At the risk of repetition – Delimiter’s questions.
The Delimiter blogsite regularly complains that I have not answered a list of questions about the Coalition’s approach to the NBN. All of the issues covered by the questions have been answered – again and again. Exhaustively, if not exhaustingly.
But so Delimiter will have something else to write about – here are his questions and some very brief answers. More details are in the many speeches and blogs on my site.
Q. What international examples of FTTN-style broadband deployments do you consider most pertinent to the Australian situation, and why?
A. There are many examples- UK and US are two obvious ones. But these technologies are rapidly evolving and there are useful lessons from many markets especially in Europe where VDSL is being used more widely.
Q.How long do you estimate it would take, if the Coalition wins the next Federal Election, to deploy FTTN to more than 90 percent of the Australian population?
A. Much less time than via FTTP. We don’t know what awaits us in terms of commitments entered into etc, but we do know that FTTN is much faster to deploy – in the UK for example a quarter of time cf to FTTP.
Q. What, specifically, do you estimate would be the cost difference between deploying FTTN and FTTH as part of the NBN rollout?
A. FTTN in Europe and North America has been described to me by those actually building new generation networks as costing between one third and one quarter of FTTP. Given our relatively high labour costs and the fact that FTTN’s main virtue is that it reduces the civil works which is mostly labour, the difference in Australia is likely to be even higher.
Q. Do you consider it possible to re-work the current Telstra/NBN contract to focus on FTTN instead of FTTH, and how long do you estimate this would take?
A. Yes, and not very long.
Q. What broad details of this contract would need to change, and how long do you anticipate the ACCC would take to approve a modified version?
A. Simply getting access to the D side copper (ie between the street cabinet and the premise). As NBN would remain a separate wholesale only network there are not any ACCC implications.
Q. Do you have a long-term plan to upgrade a FTTN-style network to a FTTH-style network, or a medium-term plan to allow ad-hoc upgrades of this network to FTTH?
A. We would expect to use FTTP in greenfields and other areas where it was more cost effective. As to the longer term that depends on demand and technology.
Q. What do you consider to be the time frame on which a FTTN-style network would continue to be used without an upgrade to FTTH? Will there, in fact, be a need to upgrade in the long-term to FTTH? On what evidence do you have these beliefs?
A. Long term predictions of technology are hazardous, but it is interesting to note that given the dramatic improvements in VDSL technology, there is in many markets a swing back to FTTN. The analysts at Informa, including Brisbane based Tony Brown, have written a lot about this recently and BT for example has increased the percentage of its NGN footprint which is FTTN from 75% to 90%. AT&T for example in the USA do not foresee a need to evolve to FTTP. But contrary to what was been said by others, most of the investment in FTTN is directly applicable to FTTP, and the modern MSANs can support both GPON and VDSL so an evolution is very feasible.
Q. How would you address the claim that FTTN is a short to medium-term technology that will be superceded over the next several decades by FTTH, and that Australia should only be investing for the long-term when it comes to this kind of telecommunications infrastructure? On what evidence do you feel this way?
A. This issue involves a balancing of cost to build, time to build, service outcome delivered and service outcome customers want and will pay for. If FTTN is built with a possible expansion to FTTP in mind, you can have the best of both worlds. Get your network upgrade sooner and cheaper satisfying needs for today and the medium term and, if in the long term you do need to take fibre into the house you have given yourself a head start and in the mean time saved a lot of capital investment until it was needed.
30 Responses to “At the risk of repetition – Delimiter’s questions.”
Get your hand off it Malcolm. If you get into power, you’ll be the first to conceded that FTTN presents an unviable business case given the cost of acquiring the copper and reworking the NBN plan and contracts, vs the result it will deliver. Still I suppose you have to appeal to the right side of the conservatives to get in first, right?
Mr Turnbull:
Q.How long do you estimate it would take, if the Coalition wins the next Federal Election, to deploy FTTN to more than 90 percent of the
Australian population?
A. Much less time than via FTTP. We don’t know what awaits us in terms of commitments entered into etc, but we do know that FTTN is much faster to deploy – in the UK for example a quarter of time cf to FTTP.
That is not an answer. That is a deflection and you have no idea, would be an equivalent answer. If your “1/4″ holds true, then your network should be COMPLETE by 2015. Will you promote that?
Q. What, specifically, do you estimate would be the cost difference between deploying FTTN and FTTH as part of the NBN rollout?
Note the word SPECIFICALLY. You have not answered that question. You have deflected it by using “other countries” as an example. Do you know of ANY country that has rolled BACK from doing FTTP to FTTN? (No, Verizon has not, they have simply stopped expanding FTTP and concentrated on their existing HFC) No, there isn’t, so you have NO IDEA how much it will cost. And “1/4 to 1/3″ is not relevant as they are FROM SCRATCH, which you know very well you won’t be doing.
Q. Do you consider it possible to re-work the current Telstra/NBN contract to focus on FTTN instead of FTTH, and how long do you estimate this would take?
A. Yes, and not very long.
Did you make it through University with answers like those Mr Turnbull? I seriously doubt that.
Q. What broad details of this contract would need to change, and how long do you anticipate the ACCC would take to approve a modified version?
A. Simply getting access to the D side copper (ie between the street cabinet and the premise). As NBN would remain a separate wholesale only network there are not any ACCC implications.
That is entirely incorrect. Telstra own the D Side copper and the ACCC are INTEGRAL to Telstra’s operations as are ALL Telco’s, being that they are regulated, including the NBNCo. You have given NO information on this, simply repeated “Telstra are happy to give us what we need for the same price” and assumed everyone will believe you. And “The same as what NBNCo. are paying” is not likely- you are getting access to both their infrastructure AND their physical copper lines, twice what NBNCo. are asking for.
Your answers lack detail Mr Turnbull. Your standard answer is “the industry says”. The “industry” in Australia FAILED to give Australia what it needs, which is EXACTLY why the government has stepped in. I would not believe “the industry” at large in this country as a matter of faith, as you do. Most others will not either.
The Australian people want DETAILS:
- What will the estimated TOTAL CAPEX be?
- What will the estimated TOTAL OPEX be?
- What will the estimated wholesale price be?
- How long, IN A INTEGER OF YEARS, will it take?
- WHO will be covered?
You cannot and WILL NOT answer those questions, because you do not know. And I’m sorry Mr Turnbull, but we DO know that from the NBNCo. So I will vote for details that may be a bit late and cost a bit more than thought, rather than X “unknown” amount and Y “unknown” time and Z “unknown” coverage. Why? Because I don’t believe that ANY government, Coalition OR Labor, should be trusted at all without a ON PAPER, detailed policy, which you do not have.
Not only do Labor currently have that, IT IS BEING DONE.
Answer the questions AS ASKED Mr Turnbull, not as you would LIKE to answer them.
No hard numbers (quoting some overseas ratio is almost meaningless), no hard promises, no acknowledgement of the waste from deploying cabinets only to upgrade to FTTP which doesn’t require them.
No justification for why you compare government rollouts to for-profit rollouts. Do you understand the difference?
A poor effort.
Mal it would be nice if you can answer some questions not repeated FUD?
1. You now exampled the US, this brings inline New Zealand, UK, USA.
2. Your response to question 2, how long does it take to build is very lacking in detail, much less than you have previously told the public.
3. You are now citing Europe and USA as costings for your argument, when previously it was the UK.
4. Your answer to question 4 is not adequate as well – please expand in great detail thank you.
5. Your answer has no relevance to the question given.
6. So now you stipulate that you are not upgrading to FTTP in the future (even know you are using UK example where they are using FTTC to do on-demand) you are now suggesting that FTTP is no longer an option.
7. Your answer to your question is a constriction to your answer at question 6.
8. Your answer is inadequate. Simply because John Howard did not separate Telstra at the final sale of Telstra shares, it would have been more prudent then to Separate and build a new FTTN/FTTC network then – just like BT in the UK are now doing.
The Capital Investment for FTTP is not much more than the capital investment than a FTTN/FTTC network here in Australia, because to do any real investment you need to do more than just an half-assed network to improve the GDP.
I find your answers to Delimiter, unacceptable, and I ask that you do a proper essay of at least 10,000 words (this is your assignment for holiday period) and report back to us, the public as to see as to why we need to stop the NBN and go with your less than half-assed plan.
.
Q How long is a piece of string?
A About that long.
.
Your comparisons don’t take into account the age of Austrlia’s copper network. Especially in relation to the UK.
Copper life expectancy ~30
Copper age ~30
30 – 30 = Zero time to zero..
See, including numbers isn’t that hard.
There are some locations that could arguably use FTTN. But that doesn’t allow for the upgrade path to fibre..
There are some locations that could arguably use HFC. But that doesn’t allow for the upgrade path to fibre…
And then ‘how’ can this be done ‘cheaper’ and /or ‘faster’ given that all evidence suggests otherwise. Given the current time frame with which we are working and the build that is currently being undertaken.
Here’s a question for you Mr Turnbull.
If your Network Co, can be deliverd in 1/4 of the cost, can you guarantee that end user prices will also be 1/4 of the cost?
I will go for your cheaper network Malcolm if:
a) you can ‘guarantee’ me my needed speed
b) you can ‘guarantee’ me that if the network is 1/4 – 1/3 cheaper to build, my retail price is 1/4 – 1/3 cheaper respectively.
Awaiting your response.
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
Might I remind you back in 2003:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/terry-mccranns-column/coonan-must-be-a-rogue-minister/story-e6frfig6-1111113560681
You really have not answered many of the questions.
I will paraphrase for brevity:
How long to roll out?: Much faster. Not an answer. Tell us your estimate in years thanks. And we don’t think your completion date will be much faster either, taking in time to do your CBA, and then redesign. Oh, and negotiate with Telstra.
What do you estimate would be the cost difference between deploying FTTN and FTTH?: Between one third and one quarter of FTTP by those building it. That’s true, but only when you own (or otherwise control) the D side copper. Telstra will be looking for more money than the current agreement with NBNco to allow this.
Is it possible to redesign the NBN to FTTN and how long?: Yes, and not very long.
A) okay, and B) please give us a timeframe in months and/or years. “Not very long” is not an answer.
What broad details of this contract would need to change?: Simply getting access to the D side copper.
It’s very simple to talk about it Malcolm, but Telstra doesn’t want the copper as they haven’t maintained it well enough. Anyone who has had a Telstra Tech visit in the last 2 years will know that it takes multiple goes to fix things, and the technicians are quite open about telling customers that the copper network is well past it’s use-by date.
If you want to use it and actually deliver the speeds you have undertaken to deliver to the Australian people, then there is going to need to be a quite a bit of copper to be replaced.
What time frame can a FTTN-style network last without an upgrade to FTTH?: Long term predictions of technology are hazardous, but it is interesting to note that given the dramatic improvements in VDSL technology, there is in many markets a swing back to FTTN.
That’s nice, but didn’t answer the question. How long Malcolm, in years thanks.
And for the waffle you decided to give us, there’s more markets worldwide that are moving from FTTN to FTTP. Even the CEO of BT said that FTTN was the worst mistake they have ever made.
How would you address the claim that FTTN is a short to medium-term technology that will be superceded by FTTH, we should invest long-term? This issue involves a balancing of cost to build, time to build, service outcome delivered and service outcome customers want and will pay for. If FTTN is built with a possible expansion to FTTP in mind, you can have the best of both worlds.
Well you kind of can, but you end up with a less than optimal fully fibred network once you do finally make that migration. There is going to have to be new copper laid to get your 80 Megabits as that needs two lines/pairs.
There is a cost to build anything, and with the current state of our national network, there is a real cost of not doing anything – especially in terms of businesses experiencing higher costs than they need to, and that affects their global competitiveness. I have clients that want to back up into the cloud, but they can’t because it takes too long. They sit on ADSL2 exchanges which aren’t that far away, but the copper is so bad they only get 3 or 4 megabits per second.
I myself work in an office where we are at the very end of the reach of an exchange in Inner Western Sydney. We get 3.5megabits and we are trying to run an IT business on that, and we pay Telstra an inequitable amount for the service that is provided.
Your FTTN cannot help us – we need more upload than you want to give us. I would get a 100/40 Fibre internet service tomorrow if it was available, and probably a second 25/5 for testing and other things we do.
The Liberals are supposedly the friend of business and SME’s, yet your ‘policies’ (and that’s being very generous) are literally holding back the businesses that you pretend to support.
You yourself are directly investing in overseas companies deploying fibre to the home. You obviously agree it’s a good thing, but you keep saying it isn’t affordable. It is, and we can’t afford not to have it.
On top of that, taxpayers only guarantee the money and pay the interest bill, then we have an entity returning money back to the Government to spend for the Australian people.
You are a smart guy Malcolm, and I admire your intellect. But I feel sorry for you having to promote something that is not in the interests of our nation or it’s people.
And also please read this article:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/leapfrog-fttn-and-howard-goes-to-top-of-the-class/2007/05/15/1178995155898.html?page=fullpage
Also please read this forum thread on the discussion:
Entitled: “FTTN Will Provide Benefits – Coonan”
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/505286
A few additional questions for Mr Turnbull:
- Is 80 devided by 1000 more or less than 1 divided by 4?
- How about 20 devided by 400?
- What is more expansive:
1. Laying a piece of string all the way between point A and point B; or
2. Laying a piece of string most of the way from point A but stopping short of point B, and then coming back years later to finish laying it all the way to point B from where you stopped.
I would like to add above to posts above:
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/the-big-build/the-numbers-game.aspx
The local access network covers 30 million customers and 8 million broadband lines from approximately 5,500 local exchanges. 300 million telephone calls and 350 million internet connections are made across this network every day.
The numbers are pretty similar to that of Australia’s and Telstra’s network, the only major difference is the population it’s doing.
This is why we cannot do FTTN/FTTC because the population density is greater than doing FTTP here.
And the reason why FTTP works here because it’s doing smaller networks than the FTTN/FTTC networks are doing.
NBNCo are using the splitter ratio of 1:32, where FTTN/FTTC cabinets require much more.
And the distance for FTTP can be archived more because of the PON technology.
I also noted that you are not even showing any promise or confirmation that you will do any type of FTTP only VDSL2.
> This issue involves a balancing of cost to build, time to build, service outcome delivered and service outcome customers want and will pay for.
What about maintenance costs, which are expected to be higher under FTTN? Why the obsession with capex only?
> If FTTN is built with a possible expansion to FTTP in mind, you can have the best of both worlds.
This is hilariously idealistic.
When you say “best of both worlds”, do you mean “you can have a cheap network and a high performance network at the same time”? When you consider that FTTN has much higher maintenance costs, and that the FTTP upgrades are much more expensive than just building FTTP from the start, it becomes clear that you can’t have either with FTTN.
This “FTTP upgrade” system would be affordable by businesses only, unless it is heavily subsidised, or if you can get whole streets to agree to upgrade at the same time. If you anticipate upgrades of this scale, then why bother with FTTN in the first place? So you can provide mediocre broadband a year or two earlier while they wait for the real connection to come?
What a waste of time and money.
Not to mention the FTTP upgrades appear to be limited to 300Mbs from this configuration, plus what contention ratio
BT has just done a trial in Cornwall of 300Mbs which they will now roll out, Verizon and AT&T also offer approx 300Mbs as max from the FTTN infrastructure, note they have almost stopped the FTTN rollout and are flogging off their copper as too expensive to maintain.
Not forgetting contention ratio’s and loaded performance, the NBN is 32 per node fed by 2.5Gbs, how many off a FTTN node when servicing 200 customers on copper?
Off the shelf the NBN being GPON will be upgraded with 10GPON giving 1Gbs – for the high value Business and Enterprise markets which will be a major revenue earner (the 500Gbs coming on line in 2014) as backhaul and transit capacity is increased.
Note the scientific community are already using 100GPON on their network, so the upgrade path is established for the FTTH NBN
> A. Long term predictions of technology are hazardous, but it is interesting to note that given the dramatic improvements in VDSL technology
There has been only one improvement to what could be meaningfully described as the “technology”, and that is vectoring.
The VDSL standard is more than a decade old, and the only other “improvements” have been to move the nodes closer (ie. RUN MORE FIBRE) and use more bandwidth (ie. VDSL2) or double up the lines (pair bonding). Neither of these are a technical gain; they don’t improve the “average performance per 1km line” or “average performance per 500m line” at all, it’s just playing with the numbers.
Here, allow me to invent VDSL3: take VDSL2 profile 30a and double the bandwidth again. Done! Now you get 400Mbps at 100 metres. Time for VDSL4 now….done! double the bandwidth again, and you get 800Mbps at 50 metres.
I understand that you’re not an engineer, so it may be difficult to understand the nature of technological improvements, and how past gains do not imply future gains. They don’t come out of nowhere; anything a telco is deploying was seen in a lab 10 years ago, and on paper 20 years ago. VDSL2 still uses the same OFDM described decades ago, and vectoring uses noise-cancelling principles that are just as old.
There is nothing left to do now. Minor improvements (as in, less than 10% overall effect) are possible with vectoring implementations, but there isn’t anything promising that’s sitting in the pipeline, waiting for the silicon to catch up (this is what can hold back a “known” technology…you can’t really roll it out until a sub-$50 chip can implement it).
The only thing left to do now is move the nodes even closer, installing even more fibre. The logical limit of this is FTTP.
What I find most disappointing about Mr. Turnbull’s response here is that he is failing to come to terms with fibre being the end game technology regardless of the path taken.
Wherever Mr. Turnbull cites an example of FTTN he is citing an example of where the decision was made because it suited the owner of the copper.
Mr. Turnbull cites costs of one third to one quarter for FTTN construction, but neglects to mention that this is the cost incurred to the owner of the copper. Once you add the copper the real cost doubles.
Indeed, if you go case by case looking at the examples cited by Mr. Turnbull it turns out the real reason why FTTN is being used is that the beneficiary is the owner of the copper.
Lets take a longer term view on where we want to end up and who benefits.
The most egregious aspect of Mr. Turnbull’s argument is to treat the future as if it will never happen.
We will never build fibre to the home in Australia it seems. Because if we did, what is the cost of FTTN, or any such interim “fix” but an additional cost? And if we do, the entire cost argument falls into a hole.
Indeed, unless you want to believe that we will be using copper forever, any cost whether it is a third, a quarter, or a half (most likely if you add in the cost of renting copper) is a cost that is simply in addition to the cost of then running fibre to (almost) every house.
Perhaps I can explain this situation in the following way.
We have the following alternatives.
1. Replace the copper network with fibre, now.
2. Replace the copper network with fibre, but in a piecemeal fashion as the copper fails.
3. Replace the copper network with copper, again in a piecemeal fashion
4. Simply allow the copper to gradually fail.
Now, Mr. Turnbull, you’re not advocating option 4? We surely aren’t going to end up being a country with no fixed line network are we?
How about option 3. Problem here is it’s now cheaper to replace failed copper with fibre, so we can move along. (But curiously, one of the things that might happen under FTTN to maintain any semblance of a service guarantee is precisely that. Throwing good money away redoing copper).
Option 2? It is more expensive to replace fibre piecemeal, on a street by street, Node by Node, or even house by house basis (as Mr. Turnbull seems to be advocating on Lateline). In essence we end up with a fully fibre network eventually, but the summed total of the labour that went into its construction is much higher than in option 1. Who pays for this inefficiency? The end user of course.
Option 1 means building a fibre network now. And clearly that’s what we’re doing. Its the most efficient method if (Mr. Turnbull’s obfuscation aside) you accept that a fully fibre network is the inevitable end result.
All that remains is not that we build a fibre network, nor when, but how. And NBNco is perhaps the best model for this. Certainly if Telstra were allowed a monopoly FTTH network, it would cost considerably more. And certainly if this was the case, Mr. Turnbull would not only approve of the situation, but invest in it.
The proposition that we will never have a fully fibre network in this country is, when you consider the above options, ludicrous.
We’re not going to let our network rot.
We’re not going to continue to use copper.
The inescapable conclusion is the cost of running fibre to every home is inevitable and that anything we do to delay that simply adds to the cost as well as causing delay.
Mr. Turnbull’s attempts to obfuscate the time scale ignores some hard reality.
Some of the copper is already dead. Its dead in my street. Under FTTN we would either be replacing that dead copper with new copper (throwing good money after bad as they say) or replacing that dead copper with fibre. And if Mr. Turnbull is to be believed in what he said on Lateline, I and many others like me will have to pay tens of thousands for the “business class solution”. Namely a fibre.
You have to keep asking this question – who benefits from all of this, Mr. Turnbull?
So the whole case for “cheaper” is a fiction. It doesn’t matter how many billions you spend, or don’t spend on FTTN, that money is wasted.
FTTH has a 50 year plus lifespan. FTTN certainly does not.
Lets talk about “sooner”.
Mr. Turnbull seems to be advocating that NBNco be directed to redesign its network in mid roll out, weaving FTTN into the patchwork quilt of existing fibre serving areas. Creating not just a host of technical conundrums but an entire new dimension to its product map, mixing slow and unpredictable “location lottery” copper based services, with infinitely faster and more reliable fibre services.
What Mr. Turnbull’s non-answers fail to mention is that this approach will result in years of further delays.
Re-negotiation with Telstra is not a process that will take weeks or even months. The length of time reflects that it is a detailed technical process involving thousands of pages of documents and a host of lawyers. And with such a substantial deal you can expect a repeat of what NBNco faced which is the deal had to be taken to shareholders. So you’re talking about a year of delay, even if things go smoothly.
And has been pointed out by others, if you walk into an election with a political promise to use copper, then you’ve lost the negotiation before you started. Its either cost billions more or take longer.
Lets not forget also that the deal with Telstra is interwoven with the deal with Optus. Indeed, the physical nature of the network is linked into the contract. Once you tear that up you’re also up for re-negotiation with a none-too-pleased Optus.
The potential for this to be taken to the regulator is obvious.
Before Mr. Turnbull can get past those hurdles he needs to first re-appoint the board and CEO at NBNco. That doesn’t happen overnight either.
The most potentially time consuming process however is the newly re-appointed NBNco would have to work through the actual process of redesign and more importantly the challenge of issuing a new corporate plan. That process would involve behind the scenes meetings with Mr. Turnbull himself and with Treasury officials, who quite rightly would be concerned about NBNco’s status as a functional investment.
There are so many details in this process, the most insidious one of course being that the entire NBNco product roadmap gets hideously ugly. This is where the regulator will become deeply involved and further delays are the obvious consequence.
I could of course mention other stakeholders, potential legal actions and so on, but it should be clear now that were a Liberal government actually to pursue FTTN the result would be further years of delay.
Its worth noting also that a FTTN design would have to take into account that by 2016 (which is when FTTN may begin construction) the existing FTTH rollout would cover a third of the map.
So, not just a technical mess, but a political disaster.
In essence, a FTTN re-design does not being in earnest until 2016 and therefore may not be complete until 2020. So much for “sooner”.
Let me conclude by giving this debate some more perspective.
What Mr. Turnbull is actually doing is constructing a massive red herring. A smokescreen and a bookmark as it were. A plausibly deniable “alternative” which simply amounts to fooling Liberal leaning voters into thinking its safe to vote Liberal.
If you read between the lines though you’ll notice one thing that Mr. Turnbull has never spoken about, and that’s how, when and under what weakened regulations, he would sell NBNco.
That’s the real policy.
I also forgetting two important challenges to Turnbull’s plan, with the addition to my challenge of a 10,000 word essay and to be reported back by Feb (when parliament resumes).
Two important challenges.
Rising Prices of Electricity
Rising heat issues.
There has been two examples of this recently of heat related, Vodaphone
http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/mobiles/vodafone-outage-leaves-customers-in-the-lurch-20121129-2aj7s.html
“The company said an airconditioning failure at their Tullamarine switch in Melbourne was causing disruptions to 15 per cent of voice traffic across the country”
And also the exchange fire – which completely destroys the exchange.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/324597,conroy-launches-warrnambool-exchange-fire-inquiry.aspx
Can the Hon member for Wetworth, Shadow Communications Minister explain to the pubic in your essay how to resolve these issues?
Thank You,
Daniel.
at the previous election, liberals came with a fttn broadband plan and labor came with ftth. who won? doesn’t that tell you what Australians want?
you site poor take up, but most people are on contracts. I cant afford to break a contract like im pretty sure you can, so I wait. like many others.
you have not answered any of delimiters questions any better than my 5 year old eg. “not that long”.
you say they are wasting money. what? by building something that will last more than 10 years? I think you are wasting a lot more money than nbn.
and your whole wireless is the future is bull**** too. we cant even get decent phone reception in many parts of Australia on networks that have been built over what 20 years? so how are we going to get internet
Hahaha, seriously Malcolm? My 9-year-old brother would call “bullshit” on this nonsense.
At the very least, I was expecting some clever non-answers from you, but these are the least creative non-answers I’ve ever seen. I don’t know whether you were short on time or just lazy as hell, but dear God, you really didn’t give this ANY thought.
I think you need to realise that the people you are trying to convince, the people that are interested in the answers to these questions, are not stupid enough to buy your spin, misrepresentation and deflection. I mean, really! The only reason you might write a response is to try to convince us, so why would you insult our intelligence by giving us these so-obviously non-answers? You would have been better served not ever writing a “response”. You would have at least saved the time and effort.
What a joke. If this is all you’re capable of, no wonder Tony took the leadership from you.
Malcolm Said: “But so Delimiter will have something else to write about – here are his questions and some very brief answers.”
I’d suggest they are more “responses” than “answers”, but I thank you for the attempt at least.
Some actual debate about the facts of your system would be welcomed I think, even if some of those facts are still to be worked out (for example, how much do you think Telstra will charge to access their copper, or to put it another way, how much are you willing to pay them to access their “last/golden mile”?).
How’s your investment in the French FttP roll-out going by the way? ;o)
Truly Malcolm Turnbull has to get the award for the worst of the worst politician ever. He calls for truth and fact based policy discussions but continually comes up with useless weasel word answers devoid of anything approaching detail or fact. This act of honest Malcolm might wash with a lot of people but won’t pass anyone with any technical background and as the election approaches Malcolm will be shown up as the vacuous slime he really is.
Turnbull may have accused John Howard of breaking a nations heart by using devious political maneuvers to kill the Republic yet he is doing exactly the same to kill the nations communication system. The man must be stopped.
[...] In a new post on his site late yesterday, Turnbull noted that many of the issues raised in July had been covered “exhaustively” covered in other speeches and media commentary since. However, Turnbull noted, he would answer the supplied questions “so Delimiter will have something else to write about”. “More details are in the many speeches and blogs on my site,” the Shadow Communications Minister added. [...]
This is insulting, this is sneaky. The best example of how to answer question, without answering it. Mr. Turnbull, you must be tired after the intensive policies debates over the last week in the Parliament.
Or, do you think that only idiots read your blog?
Damn…
Posted 02/12/2012 at 12:23 am | Permalink | Reply
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5594-european-broadband-coverage-summary-for-2011.html
France 96% DSL, 0.3% FTTP, 39.6% Standard Cable, 28.2% Docsis 3 Cable, 87% HSPA, 0% LTE, SAT 100%.
Germany 51% DSL, 12.6% VDSL, 0% FTTP, 2% Standard Cable, 2% Docsis 3, 30% HSPA, 41% LTE, SAT 100%
Spain 90.1% DSL, 7.2% VDSL, 9.4% FTTP, 0.4% Standard Cable, 88% HSPA, 0% LTE, SAT 100%
Sweden 84.4% DSL, 7.2% VDSL, 9.4% FTTP, 1.7% Standard Cable, 1% Docsis 3, 98.8% HSPA, 13.9% LTE, SAT 0%
England has 100% DSL, 17.4% VDSL, 0% FTTP, 2% Standard Cable, 2% Docsis 3, 88.5% HSPA, 0% LTE, 100% SAT
These stats were for 2011.
So DSL still has the greatest Coverage against all technologies.
@Daniel,
I suspect, those DSL were set up years ago over the quality copper network where optic fibre was not option money wise.
In Australia, we are facing bit different copper network and thanks to Liberals Telstra’s total monopoly.
As a result, we have bad quality network and Telstra ripping off every customer to make the shareholders happy.
It is misleading to compare Australia to other countries. Every country has its own, unique circumstances like present copper quality, population, population density, distances, economical situation and so on.
We have to change the present mess, so everyone has access to quality network and all competitors have an equal opportunity to provide its services. Present Government’s FTTH approach is logical and is addressing above problems the right way I believe. It is logical as it fixes two major problems, the Telstra monopoly and carrier quality. When completed, NBN will create true competition between ISPs. It is futuristic and will benefit all Australians, in many ways, for many decades to come.
Few days ago, I was listening to Abbott book introduction. He was talking about modern infrastructure his party is going to build in Australia. Guess what, no mention about National Network, just roads, roads and more roads. I suspect he believes that scrapping NBN will give him the 40B to build them. Stupid as it is, many people still believe in this false injected to unsuspicious voter mind.
Personally I believe that LNP does not give a damn about National Network, in the best scenario it has very low priority on their list. It is puzzling me, why on earth they try so hard to leave Telstra at its present position. There is a saying that if nobody knows what is going on, it is about the money….
As someone said in previous post, M.Turnbull behavior is a smokescreen, and I think this is to cover that they are not going to address present situation, they are responsible for. The arrogant “answers” Mr. Turnbull provided here just confirm this to me.
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/12/01/turnbull-responds-to-fttn-concerns/
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/11/30/unbalanced-turnbull-hammers-abc-again-on-nbn/
Once again you give us nothing as you have nothing.
The reddit/r/Australia ’s ‘brightest’ lefty minds double up as delimiter’s main audience… It’s an incredibly biased website and I’d ignore Renai LeMay. If she didnt furiously promote her own content on sites like reddit Delimiter’s traffic would be just about zero. If it wasn’t for some criticism of Conroy’s filter you’d think the site was setup by the ALP to promote their favourite white elephant projects
Do you have a problem with a fact and evidence based forum. ?
Prefer wishy washy fantasy sites, stick with Bolt, Murdoch Media and A.Jones – plenty of unsubstantiated fluff there to keep you happy
Once again you haven’t answered any questions and are doing yourself no favours in getting votes from IT professionals! I have some questions for which I have been unable to find any answers on the coalition policy.
1. What percentage of the country will get FTTN? We know 93% are due to get fibre under the Labour policy. Are you doing more or less than 93%?
2. Will you be buying or renting the copper from Telstra or will Telstra be running and maintaining the last mile copper? Will Telstra still be responsible for voice services? Will consumers still have to pay line rental? I don’t understand what you envisage the deal with Telstra actually being. And with such a complex deal and changes to the current deal why do you think it won’t take long to arrange? And surely with such fundamental changes to the deal, it will need to be voted on by their shareholders and looked at by the ACCC again?
3. With the higher running costs of FTTN than FTTH or even current ADSL and with the higher maintenance costs compared to a FTTH network, at what point will the cumulative ongoing and construction costs of a FTTN network surpass the cumulative ongoing and construction costs of a FTTH network? Can you show us some actual figures? Surely this will make the consumer price of services over FTTN higher than service over FTTH in the medium to long term?
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