at 9:06 pm

               No idea. No-one sends large files by attachment.
               • lprent …

                 1 February 2010 at 10:11 pm

                 Yes they do – clogs my mail-servers. Usually it is just junk.
                 • Lew …

                   1 February 2010 at 10:15 pm

                   I blame 12 megapixel compact digital cameras.

                   Come on, people, nine full-resolution photos of your cat? You have to be taking the piss.

                   L
                   • Draco T Bastard …

                     2 February 2010 at 12:15 am

                     and they send them to everyone in their address book…
                 • infused …

                   2 February 2010 at 4:42 pm

                   Like I said before, if you’re not running something in front of the mail server, you’re doing it wrong.
             • Lew …

               1 February 2010 at 9:10 pm

               No-one competent. Which means tens of thousands (millions!) of people do it every day. And they expect it to work. And in 2010, I reckon it should.

               L
             • infused …

               1 February 2010 at 9:49 pm

               I get asked every week why they can’t send an email over 10mb. Try actually dealing with small businesses felix.
               • lprent …

                 1 February 2010 at 10:03 pm

                 Usually because the receiving mail server limits the size of attachments or has other limits. Frequently the anti-spam/virus checkers cause timeouts. But usually it isn’t the transmission of the data unless you have a lot of people clogging the internet link. Often that happens because they don’t check what connections are moving and have peer2peer connections running (which would soak up even much wider pipes)

                 In my experience, it isn’t the connections that is usually the problem. It is those other issues. However people tend to blame the pipes. There is a simple check for the pipe on ADSL – just look at speeds at the router. That is a function of how far you are from exchange/booster on ADSL.

                 Lyn sometimes has problems moving multi-gigabyte files – but that is because she uses http as the transport protocol. Resumable ftp would be a lot simpler.
                 • Dean …

                   1 February 2010 at 10:08 pm

                   “Usually because the receiving mail server limits the size of attachments or has other limits. Frequently the anti-spam/virus checkers cause timeouts. But usually it isn’t the transmission of the data unless you have a lot of people clogging the internet link. Often that happens because they don’t check what connections are moving and have peer2peer connections running (which would soak up even much wider pipes)”

                   Receiving mail server attachment limits are a thing of the past. That’s just a nonsense that expired when the year 2000 rolled around. The only people who have this problem are the ones who have an ISP mailbox, and theres no excuse for that anymore.

                   ” But usually it isn’t the transmission of the data unless you have a lot of people clogging the internet link. Often that happens because they don’t check what connections are moving and have peer2peer connections running (which would soak up even much wider pipes)”

                   Traffic shaping and QOS doesn’t exist? News to me. Even a small or micro business can afford such things these days – they’re either cheap or essentially free.
                 • felix …

                   1 February 2010 at 10:16 pm

                   I’m surprised that you can sit by and watch someone struggle with http transfers Lynn 🙂
                 • infused …

                   1 February 2010 at 10:25 pm

                   Alot of those issues you describe would affect a home user, not a business user.
             • lprent …

               1 February 2010 at 10:14 pm

               Typically about 1-20MB on most mail servers. But it varies a hell of a lot. It is one of the reasons that you use your own mail servers.

               But the restriction is mainly there because of the processing times for anti-virus and anti-spam filters rather than then transmission speeds.
           • Richard 3.1.1.1.1.2

             2 February 2010 at 9:36 am

             In my experiences, heaps of business people like to email bloated excel spreadsheets and (less commonly) database files. Excel spreadsheets can fairly easily get into the 10-100MB size category.

             Another favourite, large attachment, is pdfs that have been created by scanning a document (rather than created electronically). Which is often caused by someone doing something like printing a document, signing every page, scanning the whole thing and then emailing it back again.

             Pdfs of catalogues, that have been created electronically, but contain lots of pictures suitable for high quality printing are quite common large size attachments too, as are powerpoint presentations.

             Of course, there are many strategies for keeping such documents to a manageable size, or ways other than email attachments of distributing them — but the average computer user doesn’t bother. They just expect email to work with large attachments.
     • Lanthanide 3.1.2

       2 February 2010 at 9:31 am

       Business already has access to “fast” broadband. Any business that wants to use it for “telecommuting” simply has to pay the price. These services are not cheap, and it is unlikely that rolling out a new billion dollar network is somehow going to be magically cheaper (they have to pay for the rollout somehow).

       Whenever you see anything about the new “super-fast” broadband, about the only concrete example of what it will be used for is streaming television to people’s homes. Whoop-de-do, that’s really going to improve our productivity by letting people sit on their couch.

       As Iprent points out, if you’re concerned about “attachment size” on your emails, then you shouldn’t be using whatever email address it is that you get from your ISP. “super-fast” broadband is unlikely to change that policy.

       What other people have pointed out in the past, is that the best bang for buck in terms of broadband penetration would be to concentrate on rural areas, where delivering broadband to farmers and small towns could actually improve their productivity significantly, especially in places where broadband is unavailable and connections are unreliable. However the plan that has been laid out by the National government focusses on the 20 (25?) largest communities in the country, and the rest get zippo.

       FYI, I actually work as a software developer for a company that designs switches and routers for the internet, so I do actually have a clue what I’m talking about.
4. infused 4

   1 February 2010 at 2:32 pm

   Well, the fiber in Wellignton is being laid by Citylink via Smartlynx3 for the Hutt. They are quite reliable to be honest.

   Two different things.

   Also, both outages were different issues. The fact that they have replaced hardware at all sites indicates some sort of hardware issue,
5. RedLogix 5

   1 February 2010 at 2:37 pm

   Spare a thought for the poor sods at the coal-face who have probably been working some very long, stressful hours dealing to this issue. As a techie myself I know just how hard it can be to resolve this kind of issue with complex new systems.

   It’s moments like this when you need seven arses, so as they can all be kicked at once.
6. Steve 6

   1 February 2010 at 5:07 pm

   The Govt should buy back Telecom. Only then we will find it is just as fucked as a train set. Telecome needs rebranding, renaming.
   “PELICAN” is a good name, then they can both stick their bills up their arse
7. Draco T Bastard 7

   1 February 2010 at 6:39 pm

   He says telecommunications is about scale, and the proposed 33 local fibre companies will not be large enough to deliver affordable services.

   And Labour aren’t any better – they keep going on about regional telecommunications companies. It’s the completely delusional “competition will save us!11!!!” BS.

   1 SoE, 1 network. Fixed. It is the most efficient structural model and that’s how Telecom has maintained its dominance.

   If all those billions of dollars of profits that have been siphoned out of Telecom over the last 20 years since the sale had been put back into the network like what was happening before the sale ($272m in 1985, $300 1987, etc) we wouldn’t have to be promising billions of dollars of subsidies to the private profiteers.
   • Dean 7.1

     1 February 2010 at 7:13 pm

     “If all those billions of dollars of profits that have been siphoned out of Telecom over the last 20 years since the sale had been put back into the network like what was happening before the sale ($272m in 1985, $300 1987, etc) we wouldn’t have to be promising billions of dollars of subsidies to the private profitee”

     That’ll explain why it took 3 people to put a phone line on to a house in 1984-6, and why it took anywhere between 3-6 weeks, if not months. I can also remember my mother saving a little money from her DPB for WEEKS to be able to afford a 10 minute call from me to my grandmother in the UK.

     As someone who was affected (medical issue which a GP advised a phone call to the hospital may be necessary in order to save a life) by how badly Telecom (the post office back then) ran things, your simplistic cry for nationalisation holds little merit.

     I’m not defending the current state of Telecom – the XT outage is an absolute shocker. It’s just a good job you’ve got a choice as to who you use for your cell or landline. What’s more it’s cheaper too, and hasn’t become yet another government department turned into a revenue gatherer – just like Telecom/NZ Post used to be.
     • Draco T Bastard 7.1.1

       1 February 2010 at 7:56 pm

       It’s not a simplistic cry. I was there, I was one of those people hooking up the phones and I was also there a couple of years ago. Want to know what’s changed in the intervening years? NOTHING except that the technology has improved and the culture of service has gone.

       Everything you say was wrong with Telecom prior to privatisation was fixed prior to privatisation by installing new technology. Exchanges that could leave a phone physically connected rather than having to disconnect them improved connection times by the simple fact that people didn’t need to be sent around to the exchange, cabinet and house to wire it up. Cabling became much cheaper as it went from steel and lead wrapped to plastic allowing more lines to be run for each house.

       Basically, what you’re complaining about is a lack of resources that nobody could do anything about until things became cheaper and when it did that lack of resources was taken care of as fast as it could be. Even with close to 20k people working it still takes a long time to wire up an entire country (which puts the lie to JKs $1.5b and 75% of households to have FTTH in 5 years when only ~ 2000 people are employed by telecommunications firms).

       What’s more it’s cheaper too, and hasn’t become yet another government department turned into a revenue gatherer just like Telecom/NZ Post used to be.

       There’s two reasons why it’s cheaper:
       1.) All the needed investment was done prior to the sale and there’s been minimal investment since (Gatung mentioned 15% of income – that included maintenance).
       2.) The price of things have come down. Analogue exchanges were big power hogs that cost a bundle. Digital ones? Use far less power and are much much cheaper. Think about your PC and how much it cost and then think about how much it cost for 1/10th (if you were lucky) the computing power that required an entire building to be housed in.

       The Post Office P&O branch (Telecom), btw, was never a cash cow for the government. All of it’s income went back into what it did – telecommunications. The Post Office and Postbank were losing money. Which just goes to show that you really have NFI what you’re talking about.
       • PaulD 7.1.1.1

         1 February 2010 at 8:49 pm

         Your analogue v’s digital comparison isn’t valid. New exchanges take up far less space but the idle power requirements are similar to working load. The old analogue exchange doing nothing consumed nothing. Newer generations of digital will be an improvement especially if the users end up responsible for powering their end of the connection.
       • Dean 7.1.1.2

         1 February 2010 at 8:55 pm

         “It’s not a simplistic cry. I was there, I was one of those people hooking up the phones and I was also there a couple of years ago. Want to know what’s changed in the intervening years? NOTHING except that the technology has improved and the culture of service has gone.”

         Why did it take 3 people to put on a phone line back then? I notice you’re conveniently avoiding that question, but if your memory goes back that far you’ll know that it was a union rule.

         “Everything you say was wrong with Telecom prior to privatisation was fixed prior to privatisation by installing new technology”

         That’ll explain why it wasn’t until they were privatised that costs came down.

         “The Post Office P&O branch (Telecom), btw, was never a cash cow for the government. All of it’s income went back into what it did telecommunications. The Post Office and Postbank were losing money. Which just goes to show that you really have NFI what you’re talking about.”

         This is the best part. You;re actually pretending that there was never ever any money made off the post office, but also that them losing money is somehow indicative of this.

         I’d like to introduce you to a concept – it’s called double entry accounting. You may have heard of it? The way it works is where you put your profits on one side of the ledger, and your losses on the other side. It’s why back in the day the government/post office insisted on charging what they did for toll calls while expecting people would think it was reasonable to wait so long for a phone line to be connected, and why they tried to hide it from everyone who was paying so much.

         “What choice? The service you buy is exactly the same no matter who you get it from and multiple companies with multiple bureaucracies is inherently more expensive. In other words, if we still just had one SOE and one network it would be cheaper still.”

         That’s why vodafone had a nationwide outage!

         Honestly, Draco. Have you actually read back what you typed to yourself?

         You’re honestly comparing Vodafone’s supply to Telecom’s XT and pronouncuing them to be exactly the same? You’re saying that Vodafone – despite the inherent issues theyve had with interconnect issues – who have consistently bettered pricing and availability of new technology – are the same service as Telecom?

         Wow. You really have no idea, do you.
         • Draco T Bastard 7.1.1.2.1

           1 February 2010 at 11:42 pm

           but if your memory goes back that far you’ll know that it was a union rule.

           Again, more delusion on your part. There was no union rule and that wasn’t a work rule either. You got what was available – if that was a van with one person in (unlikely because most vans carried trainees) then you got one person. If you got three that was because that’s was what was available. A three person van was almost always a cable van so it’s unlikely you’d get that.

           That’ll explain why it wasn’t until they were privatised that costs came down.

           The costs would have come down either way. It’s just that it’s most likely costs would have come down more if it had remained an SOE. We certainly would have had a better network now as the profits would have gone back into the network rather than in profiteers pockets causing a massive dead weight loss.

           I’d like to introduce you to a concept it’s called double entry accounting. You may have heard of it? The way it works is where you put your profits on one side of the ledger, and your losses on the other side. It’s why back in the day the government/post office insisted on charging what they did for toll calls while expecting people would think it was reasonable to wait so long for a phone line to be connected, and why they tried to hide it from everyone who was paying so much.

           I’d like to introduce this thing called logic to you. It goes along the lines of this and this = conclusion. It amazingly enough has absolutely nothing to do with what you wrote here where you quite simply go this… conclusion!!!!. You’re missing all the connecting bits that actually make up an argument. Hell, from what you say I’d have to accuse every single business of deceit because they all use double entry book keeping.

           You’re honestly comparing Vodafone’s supply to Telecom’s XT and pronouncuing them to be exactly the same?

           The service is: mobile telecommunications – and that’s all it is. Both providers provide exactly the same service. Especially now that Telecom have shifted to using the same standards that Vodaphone and the rest of the world use.

           You’re honestly comparing Vodafone’s supply to Telecom’s XT and pronouncuing them to be exactly the same?

           No, I’m not. I’m saying that the service is exactly the same. You’re confusing the service with the delivery of that service which aren’t exactly the same.
     • Draco T Bastard 7.1.2

       1 February 2010 at 8:02 pm

       It’s just a good job you’ve got a choice as to who you use for your cell or landline.

       What choice? The service you buy is exactly the same no matter who you get it from and multiple companies with multiple bureaucracies is inherently more expensive. In other words, if we still just had one SOE and one network it would be cheaper still.
     • PaulD 7.1.3

       1 February 2010 at 8:39 pm

       The biggest improvement to Telecom and almost every other organisation since the mid 80’s was the computerisation of customer records. Before then applications for service existed as bits of paper that could and did go missing at every possible chance.
       • Draco T Bastard 7.1.3.1

         1 February 2010 at 11:50 pm

         Computerisation in general. It added quite a few abilities that analogue couldn’t do and was far cheaper. As I said though, most of that was done before Telecom was sold which proves that the improvement would have come with privatisation or without it. The argument now is how much we would be better off if we hadn’t sold it (and we would be).
8. kiwiteen123 8

   1 February 2010 at 7:40 pm

   Good point… I’m not sure where Telecom is heading… Not going to well at the moment.
9. Deus ex Machina 9

   1 February 2010 at 8:09 pm

   Our collection of small, remote, scattered communities far beyond the reach of public sewers and tapwater has had to provide itself with broadband because no-one else was going to – we’ve created a community-owned, non-profit wireless network which taps into dsl in a town 20km away and must be among the cheapest broadband in NZ. I regularly get >5MBps and 4GB/month costs me $20.

   Yet it took a community effort, some risky capital outlay in a system we weren’t sure was even going to work and some luck. We’ve had no public money or help whatsoever.

   We were shortlisted under the last Govt’s Broadband Initiative for a grant to extend our network to some really out of the way corners, but National canned that and are instead spending millions on providing ultra-fast broadband business districts despite research showing that ultra-fast broadband is of no greater value to business than a reliable 10MBps. The only real benefit of Ultra-fast broadband is on-demand TV or films, so National’s funding of it is like putting public money into launching satellites for Sky TV to use.

   What little is being directed into rural areas is now going towards subsiding the commercial operators rather than supporting community efforts like ours, exemplifying National’s favourite trick of using public money to facilitate private profit.
   • pollywog 9.1

     2 February 2010 at 12:47 pm

     sounds choice Deus.

     thinking off hooking up with ‘scorch’ for the same type of deal. did a couple of installs for them and it seems fairly reliable.

     http://www.scorch.co.nz/
10. Dean 10

    1 February 2010 at 9:07 pm

    felix:

    “No idea. No-one sends large files by attachment.”

    Unfortunately for you, you are entirely incorrect.
    • felix 10.1

      1 February 2010 at 9:14 pm

      Good for you Dean. If I am (and I might be, I’m only speaking from my own limited experience) then that rather undermines your entire argument.
      • Dean 10.1.1

        1 February 2010 at 9:58 pm

        “No-one competent. Which means tens of thousands (millions!) of people do it every day. And they expect it to work. And in 2010, I reckon it should.”

        and

        “I get asked every week why they can’t send an email over 10mb. Try actually dealing with small businesses felix”

        Your experience is indeed limited, felix.

        Email attachement size shouldn’t be a limitation, but if youre prepared to argue that fast internet isn’t necessary because you know what you’re doing then you need to understand a whole lot more about how the average person uses computers.

        I look forward to you explaining why people who want to send large attachements somehow undermines the idea that they should be able to because they don’t “know what they are doing”, and why this means wanting a larger pipe on the internet a bad thing.
        • felix 10.1.1.1

          1 February 2010 at 10:12 pm

          No surprises there – as I said my experience is limited and I must be fortunate to work with fairly competent people.

          I can’t for the life of me see why anyone would prefer to move large files by email but I’m not an IT prof so what do I know?

          To be clear: I’ve never stated that a bigger pipe isn’t necessary or that faster speeds aren’t desirable. I just don’t think there are as many people screaming out for it as you do.

          And as I said, I could well be wrong but I suspect you’re talking about fairly specific industries, a tiny minority of the business community.
          • Dean 10.1.1.1.1

            1 February 2010 at 10:18 pm

            “And as I said, I could well be wrong but I suspect you’re talking about fairly specific industries, a tiny minority of the business community.”

            Panelbeaters, retail stores, accountants, publishers, manufacturers, writers, health professionals.

            I’m going to go with you could very well be wrong. Unless you see how the average person who doesn’t know much about computers determining the easiest way to do things is somehow interested in learning a way to get around the limitations of a crappy internet connection, I don’t think you’ve got a lot more to add here.

            “And as I said, I could well be wrong but I suspect you’re talking about fairly specific industries, a tiny minority of the business community.”

            Clearly you are wrong if you think it’s a tiny monority, who are all 18-35 whose vote got bought because theyre P2Pers.
            • felix 10.1.1.1.1.1

              1 February 2010 at 10:27 pm

              I appreciate your sentiments but you’re really just stating an opinion as fact in response to my opinion stated as opinion. I don’t see that you’re adding much either but at least I know it.

              And actually I don’t think it’s necessarily correct to design everything to pander to the shortcomings of the stupidest users. We’re talking about real resources here. Why should people be encouraged to waste them rather than be encouraged to learn to use them efficiently?
              • BLiP …

                1 February 2010 at 10:55 pm

                Why should people be encouraged to waste them rather than be encouraged to learn to use them efficiently

                Think Microsoft.
              • Draco T Bastard …

                2 February 2010 at 12:08 am

                but you’re really just stating an opinion as fact in response to my opinion stated as opinion.

                No, you stated an opinion what he stated was fact. People regularly send multi-megbyte files via email. They haven’t heard of ftp or any other technology that does it better. People write an email, add attachment and press send. They neither need nor want to know about the technology that makes it work or it’s limitations.

                Why should people be encouraged to waste them rather than be encouraged to learn to use them efficiently?

                That’s the society that we’ve grown up in – everything you want, now. It would be nice if we started looking at the waste that we do unthinkingly though.
              • felix …

                2 February 2010 at 12:38 am

                The “opinion stated as fact” was referring to “Panelbeaters, retail stores, accountants, publishers, manufacturers, writers, health professionals.”

                I don’t think rattling off a list of “people I reckon need bigger pipes nao” constitutes a fact-based argument.

                I maintain that the potential for genuine productivity gains from vastly improved web access are limited to a relatively small and specific group of industries and so far no-one has shown me any evidence to the contrary.

                I remain open to seeing it though. I’d like everything bigger faster better more too.
11. infused 11

    1 February 2010 at 9:53 pm

    It’s the same reason most of my customers convert from adsl to citylink, fast, fast, fast, national data is free. Do a backup felix. Most people have anywhere from a few gb to 1tb of data these days. It’s a struggle. Unless you are centre CBD getting these sort of connections is next to impossible – and they are needed.
12. Clarke 12

    1 February 2010 at 10:35 pm

    I’ll tell you why this FTTH thing is a waste of time economically – because I’m in Wellington and already connected to CityLink at 25mb/s synchronous, and it has completely failed to transform my business.

    To put the connection in cost me $2.500 from the fibre running past in the street, as this is the price CityLink need to charge to make a dollar – and it’s hard to see how there are huge economies of scale in that number.

    The link has been 100% stable and is seriously fast, but the only positive impact on me financially has been the saving of $100/month in hosting fees as I’m now running a mail and web server in-house … although it’s not necessarily a smart decision, given I also lack the UPS and monitoring infrastructure of a proper data centre.

    The reason I put the fibre in was because I’m a geek, and CityLink had a fibre running past our office. But if I was a non-geek running (say) a panel beating business, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to my profitability. Watching gratuitous YouTube clips at lunchtime would definitely be faster, but since when is that a transformative economic strategy for the country?

    Conclusion: Key doesn’t have a clue what he’s up to with this FTTH nonsense.
13. infused 13

    2 February 2010 at 12:15 am

    Must be a pretty piss poor mail server then lprent. Try using something like Brightmail Gateway.
    • lprent 13.1

      2 February 2010 at 7:45 am

      I’m using MDaemon on an old box from about 2003-4. But I was actually referring to various mail systems I’ve seen over the years. Exchange being about the worst.
      • infused 13.1.1

        2 February 2010 at 4:40 pm

        Nothing wrong with Exchange. I look after around 20-30 exchange servers. Good hardware, configured properly, what’s the problem?

        Just like any other software.

        anti spam word: servers

        nice
14. Dean 14

    2 February 2010 at 1:59 am

    “I appreciate your sentiments but you’re really just stating an opinion as fact in response to my opinion stated as opinion. I don’t see that you’re adding much either but at least I know it.”

    I’m sorry that I have real world examples of people who want to send files by email because they can’t be bothered to do it a more complicated way, and I’m sorry that you see it as an opinion rather than the way people actually do things.

    Mind you, you did assert that the only reason National campaigned on faster internet connections was to placate the P2P crowd, so I suppose you really don’t have an awful lot more to add rather than they should probably vote Labour?
    • felix 14.1

      2 February 2010 at 2:57 am

      Mind you, you did assert that the only reason National campaigned on faster internet connections was to placate the P2P crowd, so I suppose you really don’t have an awful lot more to add rather than they should probably vote Labour?

      You have me confused with someone else. I never said that and I don’t vote Labour.

      Sorry I missed your real world examples. I don’t really care if people don’t know how to use the net. The only point I’ve been trying to make (and you’ve been studiously avoiding) is that there is no apparent advantage in terms of productivity and profit for anyone but a very small minority of very specific companies. Nothing you’ve said has made any case to dispute this. If you think a panelbeater and an accountant are losing ground in the marketplace because they can’t figure out how to send 20MB files to each other then I don’t really know why I’m bothering discussing it with you.

      I’m not denying the convenience factor but I haven’t heard anything from you about actual productive gains.
      • spot 14.1.1

        2 February 2010 at 9:22 am

        “Productive gains” angle is a hard one, and I think you’re bang on, not every business will benefit, cos clearly not every business has a model that’s improved by it. But some will, and I guess the argument is that there’ll be some that don’t exist now but could.

        I think they’ll look at (or have done) a whole range of socio-economic metrics for this sort of stuff.

        You could probably construct and craft some numbers to fit any business case you want but it’d be good to see stuff like e-learning, home business/office, health and other public service delivery, ‘quality of life’, improved comms, and obviously all sorts of lifestyle type services.

        Personally I’m very interested in anything that can really support ‘regionalisation’ (if that makes sense) in NZ, and in doing so having a positive impact on local economies etc etc.
15. tc 15

    2 February 2010 at 10:19 am

    Gosh aside from all the tech talk about attachments etc the fundamental point is if our infrastructure wasn’t third world you’d get away with much of the above as the network would have capacity to handle bad user behaviour….for which they’d pay.

    More to the point is we have a gov’t that thinks big bus can do no wrong, a big bus (telecom) who can do no right and in fact rewards it’s shareholders by not investing in infrastructure.

    Then a broadband plan hammered by all and sundry as unworkable being handled by JK’s head bully Joyce……billions being spent to improve what telecom shareholders should be funding, not you and me.

    This gov’t lack the brains and principles to solve our telco landscape….helen put the right minister (Cunliffe) onto it after the wrong one (Swain) but contrast that with NACT who have one plan B when ministers fail…..B is for Bully…come on down Joyce.
16. tc 16

    3 February 2010 at 3:40 pm

    maybe this thread should be renamed……..Standard IT advice, there’s some great stuff here from people who know their stuff answering people who need to know their stuff……..meanwhile the Grumpy Scot collects his bonus….Kaching !

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1. FiberNews: posted on 1 February 2010 at 8:06 pm

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