Note I'd started to type this at 8am and then had to go out. I'd left this without hitting the Post button because I wanted to see if I could find the prices for host links anywhere. I note that since there has been a lot of further replies, so I'll hit post button now and then read all the other responses.
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BT's backhaul prices are absolutely insane, even on 21CN they significantly higher than typical transit costs.
Unfortunately you can not compare backhaul bandwidth to transit costs:(
Different kettle of fish. Transit pipes are big fat things that go to a specific central location serving millions, pure TCP/IP and practically a case of plug in to their router and away you go.
Backhaul has to cover far more remote locations and you simply cant equate the cost of connecting to a pipe in a CoLo center, to backhaul costs which have to reach each and every exchange. As well as the switches and routers, you also need equipment like MSANs and RAS, RADIUS oh and WDM multiplexors for backhaul which are very expensive.
Access technology for DSL cant be compared to normal routing. Access & Backhaul costs are always going to be way more expensive than Core costs, which in turn will be more expensive than transit.
BT have got away with it because of the lack of wholesale backhaul competition offering the same thing.
Other backhaulers arent that much cheaper! Even RevK himself admits there's little difference between BT's 21CN and TT's backhaul costs. The reason why some people like TT backhaul is their DLM is more configurable. The problem with is 20CN because of OFCOM setting the pricing on Market 1 exchanges, which keeps the price higher. All 20CN exchanges are Market 1.
All those years when adsl max was "the thing" and uk isp's commonly traffic shaped etc. blaming heavy users when it was the excessive backhaul costs been the real reason.
There is no need to tell me about why ISPs had to start capping.
I do believe I was one of the very first to point out that it was down to the cost of backhauls & CBC as to why certain ISPs had started to put caps or traffic shaping in place.
In 2006 I wrote the capacity report for another website. That article was widely covered and caused much discussion on the likes of ADSLguide (TBB) and ISPr etc at the time. I was even contacted by the BBC about it who covered it on radio. No-one had ever attempted to do anything like that before. The original report was long and more detailed, but there's still a cut down version still on my site -
Wholesale cost of ADSL in the UK. It was a big eye opener at the time for many people.
I expect in the region of 300mbit at the absolute most.
I haven't analysed Rev K's figures to work out how much capacity he'd need. I didn't bother doing so - only he can do that because he will have the breakdown figures regarding more specific usage of those EU's still on 20CN. He will need to ensure there is sufficient capacity to run the service at peak without causing noticeable contention.
AAISP aren't what I'd call a typical ISP, therefore 'typical usage of the masses' are unlikely to apply. Also knowing RevK's commitment to service and the customers experience, I doubt he would be happy letting 'his network' run anywhere near as contended as the likes of the larger ISPs.
Contention is a weird game.. the more users you have the better, as it becomes more cost effective. Datastream was an epic fail because the EU numbers were too small. Exactly same contention ratio would quite happily work once you upped the scale of EU's. Therefore I doubt whether any back of a cig packet type calculation would work for AAISP.
I suspect with a few hundred users he has one of the much more expensive smaller pipes, he hasnt got enough left to have a 622mbps pipe.
Smaller pipes arent more expensive. The options for 20CN L2TP centrals are and always have been 622 or 155.
622 Mbps = £1,028,920
155 Mbps = £ 221,280
He may even have one of the newer IPSC host links, but as I said in my post above I couldnt find a price list for those which is why I'd used a 622 Central
if they really on the side of the consumer they would step in and put a cap on the costs from BT,
As I said last night, its OFCOM that doing the opposite and ensures there is a 2 tier charging system.
It fixes the MINIMUM cost that BTw can charge. OCOM will not allow BT wholesale less than figures they set.
It can be see quite clearly when you look at WBC node costs for IPSC.
Contracted bandwidth per Mbit/s per node.
Market A £40.15
Market B £122.64
I take it that you have heard of the Margin Squeeze Test (MST) put in place by OFCOM. The aim of MST is to ensure that BTw charges more than a competitor could. The idea behind MST is to make it easier for competition to come in, knowing that BT will not undercut LLU charges. BTw can only charge less for Market A exchanges which have been deregulated by OFCOM and its OFCOM keeping the prices high for Market B pricing.
Perhaps you can see now why the likes of Ignition, wombat and I say that OFCOM regulation in some respects is not good for consumer.. and even some people said that deregulation may be a better option that splitting off Openreach.
OFCOMs approach has done nothing to help the smaller ISP's - look how many have gone to the wall since they started meddling.
All OFCOM appears to care about is making it cheap to the masses by supporting the whims of 'LLU' SPs and not bothering to listen enough to the likes of what I'd call proper ISPs like AAISP and Zen who rely on BTw to provide their services.
