In August 2018 we launched NGA Business Premium (Enhanced Bitstream 4) commercial trial following a ‘technical trial’ - running since late 2017, and a ‘UFB trial’ - running since June 2018. These trials aimed to test out this service and make recommended changes to the product.

Some improvements were identified during the technical trial and include a requirement for:

• Flexible Bandwidth
• Multiclass-PCP mappings
• Multiclass-colour awareness
• medium traffic class
• Some future options: glass only and 10G options.

Please find below a summary of the feedback we’ve received:

• The original intent of Bitstream 4 was to assign traffic class bandwidth independently, reducing the need for pre-set bandwidth combinations. This was not implemented during the technical trial.
• The use of explicit PCP settings to assign traffic class removed PCP transparency and reduced Service Provider flexibility.
• Following the Layer 2 working party discussions, Chorus has implemented a congestion free network policy. While this is not non-blocking (some frame loss is expected once utilisation > 50%), this policy significantly reduces the need for a medium class of traffic. It also removed the need for colour awareness.
• Glass only installation is required for installations with limited access to space or power or other environmental constraints, such as smart locations or data centres.
• A 10G access option is required.
   

What's happening?

As the ‘technical trial’ and ‘UFB trial’ have achieved their purpose, they will be withdrawn on 13 May 2019.
 

You can either keep or relinquish your technical and UFB trial connections by the end of this period. Upon your request, we will update these connections to NGA Business Premium (Enhanced Bitstream 4) commercial trial connections, and commence billing at standard pricing at the end of the technical and UFB trial notification period.

Any remaining technical and UFB trial circuits that you wish to migrate to the commercial trial, will commence billing at either 100Mbps or 1Gbps access rate, as per their configuration.
 

Next steps

If you have existing technical or UFB trial connections, please liaise with your Account team to confirm if you would like to keep these services. You’ll need to sign the NGA Business Premium (Enhanced Bitstream 4) commercial trial agreement to keep your circuits and commence billing.

If you do not wish to keep the technical or UFB trial circuit, please ensure this is relinquished via email request to BS4Pilot@chorus.co.nz and your Service Delivery Manager.