A response to the Technology Spectator
Steve Jenkins published a piece recently in the Technology Spectator which, like many articles written about the NBN, is full of indignation that the Coalition would dare to criticise the NBN Co’s fibre to the premises strategy. Mr Jenkins did not take time to discuss why it is that thousands of people in greenfield estates, around Australia, have no wireline service at all because the NBN Co simply hasn’t turned up, nor did he discuss why the NBN Co is so woefully behind even its own very long schedule. Disturbing the dream is always uncomfortable, better to focus on the Opposition.
However he does pose some questions and I thought I would restate them and respond to them.
With this scenario in mind, these are questions that Mr Turnbull should be answering about the Coalition’s NBN:
1) Just who is going to own the company that will do the FTTN-NBN roll-out?
The NBN Co will continue as a government owned company – it far from ideal that it was set up as a government owned company, but it has been and is probably unsaleable in its present state of development and for the forseeable future.
However we will remove as many of the barriers to competition with the NBN Co as possible – for example we would seek to reverse the arrangement whereby Telstra and Optus are obliged not to use their HFC to compete with NBN Co on broadband data and voice, the extent to which that is possible obviously depends on negotiation. In every other country of which I am aware, government policy seeks to encourage and promote facilities based competition, including by HFC, not suppress it.
We will certainly remove the obstacles to private sector fibre deployment companies operating in greenfields estates.
2) Is Turnbull prepared to guarantee that NBN Co will be left with a competitive business model, able to service debts and commitments already entered into?
If the NBN Co completes its network build more quickly and at less expense, it follows that it will have much less capital to service. Accordingly its financial position should be better relative to that of the NBN Co on its present plan. The experience in other markets (USA for example) is that FTTN networks enjoy comparable ARPUs to FTTP networks – the very high speeds (100 mbps plus) available on FTTP are not sought after by sufficient customers at sufficiently high premiums to justify the additional investment. That, at least, is the feedback I have had from telcos in the USA, UK, Canada and several other countries.
i) If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?
I am not sure what he means by this. Is he suggesting that the FTTP strategy is some sort of religious cult and were the NBN Co to change its build strategy to incorporate more FTTN, that would be a moral outrage? If he means will the NBN Co comply with its contractual and other legal obligations to its employees, then the answer is obviously yes – just as any Australian company should.
ii) Will he be giving the contract to Telstra? What then of the SSU?
I am not sure what contract he is referring to here – the network would continue to be owned by NBN Co and built by whatever contractors it selects.
iii) Give the contract to NBN Co? How will that integrate with their work?
See above
iv) Create a new entity for the FTTN-NBN and would such an entity be wholly Govt owned for shared with Telstra?”
See above
3) Where is he going to get the detailed FTTN deployment plans?
i) Will he acquire them from Telstra or rely on Telstra to give up in-confidence commercial data and Intellectual Property?
FTTN deployments, because they follow the pattern of the existing lay out, cost much less and take less time to plan that FTTP- as I have been advised by people who are actually doing FTTN and FTTP rollouts. I anticipate a thoroughly constructive co-operation with Telstra on this, and their management has made public statements indicating that. However the network would be NBN Co’s – there is no change to the objective of structural separation which I have supported for many years.
4) Will he make any guarantees about the service provided?
ii) And will ASIC or the ACCC regard those promises as mere political puffery or commercial statements, misleading, and actionable, if false?
Services offered should be described factually. The Openreach (BT’s functionally separated network company) approach is before a premise is signed up, a line test is done so as to show the would be customer what speed service they are able to get.
How can he guarantee “$20 billion in savings” if they don’t appear on the Federal Government balance sheet?
I have been careful not to nominate a particular sum of money as the difference between what we would do and Labor’s current plan. For a start there is enormous scepticism that the NBN Co project can be completed within the cost and timeframe of their business plan. Several very experienced civil contractors and engineers have said to us recently that they think the actual build cost is likely to be $80 to $100 billion for example.
These more recent comments compare with Cliff Gibson’s estimate cited in Commsday 16 May 2011:
“I do know that the two partner organisations that we work with would have put tens of millions of dollars worth of work in to put the bid together and our experience on this exercise, and the costing involved, would lead me to think that the cost of roll- ing out the optic fibre to 93% of the homes around Australia is going to cost between 60-80 billion,” [Mr Gibson] told an ATUG industry gathering in Melbourne.
What we do know is that FTTN is cheaper and faster to deploy than FTTP. The experience around the world is that FTTN costs between 1/3 and and 1/4 of FTTP and that it takes much less time to deploy. As I have noted elsewhere by way of example, BT passed 7 million homes in the UK with FTTN last year alone.
The argument against FTTN is obviously that it does not offer the same very high speeds of FTTP, but if you can deliver speeds capable of supporting the services people actually need now and in the forseeable future and you can do so quickly as opposed to many years away then the trade off is worthwhile. If money and time were no object you would do FTTP everywhere, but sadly in the real world, rational people do have to take into account how much things cost and how long they take to deliver.
I might conclude this blog with a reflection on my visit this week to Western Australia. I have now met dozens of people here (as I did last week in Queensland) with inadequate broadband services who would dearly like the NBN to come along and fix their problems.
But it simply isn’t happening. Some people, in greenfields estates, have no wireline services at all and the NBN Co can give them no assurance as to when it will turn up to connect them. Others are told they will be dealt with some years in the future. For them a faster upgrade is a very compelling proposition. The growing gap between Labor’s FTTP nirvana spin and the reality of nothing happening is causing more and more bitterness especially in greenfields estates where the NBN no-show is a growing catastrophe for more and more Australians.
As far as the balance sheet point is concerned, let us just cut through the fog of spin and nonsense here. A dollar saved on the NBN Co build is a dollar less for the Commonwealth to borrow and service with interest. Under the accounting rules the expenditure on the NBN does not count towards the budget outcome – so much deficit or surplus – but it is cash – real money – nonetheless and it does add to the debt burden of Australians.
56 Responses to “A response to the Technology Spectator”
Very good response Malcolm – unfortunately, NBN absolutists rely more on emotion and platitudes than logical reasoning. So good to see you standing up to the IT geeks, and actually putting together a sensible policy which is good for Australia.
I especially loved “If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?” Their attitude of entitlement knows no bounds! Do they realise their salaries are being paid by the taxpayer?
“The argument against FTTN is obviously that it does not offer the same very high speeds of FTTP,”
Or the same reliability, the same consistency, or the same upgrade-ability.
The greenfields wireline access problem is a complete furphy which you have included to distract the discussion away from the central difference between the Coalition FTTN proposal and the current Govt’s FTTP network.
FTTN cannot and will not overcome the problem of the ‘last mile’ being COPPER. Clearly your proposal is to build a second rate broadband network that will never have the capacity to fulfil the the fantastic potential which the FTTP offers. This will put Australian citizens/businesses/students at a major disadvantage to those in other countries adopting the inevitable FTTP model.
It’s really inexplicable that you would seek to provide Australians with second rate technology for purely ideological (ie: opposition for it’s own sake) reasons.
The Coalition’s agenda of saying no to Australians’ dreams and aspirations is not acceptable to those of us who want to see this great country prosper in an increasingly competitive world.
The Coalition are displaying all the signs of extreme reactionaries without hope/vision/optimism… they seem to prefer a nihilistic dystopia.
We demand the best broadband technology available…we are a rich country…we can afford it…
Do it once…do it right…do it with FIBRE.
Get on board…or get out of the way…
Mark, seriously, no one is saying FTTN is superior technology to FTTP – we are just saying that FTTN is more affordable and a more cost-effective policy. The fact is that there is a limited amount of money in Australia, and we need to take that into account in every policy, whether it be broadband, health education, or whatever.
And besides, the marginal difference in speeds between FTTP and FTTN would mainly be used for movie downloads, broadcasting etc. in the foreseeable future (not really enhancing productivity or anything).
“Do it once…do it right…do it with FIBRE”
Classic meaningless platitude – coined by a Labor hack – this is not sufficient justification for spending tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Hmm… I think the “Do it once…do it right attitude” it quite admiral and would be a good policy for our politicians to follow. Many of the countries that have been rolling out FTTN have conceded that FTTP is the future and have are moving to that model.
Also saying that there is a “marginal difference in speeds between FTTP and FTTN” is crazy! To take advantage of the improved speeds from FTTN you will need to live 50Mbps. FTTP is futureproofing. Currently it is at 100Mbps but that can be increased (and will be to 1Gbps) as the demand and technology advances allows.
Not sure what happened to my comment there… This is what I emant to say:
To take advantage of the improved speeds from FTTN you will need to live 50Mbps.
Ah I see… the server is stripping out the “left bracket character” and messing the comment up… Anyway…
Josh
Glad you cleared that up
“Blazes says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:44 am
…
Steve Jenkins published a piece recently in the Technology Spectator which, like many articles written about the NBN, is full of indignation that the Coalition would dare to criticise the NBN Co’s fibre to the premises strategy. Mr Jenkins did not take time to discuss why it is that thousands of people in greenfield estates, around Australia, have no wireline service at all because the NBN Co simply hasn’t turned up, nor did he discuss why the NBN Co is so woefully behind even its own very long schedule. Disturbing the dream is always uncomfortable, better to focus on the Opposition.
However he does pose some questions and I thought I would restate them and respond to them.
With this scenario in mind, these are questions that Mr Turnbull should be answering about the Coalition’s NBN:
1) Just who is going to own the company that will do the FTTN-NBN roll-out?
The NBN Co will continue as a government owned company – it far from ideal that it was set up as a government owned company, but it has been and is probably unsaleable in its present state of development and for the forseeable future.
However we will remove as many of the barriers to competition with the NBN Co as possible – for example we would seek to reverse the arrangement whereby Telstra and Optus are obliged not to use their HFC to compete with NBN Co on broadband data and voice, the extent to which that is possible obviously depends on negotiation. In every other country of which I am aware, government policy seeks to encourage and promote facilities based competition, including by HFC, not suppress it.
We will certainly remove the obstacles to private sector fibre deployment companies operating in greenfields estates.
2) Is Turnbull prepared to guarantee that NBN Co will be left with a competitive business model, able to service debts and commitments already entered into?
If the NBN Co completes its network build more quickly and at less expense, it follows that it will have much less capital to service. Accordingly its financial position should be better relative to that of the NBN Co on its present plan. The experience in other markets (USA for example) is that FTTN networks enjoy comparable ARPUs to FTTP networks – the very high speeds (100 mbps plus) available on FTTP are not sought after by sufficient customers at sufficiently high premiums to justify the additional investment. That, at least, is the feedback I have had from telcos in the USA, UK, Canada and several other countries.
i) If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?
I am not sure what he means by this. Is he suggesting that the FTTP strategy is some sort of religious cult and were the NBN Co to change its build strategy to incorporate more FTTN, that would be a moral outrage? If he means will the NBN Co comply with its contractual and other legal obligations to its employees, then the answer is obviously yes – just as any Australian company should.
ii) Will he be giving the contract to Telstra? What then of the SSU?
I am not sure what contract he is referring to here – the network would continue to be owned by NBN Co and built by whatever contractors it selects.
iii) Give the contract to NBN Co? How will that integrate with their work?
See above
iv) Create a new entity for the FTTN-NBN and would such an entity be wholly Govt owned for shared with Telstra?”
See above
3) Where is he going to get the detailed FTTN deployment plans?
i) Will he acquire them from Telstra or rely on Telstra to give up in-confidence commercial data and Intellectual Property?
FTTN deployments, because they follow the pattern of the existing lay out, cost much less and take less time to plan that FTTP- as I have been advised by people who are actually doing FTTN and FTTP rollouts. I anticipate a thoroughly constructive co-operation with Telstra on this, and their management has made public statements indicating that. However the network would be NBN Co’s – there is no change to the objective of structural separation which I have supported for many years.
4) Will he make any guarantees about the service provided?
ii) And will ASIC or the ACCC regard those promises as mere political puffery or commercial statements, misleading, and actionable, if false?
Services offered should be described factually. The Openreach (BT’s functionally separated network company) approach is before a premise is signed up, a line test is done so as to show the would be customer what speed service they are able to get.
How can he guarantee “$20 billion in savings” if they don’t appear on the Federal Government balance sheet?
I have been careful not to nominate a particular sum of money as the difference between what we would do and Labor’s current plan. For a start there is enormous scepticism that the NBN Co project can be completed within the cost and timeframe of their business plan. Several very experienced civil contractors and engineers have said to us recently that they think the actual build cost is likely to be $80 to $100 billion for example.
These more recent comments compare with Cliff Gibson’s estimate cited in Commsday 16 May 2011:
“I do know that the two partner organisations that we work with would have put tens of millions of dollars worth of work in to put the bid together and our experience on this exercise, and the costing involved, would lead me to think that the cost of roll- ing out the optic fibre to 93% of the homes around Australia is going to cost between 60-80 billion,” [Mr Gibson] told an ATUG industry gathering in Melbourne.
What we do know is that FTTN is cheaper and faster to deploy than FTTP. The experience around the world is that FTTN costs between 1/3 and and 1/4 of FTTP and that it takes much less time to deploy. As I have noted elsewhere by way of example, BT passed 7 million homes in the UK with FTTN last year alone.
The argument against FTTN is obviously that it does not offer the same very high speeds of FTTP, but if you can deliver speeds capable of supporting the services people actually need now and in the forseeable future and you can do so quickly as opposed to many years away then the trade off is worthwhile. If money and time were no object you would do FTTP everywhere, but sadly in the real world, rational people do have to take into account how much things cost and how long they take to deliver.
I might conclude this blog with a reflection on my visit this week to Western Australia. I have now met dozens of people here (as I did last week in Queensland) with inadequate broadband services who would dearly like the NBN to come along and fix their problems.
But it simply isn’t happening. Some people, in greenfields estates, have no wireline services at all and the NBN Co can give them no assurance as to when it will turn up to connect them. Others are told they will be dealt with some years in the future. For them a faster upgrade is a very compelling proposition. The growing gap between Labor’s FTTP nirvana spin and the reality of nothing happening is causing more and more bitterness especially in greenfields estates where the NBN no-show is a growing catastrophe for more and more Australians.
As far as the balance sheet point is concerned, let us just cut through the fog of spin and nonsense here. A dollar saved on the NBN Co build is a dollar less for the Commonwealth to borrow and service with interest. Under the accounting rules the expenditure on the NBN does not count towards the budget outcome – so much deficit or surplus – but it is cash – real money – nonetheless and it does add to the debt burden of Australians.
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52 Responses to “A response to the Technology Spectator”
Blazes says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:24 am
Very good response Malcolm – unfortunately, NBN absolutists rely more on emotion and platitudes than logical reasoning. So good to see you standing up to the IT geeks, and actually putting together a sensible policy which is good for Australia.
I especially loved “If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?” Their attitude of entitlement knows no bounds! Do they realise their salaries are being paid by the taxpayer?
Reply
Phil says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:28 am
“The argument against FTTN is obviously that it does not offer the same very high speeds of FTTP,”
Or the same reliability, the same consistency, or the same upgrade-ability.
Reply
Mark says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:32 am
The greenfields wireline access problem is a complete furphy which you have included to distract the discussion away from the central difference between the Coalition FTTN proposal and the current Govt’s FTTP network.
FTTN cannot and will not overcome the problem of the ‘last mile’ being COPPER. Clearly your proposal is to build a second rate broadband network that will never have the capacity to fulfil the the fantastic potential which the FTTP offers. This will put Australian citizens/businesses/students at a major disadvantage to those in other countries adopting the inevitable FTTP model.
It’s really inexplicable that you would seek to provide Australians with second rate technology for purely ideological (ie: opposition for it’s own sake) reasons.
The Coalition’s agenda of saying no to Australians’ dreams and aspirations is not acceptable to those of us who want to see this great country prosper in an increasingly competitive world.
The Coalition are displaying all the signs of extreme reactionaries without hope/vision/optimism… they seem to prefer a nihilistic dystopia.
We demand the best broadband technology available…we are a rich country…we can afford it…
Do it once…do it right…do it with FIBRE.
Get on board…or get out of the way…
Reply
Blazes says:
September 6, 2012 at 9:44 am
Mark, seriously, no one is saying FTTN is superior technology to FTTP – we are just saying that FTTN is more affordable and a more cost-effective policy. The fact is that there is a limited amount of money in Australia, and we need to take that into account in every policy, whether it be broadband, health education, or whatever.
And besides, the marginal difference in speeds between FTTP and FTTN would mainly be used for movie downloads, broadcasting etc. in the foreseeable future (not really enhancing productivity or anything).
“Do it once…do it right…do it with FIBRE”
Classic meaningless platitude – coined by a Labor hack – this is not sufficient justification for spending tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.”
It’s not taxpayers’ money. It’s borrowed money. Borrowed money that will be repaid by customers on the NBN itself.
Maybe that’s what you mean by “taxpayers”? NBN customers who also pay taxes?
Nor is it a meaningless platitude. FTTP is the -inevitable- future. So you can spend 40 billion now for FTTN, then another 40 billion in 10 years to upgrade it/replace it with FTTP; or spend 60 billion now for FTTP, but take a couple years extra to finish rolling it out. Note: I made the numbers up for the sake of argument, but the cost of the two-phase approach over the single-phase approach is likely to be higher. So yeah,
1. Do it once – in a single phase, with FTTP, so you aren’t spending twice.
2. Do it right – FTTP is scalable, upgradable and competitive with the rest of the world. And isn’t that the point of the NBN? To make Australia competitive internationally?
Hey Mark,
Can you please nominate a technology other than video delivery that requires that level of speed into my home. I’m not talking about business premises as they can already obtain any extra bandwidth they need at their cost. Please use your imagination and look into the future. What other consumer data type uses that degree of bandwidth. Anything? So you want the rest of us taxpayers to pay for you to be able to watch multiple movies at the same time. Your sense of entitlement is everything that is wrong with this country at the moment.
Pull your head in.
I’d love to have fibre to my front door but I don’t need it and I don’t want to pay for you to have it when you don’t need it either.
24/7 B2B video surveillance over IP? With FTTP this would be perfectly realistic and perfectly affordable. Not with FTTN.
Blazes said.
“The fact is that there is a limited amount of money in Australia, and we need to take that into account in every policy, whether it be broadband, health education, or whatever.”
The current FTTP NBN is not on budget, it is not taking away any money from the budget.
It is being financed by loans from Government Bonds. It is payed off by money going to the NBN Co. from customers using the system, paying the Private enterprise RSPs for internet?phone/etc services.
I don’t want a last century solution for this century. That is what the Coalition plan FTTN will give you.
Blaze, if you were keeping up you would know that the NBN is not being paid by tax payers but is in fact paid by investment money. The investment money is obtained through bonds sold by the government. Once the NBN is completed it will make money and pay dividends to the investors. FTTN will not make money like FTTP will as it will use existing copper lines.
FTTN is also building obsolete hardware. Once FTTN is finally built the Node cabinets will have to be torn down in order to deploy FTTP.
FTTN is like the reversible Express-way in Adelaide, it does the job OK but inevitably it has to be replaced by a two way Express-way, which is now costing more than if a two way Express-way was built in the first place.
Mike said.
Pull your head in.
“I’d love to have fibre to my front door but I don’t need it and I don’t want to pay for you to have it when you don’t need it either.”
I don’t want to pay for you you to have it!!
You won’t. See my last post about how it is financed.
If you don’t need it or want it, don’t be so self interested. This is something that will project us into the 21st century, it is a necessity.
Bruce please provide at least some conjecture as to it’s necessity. No one who is pro FTTP can even speculate as to some form of consumer data that requires that level of bandwidth. I’d would gladly reconsider my position if they / you could. And despite all the accounting tricks used to remove it from the budget, as Malcolm states in his last paragraph it’s still a debt burden we will all have to service.
> Steve Jenkins
We’re off to a wrong start. The guy’s name is Steve Jenkin. You know we’re off to a bad start if the mistakes start two words in.
> Mr Jenkins did not take time to discuss why it is that thousands of people in greenfield estates, around Australia, have no wireline service at all because the NBN Co simply hasn’t turned up
The reason Mango Lakes, which you used as an example last week, doesn’t have fibre yet is because the developer, VillaWorld, decided not to care about communications and didn’t put in a thing. What happens is that NBN Co is the provider of last resort for new developments with more than 100 premises. That means that they’re the people who will hook up new estates if the developer goes belly up or doesn’t arrange with Opticomm or Telstra or whoever for telecommunications. Now, NBN Co became the provider of last resort for premises approved after the 1st of January 2011, which was at a time when it wasn’t clear how long the Telstra negotiations were going to take and was, in retrospect, too early.
> nor did he discuss why the NBN Co is so woefully behind even its own very long schedule.
You better be grateful you didn’t, because NBN Co is behind its schedule because it was delayed for nine months in negotiations with Telstra. Which a coalition government was responsible for. You’re criticising NBN Co for taking the time to satisfactorily resolve a mess your own party created.
So, so far one mistake and two things that the Labor party wouldn’t have to do if the Liberal party hadn’t created the telco monopoly in the first place and a delay directly caused by said telco monopoly.
If you’re arguing we shouldn’t vote Liberal next election, you’ve been doing a bang-up job so far.
> However we will remove as many of the barriers to competition with the NBN Co as possible – for example we would seek to reverse the arrangement whereby Telstra and Optus are obliged not to use their HFC to compete with NBN Co on broadband data and voice, the extent to which that is possible obviously depends on negotiation. In every other country of which I am aware, government policy seeks to encourage and promote facilities based competition, including by HFC, not suppress it.
You do realise that the HFC network is facing increasingly higher maintenance costs and that fibre to so incredibly superior to it that it would be anti-competitive for NBN Co to swoop in and steal Telstra’s and Optus customers? If you do this without compensation, what you have is a lawsuit on your hands from Telstra and Optus and iiNet (through TransACT). Furthermore, it is also moneys paid to ensure that the monopoly situation is resolved and that the providers compete on an even playing field.
Furthermore, if people stay on HFC then this dooms the finance model for NBN Co to push up prices. What you’re saying here is in effect “screw Regional Australia”, and the HFC standoff that has resulted in no substantial coverage improvements to the HFC network will continue. You’re saying “screw Urban Australia” with that too.
> We will certainly remove the obstacles to private sector fibre deployment companies operating in greenfields estates.
There are no obstacles. Private sector fibre deployment companies are not hampered by NBN Co if the developer of said estate cares even the slightest bit. Furthermore, these companies, while they have a higher upfront install cost for the customer or developer can offset this by not having to subsidise regional areas. OptiComm still survives and will continue to thrive. The only thing it means is that it has competition, but said competition is hampered by both the ACCC restrictions placed upon it and its business model.
> If the NBN Co completes its network build more quickly and at less expense, it follows that it will have much less capital to service. Accordingly its financial position should be better relative to that of the NBN Co on its present plan.
So, what you’re saying is if one offers a crappier service that’s cheaper, it follows beyond any doubt that one would make more money?
Even if fewer people would buy said product or if it is much more expensive to maintain? Even if you’re paying $700 million more every year for maintenance?
I’m really not sure how much of a businessman you really are after a statement like that.
> The experience in other markets (USA for example) is that FTTN networks enjoy comparable ARPUs to FTTP networks – the very high speeds (100 mbps plus) available on FTTP are not sought after by sufficient customers at sufficiently high premiums to justify the additional investment. That, at least, is the feedback I have had from telcos in the USA, UK, Canada and several other countries.
NBN Co estimates the same thing, unbelievably, for a certain part. Check page 64 of the NBN Co corporate plan. It estimates that even in 2028, 60% of customers will be on 100 Mbps or less. However, there are customers who would make that additional investment, 30% will go for 100 Mbps plus by 2020, 15% for 250 Mbps or more. And they are the customers which FTTN cannot have that make FTTP financially viable. They are the millions of people who will benefit from faster internet than FTTN can ever do, and every projection out there estimates that they are willing to pay for it. They are an integral financial part of the NBN Co plan, and disregarding them threatens the finance structure of the whole thing.
FTTH will be paid for in great part by those who are in cities and want very fast speeds. Changing this to FTTN removes this most lucrative contribution will mean that if you’re saving billions by rolling out FTTN, you’re also giving up billions in revenue.
> i) If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?
> I am not sure what he means by this. Is he suggesting that the FTTP strategy is some sort of religious cult and were the NBN Co to change its build strategy to incorporate more FTTN, that would be a moral outrage? If he means will the NBN Co comply with its contractual and other legal obligations to its employees, then the answer is obviously yes – just as any Australian company should.
It’s rather obvious. FTTN is a betrayal of the plan that NBN Co has by being able to provide one hundred times worse in upload speeds on average to each FTTP premise vs. FTTN/HFC. It will mean billions down the drain by your own arguments and increased end-consumer costs every month. Yet you have the audacity to say that “it’s completing the same project” and will continue to call it the “NBN”. There will be people from NBN Co who will not be OK with that.
> ii) Will he be giving the contract to Telstra? What then of the SSU?
> I am not sure what contract he is referring to here – the network would continue to be owned by NBN Co and built by whatever contractors it selects.
The contract to build the FTTN network. And surely you know what the SSU is?
> iii) Give the contract to NBN Co? How will that integrate with their work?
> See above
Or will the construction be run by NBN Co through various contractors (who already have contracts for rolling out fibre)?
> iv) Create a new entity for the FTTN-NBN and would such an entity be wholly Govt owned for shared with Telstra?”
> See above
Or will you do exactly this. You’re feigning ignorance to not answer any questions.
Never mind your not answering any questions posed by Senator Conroy in the interest of the Australian people.
> However the network would be NBN Co’s – there is no change to the objective of structural separation which I have supported for many years.
So, now you’re saying that the network is Telstra Wholesale’s and NBN Co’s, at the same time?
> I have been careful not to nominate a particular sum of money as the difference between what we would do and Labor’s current plan.
But you said you already had. You said you had a fully costed plan all drawn up and waiting for release? You already have nominated a particular sum of money that you could at the very least compare to NBN Co’s current projections, you just haven’t revealed it yet.
> Several very experienced civil contractors and engineers have said to us that they think the build cost is likely to be $80 to $100 billion for example.
“Several very experienced”.
Don’t patronise us. Show us why and help us understand. If you truly believe that it will cost that much, then you owe it to Australians to explain why. But you haven’t. Not in the past five years of arguing about the actual cost of the NBN Co. You’ve been blowing this thing out of proportion just like Abbott did with the effects of the price on carbon dioxide. And similarly, you have nothing real to back up these numbers. If you can save the Australian taxpayer x billion with your plan, then I guess it’s up to you to reveal how so in detail. But if you’re saying that the government is wrong and as actively wasting money, then you should say why it’s $80 to $100 billion and that’s an obligation that you have as an MP.
If you’re not going to do that, however, and you still haven’t, then you’re just full of hot air.
> As far as the balance sheet point is concerned, let us just cut through the fog of spin and nonsense here. A dollar saved on the NBN Co build is a dollar less for the Commonwealth to borrow and service with interest. Under the accounting rules the expenditure on the NBN does not count towards the budget outcome – so much deficit or surplus – but it is cash – real money – nonetheless and it does add to the debt burden of Australians.
Again, the actual cost to the taxpayer is a few dozen million in education and for the ACCC, the treasury and DBCDE. The entire capital and running costs of the project are funded through bonds and revenue, and that includes the repayment of the interest and up to 350 basis points above that.
Yes, it is less money for now, but when the NBN is completed and even before that, it will mean more money for roads, hospitals, healthcare and infrastructure. It will mean $2 billion a year, if not more, in the 2030s extra that we can use to build things that aren’t an investment under accounting rules, but help to improve Australia.
If we’re going to do that by 2030-ish and have an asset worth dozens of billions of dollars, lower prices and a real 21st century telecommunications network, then we’d be insane not to do it.
> Very good response Malcolm – unfortunately, NBN absolutists rely more on emotion and platitudes than logical reasoning. So good to see you standing up to the IT geeks, and actually putting together a sensible policy which is good for Australia.
I am being very logical. I’m looking at the financial situation of what the Labor and coalition policies will cost and what it will earn and what its benefits will be thirty years into the future.
There is not much a doubt that the coalition policy is a better financial investment to make over a timespan of five years and it will deliver results sooner. Over ten years, it becomes very doubtful whether the coalition policy is the better way to go. Over thirty years, which is how long the SAU with the ACCC regarding NBN Co will last, the Labor policy is beyond any sliver of a doubt the better way to go, not least of all because of the cost of maintaining all the copper.
> I especially loved “If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?” Their attitude of entitlement knows no bounds! Do they realise their salaries are being paid by the taxpayer?
This refers to ethical considerations. Aspects of this FTTN plan that is created in collusion with Telstra are a betrayal of the NBN Co promise. It means that even if that’s a tiny bit true, some of the employees of NBN Co will not feel comfortable participating in this. As they were hired to build 93% an FTTH network, then the job description would change substantially. This is asking what should be done about these staff members. Furthermore, and once again, their salaries aren’t being paid by the taxpayer.
> Mark, seriously, no one is saying FTTN is superior technology to FTTP – we are just saying that FTTN is more affordable and a more cost-effective policy.
It is in the short-to-medium term. But the cost of the FTTN proposal combined with the fact that we’d have to throw away at least half that investment with an upgrade to FTTP according to Malcolm Turnbull himself (check the FAQ here), then over the medium and long term it becomes obvious which is better.
> And besides, the marginal difference in speeds between FTTP and FTTN would mainly be used for movie downloads, broadcasting etc. in the foreseeable future (not really enhancing productivity or anything).
The commercial FTA TV industry is a $4 billion a year operation. They may disagree with the argument that they’re not enhancing productivity. Surely businesses being able to upload files at a maximum 400 Mbps instead of an average maximum of 4 Mbps (or maximum maximum for FTTN of 10 Mbps) is a productivity enhancement? Surely going 100 km/h on a road is better than 1 or 2 or 3 km/h?
> Classic meaningless platitude – coined by a Labor hack – this is not sufficient justification for spending tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
You do realise that the FTTN plan would also cost tens of billions of dollars? And again, it is doubtful whether the coalition plan would include taxpayer money or whether it could be funded through the current NBN Co funding model, but the NBN Co funding model is at almost no cost to the taxpayer.
> Can you please nominate a technology other than video delivery that requires that level of speed into my home.
Uploading. Reliability. Upgradeability. If you had asked someone in 1980 what we’ll do with 1 Mbps, they’d have said the same thing, but here we are, uploading files over constant reliable links, watching YouTube and playing games. Furthermore, FTTH means the network isn’t tied to Telstra as it would be with FTTN. Multicasting is still not allowed on Telstra’s wholesale network and they make unicasting prohibitively expensive.
There is no reason to even think that FTTN can guarantee reliable delivery of IPTV to any substantially greater extent than ADSL can to the same premises or all of the premises it can be hooked up to. And this is talking about plain vanilla HD IPTV. Alcatel Lucent estimates that the average connection on the planet in 2020 will be 100 Mbps. Sure, Alcatel may be biassed, but that doesn’t change the fact that FTTN can’t even do 100 Mbps, reliably, and definitely not with the copper infrastructure we have in this country.
Think back to 1980 and how they’d have imagined what we could do, and then think forward to 2042. The only thing we do know is that FTTN won’t be good enough in 2042, and we’d have to throw away an FTTN investment in the tens of billions of dollars (apart from the other FTTN drawbacks) between now and then.
> I’m not talking about business premises as they can already obtain any extra bandwidth they need at their cost.
For medium and large businesses that may be the case. But for schools, small businesses or people who work from home that extra cost is unaffordable. NBN Co’s FTTH makes it affordable.
Please use your imagination and look into the future. What other consumer data type uses that degree of bandwidth. Anything? So you want the rest of us taxpayers to pay for you to be able to watch multiple movies at the same time. Your sense of entitlement is everything that is wrong with this country at the moment.
> I’d love to have fibre to my front door but I don’t need it and I don’t want to pay for you to have it when you don’t need it either.
No one will ever need more than 640k of RAM, right?
> And despite all the accounting tricks used to remove it from the budget
It’s standard accounting practice, but if you want to call accountants tricksters, then fair enough.
> as Malcolm states in his last paragraph it’s still a debt burden we will all have to service.
Actually, it’s a debt burden that NBN Co would service. The government is only on the hook if NBN Co goes tango uniform, and there’s no sign are even reasonable suggestion of that happening.
And here are the real questions that are being asked that Malcolm Turnbull is refusing to answer until a week before the next election:
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/09/05/stop-hiding-your-nbn-policy-conroy-tells-turnbull/
And lastly, the fact is that for 50% of those on the slowest fibre speed and for those 7% not on fibre, so about 57% of the Australian population, NBN Co will provide wholesale services below cost in the next year or two, while still having a viable funding model.
Dear Malcolm Turnbull, will your plan provide wholesale services to 57% of premises under cost or should we just screw regional Australia and the old and poor who are less likely to want higher fibre speeds?
And really now, finishing up, this was called “A response to the Technology Spectator”.
These were the questions, and whether Malcolm made any response at all:
Not answering these:
> Alternatively if he has reached a certain understanding with Telstra, including being given full/partial access to the 2008 Telstra FTTN plans, then shouldn’t we be informed of the terms of the deal?
> How is he going to get access to the Telstra copper distribution network?
> Has he already approached the Telstra Board and CEO about how this would work and what would work for them?
> And will ASIC or the ACCC regard those promises as mere political puffery or commercial statements, misleading, and actionable, if false?
Answering “Not sure” for these:
> If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?
> Will he be giving the contract to Telstra? What then of the SSU?
> Give the contract to NBN Co? How will that integrate with their work?
> Create a new entity for the FTTN-NBN and would such an entity be wholly Govt owned for shared with Telstra?
Responses for these, but:
> Just who is going to own the company that will do the FTTN-NBN roll-out?
While leaving it ambiguous which company will do the FTTN-NBN rollout.
> Is Turnbull prepared to guarantee that NBN Co will be left with a competitive business model, able to service debts and commitments already entered into?
Saying that the funding required would be less, but without covering the revenue impacts.
> Where is he going to get the detailed FTTN deployment plans? Will he acquire them from Telstra or rely on Telstra to give up in-confidence commercial data and Intellectual Property?
“I anticipate a thoroughly constructive co-operation with Telstra on this” after making Telstra’s copper insanely more valueable and leaving them with all the cards.
> Will he make any guarantees about the service provided?
“Services offered should be described factually.”. He’s not making any guarantees about any speeds, he’s just going to make guarantees that it will be clear exactly how crappy they are.
> How can he guarantee “$20 billion in savings” if they don’t appear on the Federal Government balance sheet?
No saying that he cannot back up his earlier statements.
So, Malcolm has “responded” to five out of thirteen questions. In those five responses, he contradicted earlier statements, answers in a way to make it clear he doesn’t understand the NBN Co funding model, leaves the answer purposely ambiguous, expects Telstra to fully cooperate with everything (without much evidence) and guarantees that at least people will know how crappy their FTTN connection will be.
Wow.
I don’t follow — if people can’t get DSL service now, how would fibre-to-the-node help? Isn’t it entirely on Telstra to (elect not to) provide the service from the interchange to their house?
Hi Jon.
Basically, there’s two parts involved. One is the copper connection to your house, the other is the fibre connection from an exchange (or node), which is directly connected to your house, onwards to the Internet at large.
As far as I can tell (and I’m not sure anyone really can, given the few contradictory statements), the coalition plan is relatively clear on one aspect. That is establishing nodes, which basically are mini-exchanges, closer to the customer. These will run a newer version of the ADSL series of protocols called VDSL2, which make copper go as fast as possible.
With the combination of the new protocol and the reduced distance, people who had marginal access to broadband will now get it. That’s in addition to the wireless and satellite plans which are pretty much the same in either the coalition or Labor plan. In addition, the coalition is probably (although who knows) putting some money into blackspot funding, which means that areas that didn’t have ADSL before will have it. It’s not made clear who will own this network, whether it will be NBN Co or Telstra, but probably NBN Co.
As for the second part, the actual copper network to which customers connect to the nodes, it’s unclear what will happen or who will own it. Probably Telstra will own it, and be responsible for this part.
That means that NBN Co will probably be a reseller of DSLAMs and will have to compete against the HFC networks owned by Telstra and Optus as well. It also means that NBN Co will have to pay billions every year to rent the copper from Telstra instead of outright owning it.
In effect, it will mean that most Australians will pay a government run company for about three or four times faster Internet and much of that money will go straight towards its biggest competitor, also a private company, who will also compete in the same areas against them. That is unless the coalition shuts down NBN Co, which may be the more sensible thing to do, in which case the current situation continues and we get to look forward to a Telstra fibre monopoly being rolled out veeeeery slowly. Unless the government gives money directly to Telstra to speed up the process.
So, in a nutshell, the coalition plan will help, and it may do so sooner than the Labor NBN plan. But by basically giving Telstra billions and billions every year, as far as I can tell.
HFC – Designed for TV. Not broadband.
FTTN – Uses Fibre. Was good when Fibre was expensive (pre 2000) – Expensive to Run and Maintain.
Wireless – A long way off for being the main medium for the bulk of the country.
What does that leave….
Can you say ‘Fibre to the Home’
We’re getting tired saying the same thing to you Mr Turnbull.
And all the while, day by day, you get closer to a Fibre to the Home rollout.
First we could do it with wireless.
Then we didn’t need those speeds.
The amount of times your party’s position has changed on broadband is laughable.
Can you say ‘Fickle’?
It’s time to come to the party and realise that the bulk of the cost is Manual Labour.
Manual Labour that we need today or tomorrow.
It’s time to do the sums Mr Turnbull, cause although you can find the odd person to support your claims, time and time again you have been refuted.
The maths for FTTN don’t stand up IN AUSTRALIA.
They may stand up in many many many many other countries (once upon a time), but they don’t stand up in AUSTRALIA.
Do the numbers Mr Turnbull.
All the info is there.
FTTN doesn’t stack up in Australia.
And a GBE is a cost effective way to deliver FTTH to the country.
‘Ubiquitously’
Not Patchy. Not 2mpbs here, 80mbps there as is the case in the UK…
It’s time Mr Turnbull.
It’s time to step up and admit you are wrong.
Or it’s time to step down.
You have wasted too much of our time already.
Sincerely
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
The answers above still lack a lot of clarity. eg. there is lots of posturing about designing the system for reality and not dreams, then follows a discussion on how much faster a roll out of FTTN would be over FTTP. Well that might be true if FTTN had been started before FTTP, but the REALITY is that didn’t happen, the whole plan and roll out is for FTTP.
In Malcolm’s discussion there is no indicator about how long it would be before a FTTN project would take to roll out now considering that so many things would have to happen over a long eriod of time before it could be started. 1) the government laws/contract changes to stop the current roll out and under what conditions – stop immediately or continue all current cable roll outs to completion? – I dunno 6 months – 12 months from assumed coalition win? 2) Stop of existing FTTP planning by NBN and re-design of whole network to accommodate existing FTTP and new FTTN maybe 1-2 years? 3) negotiate contracts again with suppliers to roll out at reasonable cost – didn’t this take the NBN over 1 year with the FTTP roll out when lots of the negotiations stalled due to what the NBNco called attempted gouging. 4) re-negotiation with the affected carriers etc such as Telstra, Optus, especially on how to share access on the copper pair again.
It might be argued that a lot of this might happen in parallel, but in most cases it probably wouldn’t as each step requires input from the previous before the parties involved would agree to anything, which is what we have seen with the FTTP.
So what is a likely time frame before roll out of a FTTN network would start? 3-4 years? So the argument that people would get their fast broadband faster with an FTTN is not true. The argument used by Malcolm is a bit sly, he should say how long it is estimated before FTTN is rolled out to customers, and when discussing the FTTP/FTTN options, he should state reality about a CHANGE over to FTTN.
The other disturbing part of the discussion is the HFC cable, and where FTTN would be rolled out first. It is suspected that the allowing the HFC to continue and rolling out the FTTN in competition is that the FTTN is to start in the city where they already have fast ADSL2 and wireless, and the FTTN would compete against them, and ignore the regional areas where the FTTN/fixed wireless is needed most, and no doubt from where Malcolm receives the most complaints.
It is assumed that the direct wireless (not existing mobile) to be used in the NBN FTTP would also be used as part of Malcolm’s “mixed technology” solution to regional areas, as FTTN is of no use in the regional areas where the copper pair lengths are too long to carry the signals from the FTTN node, which is the reason for poor ADSL in the regions to start with. If the NBN roll out is stopped while all the re-jigging is done over a 3-4 year period, then all those regional customers that would have received fast wireless broadband as part of the NBN FTTP, will be delayed by another 3-4 years while the new solution is setup, and then receive exactly the same solution they would have received from the earlier plan. But again we hear Malcolm say that these customers would (have) received their faster broadband earlier with a FTTN solution, the REALITY is that the regional customers will be delayed another 3-4 years with Malcolm’s solution.
Reading Malcolm’s reply above and watching/listening on the TV interviews it seems that Malcolm has been talking with lots of obfuscation. He talks about what would have been possible with a FTTN and then fails to talk about the reality of the current situation.
(parallel posted on technology spectator)
How do you know that FTTN will deliver “speeds capable of supporting the services people actually need now and in the forseeable future” if you can’t state the sort of minimum speeds it will deliver? What is this adequate speed and what services have you benchmarked that you think people actually need?
More fact free spin from Malcolm, what a surprise!
How about applying the same level of disclosure to your patchwork of obsolete technologies plan (dubbed NoBN on Whirlpool – National obsolete Broadband Network) and Telco handouts (aka subsidies to Telstra) that you applied to to the costings of the Liberal Party’s “Direct Action Climate plan”?
Until you do that, I and the rest of the tech savvy, critical thinking Aussie population will apply a bucket of salt to your fact free claims!
After your speech about honesty in politics and the dire situation we find ourselves in, it would be refreshing if you’d take some of your own advice and come clean on the NBN. If we can build an FTTP network at NO COST to the taxpayer that has VERY good consumer pricing, why shouldn’t we?
Start telling us how much our FTTN connections will cost consumers.
Start telling us how much they’ll cost taxpayers.
Start telling us what speeds we’ll get, how far apart are the nodes?
Start telling us how long you think it will be before we’ll need FTTP anyway.
If you’re going to start playing the honesty card then start with yourself please.
“Is he suggesting that the FTTP strategy is some sort of religious cult and were the NBN Co to change its build strategy to incorporate more FTTN, that would be a moral outrage?”
I really hope that the FTTN plan you and your clown master have come up with cost you another election.
What will be an outrage is if you and your clown master and clown party get in to government and fuck it all up (i.e Australia’s communications future) with your FTTN plan. That will be the outrage.
Malcolm, Please stop the lies stop the deception, stop treating the Australian public with contempt..
Your plan (FTTN) is akin to building a 1 lane freeway, it will do the job… although very poorly. Why wouldnt you for the extra dollars build a 2 or 3 lane freeway(FTTP) and be safeguarded into the future for a long time to come..?
Do it once do it right…
To people saying it is not taxpayer money paying for the NBN, the fact is that when NBN Co, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Government, raises debt, that debt is debt of the Government. Every last cent spent on the NBN is at the risk of the taxpayer. And the financial modelling for the NBN that predicts a return is very dubious.
.
@Blazes:
“And the financial modelling for the NBN that predicts a return is very dubious.”
Every played the board game monopoly?
It isn’t very dubious at all. And if you had punched the numbers you would know this.
And hence why Turnbull has to keep the GBE.
There is no other way to deliver vast infrastructure improvement (if there had been in Australia, they would have done so sometime in the last 15 years (remember we went from being on top of communications, to somewhere way down the list…)
The point is, even if the NBN FTTh rollout doubles to $80billion CAPEX, it’s still value for money. It’s unlikely to do that though.
A partial FTTN could have been more easily considered had Telstra been separated. But alas, it wasn’t.
If FTTN was rolled out in 2000, it would have been alot better too. But alas, it wasn’t.
The fact is, Fibre is the end goal. Until such time as wireless can easily handle gigabit speeds (+), which won’t be for a long long time.
And fibre helps with that goal.
So, do the maths (and hopefully Turnbull finally does also) and you will see, it isn’t that dubious afterall.
In fact, FTTH is very prudent.
And it will help Australia to reclaim it’s spot as a leader in telecommunications.
aw
.
Any assumptions that NBNCo making that are allegedly “dubious” apply equally to a FTTN network if not more so.
For example one of the more widely criticised assumptions is that expect some users to be wanting to pay a premium for services upto 1Gbps in the medium to long term. With FTTN you can’t charge a premium for such a service because it won’t exist. Not only that on the sort of FTTN network one assumes Turnbull is actually talking about some users (metro users BTW) will only get a 20Mbps. Will these people pay more for a higher grade service? No, they won’t be able to even if they wanted.
The questions people want to know is how much Turnbull’s network will cost, when it will be finished and what that low end speed is. Those are the only major ways his network will be different….. and he is yet to answer them.
Blazes – i could almost call you Malcolm but you dont seem smart enough..
Malcolm knows in his heart of hearts that FTTP is the right way to go he is unforunatley been hamstrung by his useless clown of a boss, being forced to regurgitate rubbish.
I can imagine Turnbull being a salesperson at JBHiFi or somewhere similar. A reasonably tech-literate customer walks in looking for a laptop or something and asks about the amount of RAM, CPU spec, HDD size and so on. The salesman answers every question with “all of these laptops have as much as they have, if it can deliver the performance and space required for your needs then you don’t need more”.
That isn’t answering the question.
Malcolm, Malcolm, Malcolm…(with sage like shaking of head)…why? oh why? do you continue with this rubbish.
You are a man of such intellect, and in so many ways perhaps the best politician in parliament today, but I cringe in sympathy for you when I read or hear you trying to defend something that you obviously couldn’t, in your heart of hearts, believe in.
Sure, I can understand your opposition to the vast sums that building a FTTH entails, but I can’t understand how you can advocate the vast sums that would be wasted on building FTTN.
I am fast heading into the “old codger” category where a fully completed FTTH will have little discernable difference on my lifestyle or well being.
However I cannot, and will not countenence the idea that a FTTN build is the best option for my children and grandchildren.
So Malcolm by all means let the merchant banker in you question the “financials”, but as a father and grandfather I simply implore you to “think of the children”.
“Fibre to the home” is not about the here and now, it is about the future!
Gary says:
September 6, 2012 at 3:00 pm
“You are a man of such intellect, and in so many ways perhaps the best politician in parliament today, but I cringe in sympathy for you when I read or hear you trying to defend something that you obviously couldn’t, in your heart of hearts, believe in.
Sure, I can understand your opposition to the vast sums that building a FTTH entails, but I can’t understand how you can advocate the vast sums that would be wasted on building FTTN.”
Nailed it Gary. I really hope Malcolm is only holding this position until they get rid of Tony. I can’t believe that Malcolm can really be this ignorant when he holds such decent views on many other issues.
[...] in a small note published at the end of a lengthy response to a critique of the Coalition’s rival NBN policy by Business Spectator, Turnbull [...]
Aaron, I could almost call you Stephen Conroy though you seem too smart (lol!).
Seriously, guys, you have comprehension issues. It’s very simple:
1. We want better broadband.
2. We don’t want to risk too much taxpayer money in the process.
3. FTTN is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than FTTH.
4. FTTN would greatly improve current broadband services.
5. The extra benefits from FTTH (over FTTN) are not that great, given that the extra speeds would generally only be used for movie downloads etc.
I can understand that in an ideal world with unlimited resources FTTH would make sense, but in the real world, not in the IT geek world, this is not so and FTTN makes more sense.
@Blazes:
> 1. We want better broadband.
Agreed.
> 2. We don’t want to risk too much taxpayer money in the process.
Agreed, but more importantly we don’t want to spend too much taxpayer money either.
> 3. FTTN is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than FTTH.
The capital cost is. However, maintenance for the copper alone would be $700 million a year extra (spiking some years to above $1 billion already), and the coalition plan would have a private company do this at a profit margin. That’s apart from all the other costs such as cancelling contracts.
> 4. FTTN would greatly improve current broadband services.
It will double or triple speeds, but has no further upgrade capacity unless we rebuild copper and then it might quadruple it. 4 Mbps upload is typical, 1 Mbps is virtually guaranteed. Some might be lucky enough to get 8 Mbps. Fibre can guarantee 400 Mbps.
> 5. The extra benefits from FTTH (over FTTN) are not that great, given that the extra speeds would generally only be used for movie downloads etc.
And uploads, and lower maintenance, and greater reliability or guaranteed consistency of service and, you know, business kinds of large downloads. Also, the FOXTEL merger decision by the ACCC relied on IPTV providers not FOXTEL being able to compete. That relies on a multicast network not owned by Telstra with guaranteed quality of service.
!Blazes – Until Malcolm provides us with “The Plan” and “The numbers” you are making one hell of an assumption that it will be cheaper. If we were back in 2007, and this was a decision between FTTN and FTTP, then you would have a better argument. But we were there once, and the Government had experts consider the scenarios and guess what, FTTN was not the best choice. Point 5 is shortsighted. If you had said, when Viatel and later Modems were invented that Peer to Peer and Social Media would rule the world, people would have looked at you with utter disbelief, and yet now, people, individuals, produce and distribute content like never before. All enabled by the incremental performance improvements of broadband internet technology. We have a LONG way to go. YOu aint seen nothing yet. FWIW, its not the IT Geek world that is driving the mass adoption of Tablet PC’s and Smartphones. Its not the geeks that are driving the huge explosion of self-publishing. Its the geeks that are forseeing the solutions, and scoping and building to support them however. Maybe its time you stop calling people names, and start to accept you dont really know as much about this topic as the commenters who respond with facts, and not opinion.
Malcolm – I want my kids to live in a world that has the sort of telecommunications I had as a child. That is to say, world class. Not because I want to be able to brag to the world, because I want them to have better jobs, telecommuting potential, choice of non-city home and schooling, access to quality and efficient medical services, ability to communicate in wideband, in real-time, ability to utilise the best the world has to offer, ability to innovate and have the rest of the world buy from us, rather than us from the world. I want us to compete, and compete hard. This is one significant enabler. And you know it.
[...] in a small note published at the end of a lengthy response to a critique of the Coalition’s rival NBN policy by Business Spectator, Turnbull acknowledged [...]
Mr Turnbull.
Are you going to do a CBA?
The comment below came during an Australian Communications Consumer Action Network event in Sydney on Thursday.
“Telstra group managing director of corporate affairs Tony Warren said there were three key areas “to watch” during a move to the NBN; the forced migration from copper to fibre, a potential degradation of services once NBN Co took over and how telcos would build a loyal customer base in a market where all players used the same infrastructure.”
It is called a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD, something that Telstra is not used to and is very frightened about.
If the Labor NBN is built, that is what we will have. Roll on the FTTP NBN.
[...] — not one to be outdone — wrote a lengthy response on his blog, slamming Technology Spectator for a piece “full of indignation that the Coalition would dare [...]
Did you see they have wireless speeds in Tokyo as fast as the NBN now, yes right now
Hi Ann,
> Did you see they have wireless speeds in Tokyo as fast as the NBN now, yes right now
First of all you have to define what you mean by “NBN”. I’m guessing you mean the FTTP deployment. Which has speeds of about 1 Gbps.
Now, let’s look at wireless. Basically no one in Australia has more than a continuous 100 Mhz block of spectrum.
Shannon’s Law says C = B log (1+S/N), with a log base 2. Assuming a 20 dB signal to noise, we get a power factor of 10. So, C = 100 log (11). Working that out, C is about 330 Mbps.
Let’s assume that we have a contention ratio of 20 (which expresses the proportion of customers currently using this spectrum versus how many are on that frequency and ready to use it), and 2000 customers with a connection to that base station.
Due to contention, we’re down to about 3.3 Mbps, which is very poor at all, or about a three hundreth of what the NBN will do. This also ignores interference from other towers.
Now, Shannon’s theorem expresses a physical limit that is the maximum an absolutely perfect technology can go. However, with noise and such and the actual implementation, we might get less than a three hundreth of the speed of fibre. Now consider the fact that fibre is also subject to Shannon’s Law. But the frequency is in the high terahertz (infrared light) instead of low gigahertz. And because it’s a point-to-point link, there is no contention on a single fibre link. And because it’s a clear channel, the SNR ratio is very good. There is no contest between the two even at a very very fundamental physical level.
One way to test whether wireless is feasible is quite simple. We find out whether wireless is already competitive with fixed line broadband.
Right, Telstra 15 GB on NextG wireless goes for 42Mbps/15Mbps at $110 a month.
Internode NBN FTTH does 50Mbps/20Mbps with 600 GB at $105 a month.
Wireless costs about 40 times more currently, in the market place.
Wireless will work very well if you have a metric shitton of bandwidth and willing to build towers every three hundred metres.
So, yes, there might be wireless speeds in Tokyo that are, if no one else is on the same tower, and you’re not moving, as fast as 50 to 100 Mbps, which is between the top two NBN speed tiers. But the NBN FTTH deployment is adding 1 Gbps soon and the fibre itself can support hundreds of Terabits.
DOMINIQUE TO QUOTE YOU “STOP TALKING CRAP’.
You are not a qualified expert, so stop parroting simple formulas that are 60 years behind the state of the art. You really don’t want to duel capacity formulas with me I can assure you. You clearly have ignored my detailed replies addressing your previous misinformed statements.
You and the other NBN koolaid drinking religious fundamentalists just can’t imagine the damage the policies and philosophy of this Labor government is setting us up for now and for many decades.
Put this in the context of media censorhip, internet filters and ubiquitous monitoring of citizens. This is a government that espouses criticisms of free speech. Who are these historically illiterate technocrats that are running this country and forging these dangerous regressive policies? Did we sacrifice 60M souls last century and absolutely learned nothing?
You may wish to read Technology Spectators response, especially the comments.
http://technologyspectator.com.au/turnbulls-reply-our-nbn-questions.
Sorry Malcolm on so many levels
FAIL
Malcolm why the continuing obsession with HFC.?
Optus really wants nothing to do with it, unlike overseas the physical infrastructure has never been upgraded so oils aint oils Sol, in fact potential customers have been refused, to keep contention down. The upgrade would almost match the initial install cost, i.e not much difference to replacing with fibre, to extend would be not much difference in cost or methodology to FTTH, still running feeder fibre, but with active nodes and coax drops to houses. Lesser upgrade path , lesser lifespan, higher maintenance cost.
Optus and Telstra have no wish to maintain, let alone spend a fortune upgrading it let alone extending it, it could only be done with Taxpayer incentivisation – in other words we pay for it or the NBN is forced to pay for it.
Why such irrationality,? can only assume for the benefit of the Pay TV MONOPOLY owners
http://afr.com/p/business/companies/news_poised_to_formally_bid_for_iMgNdjizBrgTGYQZ70549M
????????
Malcolm, I do have many concerns with the answers you gave.
1) The competion aspect, removing all barriers ?. HFC ( see my earlier comment – Why? and achieving what?, and who will pay for the necessary 10+ year overdue physical upgrade when the owners want nothing to do with it for broadband ?, only for cable TV). Does this mean you will be leaving the copper in situ to enable the continuing use of existing DSLAMS, why discriminate?. If so how can you implement high capacity FTTN?. There are direct wireless companies, no one is preventing them from installing and operating their solutions. So what are you talking about? –
The Greenfields operators – . The NBN is not competing, they are “The Provider of last resort”, so what impediments are there apart from the operational aspects of their proprietory local network. After all they are not part of the NBN so I can understand the commercial decisions of intelligent developers that look to their future reputation.
Still no answer as to who will own and operate and maintain the copper tail at what price, or do we just trust Telstra. The same old runaround and right when tested BS
2) Considering 1) The operational aspects of your Playschool FTTN NBN which has to compete with every premises with existing ADSL and HFC, reducing everyones possible customer base and income whilst multiplying operational and maintenance costs, some one has to pay for that plus ROI. Who will that be?
The argument that not enough will want the higher speeds based on overseas experience, funny our mobile and smartphone ownership and useage do not mirror the figure from those sources. PLUS that is CURRENT useage, not allowing for trends and future requirements. Sorry the attitude that has lead us to our very limited economic depth as a Nation. Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail.
There is no way that your NBN can be viable as you suggest. People want to hang onto their email addresses, so many have that address, business, institutions, friends, family, associates, clubs, financial institutions. That is why the take up figures, Telstra has approx 70% of broadband customers (note their last financial statement), greater in rural and regional and their offerings are VERY expensive, note the News Ltd item re 25% takeup in Bris. Suspect very few Telstra customers, did you also note the ONLY pricing that item printed was The Telstra starter @ $80, no mention of the Exetel etc and those UNDER $30. Scaring off the average citizen. Good old News Ltd and their honest balanced reporting influencing the public
“We will certainly remove the obstacles to private sector fibre deployment companies operating in greenfields estates.”
What obstacles? – Do you mean reduction in standards?
The point is from the developers viewpoint if you think about it.
a) Who owns and is responsible for the servicing, maintenance and upgrades.
b) Remember it will not be part of the NBN Network unless installed by the NBN, so what products and services will be available not just now but also in the future and at what price.
c) It is well and good cabling up and providing for the estate, but what will that connect to, what capacity and interconnect capability, business systems etc.
Remember the Developers are selling a product, that product and their Companies future depends on happy residents and businesses operating within that estate, not just now but also in the future. Word of mouth and perception can make or break
That Drouin Opticom site, forgot to mention that there are NBN estates in the area being installed as we speak
“i) If NBN Co are forced to take on the FTTN, what arrangements will be made for existing staff who may not want to continue under the altered circumstances?
I am not sure what he means by this. Is he suggesting that the FTTP strategy is some sort of religious cult and were the NBN Co to change its build strategy to incorporate more FTTN, that would be a moral outrage? If he means will the NBN Co comply with its contractual and other legal obligations to its employees, then the answer is obviously yes – just as any Australian company should.”
2) i) My great Grandfather was a major Contractor late 1800’s early 1900’s and built much of the rural roads in a part of Victoria and also was a Major Contractor building the irrigation channels in Victoria. That to me is, as an Australian a badge of Honour for the family.
Quigley came out of retirement for this visionary project, many of the team see this as a project they can be proud of being involved in, a badge of honour as an Australian.
I understand the soul less mercenary bean counter mentally cannot understand this. So don’t be surprised if many key individuals have no wish to be involved in the destruction of the vision and providing a cheap and nasty solution.
If I was 15 years younger I too would have dearly loved to be involved in the building of the essential communications infrastructure for the Nation we love, my background some years ago was many years in transmission networks and systems , a bit of brush up and study , but age and family commitments precludes, however I support those with the vision and the Passion
Guess you can have your Seagull management team come in to make the usual seagull drama and mess.
P.S Of the Total cost of the NBN, I believe the provision of fibre to the 93% is only $12Bill. The rest is in support infrastructure, wireless and satellite. The FTTN solution was costed at approx $11Bill, plus add on increased maintenance over 30 years, plus lack of high value high return products.
A disaster in the making just for political power
C’mon Malcolm where is you stupid reply to all our comments? Don’t tell me Tony has got your crotch???
Malcolm, whilst you feel free to dispute any article that reasonably questions your stance.
I await your valiant dispute against this article in the Australian.
a) The headline terminology
“Conroy’s minions offer to ghost the good news ”
“http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/conroys-minions-offer-to-ghost-the-good-news/story-e6frgaif-1226468562442″
To quote
“Council general statement of principles say that publications ’should not deliberately mislead or misinform readers’”
The Australian is the flagship of News Ltd and the head honcho was top gun of FOXTEL – News Ltd’s PAY TV(after the takeover 50% owner of and owner of much of the content) Provided along with the Pay Sports service which News Ltd will be the 100% owner of as a MONOPOLY Pay TV provider on the HFC which you are so obsessed with keeping, upgrading and extending at taxpayer expense.
The Australian consistently and vehemently misleads and has been known to publish absolute untruths in relation to the NBN.
“Stephen Conroy likes to lecture the media about ethics and standards while his own department is breaching every ethic and standard imaginable”
So News Ltd has a problem with any Media release that subverts their agenda and own self interest.
Pot Meet Kettle
” we have his own department feeding taxpayer funded propaganda to magazines.”
The biggest and most powerful Propoganda organisation in Australiais calling information and facts that counter their Propaganda effort to maximise Profits and income via Murdochs new focus on Media content and provision propaganda.
They have no problem with printing anything you or anti NBN source provides that casts the NBN in a bad way or glorifies the HFC vehicle for their MONOPOLY media interests.
I would be ashamed to have support such as that, It would make me question my own worth and integrity