WAIKAWA BEACH RATEPAYERS ASSOCIATION
MAY 2015 NEWSLETTER
Hello to you all
We survived the heavy rain but wow, I thought it would never stop. Driving home along Waikawa Beach Rd it was impossible to tell where the river ended and the paddocks started. At least none of us had to be evacuated by boat like my son and his flat mates in Paraparaumu Beach on Thursday. Our river has had a good washing out so that can’t be bad. And all our tanks will be full to overflowing. Yay!
Broadband at the beach
A lot of people have been complaining about the speed of broadband etc. Being a technophobe I asked Peter Clark to write a piece about this for the newsletter as I have no idea what it’s all about. His explanation and answers are below:
There have been several comments lately about the slow speed of broadband at the beach. Also several articles in the DomPost about slow broadband speeds. At times during holidays, after school and between 8pm and 10 pm broadband speed can slow down to the OLD DIALUP SPEED. There is several reasons for this:-
- The development of Strathnaver Drive and properties connecting up to the Waikawa Beach cabinet situated on Waikawa Beach Road opposite Manga Pirau Street
- The speed will be more affected by the distance you are from the Waikawa Beach cabinet (length of copper wire to your house)
- Schools are now using broadband widely and most children have computers which they use at home after school for research
- The size of the fibre optic cable that feeds the Waikawa Beach cabinet is near total capacity so no room to spread the load
- The introduction of being able to download movies and live sport on line
- With the increase in tech product that use broadband the service providers (Spark, Vodafone etc) buy capacity from Chorus to get from your house to other centres and via southern cross cable to the rest of the world and this is where providers manipulate speeds to suit ”THEIR” requirements that can affect our downgrade speed
- Problems with wiring within your house, i.e. no dedicated line for broadband
- Congestion from the Waikawa Beach cabinet back to the exchange, this has been proved by Chorus technicians
There is good news though. Sometime after June this year Chorus intends to upgrade our cabinet.
What I have been able to deduce is they are going to increase the ports available (spread the load) at our cabinet plus introduce VDSL. This will mean an upgrade of expensive equipment in our cabinet On the chorus website, a broadband capability map is available to input your address to see what is proposed also other information.
But the final say on what speeds you will get is with your internet provider. Chorus say on their website, that with VDSL2 we could get speeds up to 20mps? BUT that doesn’t solve the problem if they are manipulating speed to our cabinet. In the long term I cannot see any improvement to speed if the cabinet is upgraded to handle VDSL except in off peak times. We still have copper wire from Waikawa cabinet to our houses. In theory we should see improvements on what we have now with ADSL.
What we have found in the past is the more people complain the more you get noticed.
PERHAPS IF EVERYBODY PUT IN A COMPLAINT THE SAME LONG WEEKEND MAYBE THEY MIGHT TAKE MORE NOTICE.
USUALLY WHEN A COMPLAINT IS MADE THEY ASK YOU TO RUN SEVERAL SPEED TESTS THAT THE SERVICE PROVIDER WILL MONITOR AND WILL SEND RESULTS TO CHORUS
HERE HOPING FOR A BETTER SERVICE!
Another solution for those who only want internet access. SPARK GO NAKED which gives 80GB of data for $69 per month using a smart phone and no modem is required. It works in most areas of the beach. Other mobile providers may have similar deals.
Footnote here is an article from TV GUIDE:
It appears that the enthusiastic adoption of internet TV by many Kiwis may have hit a bit of a snag. While the ability to download international TV content online and on demand may have been seen by some as a liberation from the shackles of the established TV providers, doing so has begun to seriously overload some broadband connections around the country.
It’s a complicated affair for the average internet user but the simplest analogy is that having increasing numbers of people trying to download TV on their computers at the same time (usually in the evenings) is causing a traffic jam on some of the available internet services.
Apart from the established TV companies that have long offered TV “on demand” from their websites, the entry of new services such as Lightbox, Neon, Quickflix and Netflix has added to the load. It’s still early days yet, but if the problem continues, old-fashioned broadcast television might be seen as not so bad after all.
Thanks to Peter for his Broadband info.
Julie Stichbury