Zen's response to query about 2Mbps adsl upgrades

"This is a common question that has been asked over the last few days.
Whilst Zen always plan to increase the level of service that our customers
receive, we do not have any intention of increasing the bandwidth that is
currently assigned to our users.

Whilst this may seem a very generous offer from BT, it may in fact not be as
'special' as you are led to believe. The fact that they are upping 'most' of
their customers bandwidth for free will in actual fact cause their network
to become more congested, possibly resulting in larger periods of downtime.
In addition to this, they have placed caps on all of the services, something
that Zen has no intention of doing.

All in all, yes we will at some point lower our prices to fall further in
line with our competitors but at this point we believe that the quality of
service we offer is more than a justifiable reason for paying that bit more
with Zen."

Any comments?

Seems like they don't want to pass on extra bandwidth, unlike other ISPs?
Does their congestion argument hold water? If so then the ISPs that are
upgrading their customers must be doing a bad thing!

With regards capping, my personal ISP (nildram) are capping at 50GB/month,
pretty generous and that's only at peak times.

Andy

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 10:06:16 -0000, andy <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> "This is a common question that has been asked over the last few days.
> Whilst Zen always plan to increase the level of service that our
> customers
> receive, we do not have any intention of increasing the bandwidth that is
> currently assigned to our users.
>
> Whilst this may seem a very generous offer from BT, it may in fact not
> be as
> 'special' as you are led to believe. The fact that they are upping
> 'most' of
> their customers bandwidth for free will in actual fact cause their
> network
> to become more congested, possibly resulting in larger periods of
> downtime.
> In addition to this, they have placed caps on all of the services,
> something
> that Zen has no intention of doing.
>
> All in all, yes we will at some point lower our prices to fall further in
> line with our competitors but at this point we believe that the quality
> of
> service we offer is more than a justifiable reason for paying that bit
> more
> with Zen."
>
> Any comments?
>
> Seems like they don't want to pass on extra bandwidth, unlike other ISPs?
> Does their congestion argument hold water? If so then the ISPs that are
> upgrading their customers must be doing a bad thing!
>
> With regards capping, my personal ISP (nildram) are capping at
> 50GB/month,
> pretty generous and that's only at peak times.
>
> Andy
>
>

Hi Andy,

That makes interesting reading, and very different to what BT Wholesale
are telling us.

The ability to bulk increase everyone (where possible) to 2Mbs plus the
faster speeds that will come out of the forthcoming trial are because of
BT's major upgrade programme to what they are all a 21st Century Network
(21CN).

21CN will see the backhaul bandwidth from BT's exchanges increased to not
only allow the faster speeds but also so that they can phase out standard
charging and only offer CBC and UBC. The reason for this is because under
both CBC and UBC they can take the effects of contention out of the
exchange and allow each ISP to control it.

A 622 BT Central Pipe under CBC costs about £1.5m per year. So it makes
sense from BT's point of view to sell as many as they can to each ISP. We
have 16 active segments across 5 622's at the moment, so you can imagine
it's bringing in a nice few quid to BT when you add them up across all the
ISP's.

So you see it makes sense for BT to move to contention to the ISP because
with contention at the exchange some of the traffic will never reach the
ISP's central pipes, less central pipes are needed overall and therefore
less revenue.



With Regards,

Dave,
--
| Dave Tomlinson Broadband Solutions For
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet plc @ http://www.plus.net
+ ----- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -----

"PlusNet Support Team" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message

> with contention at the exchange some of the traffic will never reach the
> ISP's central pipes, less central pipes are needed overall and therefore
> less revenue.

Contention is contention, and whether that happens at the exchange or at the
ISP makes no difference to the size of the BT Central pipe required - unless
the contention ratios are different.

Meanwhile, traffic from the exchange increases substantially as contention
has been removed from that point, so that is an additional infrastructure
cost that BT must bear.

- Mike

PS I'm not a fan of PlusNet at the moment, but this thought isn't aimed at
them in particular. As ISPs now have control over contention there is an
enormous financially motivated opportunity to see how many more quarts they
can fit in a pint pot. Considering the sizeable financial sums involved, who
audits/certifies contention ratios? Is it a 'Weights & Measures' thing?

> Contention is contention, and whether that happens at the exchange or at
the
> ISP makes no difference to the size of the BT Central pipe required -
unless
> the contention ratios are different.

If customers can download more data because their exchange is no longer
contended, then more data is passing through their ISP thus the ISP would
need a larger BT Central pipe to accomodate them.

> Considering the sizeable financial sums involved, who
> audits/certifies contention ratios? Is it a 'Weights & Measures' thing?

The advertised ADSL products generally say "50:1 contention", so in theory
they could run contention at this level. Of course, any ISP which did so
would end up losing all their customers because speeds would be abysmal, so
there must be a natural balancing point of contention that both customers
and ISPs are prepared to accept.

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:08:59 -0000, Chris Jones
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> Contention is contention, and whether that happens at the exchange or at
> the
>> ISP makes no difference to the size of the BT Central pipe required -
> unless
>> the contention ratios are different.
>
> If customers can download more data because their exchange is no longer
> contended, then more data is passing through their ISP thus the ISP would
> need a larger BT Central pipe to accomodate them.

Indeed, the thinking here from BT Wholesale is we'll let ADSL customers
get full speed broadband all the way from the exchange to the ISP's
Central pipe and then let the ISP decide how to manage how much their
customers use and therefore the contention ratio. There are many ways of
doing this, we've chosen three different ways for our different accounts,
fair usage for Premier, Pay As You Go per GB for Lite and shortly Traffic
Shaping for Broadband Plus. Other ISP's have chosen other ways (e.g. BT
Yahoo's hard cap).

Going back to the original quote in this thread, and remembering that if
they haven't already Zen and any other ISP currently on standard charging
will have to make a choice of going to either CBC or UBC very soon, it
simply doesn't make sense financially to allow lots of pipes to run empty
due to the costs from BT Wholesale. Afterall to the customer what
difference does it make if the pipes are 50% full or 85% full? Not a lot,
the service will be the same, expect the costs for that extra capacity
needs to be met from somewhere and at £1.5m per 622 per year, that's a
fair few quid per customer. It's an interesting statement from Zen for
sure, and does make me wonder.


>
>> Considering the sizeable financial sums involved, who
>> audits/certifies contention ratios? Is it a 'Weights & Measures' thing?
>
> The advertised ADSL products generally say "50:1 contention", so in
> theory
> they could run contention at this level. Of course, any ISP which did so
> would end up losing all their customers because speeds would be abysmal,
> so
> there must be a natural balancing point of contention that both customers
> and ISPs are prepared to accept.
>
>

Yes, the effects of real 50:1 contention aren't nice, which is another
reason to allow the ISP to manage it. Simply because exchange side
contention will affect every customer regardless of speed or contention
ratio and every protocol. So effectively your connection just grinds to a
halt. If real 50:1 contention kicked in all over the place then you would
see people moving back to 56k. Instead the ISP can be a lot cleverer about
how they manage it. For example traffic shaping like with our forthcoming
Broadband Plus product will mean that we can prioritise certain protocols
above another. So even at really busy times your web browsing for example
will be nice and fast, but your Peer-2-Peer would be slowed down.


With Regards,

Dave,
--
| Dave Tomlinson Broadband Solutions For
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet plc @ http://www.plus.net
+ ----- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -----

"Chris Jones" <(E-Mail Removed)

> If customers can download more data because their exchange is no longer
> contended, then more data is passing through their ISP thus the ISP would
> need a larger BT Central pipe to accomodate them.

Yes, if contention is removed. I was talking about moving the point of
contention from the exchange to the ISP, not removing the contention
entirely. The premise is that data is choked to the same level, but at a
different point in the chain.

> > Considering the sizeable financial sums involved, who
> > audits/certifies contention ratios? Is it a 'Weights & Measures' thing?
>
> The advertised ADSL products generally say "50:1 contention", so in theory
> they could run contention at this level. Of course, any ISP which did so
> would end up losing all their customers because speeds would be abysmal,
so
> there must be a natural balancing point of contention that both customers
> and ISPs are prepared to accept.

Indeed there must! I'd be interested in the answer, though.

- Mike

andy wrote:

> "This is a common question that has been asked over the last few days.
> Whilst Zen always plan to increase the level of service that our customers
> receive, we do not have any intention of increasing the bandwidth that is
> currently assigned to our users.
>
> Whilst this may seem a very generous offer from BT, it may in fact not be as
> 'special' as you are led to believe. The fact that they are upping 'most' of
> their customers bandwidth for free will in actual fact cause their network
> to become more congested, possibly resulting in larger periods of downtime.
> In addition to this, they have placed caps on all of the services, something
> that Zen has no intention of doing.
>
> All in all, yes we will at some point lower our prices to fall further in
> line with our competitors but at this point we believe that the quality of
> service we offer is more than a justifiable reason for paying that bit more
> with Zen."
>
> Any comments?
>
> Seems like they don't want to pass on extra bandwidth, unlike other ISPs?
> Does their congestion argument hold water? If so then the ISPs that are
> upgrading their customers must be doing a bad thing!
>
> With regards capping, my personal ISP (nildram) are capping at 50GB/month,
> pretty generous and that's only at peak times.
>
> Andy
>
>

By keeping 512kb connections is this not a cap by another route ? Keeps
them out of the worst of CBC cost under control by having a physical
150GB cap, while still being 'unlimted' in some definitions of the concept.

Bill

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:57:26 -0000, "PlusNet Support Team"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>The ability to bulk increase everyone (where possible) to 2Mbs plus the
>faster speeds that will come out of the forthcoming trial are because of
>BT's major upgrade programme to what they are all a 21st Century Network
>(21CN).
>
>21CN will see the backhaul bandwidth from BT's exchanges increased to not
>only allow the faster speeds but also so that they can phase out standard
>charging and only offer CBC and UBC. The reason for this is because under
>both CBC and UBC they can take the effects of contention out of the
>exchange and allow each ISP to control it.


Hmm...that's an "interesting" interpretation of BT's 21CN plans.

I have now had 2 presentations regarding this and each time, the concept
has been for BT to replace all of their existing platforms (including PSTN)
with a totally IP based network, which will basically signal the end for
switched voice. It has also been very firmly stated that this is not a
technology project, but a fundamental business strategy to effectively do
away with services like CPS.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the 2Mb upgrade availability,
because the last mile is going to remain untouched!

I'm also interested in your assertion that BT, by making their
infrastructure IP-based and hence potentially increasing the availability
of bandwidth between exchanges, are doing so because this will allow them
to introduce CBC and UBC and pass control of contention to the ISPs.

I'd also like to know how any ISP could change the contention ratio that BT
are providing on a residential service...unless you are saying that BT no
longer introduce any contention on their physical links and that it is
decided at ISP level...in which case you're actually contradicting one of
the FUP arguments that your colleagues trot out when bleating on about
contention!!
--

Regards

John [Essex, UK]
Remove the obvious spamtrap to reply

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 00:22:46 +0000, JC
<johncalias-newsgroupsATyahooD0TcoD0Tuk> wrote:

> On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:57:26 -0000, "PlusNet Support Team"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> The ability to bulk increase everyone (where possible) to 2Mbs plus the
>> faster speeds that will come out of the forthcoming trial are because of
>> BT's major upgrade programme to what they are all a 21st Century Network
>> (21CN).
>>
>> 21CN will see the backhaul bandwidth from BT's exchanges increased to
>> not
>> only allow the faster speeds but also so that they can phase out
>> standard
>> charging and only offer CBC and UBC. The reason for this is because
>> under
>> both CBC and UBC they can take the effects of contention out of the
>> exchange and allow each ISP to control it.
>
>
> Hmm...that's an "interesting" interpretation of BT's 21CN plans.
>
> I have now had 2 presentations regarding this and each time, the concept
> has been for BT to replace all of their existing platforms (including
> PSTN)
> with a totally IP based network, which will basically signal the end for
> switched voice. It has also been very firmly stated that this is not a
> technology project, but a fundamental business strategy to effectively do
> away with services like CPS.
>
> This has absolutely nothing to do with the 2Mb upgrade availability,
> because the last mile is going to remain untouched!
>
> I'm also interested in your assertion that BT, by making their
> infrastructure IP-based and hence potentially increasing the availability
> of bandwidth between exchanges, are doing so because this will allow them
> to introduce CBC and UBC and pass control of contention to the ISPs.


The two kind of come hand in hand. BT Wholesale have made a decision about
who pays for bandwidth, and decided it isn't going to be them and that it
will be the ISP's. So they sell pipes at a high price, and use the revenue
from this to remove any hinderances in getting that bandwidth to the ISP,
i.e. exchange side contention. The IP network for voice is a seperate, but
related investment.

Exchange side contention will still exist, but the effects won't be seen
as there will be enough capacity unless there is a major problem or they
underestimate demand.


>
> I'd also like to know how any ISP could change the contention ratio that
> BT
> are providing on a residential service...unless you are saying that BT no
> longer introduce any contention on their physical links and that it is
> decided at ISP level...in which case you're actually contradicting one of
> the FUP arguments that your colleagues trot out when bleating on about
> contention!!


The current definitions of contention will change. The ISP won't set the
contention ratio at the exchange, but will instead manage contention on
their central pipes and their network.

How they do this is now up to each ISP.

I made a post on ADSLGuide the other day which should answer this in more
detail

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthre...panded&sb=5&o=


Hi,

The broadband industry is changing and evolving at a very fast rate at the
moment. You just have to look at the ADSLGuide news page for all the new
products and services that have been announced by all the different ISP's
so far this year.

One of the biggest changes of course is that for ISP's using IPStream
standard charging will shortly be phased out and any ISP currently using
standard charging will shortly (if they haven't already) have to make a
choice of going to CBC or UBC.

Part of the background for this change is that BT Wholesale are seeing the
amount of data transferred increasing, and expect that to only increase as
we see faster speeds appear, for most new PlusNet signups from next month
they'll be getting 2Mbps and we'll also see our first customers getting
faster than that as part of BT Wholesale Alpha trial of up to 8Mbps
speeds. As well as the faster speeds were also going to see an increase in
the usage and availability of "broadband content". Services like VoIP, and
video on demand. BT have decided though that it isn't going to be them
that will be paying for all the bandwidth.

Instead what we are seeing is first of all BT rolling out their 21st
Century Network. This is what is going to enable the faster speeds to be
available and also, with CBC and UBC allow the ISP to take control of
contention.

Under standard charging the effects of contention are seen at the
exchange, and the effects aren't nice. Contention exchange side means that
in the severest cases your connection becomes unusable and it really
doesn't matter what speed service you have or even whether you are on 20:1
or 50:1. If this happened on a big scale, which it could without
investment in the backhaul, then we would see a lot of people move back to
56k.

So this is where CBC and UBC come in as I say. The per customer price is
the same (IPStream Home is £8.40 per month regardless of speed) and the
big price is the central pipe cost. A 622Mbps pipe costs about £1.5million
per year.

So it makes sense from BT's point of view to try and sell as many of these
622's to the ISP's as they can. With contention exchange side some data
isn't going to make it to the ISP's pipes, less data, then less pipes are
needed. Less pipes needed and less revenue for BT.

So, what's happening is BT are removing the contention exchange side, this
is being funded by the revenue from the sale of 622 pipes at £1.5m a throw
and by allowing faster speeds and not contending it exchange side they
hope to sell even more pipes.

So where does this leave the ISP's? Well, they have different ways in
which they are able to control contention. The three we've chosen at
PlusNet are Pay As You per GB for our Lite accounts, Traffic Shaping for
our forthcoming Broadband Plus account and Fair Usage on Premier. There
are of course other ways of doing this, such as a hard cap, but the three
methods we have chosen we believe to be the best and offer the greatest
choice to our customers and are all superior to the standard charging view
of exchange side contention.

What does that mean for services like video on demand then? Well, the
problem at the moment is that the highest bandwidth applications like
Peer-2-Peer offer little in the form of revenue to the ISP. Services like
VoIP, video on demand, music downloads, etc. can all be integrated into
your PlusNet subscription, either as an add-on payment or included in the
monthly fee. The advantage of this is that bandwidth used for add-on
services like this can be excluded from your included bandwidth or fair
usage threshold, or for Broadband Plus the traffic can be prioritised
within the shaping.

Going back to Nildram's statement


In reply to:

They say there's no point me swapping to an unlimited ISP as they will ALL
be limited soon due to BT.



Is this true? Well I can't say what will happen with every ISP out there,
because not everyone uses IPStream and LLU, cable, and datastream ISP's
won't be affected in the same way, but I can say every ISP will have
considered their options and will have discussed the future of broadband.
Every ISP using IPStream will have done their sums for CBC and UBC, and
the conclusion is that the bandwidth needs to be paid for. That unless you
have a measure of controlling contention yourself (e.g. PAYG, traffic
shaping, fair usage, hard cap) you are solely reliant on setting your
pricing in such a way as to balance the light and heavy users so you make
a profit. Without additional revenue streams as the usage gets higher
there is a point where the mix of light and heavy makes your service
unsustainable and unprofitable.

Unsustainable and unprofitable is not why we are here. Offering a low cost
high quality broadband service is.

Regards,

Dave Tomlinson
PlusNet Customer Support


With Regards,

Dave,
--
| Dave Tomlinson Broadband Solutions For
| Customer Support for Home & Business
| PlusNet plc @ http://www.plus.net
+ ----- My Referrals - It pays to recommend PlusNet -----