Reporting the real issues about the NBN or why Lateline missed the point.
The National Broadband Network is a complicated issue. But that is no excuse for superficial, misleading or unbalanced reporting of it.
Yet on Tuesday November 27 ABC’s Lateline ran a segment about the NBN ahead of a discussion between myself and Senator Conroy that was all of the above. Lateline missed the point of the debate over broadband policy, preferring to reinforce the Government’s false but seductively simple claim: Labor is ushering us into the digital future, while the Coalition is holding us back.
There is one key question in the Australian broadband infrastructure debate: are the vast costs and long waits associated with running fibre into 93 per cent of homes and businesses justified by the speeds it can deliver? If we can provide Australians with very fast broadband capable of supporting applications used by consumers sooner and at a much lower cost, isn’t that a better approach?
In this light, the questions the ABC should have been exploring are threefold.
First, what are the time and cost differences between Labor’s fibre to the premises (or FTTP) NBN and the Coalition’s alternative (often termed FTTN) that pushes fibre much closer to end users, but not all the way to their home or business? Which is faster and cheaper to build?
The answers are that in comparable North American and European markets both the cost and time to build FTTN is between a third and quarter of building FTTP. This information is easily obtained from telecommunications firms who actually build these networks – and if Australian engineers and executives are camera shy out of concern not to offend Senator Conroy, available from their counterparts in North America, Europe or our region. The ABC has a world-wide news gathering capacity – but has never stirred itself to deploy it to investigate this issue.
The reason it is cheaper and faster to build is very simple. The most expensive and time consuming part of building an FTTP network is the last mile and especially taking the fibre into existing premises. FTTN takes the fibre out to the street cabinet and then uses the existing copper line to the customer’s premises for the last part of the network. As a consequence there is no disturbance of the customer’s premise and a massive savings in civil works and labour costs. In a relatively high wage economy like Australia, the savings of FTTN will be even greater.
Given the importance of this issue – the relative cost and time to build of FTTN and FTTP – and the amount of generally uninformed commentary about it in the media it is, frankly, incredible that no effort is made to report on the actual experience and actual investment decisions of real live telcos and governments in other countries who are grappling with this issue. My comments on relative costs on the other hand are based on first hand advice from executives who are directly responsible for building new generation networks.
Second, what speeds do FTTP and FTTN can deliver? Again there is plenty of evidence. In the UK, BT is using FTTN for 90 per cent of its network upgrade, and delivering up to 80 Megabits per second. The Brits speak English and the ABC has an office in London so given the salience of this issue in the Australian debate it is hard to understand why the ABC hasn’t bothered to interview the folk at BT and report on their experience. Likewise, AT&T has used FTTN for its US wireline upgrade – passing 30 million households. Verizon on the other hard did build an FTTP network, but has stopped expanding it because of the huge costs. An interesting and highly relevant contrast worth some journalistic investigation. Americans, too, speak English and the ABC has an office in Washington – so these facts wouldn’t be hard to find out. AT&T for example offers over its FTTN network voice, broadband and pay television with four concurrent high definition TV streams available.
And across the border in Canada, the cable company, Rogers, has expanded its HFC network (originally built to deliver pay television) so that it can deliver 100 mbps broadband as well as voice and TV. Thats pretty interesting given the regular assertions in the Australian technical media that HFC is out of date and fit only for the technology dustbin. They speak English in Canada too, so that might be a good place to check out.
Indeed, recently the NBN’s own vendor Alcatel announced trials of new FTTN technology showing very fast speeds, often well in excess of 50mbps, from 600m and beyond from the node:
Source: Peeters, M., (2012), “Zero Touch Vectoring: From Innovation to Deployment”, p.11
Third, what speeds are required to deliver applications consumers want to use and are prepared to pay for? If FTTN, while not providing the highest speeds FTTP can deliver, nonetheless meets most customer demands now and in the foreseeable future, the savings in cost and time make it a better approach in most established or brownfield areas.
It is important to note there that it is NOT the Coalition’s policy to do no FTTP at all. Plainly in new developments it should be used and there will be other locations where for one reason or another it is more cost effective or their bandwidth requirements demand it. Our approach will be technology agnostic – like most telcos in the world, we would use the technologies which deliver the service levels needed at the least cost and in the shortest time.
In truth under Labor’s NBN, everybody will pay more, regardless of whether they need high speeds or not. Page 69 of the 2012-2015 NBN Corporate Plan reveals the average revenue NBN Co expects to obtain from each user will rise from $22 to $62 over the next nine years.
Source: NBN Co, (2012), “Corporate Plan”, p.69
Not even Senator Conroy can suspend the laws of economics. A less costly network can charge less to recoup its investment. As NBN Co has told the ACCC it plans to charge enough to get a 7% return on the invested capital.
Rather than these facts, however, we heard claims such as this regarding two-way video:
“It’s that sort of two-way high speed home connection that initially most won’t get under Coalition policy.”
This is wrong and the ABC should correct it.
Respected analysts Analysys Mason (recently employed by NBN Co) advise the downstream/upstream bandwidth needed for high quality videoconferencing is less than 2 Megabits per second, symmetrical.
Source: Analysys Mason, (2012), “Policy Orientations to Reach European Digital Agenda Targets”, p.12, available online here.
Last year in Korea I was shown Cisco’s latest videoconferencing system and was told it required 1.5 mbps symmetrical bandwidth.
The speeds available under an FTTN deployment are more than sufficient to deliver videoconferencing.
For all the ABC’s claims about what people will miss out on under the Coalition, there was no acknowledgement of a key weakness of FTTP upgrades –lengthy construction times. Labor has been in office for five years, yet only 8,613 premises are currently connected to the NBN fibre network.
By way of contrast, the FTTN broadband network Labor promised in April 2007 was scheduled to be finished by 2013!
Ironically, the case study Lateline used was at Wangaratta Hospital – but the report neglected to mention that town is not even on the NBN Co’s three-year rollout plan. No residents of Wangaratta will be connected to fibre until the Parliament after next. And in any event there is no controversy about the need to connect institutions like hospitals, schools, universities and medical centres to fibre optic networks.
The Lateline segment noted that an FTTN deployment would require the installation of street cabinets – the nodes – which connect the fibre to the “last mile” of the copper network. But a balanced report would have recognised that the NBN Co’s FTTP deployment will require over 60,000 fibre distribution hubs which are roughly metre high street cabinets. They are smaller than those required for FTTN and are not powered, but they will be there. Here is a picture of one in Brunswick.
And if the size of the FTTN street cabinets is a negative, a balanced report would have noted the considerable trouble, expense and disruption of taking fibre into every premise – digging up driveways, drilling holes in walls all of which is avoided by FTTN.
No industry leaders or experts supporting the Coalition case were interviewed – yet the CEOs of two Australian telcos recently made public comments supporting our claims. According to the CEO of iiNet, Michael Malone: “The Coalition says they’ll deliver the same outcomes but for lower spend – if you end up with the result that the Coalition has delivered the NBN but at a lower cost I think that’s going to be good for us.”
Source: Edwards, D., (2012), “iiNet feels out NBN Co on HFC network deal” in CommsDay, November 21.
And the CEO of AAPT, David Yuile, said: “Normally what you do is you build closer and closer to your customers with fibre, and fibre-to-the-node is normally the first step.”
Source: McDonald, S., (2012), “FTTN Makes Sense to AAPT” in Computer World, available online here.
Instead we heard from Paul Budde who said 116 countries have a national broadband network. The impression created was that 116 countries were pursuing policies akin to our NBN – but that is false. In fact Australia’s NBN is unique: unique in its cost, its creation of a government monopoly and elimination of competition, and its lack of rigorous analysis prior to such a huge commitment of public resources.
Many areas of public policy are complex, and the media’s task of explaining them simply and clearly is not easy. But that is no excuse for a lack of basic research and balance. And most puzzling of all, why does our national broadcaster, with its global network of reporters and bureaus, have so little curiosity in what other comparable countries are doing with their broadband upgrade programs.
[Note: an edited shorter version of this blog was published in The Australian today 29 November 2012]
31 Responses to “Reporting the real issues about the NBN or why Lateline missed the point.”
“have so little curiosity in what other comparable countries are doing with their broadband upgrade programs.”
Do you mean like NZ Malcolm?
Yes NZ is so like Australia. Climate, Size, Population ,… Oh, not the same at all. NBN Co. Trolls should learn to compare apples with apples!
It’s not what is needed now, it is what is needed for the long term, and in the long term your plan costs more. Stop misleading the Australian public.
If you want to be taken seriously by people who actually know what you are proposing show some costs, coverage data, expected rollout completion dates, cost to upgrade to FTTH when needed and when you believe this will happen and why you do not agree that FTTN speeds will be outdated by 2016.
Vectoring huh Malcolm? so you have verified that all households in australia have two WORKING pairs of copper? not to mention taking into account how telstras one pair is struggling? dont believe me. just go out there and ask those trying to get an ADSL connection. and all this is before we get into pair gain and RIMs
Malcolm u seem to only be focusing on today’s needs. we dont invest in infrastructure for today’s needs, but for tomorrows needs also.
Also why havent you mentioned that both BT and ur Favorited example that you now dont talk about …NZ are moving towards FTTH/FTTP
If the coalition was really concerned about Australia’s broadband needs why didnt they do anythign for the 11 years in power. How are we supposed to believe you will do some thing now when you didnt care before. And your good friend Tony has told us numerous times he is going to stop the NBN with is a big white elephant.
I am afraid your credibility is draining away. To go backwards to your plan will end up less effective but more expensive. I know you are intelligent, why let Tony Abbott stop you using your intelligence to move the country forward not backward. It must be hard to push a line you don’t believe in.
Ignoring whether we go with a FTTP or a FTTN network, I’m more concerned with those revenue numbers per user in 9 years.
You give a range from $22-$62 per user over the next 9 years, I am assuming that the $22 is the present, and the $62 will be in 9 years time when the network is built. If every user is expected to pay a minimum of $62 per connection to use the network, that means that there will be margins for business on top of that, that means that my $55/month network connection, which is fast enough for what I need, will need to increase to meet what NBN Co expects me to pay just for a connection, plus my providers margin on top of that.
No Andrew, that is not true. The VAST increase in ARPU over the next 10 years will come from business taking up high end products. ARPU is AVERAGE revenue per user, not ACTUAL revenue per user. You can have the 2 million businesses in Australia, on average, take up say 250Mbps (many larger would take up 1Gbps, so that’s not unreasonable) When you balance that out with 8 Million households taking up, say 50Mbps on average, you find that Your average speed might be 90Mbps. 100Mbps costs $38 AVC, plus, at a contention ration of 1:50 (reasonable balance between the 1:10 or 1:20 for busineas and 1:50 or 1:100 for residential) CVC of $40 you find you need $78 for that connection (@ $20/Mbps). Taking into account CVC will drop as more data is used, $62 in 10 years is actually quite conservative.
Mr Turnbull likes to use the graph to try and prove everyone will be spending $62 a month (plus retail) on broadband. But he DOESN’T say, this is AVERAGE, so many will pay much LESS if they don’t want it. AND he doesn’t include the impact businesses will have on NBNCo’s revenue (business data is higher priority and they pay as such)
Mr Turnbull, your half truths about ARPU have been covered time and again.
I’m a huge fan of yours Malcolm but I feel compelled to respond to this.
You ask three questions:
1. First, what are the time and cost differences between Labor’s fibre to the premises (or FTTP) NBN and the Coalition’s alternative (often termed FTTN) that pushes fibre much closer to end users, but not all the way to their home or business? Which is faster and cheaper to build?
2. Second, what speeds do FTTP and FTTN can deliver?
3. Third, what speeds are required to deliver applications consumers want to use and are prepared to pay for?
The issue I have with all this analysis is that at best it is looking a couple of years out. These national assets do not get built for a couple of years out and forgotten — as the copper network has amply demonstrated, these are assets that could end up being in use for the entirety of our lifetimes, and potentially our childrens’ too. Given the fact we’re going to go to through the once-in-a-lifetime effort of replacing the fixed landline network, is it worth doing it by half — FTTN — or going whole hog?
I think what you miss, despite your cost/benefit allegations, is that most Australians recognise that for an asset like this — with huge unknowable benefits derived from the fact that we won’t know what applications we’re going to be using in twenty years time, and what bandwidth they will require — it’s worth doing it once, and doing it properly. If that means that we have to spend big to achieve it, so be it.
I’m in a capital city right now and subject to completely ridiculous speeds by virtue of the fact my house is too far away from a node. Distance from the node becomes completely irrelevant when you deploy fibre to the home, because ***nothing travels faster than the speed of light***. From a hardware perspective, this is likely to be the last fixed line network this country ever needs to build.
Using speeds required for applications today to justify why not to invest is incredibly shortshighted. When the speeds required for future applications go up, then we’re going to have to pull out your “small boxes” and put in the “big boxes” anyway.
And comparisons to the UK — going through one of the worst recessions in its memory — and the US, where Govt regulation has resulted in one of the “patchiest” and most expensive networked economies in the developed world — just make absolutely zero sense.
When the Australian Govt built the copper network, there’s no way a cost benefit analysis or any other type of assessment could have foreseen benefits like the internet fifty years down the track. Rather than take a short-sighted view of building only the minimum required for as little as possible, they went ahead and rolled it out across the country anyway.
Such vision is required yet again. We’re a 22 million person country located on the arse end of the earth. Communications infrastructure is going to become the most important type of infrastructure for national competitiveness in this century. Don’t hamstring our country with a half-assed FTTN system.
More lies.
Pathetic Malcolm.
Malcolm, your plan completely disregards the technologies that will be omnipresent as early as even your NBN is completed, such as 4k tv. LG and Sony have released their first 4k, or ultra definition, TV sets a few months back, which require bandwidth four times greater than the values shown for HD streams. Consider a family in 2020 streaming 4k TV, a 4k videoconferencing feed and internet use, and you’re already around the 1 Gbps requirement forecast by respected telco companies such as Cisco. Your FTTN plan will only be required to be updated, costing more in the long term. Give up Malcolm.
Malcolm,
You seem concerned that some say “Labor is ushering us into the digital future, while the Coalition is holding us back” – in fact you actually lead with that point, which you say is false.
You then fail *utterly* to address that very point you say is misleading.
You spend the rest of the article pushing your technology and cost arguments, never once looking to the “Digital future”. You don’t talk about economic development, social development or regional (both domestic and international) development.
You don’t talk about opportunities or options for Australia as a country or Australians as individuals.
You don’t mention increased international competitiveness, you don’t provide any aspirations for growth in telecommunications driven employment, export or productivity.
It’s all about “They’re wrong, I’m right!” and political point scoring.
Is it any wonder, then, that some say “Labor is ushering us into the digital future, while the Coalition is holding us back”.
Come on, mate – show us your credentials, show us your vision, show us some cojones, take us into the digital future and prove them wrong.
Mr Turnbull, I will say, you are an adept and masterful politician for a start. You have managed to pull out of what was, politically, a poor performance for you on the Lateline interview. You took up over HALF the 18 minute segment, but managed not to answer any single question wholly put to you by either Emma or Mr Conroy. And yet you manage to produce a subsequent rebuttal of points made in the Lateline piece before the interview, to make it sound as though Lateline are misleading. Let’s go through these points, shall we?
1- What is the time and cost difference between FTTN and FTTP?
You quote numerous fractions, 1/4, 1/3 and even 2/3 a few weeks ago, that FTTN will cost compared to FTTP. This is based on overseas rollouts, such as BT in the UK’s Infinity Broadband FTTC and AT&T’s U-Verse FTTN. And yet, Mr Turnbull, when asked about how much YOUR POLICY, not a US or UK Telecom’s COMMERCIAL FTTN rollout, will cost, the BEST you can estimate is, from scratch, $15 Billion.
I have news for you Mr Turnbull- you CANNOT start FTTN from scratch. And also, $15 Billion IS NOT 1/4, 1/3 or even HALF the $26 Billion of the FTTP portion of the NBN ( you have already said you will keep the wireless and satellite portions, so you MUST discount them from the cost, along with the Telstra cost AND the startup/trial cost as neither are now relevant or recoverable). It is, in fact, almost 2/3. AND you did NOT answer Mr Conroy’s question as to whether that would include the Copper CAN lease from Telstra. So it may very well be EXACTLY THE SAME cost.
2- What speeds will FTTP and FTTN deliver?
You actually never mention the speeds FTTP delivers, which is unfair straight away, for all your talk of balance- RIGHT NOW, in Australia it is 100Mbps or 1Gbps in 2 years. RIGHT NOW, FTTN in Australia delivers basically none, because there are VERY few FTTN sections of the CAN, although, to be fair, you could call CMUXs FTTN, in which case, they deliver UP TO 24Mbps, as the Coalition government never specified Telstra to upgrade CMUXs to VDSL instead of ADSL.
What COULD they achieve? FTTP WILL achieve 1Gbps in 2014 here, in Australia. BT have demonstrated 10Gbps on GPON NOW. FTTN? It can deliver UP TO 80Mbps in the UK and UP TO 150Mbps in theory using Vectoring and UP TO 300Mbps using bonded pairs. ALL of those are at LESS than 800m, NOW.
Australia CANNOT use bonded pairs as you know in the vast majority of cases, so the MAXIMUM Australians would reach is 150Mbps. And THAT is within 300m of the Node. To achieve that, you’d need 3 times the 70 000 nodes (for 98% coverage) that Telstra proposed several years ago. But you have said that wouldn’t be you goal. Your goal would be 80Mbps, or 50Mbps to most, so that’s at around 700m. That’s MAXIMUM 80Mbps on FTTN. For the next 10-15 years.
You have indicated you MAY go along the path of allowing on-demand, user-pays upgrades from FTTN to FTTP (whether GPON or PTP you have not made clear) from the node. Have you factored in the increased Capex for the ISAMs size and LT cards required for this? AND the increase in distribution fibre cores required over normal FTTN? You have not made this clear. That may affect the cost, again.
So, to reiterate, Australians will receive 100Mbps GUARANTEED (wholesale guaranteed, not retail) and up to 1Gbps guaranteed, in 2 years on the NBN and possibly 10Gbps by 2022. On FTTN they will receive UP TO 80Mbps up to and possibly beyond 2022 (again, you’ve not made any upgrades clear) . MAXIMUM- average (possibly) 50Mbps. With a POSSIBLE user-pays upgrade to FTTP.
That seems like a fairly large disparity and relies HEAVILY on the condition of the copper by the way.
3- What speeds will consumers require and how much will they pay?
Consumers have have largely plateued their average spend on internet over the last 15 years. Many used to spend $50 a month on dial-up. Many now spend $50 a month on broadband. That would indicate many would expect to pay $50 a month on FTTP broadband.
Now, you enjoy using the NBNCo. ARPU forecasts to show that average spend per user (you specifically mention broadband in several comments, but not on this blog, but you IMPLY it will be on broadband specifically) will go UP over the next 30 years and specifically, triple in the next 10. This is PATENTLY false. That is NOT what the NBNCo. graph shows IN THE SLIGHTEST. What it shows is the Average Revenue per user of the NBN SERVICES will go from $22 now to $62 in 2022. That isn’t “The average BROADBAND spend will go from $22 to $62″ nor is it “the average PHONE spend will go from $22 to $62″ nor is it “the average PAY TV spend will go from $22 to $62″ IT IS A COMBINATION. PLUS, you fail to mention the affect massive amounts of PRIORITISED business traffic will make on NBNCo’s revenues.
Many tens of thousands of SMALL businesses pay for Annex M DSL NOW, usually 5/5 Symmetrical. That costs $350 a month. 10/10 costs $1350 a month. On the NBN, 5/5 will cost (wholesale) $100 a month. 40/40 will cost $200 a month. They are MASSIVE savings for small and medium businesses (100/100 will ALSO be offered and will almost certainly STILL be cheaper than 10/10 Annex M) meaning that business would be happy to take them and both save themselves money AND get massive increases in service.
Why do I go into this? Because BUSINESS ARPU is likely to be HUGELY high compared with Residential ARPU. Business ARPU, overall, may well be in the low $100 range. (for 2 -3 Million businesses) Meanwhile, the 8 Million households residential ARPU may well be, once again, $50 a month or even less. That will give you, once worked out, an ARPU of VERY close to $62 a month overall. THIS is how NBNCo’s plan on increasing their ARPU works- NOT massive wholesale increases or expecting residential users to pay $100 a month (although according to the takeup tiers RIGHT NOW, many ARE willing to pay that- not surprising after being stuck on ADSL UP TO speeds for 10 years).
And this analysis doesn’t even include Pay TV! OR any other services the NBN may offer like home monitoring, smart meters, smart traffic lights etc. etc, ALL of which contribute to NBNCo’s ARPU WITHOUT forcing customers to pay MORE for BROADBAND every month- they are simply offering NEW and INNOVATIVE services not relevant or indeed possible on unreliable ADSL services.
Your disingenuity about the ARPU is based around people paying more for broadband when you completely dismiss the point of the NBN- it is about CONNECTIVITY, not JUST broadband. People may well continue spending $50 a month on broadband (plus a few dollars on VOIP/phone), but they’ll likely spend another $50 a month on Pay TV (35% of us do now) that is already being discussed to be being delivered over the NBN. NBNCo. will no doubt release a VOD data package for providers as VOD is now taking the lions share of bandwidth in the US. They’ll pay even MORE, even if only $5 or $10 a month, for alarm monitoring, smart meters, in-home monitoring and other automation services.
Your analysis of ARPU is FLAWED Mr Turnbull. You KNOW it is flawed, but you continue to push to raw numbers as misleading to the Australian Public.
In terms of speed? Australians have been ARTIFICIALLY limited by their copper lines for several years now. 450 000 new 100Mbps services were signed up in the last 12 months. Does ANYONE honestly believe we want LESS speed now??
Mr Turnbull, stop the misleading, stop the rhetoric. Release your plan or, better yet, accept the NBN is a decent and well thought out plan (not perfect) and strive to DO IT BETTER rather than snipping its’ legs off to save PERHAPS $3 Billion NOW, but spend it over the next 10 years twice over maintaining the copper.
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“The National Broadband Network is a complicated issue. But that is no excuse for superficial, misleading or unbalanced reporting of it.”
Thank you. So please don’t mix up ARPU with retail pricing. The two aren’t the same thing.
And Please stop comparing your $15billion project, with the full capex and opex of the current NBNco build.
People might actually start to believe you or something…
Sincerely and in good faith
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
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-”If we can provide Australians with very fast broadband capable of supporting applications used by consumers sooner and at a much lower cost, isn’t that a better approach?”
What about future applications Mr Turnbull, such applications that will need more bandwitdh that FTTN can support?
-”no effort is made to report on the actual experience and actual investment decisions of real live telcos and governments in other countries who are grappling with this issue. My comments on relative costs on the other hand are based on first hand advice from executives who are directly responsible for building new generation networks.”
Fuck the other countries, WE LIVE IN AUSTRALIA!!!!! Which of these experts has any experience with Australian conditions? Which of these experts has any knowledge of the mess the copper is in? I’ve asked you this on Twitter before which of these experts has any clue about Australia in general. ANSWER IS STILL NONE.
Just give it up Malcolm. I dont want upto 80Mbps (more than likely ALOT LESS than that). As a citizen of this country I dont to be kept in the technology dark ages i want want 100Mbps and futue upgradability to more, which your FTTN simply is NOT capable of and if you think it is then clearly you’re more of a fool than i already believe you to be.
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Hi again Malcolm.
Firstly. Please observe your first graph.
Notice the dots are all scattered?
FTTH is a flat line at 1ooompbs at (in the current design) 14kms from the FDH.
‘Flat line’
‘Guaranteed Speed’
Not ‘up to’.
14kms away.
Not 600metres or such…
Oh, and Australia has a ‘distance’ issue.
Population density of 2.91 remember?
2nd, ARPU, or Average Revenue Per User is not retail pricing. Please stop pretending it is.
NBNco can add on one new customer per state, say the RTA for traffic lights with spare fibres, and the ‘Revenue’ would grow immensely, yet ‘customers’ or ‘users’ would stay pretty static..
You, should understand this.
The uptake in revenue, is becuase of an increase in services. ie. Things like IPTV.
Extra Service.
Not an increase in price.
Apples with Apples.
Thirdly our copper is in poor state.
Meaning, certain parts of it will have to be replaced anyway. Copper has a 30 year shelf life.
It is 30 years old….
You do the math.
I’m sure the rest of Australia can.
4th.
Have you seen a battery backed up node in England? Each battery is worth $10 at the scrap joint. If you are going to post pictures of vandaled cabinets, lets use BT:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81769364@N03/7849074652/in/pool-2050655@N20
Look ma. No batteries! No phone or internet..
2 batteries, will get you a 6 pack or a pack of smokes….
Let’s look at a Telstra ‘node’ shall we?
Page 11 (slide 10)
http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/tls652-NBNtechnologybriefing.pdf
Hardly the size of the one in your little picture is it?
Lastly, Why is Verizon in the US disconnecting the copper, and replacing it with fibre even if the customer doesnt’ order it?
Because the end goal is, and always will be fibre.
Why use FTTN when it is going to cost nearly as much as FTTH? And even moreso by the time you could actually do anything if the Australian public somehow believe what it is you have presented…
And then what is your upgrade plan?
And what will it cost?
All while your boss seems to think we don’t need it. If fact, it should be ‘paused’..
If I may be so bold Malcolm, Take a rest.
You look like you need it.
And it’s going to be a long 12 months.
Especially if you can’t present facts.
And answers to questions that you have been asked for the better half of 12 months…
For as long as you continue to mis-report the facts, there will be people like us willing to straighten it up for the Australian Public.
Sincerely and in good faith.
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
Same reason
In Taipei there is a FTTN box every 100 meters with speeds up to 100Mbps near the box. Practical in a high density populated area like Taipei – apparently not so practical in spacious Australia. (The speed declines with distance from the box).
Despite all the mumbo and jumbo about NBN i find the speed too slow when you want to watch Utube on your telly. So if NBN can make it faster I am for it.
I am disappointed about Malcolm’s attitude towards the Palestinians in that segment. I was beginning to look up to you as a respectable statesman.
As an employee of a small business with 6mbit/6mbit syncronous fibre, I can assure you that between 15 employees and constant downloading of large files like games, as well as the need to retain stable connections to multiple online services such as VPN’s and online games, we are in desperate need of more bandwith. Videoconferencing globally with clients like intel is not an option for us.
Under the Current NBN the rollout shows that we will be able to sign up for and obtain speeds of 1gbit per second with multiple terabyte quotas for a fraction of what we are paying now, in about 5 years time.
How will the coalitions plan provide faster fibre broadband equitably to small and medium businesses that are currently lorded over by monopoly providers such as amcom? (6mbit/s and 500GB quota for $800/pm!)
” …that is no excuse for superficial, misleading or unbalanced reporting ”
But that is what the ABC do.
“Superficial, misleading”? Pot, kettle…
As a couple of previous commentators already mentioned, there is no need to go all the way around the world to investigate what “folk at BT are doing”; much easier to ask our Kiwi mates what they are doing. Why has the Conservative government of NZ decided to switch their broadband policy from the FTTN model (as previously lauded by you, Mr Turnbull) to Fibre-to-the-Premises (similar to what Labor is currently rolling out here in Australia)?
Are you seriously unable to see the benefits that 1Gbps broadband, available to 93% of Australian premises, can bring to the national economy? The potential for local businesses, small and large, to provide cloud-based services to most of Australia’s population? The potential for small businesses to be able to set up practically anywhere in Australia and utilise HTTP’s upstream bandwidth to serve customers internationally? These things just won’t be possible with speeds that your FTTN/HFC/mishmash alternative can support.
Bottom line is: FTTP offers much better bang for the buck than FTTN, HFC, 4G or whatever else you are trying to sell us.
Even assuming the best case scenario of your solution being only 1/4 of the cost of Labor’s FTTP (which is highly unlikely), and maximum download speed of 80Mbps (very unlikely to be achievable for most customers), this is very poor value compared to 1000Mbps that are achievable on NBN’s FTTP. Not to mention the upgradeability of the two solutions, which just can’t compare.
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Fair enough if you don’t agree with what he says, but how one-sided are you lot?
Surely it is the role of the Opposition to question whether projects spent with our tax dollars represent value?
And whether ‘business plans’ are rigorous enough to ensure that our children aren’t stuck with repaying debt via the tax system for a project that didn’t work out?
I wonder whether if we went door to door around Australia and asked each household to pay ~$3600 to connect to a broadband network, and then pay $X a month thereafter for services, what sort of response you’d get?
Matt,
If you went “door to door around Australia” and asked people to pay for any of the services or infrastructure normally provided by the government, you would get the same response, as you well know.
Does that mean that we should not have roads, freeways, water and sewerage, electricity, gas..? If your ideological approach was taken by Australian governments a century ago, we wouldn’t have had telephone lines installed to all households (the same copper lines that Mr Turnbull’s FTTN solution depends on.)
“Surely it is the role of the Opposition to question whether projects spent with our tax dollars represent value?”
Matt, I don’t think Malcolm really believes his own rhetoric. It is quite clear that he is hamstrung by the party he is in (and specifically his leader). You can see this clearly in some of the misleading statements he makes about the NBN that pander to the more ignorant people in society. We know he is an intelligent guy and has a lot of respect from most people in Australia (including me), so it hard to believe he could make such statements over and over again and truly believe them.
I note with interest that Verizons major reason to get rid of their copper and replace with ftth was maintenance cost, FTTH being less than 1/4 the maintenance cost. Trouble being competition especially with the entrenched Cable operators (That have maintained and upgraded their infrastructure over the 40 odd years) and their sports channels. Once they were not competitors, now they are.
Verizons shareholders of course want dividends now rather than an upgrade even if it will mean more profits in the future.
However Sandy has given them the opportunity to upgrade Manhatten.
Even in Europe the incumbents face issues with enforced wholesaling so are loth to upgrade to FTTH under the same provisions.
That plus being incumbents they already own the infrastructure.
However that really is less relevant than you would have us believe, that is the US,UK and Europe who have economic issues and raiding the required funds as private operators is an expensive issue.
One that our NBN does not have .
Also they have not had the unhealthy Monopoly your predecessors lumbered us with even though Keating had the structural separation of Telstra in Process which was strangely reversed (WHY?).
We are in the growth Asia Pacific region as such we must needs be not only able to provide services adequately, and be competitive. So it is far smarter to look to what the dynamo’s in our region are doing, as well as the emerging Nations rather than follow the cash strapped old world operators who have been left with skimpy balance sheets after all those cut price years and the competitive pressures that have robbed them of their ability to adequately keep up with the future needs. They have problems we don’t in that regard. The private sector for a myriad of reasons could never deliver what the NBN will deliver . especially at the price to the user and the benefit to the Nation.
Last but not least, the realities of your plan are that there will never be any real upgrade nationally, only in selected high value areas of high value and high rental, effectively limiting future innovation and enterprise. The copper will be very expensive to maintain as will the nodes with all those batteries requiring servicing and replacing and the electronics in those summer ovens.
I can only see this Coalition proposal as instituting a future digital divide and instituting a definite Class Structure , only the “Nobility and the Worthy” can afford to pay for the fibre upgrade on an ad hoc basis, but even then as it is not truly ubiquitous and is just a single broadband stream. in most cases shared by multiple users
Hi…
[...]certainly granted us several tid portions to contemplate[...]…
This is all so much rubbish. So Alcatel has found a way to provide mediocre speeds for up to 600metres? Have they shown that over the sort of crap copper most of us have, pair gain and that sort of caper? The yanks have kept their copper in good shape.
A third of the cost of the NBN is pulling fibre. FTTN saves us maybe a small part of that but then has costs like 80,000 power hungry cabinets, the nodes. And a lot of copper would have to be re-run—what a WOFTAM.
Malcolm has done no costings, glosses over the delay while a new deal is negotiated with Telstra not how many arms Telstra will charge.
Since Malcolm has not done this, since he has invested in two European FTTH rollouts you can see his game plan pretty clearly:
1. Pretend the NBN will continue to be rolled out quicker and cheaper (with no costings he can’t guarantee that or the no idea of the delay in negotiation with telstra so not quicker either.
2. When the election is over and the Libs have won (unlikely to happen now) and stop the rollout like Abbott has said he will Malcolm will then throw gobs of taxpayers’ money at a company to do a FTTH rollout in which he will invest. This will just cover very cherry–picked areas like Point Piper. The rest of us can go hang.
Hi Malcom
Please look at Ballarat, mildura, and Geelong as an example, we have had hybrid fiber and cable for a decade with the “slow” package set at 30mbps and the high speed at 100mbps. Privately funded, without politics
At the beginning of this whole NBN thing, Telstra already had plans for high speed broadband which would have been funded through normal commercial methods, yet due to technicality a, they were not able to use their massive existing communications knowledge to make a system that did not require the huge expenditure of taxpayers money.
Internet is a luxury, it is NOT a nessesity. If commercial interests need faster Internet, then they will fund it
Philip
Hi Malcolm,
You seem to be quiet on FTTN ‘UP TO” upload speed, why? This is equally important as download speeds. Is there in nothing to be proud of?
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