News & Discussion: National Broadband Network

[fabricator]

Sorry for the back to back posts, but this article on what is wrong with the “Strategic Review” is too important to delay.

http://www.sortius-is-a-geek.com/fudged ... nd-review/

[rubberman]

The NBN was once known as the information super highway.

Perhaps we could re-name this effort 'The Turnbull Information Southern Expressway'?

It goes only one way fast, and the other slow.

It will need to be replaced sooner rather than later at higher cost than doing it right first time.

It was justified as being cheaper.

Obviously people who wanted something better than the original Southern Expressway were just Sunday drivers or geeks wanting a new toy...just like those who want something better than the Turnbull Information Southern Expressway are either geeks or movie downloaders.

[Dog]

The head of the National Broadband Network has told a Senate committee that speed guarantees have "lost currency".

NBN Co chief executive Ziggy Switkowski has faced a grilling at the Sydney hearing, which is focusing on the Government's guarantee of minimum speeds.

Before the election the Coalition promised minimum speeds of 25 megabits per second to available to Australians by 2016.

But the strategic review of the NBN has found it will not get halfway to meeting its targets.

Under questioning from former communications minister Stephen Conroy, Dr Zwitkowski said he is not interested in promises on the NBN.

"I do not buy questions that demand us to guarantee anything," he said.

"It's clear that after four years of NBN, guarantees have lost currency."

Do you think Ziggy Switkowski is right to move away from promises of minimum speeds? Have your say.
The strategic review, conducted by the NBN Co, also found the Government's proposed fibre-to-the-node (FttN) network would require around $12 billion more than estimated in the Coalition's April 2013 policy.

The original figures were announced under Labor and Dr Switkowski has previously criticised the way they were calculated.

"The original corporate plan underestimated the costs, overestimated what are the real world experiences of revenues and what households are prepared to pay," he said.

Speaking after the analysis was unveiled, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said jobs would have to be cut following downgrades to the company's profit forecasts.

More to follow.


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[drsmith]

Simon Hackett on HFC in the NBN.

http://simonhackett.com/2013/12/14/hfc-in-the-nbn/

[Dog]

Recently discovered I had cable (that's the old cable not NBN) connected to my house, so decided to swap over from the ADSL I had been using.
The Telstra cable guy came out, to hook a cable modem and T box up, thought it would be an easy job as I already had the connection on the wall next to the TV, no didn't work.
He checked in my roof and the box outside, so what was the problem? The Telstra pit in the street had been full of water and a couple of inches had corroded off the end my cable. When I looked at the rest of the mess in the pit I now know why my old ADSL was so crap.
The thought that under the coalitions plan we will be paying Telstra to use this antiquated corroded mess is ludicrous. And the thought of replacing it with more vulnerable copper is illogical.

Dr Smith all good in theory but I refer to this post from several moths ago, I actually have cable, but when we went to connect the pit in the street was full of water, the cable was stuffed! It might work better in suburbia where they hung more on the power lines.


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[rubberman]

Those are good points that Hackett is making Dr Smith.

If the Coalition delivers that instead of FTTN, they might save themselves.

[fabricator]

The only real problem with HFC is expanding the network into new streets, as the costs just don't add up.
Thicker and harder to handle cable, and takes up more ductwork and costs more compared to FTTH, in almost all cases it would be a better deal all round to install FTTH.

One other issue with HFC, Optus refuse to supply it as a business service, Telstra aren't so strict but charge the earth for all their services.

Roll out should consist of 3 technologies in built up areas, HFC where it already exists, FTTB for apartment buildings and FTTH for business/homes on Telstra copper (POTS). There should be zero FTTN, as it's simply a very expensive box chained to a decrepit and increasingly out of date copper network. FTTH spend most of the money on new cabling, FTTN spend most of the money on expensive boxes on street corners and local parks.

The entire point of FTTH is to replace old cabling with new, the speed is a bonus, but reliability is also an asset. Only a drooling idiot would believe a cheaper, less reliable, less able to pay itself off, less capable NBN is good policy.

[Vee]

Excellent article, well worth a read, on the latest chapter in Australia's NBN following the Turnbull instigated review and Coalition decision to proceed with a mix of technologies.
It's in The Business Spectator, written by an independent academic - Mark Gregory, Senior Lecturer, RMIT University.

Turnbull's NBN house of cards
The Coalition’s National Broadband Network (NBN) review report released last week attempts to provide justification for the Coalition’s NBN plan but contains more holes than swiss cheese.

Two weeks ago the Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull advised Australians not to believe reports written by review teams hand-picked by politicians. He is quite correct in his advice. Any NBN review designed to bolster a particular political agenda is worthless.

What we do know is that the Coalition’s ADSL, Fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), Fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB) and Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) (multi-technology) NBN approach will cost a lot more than what was promised pre-election. And the delivery timetable doesn't look that great either. The eventual cost to upgrade to Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) if the Coalition’s approach is implemented will more than treble from the cost of Labor’s approach if it is seen through to project completion.

Read the full article here:
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/art ... ouse-cards

[monotonehell]

Good round up of the findings of the recent Senate hearings...

According to Greens Communications Spokesperson, Senator Scott Ludlam, the committee effectively “dismantled” the technical and financial underpinnings of the Strategic Review, adding to what Ludlam described as “the extraordinary list of the Abbott Government’s policy failures and non-core promises”.

“This morning, NBN Executive Chairman Dr Ziggy Switkowski revoked the Government’s guarantee of minimum download speeds,” wrote Ludlam in a statement. “We now we have a dog’s breakfast of a network will be more expensive than promised, delivered later than committed, using technology that will be obsolete on the day it is delivered – if it ever is.”

“Key data including the guesswork behind the cost of acquiring and maintaining Telstra’s copper network, held together with duct tape and plastic bags, have been hidden from the Parliament and the public. We’re being asked to just trust the Government, at a time when trust is in very short supply.”

Ludlam said the committee was provided with detailed analysis of how the cost and timeline estimates for a fast fibre to the premise (FTTP) network were systematically inflated to make it look unaffordable.”It appears that the best we can hope for now is to try and retrieve some semblance of coherence from the train wreck that is Australian telecommunications policy, but after today’s hearing that seems further away than ever,” the Greens Senator concluded.

For its part, Labor’s own spokespeople also ridiculed the Coalition over the week’s Senate hearings. Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare and Shadow Assistant Communications Minister Michelle Rowland issued a statement claiming that evidence from the committee had confirmed that NBN construction would slow “dramatically” over the succeeding six months.

“The NBN rollout is currently passing 5000 premises per week. In evidence before the Senate Select Committee today NBN Co Chairman Ziggy Switkowski confirmed that this number would drop to just 4000 premises per week under Minister Turnbull’s new model,” the statement said.

“Last week they broke their promise to give everyone access to the NBN by 2016 and this week they have confirmed they are slowing down construction,” Clare said. Rowland added:“While Minister Turnbull and his mates tank the rollout of the NBN communities across the country are being left in broadband limbo.”

The two MPs noted that Switkowski had told the Senate Committee that NBN Co could not guarantee broadband speeds to Australian homes and businesses, “again confirming that the Coalition would be breaking its key election promise of delivering minimum speeds of 25 megabits per second by 2016?.

http://delimiter.com.au/2013/12/18/gree ... rain-wreck

[Vee]

Hardhitting item from Renai LeMay's article in Delimiter.
I agree. The NBN is no longer. What we have now under the Coalition is a hotchpotch ...
Read Renai's comprehensive article.
Two very short extracts below.

It is no longer appropriate in 2014 for Australians to refer to the Coalition’s radically watered down version of Labor’s pet telecommunications initiative as the “National” Broadband Network project, given the fact that it will leave the long-term future of up to a third of Australians’ broadband services in doubt.

....

But the bigger picture here is still clear: A huge proportion of Australians will be offered a vastly different technology for their future broadband needs under the Coalition than under Labor; and a technology which does not offer them the long-term certainty of a copper network replacement. Furthermore, the Coalition will create a patchwork of heterogenuous broadband networks nationally; with service levels to differ suburb by suburb or even between different sides of the same street.

Delimiter:
http://delimiter.com.au/2014/01/06/aban ... ork-label/

[monotonehell]

Yes as suspected from the start the Coalition just wanted to run this thing into the ground. The telecommunications in the country's status quo is maintained, SNAFU.

[drsmith]

Broadband Availability and Quality: Summary Report 23 December 2013

http://www.minister.communications.gov. ... _FINAL.pdf

[Vee]

Latest analysis on Coalition's broadband Multi-Technology Mix (MTM)

MTM broadband plan a "dog's breakfast" says Budde

Respected telecommunications analyst Paul Budde, has heavily criticised the Coalition’s new preferred broadband deployment model, describing its “Multi-Technology Mix” approach as “a dog’s breakfast” of different technologies, which could turn out to be a “logistical nightmare” to deliver in practice.

...

The analyst highlighted the fact that the quality of the copper network in particular varied significantly even within individual suburbs, meaning that each of the three separate fixed network technologies might have to be used even within the same suburb — for example, neighbouring streets might have FTTN, FTTP or HFC.

...

Delimiter
http://delimiter.com.au/2014/01/13/mtm- ... ays-budde/

[baristaa]

How exactly does broadband work? Like i know its fast and all that stuff. But when they say you get 10gb broadband what does that mean? does it mean you can download 10gb worth of stuff or what? I only have dial up and am thinking of switching to broadband.
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online video ~ how to video ~ funny video

[monotonehell]

How exactly does broadband work? Like i know its fast and all that stuff. But when they say you get 10gb broadband what does that mean? does it mean you can download 10gb worth of stuff or what? I only have dial up and am thinking of switching to broadband.

There's three different things here, and you're not being helped by people only quoting half the units they are talking about.

The first thing is your plan's allowance, how much data you are allowed to download a month (sometimes added to uploads as a total allowance). Most broadband plans are around the 50Gb mark depending on who you're signed up with.

What they're most probably quoting is the amount of data you can download in a second, otherwise known as bandwidth. It's usually quoted in giga bits per second, but sometimes giga bytes per second. Just to keep us confused. (A byte, roughly one character, is made of 8 bits).

The third thing, and this is the biggest difference between a proper NBN and what the Libs are proposing/what we already have in ADSL, is the upload speed. With ADSL download is much faster than upload. For example on my very good ADSL service I can download a file from my server in Sydney in about 45 seconds that takes 20 minutes to upload to the same server. In the "old" Internet this was okay as most people downloaded content. However in contemporary use, upload speed is as important as download. People are needing to transfer data in both directions.


Now may I have a ristretto?