NBN war: Is The Australian out of line?

269

opinion Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has this week levelled several extraordinary attacks on The Australian newspaper.

On Wednesday night he told Coalition senators they needed to stop believing what they read in the paper. “I repeat, you really don’t want to use as your source documents, The Australian newspaper,” Conroy said, claiming the paper was interested in ‘regime change’ in Government. And, waving around what he said was a NSW Government press release: “Go and read the source quotes, and see if you can contort it into the story written in The Australian.”

On Lateline the night after, he repeated his attack in an extraordinary diatribe aimed at the News Ltd publication. “The Australian continue to print stories that have no basis in fact,” Conroy told Lateline presenter Tony Jones.

“I think it’s fair to say that the campaigning that they’re doing against the NBN doesn’t meet any journalistic balance, it doesn’t meet any journalistic accountability, if you were to look at the actual factual substance of the story. And it’s very disappointing to see a newspaper losing its way in this way. And they have been maintaining this campaign to try and create uncertainty, to create falsehoods about the NBN and they are knowingly doing it,” he said.

Well, if you’re going to stir up a hornet’s nest, you’ve got to expect to get stung.

Today The Australian fired back at Conroy, publishing a slew of stories attacking various aspects of the NBN and rejecting the Minister’s claims about its lack of integrity.

I count no less than eight stories on the matter online right now — and you can imagine Conroy isn’t happy about most of them. A brief list:

Now there is no doubt that some of Conroy’s complaints against the Australian are legitimate. For example, my opinion is that much of what The Australian is publishing about the cost of rewiring homes to deal with the NBN is an exaggeration, given that many homes are already wired for broadband, and that this process is understood well.

For the cheap among us, re-wiring your house for the NBN will be a matter of running a blue cat5 cable down the hall — like many people already have — and hooking up wireless. For those with deeper pockets, it might require running cables through the wall — but the increasing ubiquity of broadband will make that necessary anyway — it’s hardly the NBN’s fault.

And based on my own experience in these matters — as a former systems administrator who’s played with plenty of blue cables — I hardly think it’s going to cost a tradesperson $400 per room to do so.

Then, too, The Australian’s focus on how basic fixed telephone services will be provided to homes under the NBN is simply ridiculous. Fixed line telephones are increasingly becoming an anachronism in Australia as people switch to mobiles and internet telephony. The limitations of these replacement technologies are well understood.

But the problem for Conroy, particularly today, is that much of The Australian’s reporting on the NBN is spot on.

As the newspaper wrote today, take-up of the NBN in Tasmania has been poor. This reflects a failure by the Government to sell to rural communities the benefits of a technology that is of far more interest to those in city areas. The biggest hullabaloo in rural areas when it comes to telecommunications over recent years has been the closure of Telstra’s CDMA network, not the lack of fast broadband.

There are precious few people in Midway Point in Tasmania itching to set up next-generation IT businesses from their homes as soon as they get NBN connections. That’s not why they live in Midway Point to start with.

And, as The Australian also pointed out today, there are many details to be worked out in how the NBN will be connected to people’s homes. There is a risk that NBN Co contractors will screw up the fibre installation in people’s houses — and until the process is more standardised, there will be more complaints.

But beyond these minor details — which have, admittedly, been blown up a bit out of proportion by The Australian, there is a wider problem with the NBN.

Labor never consulted sufficiently with the extremely wide range of stakeholders that have an interest in the extremely large infrastructure project that the NBN represents. The chaos that is currently engulfing its discussions with state governments about whether a national, uniform ‘opt-out’ scheme for the NBN should be implemented is representative of this fact.

The lack of a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis is another example. The truth is — as Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been at pains to point out — that it is completely up in the air as to whether a cost/benefit analysis would show the NBN was worth it or not. So when you have some of the most senior businesspeople in the country calling for such a document to be put together, why does the Government keep on rejecting the idea?

It’s not just The Australian discussing that particular issue — The Australian Financial Review last week called for the Government to conduct a cost/benefit analysis into the NBN as well. Bipartisan support from Fairfax and News Ltd? Sounds like that one might, just might, be an issue.

Finally, there is Labor’s increasing focus on making the NBN work, no matter what — best seen in the inappropriate and uncompetitive pricing rules it is proposing to set on those who want to build their own telecommunications infrastructure. As economist Henry Ergas pointed out this week, Labor is planning to shut down competitive infrastructure and enforce pricing controls to make the NBN work.

“This is unprecedented in Australian economic history,” he wrote — and I agree. Shutting down the cable networks of Telstra and Optus — which constitute competitive infrastructure — makes absolutely no sense in a first-world capitalist country.

So is The Australian on a rampage? Indisputably. But there is a concrete reason behind the newspaper’s single-minded focus on the NBN right now.

Like any good journalist, The Australian’s editors smell blood on the NBN issue. The NBN may be the right technology for the nation’s telecommunications future — in fact, I have no doubt that it is — but the NBN project as a whole is being implemented in a heavy-handed and risky way that is making many powerful people uneasy. Just as with Labor’s internet filter project, Conroy is trying to ram the NBN through without due process.

Conroy’s arrogant attitude towards criticism of his prize project will need to change drastically — and soon — if he truly wants to drive the project forward and to success. Otherwise, he may find it’s not just The Australian on his back about the issue — but much of the rest of the media as well.

Image credit: Kim Davies, Creative Commons

269 COMMENTS

  1. “As the newspaper wrote today, take-up of the NBN in Tasmania has been poor.”

    Early adopters have signed up, most people will be locked into a 12 or 24 month contract and just can’t switch. Others will be waiting to see how the NBN fairs and if they’d get benefits from it.

    • Exactly. See my post below for my reasoning. Even if they’re out of contract, I reckon most will be happy to wait until THEIR ISP can offer NBN (ie Bigpond in the majority)

      • Of course I hope the irony of that statement about Tassie customers waiting on a BigPond service before signing up has not escaped you, the success or not of the NBN is heavily dependent on Telstra playing ball!

  2. Australia has this quaint notion of freedom of the press.
    Thank God for The Australian. If it were up to Fairfax and the ABC, Rudd would still be in charge pouring billions into grocery and petrol websites, school COLAs and pink batts.

    • The only problem I have with the Australian is that they actually call themselves “journalists”, when it’s clear that they are not. I can see that there certainly is a market for the News Entertainment market, but I don’t think a single one of Murdoch’s properties actually relays anything but that anymore.

      • They are more a bunch of sooks, all I have heard from them is complaining and whinging.
        They have never given good credit where credit is due, so they ended up in my personal block list, never to be visited again. :)

  3. Hey Renai, want to checkout the %age of Bigpond users vs those ISPs who are already on the NBN in the Tas rollout areas?

    In 2/3 cases, you’re looking at conservative (not in the political sense), rural areas who just aren’t champing at the bit to get FTTH. How many of them do you think are going to cop a multiple hundred dollar break fee just to switch ISPs? How many of them are willing to go through the process of changing ISPs, including losing their existing email address, just to get on the NBN? I think once Telstra trial customers start signing up, the takeup is going to improve significantly.

    It’s a pity people don’t also take a look at the last census figures for internet access in Tas. 45% of households had NO internet access IIRC.

    • Hmm you make some fair points, and I won’t dispute them. What I will say is that these points illustrate why those communities in Tasmania shouldn’t have been the first rollout sites for the NBN. The ideal case for Conroy would have been a stack of inner-city suburbanites champing at the bit to get the NBN and then publicly proclaiming its awesomeness when it was rolled out in their trendy apartments.

      Just my 2c though — I’m no political strategist.

      • I’ve always wondered why they started where they did myself actually. You have to remember that the Tas rollout was based originally on the Auroa bid from NBN1, and that may have used something else like xDSL for the more populated areas.
        All I know is that I’m a Stage 2 area so I don’t really care anymore!! :)

      • People who think chopping down old growth forests in perpetuity and turning that heritage into toilet paper are unlikely to be at the cutting edge of technology.

        • Pull your head in mate, we’re not all a bunch of clueless tree-cutting inbred bogans. In fact, if you’d like to do your research, you’d find that there’s actually been an agreement reached that is going to end old-growth logging in Tasmania.

          How the hell is this state gonna build sustainable industry in the future if you North Islanders use that sort of stuff for a reason to INCREASE the divide between Tas and the rest of the country?

          • Hear Hear mate. Anyone that stereotypes an entire state with negative generalised comments, is obviously extremely narrow minded, and unable to imagine anything beyond their own little world.

            I live in Hobart, I’m on ADSL 2+ (with a peak download speed of roughly 18mbps) and I’m still hanging to get FTTH. Why? Primarily because my upload speed remains a pathetic 1mbps. That and I have enough vision to understand that the NBN has the ability to transform Australia’s telecommunications industry and to use a clichéd term, “bridge the digital divide” between rural and metropolitan areas.

            As for The Australian, if you have a look at the number of negative stories they’ve run against the NBN lately, its clear they have a right wing agenda. They may as well just be writing press releases directly for Malcolm Turnball.

    • Warren Seen, well you would hope once the Telstra trial customers sign-up in Tassie it will make a difference, after all it is free for them, what you might call a ‘nothing to lose’ scenario. :)

      The best test for the NBN popularity will be in the high density areas of the largest mainland capitals where there are multiple choices of high speed ADSL, HFC and wireless.

      NBN will be ‘compulsory popular’ when Telstra’s pulls the copper out and there is the transfer of the Telstra HFC and Optus HFC customers but then again the NBN is not all about ‘competitive’ choice in the long term is it?

      Conroy will ensure its artificial ‘popularity’ is based on no choice and elimination and buy out of fixed line competitors customer base.

  4. Oh, I will say one thing… It’s good that Mike Quigley is in charge of the NBN, cos I get the feeling any success they have at the end of the day is going to be in SPITE of Conroy. This guy is like a machine-gun aimed at the collective feet of internet users.

    • Any success the NBN has will be due to Conroy, the technical bit is the easy part, it’s not as if FTTH rollouts in Australia are new, they have been around for years from the likes of TransAct, Telstra Velocity and other greenfield estate rollouts.

      The NBN success relies on the elimination of fixed line competitors and the buyout of the two biggest Telco’s reatil customer bases, only Conroy has the taxpayer funding and legislative power behind him to accomplish that.

  5. Conroy is right. The Murdochs are applying the same tactics in the U.K. and the U.S.A. because they want governments who will give them less regulation and less corporate taxes. It’s as simple as that.
    To be more precise, people in Tasmania are not signing up for 100 megabits. The Oz rarely let facts get in their way.

  6. The Australian’s reporters are actually doing what those expensive MBA and economics-trained dills should have been doing – understanding exactly what’s involved with the NBN. Just in the IT section, the reports on undisclosed household expenditure for internal cabling and vulnerabiliity for emergency communications are the sorts of issues that should have been addressed a long time ago.

    • @Tony Healy – If what they published were true, you might have a point. The Australian is publishing everything from bizarre heresay to absolute straw man arguments.
      For instance, their “household costs” are blatantly false. They quote $6,000 for a job that currently costs $150.

      • They never claimed it cost $6,000. Stuart Kennedy addresses thatin a story today.

        But the costs they do claim are legitimate. They’re not the costs to install the connection to the home, but to install cabling behind walls to distribute the connection to other locations within the home.

        • It’s a bit disingenuous to lead with a headline like “NBN wiring could cost users up to $400 a room” when it’s not actually specifically related to the initial NBN connection.

          Sidenote: is the Australian taking the piss by illustrating that article with a photo of a family using wifi?

        • Tony my god man, since when did installing a cable become a fault of the NBN. You have to do the same thing now for ADSL and for any service where you want network capability throughout the home. That has NOTHING to do with the NBN. That is a cost of you choosing how to distribute a network through your own home. I use a wireless router myself as I am sure many other people do.

        • Tony, those costs are for a guy who decided to wire his entire house up…and he got ripped off to boot!
          I jst had a client wire his entire office for ~$80/room.
          As everyone has pointed out, this has nothing to do with the NBN…and so it’s not journalism at all, it’s just (really bad) politically attacks. (not even smart attacks…)

  7. Olly – the coalition was planning a 1.7% levy on large businesses (like News) to pay for their proposed maternity leave during the last election campaign. Don’t let facts get in the way though…

  8. Yes “Me”, that was what Mr. Abbott said but one never can be sure that he’s telling the truth, he said so himself.

  9. Renai, considering that the coalition slammed the government before for the cost of feasibility studies and costings related to the NBN, would it be presumptuous to assume that Conroy is skittish about giving ammunition to Abbott (if he does the CBA, no doubt there will be endless numbers generated which they will argue semantically over, and if its sound, the coalition will complain about how much it cost to do the CBA)?

  10. I’m a bit confused about how people calling for a cost/benefit analysis expect it be meaningful when most of the benefits are unquantifiable.

    The cost side of the equation has all $ figures in there.

    The benefits side of the equation has a few $ figures for near-term and some qualitative statements for longer term outcomes.

    So you can”t use maths.

    Objective judgement comes into it, but the equation is perceived differently by everyone.

  11. Communications infrastructure is just one sector of industry and one that has been in a pretty sad state for the last decade or two. If the govt wants to fix it up by taking the heavy-handed approach and taking control of the sector for a while via a public utility monopoly then I say let them. If they want to protect the tax-payers investment and shield NBN from competition .. then let them. It makes the venture less risky rather than more. We tried competition before and Telstra disgraced themselves. What’s in the shareholders of a private sector company’s interest isn’t always in the national interest.

    I’m only going to be concerned if it turns out to be a trend.

    Btw 26-43 billion over 8 years is nothing. How much are we spending on road construction and maintenance annually? And roads don’t even provide a direct return on investment like the NBN will.

    • The starting point is: do we expect universal access to be at a uniform price? If the Libs say no and turn their back on the regions, let them say so publicly. And if the answer is yes, competition must be eliminated, otherwise the private sector will cherry pick as it always has.

  12. Absolutely agree with Conroy, and usually i’d be ashamed to say that. The Australian has been pushing its ANTI NBN agenda for a long time now, and Conroy certainly isnt the first to notice it.

    • … and there is no pro-NBN agenda in media outlets anywhere? – but that’s ok of course.

  13. The Australian is Lib Run Media it would know good policys from bad ones
    and why was low number of people signing up for NBN because( government is stupid for this) location location. On Mainland u got lots of people signing up For NBN, not sound rude Tasmania but it Back water State.
    and For THE AUSTRALIAN BACK OFF !

  14. I wish that I had a lot more information on the NBN take up rate, why for example is there a 10% take up in Tasmania and up to 85% for the current roll out, what is causing the difference.

    The 85% is from a University area but what about the other area’s, can’t remember the figures but they were pretty good.

  15. Some things about your article. The Australian economist, if you can call him that, is picking up what we already knew was going to happen. Its in chapter 11 of the report of the NBN. You want to roll out a nationwide ubiquitous network, you can’t allow competitors to undercut you when they have no other costs to worry about and they only focus on the areas of greatest return being the cities. Things like the NBN only work if THEY are the backbone provider. This was always talked about upfront and available for anyone to read. You will never get an even playing field in the industry if everyone is not using the same ground to play on. In order to achieve this you need to legislate the competition so it is not worth it for them to even try to compete and that is exactly what they are doing. If you build networks to compete with the NBN you will lose money. It’s painful, but it has to be done, at least in the short term. Any company who has not already started moving their business model away from providing layer 2 services of the type the NBN will bring has had their head in the sand and needs to face reality. When the NBN rolls into town your layer 2 service will be worth nothing.

  16. “Is The Australian out of line?”

    Of course it is and knows it is. But do they care? Of course not.

    Stop buying this crap newspaper!!!

  17. It’s sad to see that this great opportunity for Australian communications has disintegrated into a Labour / Liberal dog fight…..

    • Was ever thus.

      Let’s hope it does not get as bad as it is in the US where they can’t even get themselves sorted with a universal health insurance system

      Given the unruly behaviour at the meetings on the water plan (will shouting make it rain?) and refugees in country South Australia, is it any wonder officialdom is wary of consulting folk? They just won’t listen all too often.

      • {polite cough}

        Murray Darling Basin meetings in South Australia were not disorderly: this is a media beat-up. Our only concern at these meetings is to make sure we get some credit in the MDB plan implementation for all the money we’ve personally invested in more efficient water use. (It’s hard to believe they actually still have channel irrigation upstream: my grandfather had channel irrigation. Everyone here invested in sprinklers a long time ago, and most have since invested in drip irrigation. This is the “optimization” which the Federal Government says it is planning to do for NSW and Victorian irrigators, for free.)

        As for the Woodside “community” meeting, any “vioience” was another media beatup (stated by several people attending the meeting), and members of a subsequent “protest” were bussed in. Woodside community members were out putting purple ribbons around the town, to welcome the refugees.

        Odd how differently these things were (mis)represented in the mainstream media…

  18. Hmmm a $43 billion dollar government monopoly… how quickly some people forget the stupidity of government monopolies. Get with the program people see this ensuing disaster for what it really is.

    • It was a Telstra monopoly that brought us here in the first place and the government was forced to some up with a solution. That, my ignorant friend, is why the NBN was created. Your welcome to the monopolising and anti-competitive Telstra dominated market that exists today.

      • As distinct to the monopolised giant that is the NBN Co which will have zero fixed line wholesale competitors (unlike Telstra today) owned by the Government from which legislation can and will be passed to ensure the NBN remains a effective monopoly.

        But of course that’s ok because the NBN is a political animal run by politicians, such projects in the past have always been successful, for me I back to reading the auditors general report on the insulation debacle.

        • The insulation “debacle” is another interesting example of media vs. reality. The government’s insulation scheme had a much higher survival rate than private insulation installations up to that point.

          Odd that you don’t see that reported anywhere in the MSM…

    • @Golfman

      There’s only one thing worse than a government monopoly, and that’s a private monopoly.
      The only way I can see to fairly eliminate Telstra’s infrastructure monopoly is to create a governmental one. Private investment cannot do this without destroying the ubiquitous nature of the network.

      • Currently people can get high speed broadband from a variety of ADSL providers (only pay telstra $8/month for copper hire – and get $40-70/month from customer so they are viable competitors to telstra’s own bigpond offerings – can’t say that Telstra has a monopoly on ADSL).

        People can also opt for Optus HFC and get 70-90 Mbps – that’s pretty competitive as well – and uses existing infrastructure.

        The tax payer doesn’t have to pay a cent for Optus or ADSL ISPs to provide high speed via these ways, infact the government earns money in income tax every month that a subscriber uses one of these companies for their broadband. Turn all that around to a government owned monopoly and we all pay – we pay to build the thing (even those that don’t want to pay for the monstrosity) and then we have to keep paying to use it.

        Telstra used to be a monopoly and that’s why Australia was so slow to get ADSL. When they got sold and they were made to share their copper access with other ISPs we got ADSL at last. There’s no reason why we now can’t get FTTN via VDSL2 over those same coppers for a fraction of the cost of FTTH. FTTN is how most of the western world currently get high speed broadband speeds of 30-100Mbps (depending on which generation of the technology they adopted and how ‘smart;y’ they distribute the nodes) that make our current ADSL connections seem like dial up.

        I’d rather have FTTN (and 50-80Mbps) in 6 months (Telstra has fiber running to a pit within 1km of our place now – why is that?) that wait many, many years for every home to have it’s fiber rollout and get 100Mps (in maybe 5 years, or up to 8 years).

        • Agreed.

          I have access to 100mbps cable & 20mbps ADSL2+ (unlimited TPG). Why would I want the government to blow away $43 billion installing FTTH down my street?

        • Telstra and Optus HFC covers some areas of some capital cities. What about the rest of Australia?

          What about the thousands of exchanges where competition is being forced out by Telstra’s price squeeze where Bigpond retail pricing offers no margin over Telstra Wholesale pricing?

          What about the Telstra FTTN proposal which they would only agree to build if the government promised a monopoly?

          Telstra has come to the party. The rest of the industry were already behind it. Let’s bring reliable broadband to all Australians.

          • I believe that the NBN v3 plan by the Association for Affordable Broadband would address all your points.

            Btw, why should Telstra open up their ADSL2+ access to other ISPs at cheaper prices? It’s Telstra’s infrastructure & the consumer is getting a cheap deal. The only ones whinging are internode & iinet, funny how I don’t see TPG whinging.

          • The AAB plan was a great discussion piece but it had the same piecemeal approach that the Liberals took to the last election. Expecting private companies to fill in the gaps, fix the blackspots and not cherry pick their way to profitability seems like a little too much wishful thinking. Providing incentives for them to do these things seems like an inefficient way to reach less ambitious goals which will then leave a widening gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.

            Fixed line last mile should be treated like a natural monopoly, the same as electricity, water and sewerage. The NBN is the way to bring the same benefits of reliable, fast broadband to every Australian, no matter where they live.

        • @ Golfman,

          “Turn all that around to a government owned monopoly and we all pay – we pay to build the thing (even those that don’t want to pay for the monstrosity) and then we have to keep paying to use it.”

          You mean like CityRail in Sydney, for example? I am lucky enough to have a service to die for but, being retired, no longer need it much. Millions of others in Sydney pay for a rail service and only get promises.

          I don’t begrudge other parts of Sydney getting improved services. Would You?

  19. Conroy declared war with the filter & continues to wage war by not releasing a fully transparent cost benefit analysis with a business plan to qualify blowing away $43 billion of the taxpayers monies on this NBN nonsense.

    • Get your facts straight when you come here Comrade. Its $26 billion by the taxpayer, the rest is from revenue from the NBN. Your anti NBN nonsense you plaster over at “The Australian” wont cut it here. Million of people see the immediate benefits of ubiquitous high speed broadband delivered uniformly across the country. Millions of people have had to deal with Telstra limiting their access or just price gouging because they were the only choice. They have been doing it to consumers and ISP’s alike for years. Telstra see’s the writing on the wall and they have embraced the NBN, how about you?

      • So you think the government going into debt by at least $43 billion yet more likely ending up $86 billion in debt to pay for the NBN will mean cheaper internet prices, you’re a fool if you do. Internet prices will skyrocket once a larger proportion of the NBN is rolled out and competing networks killed off as per the governments choice.

  20. $43 billion??? Someone needs to get their facts straight.

    And no-one gives a fat rats clacker whats available to you, The NBN isn’t just about you.

  21. The Australian has fallen so far – and it is obvious they have an agenda behind their stories. It is sad the paper has gone from the premier national paper, to a paper which has little integrity. I for one am sick of their stories which are factless or based on mis-reported facts (which even after acknowledgement of being incorrect are still used!). I wish they would get off their high horse, drop the agenda and get back to real journalism.

    • My nephew is a media student at uni. Even the students have spotted the decline in standards at the Oz. And now the London Times is being criticised for shamelessly promoting the Murdoch interest in the proposed takeover of the shares not already owned in Sky TV.

      There was a time when this type of editorial influence was unheard of.

  22. The NBN is a great an visionary idea. Unfortunately the execution of the idea isn’t going to well. $662M has only resulted in 262 customers connected.

    • Don’t know much about project management, do you?

      There are a lot of prepatory works and contracts to sign and pay for before you can start work on any big project, and particularly one of this nature…

  23. I used to read The Australian back when they had a real IT section on Tuesdays. That section faded at the same rate the newspaper itself seemed to lose its fairness. Now I can’t really stand it, almost every single story is written from a right leaning standpoint.

  24. The Australian totally sold out. I lost any respect for it. Boy, what a banana republic we actually are leaving in…everything is corrupt.

  25. Why can’t the people pull their heads in when it comes to public scrutiny around a major government project. Trust the government, they know what they are doing. The Senator says so.

    • @J. Goebels If the Opposition’s proposals had any technical merit, your observation, in turn, might have merit.

      But in the absence of a viable alternative, are you offering one? Or are you urging that nothing be done by anybody anywhere? To say the the private sector will fill the breach has not been evidenced by any activity during the Howard years.

      • Did I say anything about an alernative?. No. Trust the Senator. For he knows what is good for all of us, and don’t ask questions you troublemaker.

  26. Least of all, ask questions of you. Am I able to ask one more? Should we do nothing? It passes the cheapness test as you would define it. No cost. No benefit.

  27. This is not about politics as most labor supporters try to make out. The election is over, no one won the election but one team won the post election pork barreling – so effectively the election is over and won.

    Wanting high speed broadband via a financially viable and responsible method should not be construed as some last minute regime change or party political bias.

    As a software developer I’ve worked in various industries including the telco industry for 5 years. I recommend anyone who is convinced of the “my way or the high way, fiber to the home, do it once, do it right, do it with fiber” bullsh*t that Conroy is pushing should do some googling about what other Western countries have done to provide their population with speeds approaching what the NBN v2 promises.

    Fiber to the Node actually or copper over the last mile works… really well… and it’s orders of magnitudes cheaper for the ISP and the customer – forget all the FUD about ‘old copper wiring’ and other Conroy malaki – the foots stuck in the NBN FTTH headlights should do some research before they repeat their blind regurgitation of Conroy’s matras.

    • Golfman, please educate yourself. The reason for the NBN was to remove the Telstra monopoly that has been dominating the industry for 20 years. FTTN would not cover the last mile, all of which is owned by Telstra. that is why FTTH was the final solution.

  28. Really, the concept and execution of such a network project is simply to important
    and significant to the future of the nation than to be left to the avarice of the
    corporate sector

  29. It aint rocket science. Rupert Murdoch has had a hard time keeping a business model in the internet age. Nobody has been willing to pay a online subscription for his BS laughingly called journalism. I would call any journalist in his organization an intellectual prostitute. It would be good for his eroding business model to stop or destroy the open internet. So his product and his motives can’t be trusted for accurate non tabloid information without doublespeak political correctness… This is just another dinosaur from a dying industry trying to keep his monopoly intact like packer buying ten and rumored to kill one hd so there will be no sport on free to air so many will go to their unholy foxtel alliance.

  30. Conroy is right the Australian is out of line and attacks anything that has to do with labor.
    The Australian has always fielded with the liberal side of politics and will as long as Murdoch has a say i it.

  31. So the NBN has proven to be unwanted in the first state it was implemented it. Hardly surprising to be honest. Infact the likely in the end 80 billion dollar cost of this project will mean that householders will be paying considerably more for their internet connections (though for a higher connection speed in many areas) or paying hundreds yet more likely thousands of dollars in tax to recoup those infrastructure costs, if internet package prices aren’t increased considerably. The NBN is not cost effective in any way. There are far more urgent things that that many tens of billions of dollars could and should be spent on such as schools, health, roads etc. Instead the government has opted to put every Australian into debt for faster internet speeds – ludicrous.

  32. I feel genuinely sorry for you Grover. Trying to make it through life with such a low IQ must be a real challenge.

    Tell me, if you’re so blind as to not understand how tomorrow’s world will need more bandwidth than today’s, then why do you take an interest in technology sites like this one? How you can the rapid pace at which progress moves with computers be acceptable to your mind, yet at the same time you’re completely blind to the fact that the growth of the Internet (and the speed we accesss the net at) is moving at a similar speed?

    • @Grover – you are right on the money there. It’s a complete joke.

      3 years ago labor promised laptops for high school kids. 3 years later got 2 high school kids but no laptops… if they can’t even come through on a 1 billion dollar program how are these mugs going to *manage* (I use that word lightly) a $43 billion program. People would have to have ZERO IQ to think that it’s only going to cost $43 but those people deluding themselves with that are probably labor voters – the correlation there is purely coincidental, I’m sure.

      @Simon – Of course it’s convenient for you to turn thing argument into ‘high speed’ or ‘not high’ speed. Of course we’ll need higher speed in the future – we’re not arguing against that – we’re just trying to propose a financially viable (not financially insane) way of achieving that (google FTTN and you’ll see how we can get high speed without throwing money down the drain) .

      Sorry for being reasonable and not just shutting up and letting Conroy dictate without cost analysis. Just look at the arrogance on his face in the photo at the top of this page…

      I mean really… it’s the same arrogance that was proposing to introduce an internet filter and have Australia join the ranks of only a few other countries with one: China and Iran… yeah, way to go Conroy.

      • And what do we do when whatever FTTN can provide us isnt enough? FTTN is limited to a few hundred megabits under ideal situations and 30Mbps would probably be about the average.

        FTTH on the other hand is capable of 4.3Tb/s at minimum if we had a need to utilize it.

        FTTH might cost more than FTTN, but if we roll out FTTN we will be upgrading it again within 10 years, FTTH will last alot longer.

  33. The ABS has been describing a “ceiling” effect in the uptake of internet and broadband services for the past decade. The ABS compared households with equivalised incomes of less than $40k with those of more than $200k with the 2009 year indicating that the former group were 6 times more likely not to have household internet access and 3 times more likely not to have household broadband access. More than half the lower income group were without broadband and more than 40 percent were without an internet service.
    More than 10 percent of the high income group chose not to have broadband and more than 5 per cent chose not to have internet.
    Overall more than 20 percent of households with school-age children do not have household internet access and 35 percent of households without children do not have internet.
    The ABS data calls into question the assumptions about the most optimistic estimates of demand for NBN-based services.

    • In other words, the “Conroy Fan Boys” who keep popping up like annoying little ignorant delusionalists seem to be constantly ignoring important fundamentals. How convenient to ignore the facts – it must be bliss to be so delusional as to say “high speed is great and we must fiber to the home at *any* cost” even though the rest of the world by and large have settled on just as effective but less expensive options like HFC and FTTN (which, by the way, the NBN forces the removal of to remove these cheaper alternatives from the mix – Optus is now wanting compensation if it’s forced to remove it’s cable network – how much will that cost Spinister Conroy?)

      Sure we all want fast internet. We also want a 300km/hr train between the major cities and we all would like no traffic and hospitals without waiting lists and a public school system that actually provides schooling for our kids in a disciplined environment where kids actually have a chance to learn but all these things compete for funding. We can’t have them all, up front, in one go. In a world of limited resources you need to be very careful when dividing up the public funds.

      • FTTN would not be effective in this country because Telstra control the last mile. The NBN was designed to remove a monopoly situation in the industry so FTTH is required. It’s not a fan boy, and it’s not spin. It’s the cold hard reality.

    • Cliff, I guess you’re referring to ABS 8146.0, Household Use of Information Technology when you describe the ceiling effect.
      While it’s a useful study, it has to be interpreted in light of other data – such as access. Rural incomes are, in general, lower than city incomes; people on lower incomes are likely to be in homes with lower access to broadband. So the distribution of users you talk about is at least partly a result of what access is available to the household.
      It’s also worth remembering that the latest study takes us up to 2009, whereas by June 2010, total Internet subscribers in Australia passed 7 million. Counting a rough 2.5 persons per household yields Internet access already greater than the 16 million-ish recorded in the latest Household Use of Information Technology study.
      An example of what the Household Use of Information Technology data doesn’t tell us: how many people were too remote for dial-up, but couldn’t afford satellite? The data is not particularly useful to either support or discredit the NBN.

      • Richard,
        A node is a node, the NBN schema does employ a street node and from the node to the home the link is not proposed to be direct optical. Gav implied that each connected household was to get the benefit of the full bandwidth of a direct connection- you apparently agree with him even though you concede that the connection gets split to serve a number of households (nominally 32).

      • Richard the ABS data compared households stratified by income, comparing lower to upper quintiles, so your comment makes no sense. The ABS also stratified the data by metropolitan/non vs metropolitan. There are different statistical distributions of income according to geography but the trends shown are much the same.

        • Cliff –

          Re ABS data: All I’m saying there is that Household Use of IT doesn’t necessarily demonstrate a lack of a market for the NBN.

          Regarding the NBN architecture, I mentioned the splitter, so I didn’t think I needed to re-iterate that the capacity will be split between users. My observation that FTTN doesn’t provide an FTTP upgrade path still stands. The “node” in the GPON model is just an optical splitter with no active electronics; the node in an FTTN model is the active electronics converting optical to electrical, which would not be useful after an FTTP upgrade.

  34. A ubiquitous quality internet connection can provide the cheapest entertainment for financially challenged families and access to the best teachers when the market is big enough to justify preparing the lessons.

    Can’t the doubters see any of this? Do they rue the day the copper CAN was laid down at a time when many people used the phone box at the end of the street? If we can aim for the Best Olympics, why not the best communications in a land which pioneered air travel? Would these folk have criticised Qantas when it launched in Longreach?

    Why are we thinking so small these days?

    • ISPs do not offer reasonable incentives for financially challenged families. Compare the marginal additional cost of the most basic internet service for a household with a basic phone service to a household with multiple services. The “financially challenged” household will pay up to 5 times the amount for the same service. How the NBN might change this- I’m not sure.

  35. For those proposing FTTN instead of FTTH, have you spared any thoughts for those of us stuck behind RIMS or are in areas where there are no available ports for even basic ADSL, let alone ADSL2+? I guess we are the minority, and therefore do not matter… and this is in Melbourne, without even the excuse of being in a remote area. Do you think it will get any better for us if we depended on the private sector? The government is doing what it is supposed to do, provide for basic needs equally (or as close as possible) to all Australians.

    • FTTN would just make matters worse as the only company who has enough revenue to put a DSLAM in every one of the new FTTN cabinets is Telstra, and we would be back where we started, no competitor DSLAM’s – hooray.

      Not to mention after like half a milometre the speeds are slower than ADSL2+

      FTTN might cost a fraction of what FTTH does, but currently FTTN isnt able to provide much more than 30Mbps reliably, sure, it’s a upgrade, but even if it is 4x cheaper than NBNco’s FTTH plan – it isnt even scratching the surface of what FTTH can do.

      Under NBNco’s FTTH plan every cable delivered to every house will be capable of at least 4.3Tb/s after new GPON tech is released, as we speak, some have even managed to push 100Pb/s down a single Fiber strand, seriously, FTTN is dead technology, we will just end up with a even bigger decaying copper network.

        • Gav,
          As I understand it, the NBN involves direct optical cable to street nodes, thence shared optical cable to clusters of homes. The NBN is in that sense merely an extended FTTN, it is NOT direct fibre-to-the-home as you suggest.

          • Cliff,

            The cable leaves the “exchange” in the NBN model, then gets split to serve 32 homes. It is not, however, “an extended FTTN”. If you built an FTTN now, you would rip up all the infrastructure between the node and the home to “upgrade” it to FTTP. You would also replace the active equipment at the exchange end; in other words, the one fibre run – from exchange to node – is all you would get to keep.

          • It’s good to see more people getting involved in the FTTN vs FTTH debate. FTTN isa great; fast to roll out option for high speed broadband that is financially viable and has much higher take up rates than expensive FTTH style NBN.

            ….which is why the rest of the world have mostly adopted it. Verizon, Usa just ceased their FTTH roll out because of low take up rates and high expense.People find HFC and FTTN fine. next generation FTTN is hitting 100mbps up to 1km of copper. Do smart node placement and voila!

            Read up folks. dont let spinister conroy fool u.

            fttn is a great stepping stone towards ftth. just ask the swiss. sorry bout the typing – from mu phone

          • Golfman, please educate yourself. FTTN does not solve the monopoly. Telstra would still control the last mile. That is why FTTH was implemented.

          • Once again you have put the blinkers on KD in your explanation of the FTTN failure, it was a Rudd/Conroy proposal that they went into the 2007 election with, Telstra placed a proposal at almost the deadline, it was rejected on a technicality, there were other industry proposals that were accepted but were ultimately rejected by Conroys Dept.

            The FTTH NBN magic rabbit was pulled out of the hat so Labor could try and save some face after the FTTN tender farce fell on its face and the taxpayer blew a few million away on the process.

  36. the australian has blamed the NBN for everything from cancer to the assassination of JF Kennedy :) (granted, ive made a slight exaggeration here). at any time you will see about 8 anti-NBN articles, all coming at it from different angles.

    what is telling in its attacks is the extent the Oz deviates from a consistent narrative or narratives in their campaign against it – just about every aspect of the NBN has been attacked by the australian with hardly a single article (that has survived more than a day or so on its website) providing another perspective. these attacks have ranged from extremely petty technical/fiscal issues to predictions whose terminology connotes (if not actually predicting) economic-armagedon. where there is a narrative, these attacks are primarily of an economic/free market ideology disposition which are not properly infomed on technical aspects of the technology, or a knowledge of where the sector in paryticular is progressing technologically (granted there is a degree of speculation involved here). when they became technical, they are uninformed/misinformed and border on being misleading.

    this article points to what has been correctly observed/reported by the Oz, whilst hardly denying an inherent bias and cases of exageration in its reporting. when talking of the oz’s coverage of the NBn, it hardly talks of standards that our major news providers should be eulogizing or aiming for.

  37. a couple of additions to your list:

    “Little advantage in NBN for ‘mum and dad’”
    “Costly flaw in Labor’s big-picture NBN pitch”
    “Pick up the policy phone, Senator Conroy”
    “Conroy gets his wires crossed”
    “NBN needs this newspaper’s scrutiny”
    “Conroy has ‘hissy fit’ over NBN coverage”
    “A conspiracy you’re all in on”
    “Apple generation won’t need fibre-to-home NBN”
    “NBN a ‘colossal waste’, says Howard”
    “Price before speed for network users”
    “Censorship the real sleeper in the government’s $43bn NBN chaos”
    “NBN a conspiracy against taxpayers, warns Turnbull”
    “An NBN without a business case is ‘pig-headed’”
    “Tall claims, few facts in $43bn broadband gamble”
    “NBN wiring could cost users up to $400 a room”
    “Hidden back-up charge for users in fast broadband service”
    “Shaky rollout on the NBN front line”
    “Conroy spinning into old habits with rant”
    “Shield protects NBN from competition”

    fair and balanced indeed.

    • Wow. I knew they were bad, but seeing all those headlines together makes them sound like they have about as much journalistic integrity as ‘A Current Affair’.

    • Surely if you don’t like The Australian you just don’t buy it? Isn’t that the answer?
      I don’t like ACA and Today Tonight, but I wouldn’t waste 1 second of my life compiling a list of their ridiculous stories and coming onto the comments sections of websites complaining that they are biased against fat kids and dodgy repairmen!

      • Fair point but Corey might be coming from a different viewpoint from you. Avoidance is not enough, this kind of scrutiny helps others who may blindly read and accept to think again.

  38. Me,

    fat kids and dodgy repairmen are not essential 21th century nation building infrastructure that may possibly be derailed by a political crises stemming from gross misinformation in the public sphere emenating from a major news provider.

    • The only misinformation surrounding the NBN is that it is the NBN we had to have. The ‘we need fiber to the home now’ is total spin. No other financially sane country in the developed world has insisted on such a draconian FTTH approach because FTTN gets everyone up to speed much faster and at much less cost.

      Here’s a few examples of FTTH adopters:

      Singapore (though their extremely high population density makes it probably a very appropriate FTTH target). Their Debt to GDP ratio is 117%

      Spain (yah, let’s go full FTTH): They are a European economic basket case at the moment.

      I’m not saying that choosing FTTH makes your country become an economic basket case but FTTH seems to be ‘flavour of the month’ among the economically incompetent countries – what that says about Australia and its current NBN proposal….hmmm.

      Most of the others provide high speed broad band via a combination of HFC and FTTN.

      Switzerland rolled out FTTN first to get faster broadband sooner and now are extending that network to get fiber to the homes FTTH of those who want to pay for it. For those who are happy with 40Mpbs (who wouldn’t be – currently I’m stuck on 2Mbit ADSL!!!) they are not forced to take up fiber as some draconian spinister would have us do by forcibly removing competing networks to ensure the ‘excess of his little jewel.

      • You are sadly misinformed. The entire reason for FTTH is because Telstra control the last mile. It is that reason alone why FTTN was taken off the table. It didn’t solve the monopoly which the industry suffers from right now. The NBN is.a solution to a 20 year problem in the telecommunications industry. Not some political campaign, even labour were surprised the NBN had such a following. That is because the industry sees it as good solution to fix an ongoing monopoly.

        • So the problem is a monopoly, which is going to be fixed by creating another monopoly, and then seek to exempt telecommunications from the competition provisions of the trade practices act so that the Government can regulate the pricing of anyone who dares compete with the NBN.

          http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/364622/updated_government_control_prices_nbn_rivals/

          “Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, has confirmed to ARN that his proposed legislation to regulate NBN Co rivals will include controlling their prices.

          The information all but confirms industry fears that creating rival networks may soon become unfeasible and unprofitable as the Government seeks to ensure the financial viability of its National Broadband Network.”

          • Having seen how well a “private” monopoly works (NOT!), I’m all for the government owning the communications backbone and controlling the prices. I shudder to imagine a situation in communications similar to banking happen here. Company A claims they have to increase prices due to increased costs, Company B, C and D follows suit…but strangely, they are all posting record earnings consecutive years.

          • So we eliminate the (ex Government owned) Telstra monopoly by creating another Government owned monopoly called the NBN Co – brilliant!

            Here’s a thought, why don’t we rename the NBN Co the PMG, then it can become Telecom then Conroy can ‘buy’ the Telstra name (he loves giving taxpayer billions to Telstra for their co-operation), privatise it and we can start all over again.

          • So we eliminate the (ex Government owned) Telstra monopoly by creating another Government owned monopoly – brilliant.

            You have hit the nail on the head. But not the one you expected. It is brilliant. It is a neat solution to terribly Telstra dominated telecommunications sector. The ACCC has been littered with complaints from competing companies trying to work with Telstra as the backbone and it has been a nightmare. The NBN eliminates the issue, sidesteps Telstra and brings the country back to ubiquitous access for everyone. This monopoly is owned and operated by the taxpayer with the stated objective to achieve the above.

          • So you guarantee the ACCC will not have a queue of ISP’s at the door complaining about the NBN Co? – yeah sure pull the other one.

            Telstra was also a taxpayer owned monopoly – remember? – but this time they will get it right – I promise, trust me I’m a politician.

          • Be interesting to see what they would be complaining about. I can’t get the same access as…. err…. ummm… “Yes sir, you all have equal access to NBN, that is our mandate”

            Alain, this is the entire point of the NBN. To provide equal access for everyone and remove a commercial monopoly that exists today. Yes it will be replaced with a government one, that is strictly controlled to only providing layer 2 services. That is also written in stone at NBNCo. Thats all they do, is layer two. That means NBNCo cannot even provide you with Internet, someone else has to do it. The RSP’s or retail service providers as NBN call it like Internode, iiNet, Telstra, Optus etc will all provide services over the NBN.

          • Most of the complaints at the ACCC are about the TW price, in fact some ISP’s are complaining about the TW ADSl2+ pricing at the moment, if you are a retailer reselling wholesale and you have recourse at the ACCC to get it cheaper you will use it.

            ISP’s will always want it cheaper, the ‘we want the NBN cheaper’ queue at the ACCC will be just as busy as the Telstra one over the years, except this time BigPond will be lining up as well.

          • @alain you might want to read those complaints a bit more closely. Telstra has reduced their retail pricing without a matching reduction in wholesale pricing. If other ISPs wish to stay competitive they have to reduce their margins. Telstra is squeezing them out by making providing service unviable for it’s competitors.

            With the NBN you would have a neutral company setting wholesale rates which all RSPs must pay. There will still be a role for the ACCC in oversight of the pricing, a monopoly is never given free rein.

          • Please give me 3 examples of government run infrastructure that is running at a profit or at least providing adequate service without costing the tax payers billions. choose state or federal.

            rail – nup
            hospitals -nup
            power -nup state guvs ripped out profits for themselves to pay debt they racked up thru incompetance.
            water – nup

            u’d have to be a labor zealot or plain delusional to think the nbn will be any different.

          • @Golfman actually, I don’t trust any government to build the NBN.

            Thankfully they aren’t building it, NBN Co is.

            And as to your examples of “failed” infrastructure:

            Rail – some states have excellent rail services, some have terrible ones. The terrible ones are still taking hundreds of cars off the road, reducing congestion and reducing CO2 emissions. Want to put a $ figure on those benefits?

            Hospitals – no hospital system is perfect but you can’t seriously imagine trying to put a $ figure on the lives saved, life expectancy increases, quality of life improvements?

            Power – not sure what you are referring to. Most of the generating assets were sold. That private companies overpaid during the credit and infrastructure boom is not really the government’s fault.

            Water – I presume you are talking about rivers and irrigation and the assorted mismanagement that has gone on. I think that natural resource management is perhaps not the poster child for government’s compromise between competing interests. However, that is a policy problem, not an implementation problem.

            I’m no Labor zealot. I can’t stand the machinations that go on behind the scenes on both sides but Labor is the worst. I was pleasantly surprised with the minority government as the major parties need a bit of a wake up call. Finally we get continuous debate and negotiation over policy and not just a circus around every election that is promptly forgotten as soon as the numbers are in.

          • So the problem is a monopoly, which is going to be fixed by creating another monopoly ~ correct.

            However this one is owned by you and me, has no vested interest in locking out the competition on the last mile. This is the entire basis for the NBN.

            …seek to exempt telecommunications from the competition provisions of the trade practices act so that the Government can regulate the pricing of anyone who dares compete with the NBN. ~ correct

            This is by design. Think about it, the NBN is designed to provide a level playing field in the telecommunication market. The only way the to do this is to BE the playing field. If you have other competitors who offer discount pricing in the cities where it is profitable to do so, they can undercut the NBN. This is the point of the solution. It is a nationwide network upon which all others operate. If you want a fair market then you want the NBN.

            “The information all but confirms industry fears that creating rival networks may soon become unfeasible and unprofitable as the Government seeks to ensure the financial viability of its National Broadband Network”

            Its not a fear, it is the reality. For the NBN to do it job and provide a level playing field for all industry players, it is required to make rival networks in th wholesale space unfeasible. This is mandated in its design and has always been a stated objective.

          • “has no vested interest in locking out the competition on the last mile.”

            Well that is was the NBN Co via Conroy legislation is doing, which is the exact opposite to what you say, they have every vested interest in making sure there is no fixed line competitor.

            “For the NBN to do it job and provide a level playing field for all industry players,”

            What level playing field are you on about, if there is no wholesale competitors how can it be a level playing field? – the NBN Co owns the field, complete with no entry signs all around.

          • @alain, go and read the implementation. I think you need to bone up. The NBN provides the infrastructure on which companies operate. They don’t control who uses it. Anyone with the right gear can offer endpoint services over the NBN. They are providing a ubiquitous backbone so their are no barriers to retail competition like their are now. Their backbone runs all the way to your door.

            The really it no wholesale competition now. Their was Telstra and then their were others trying to compete with Telstra. Now their will be the government and anyone can provide retail services without having to pay ridiculous wholesale charges in areas were there was only Telstra. In fact any layer three service is up for grabs as the NBN stops at layer two. But you would have to have a network background to know this. That’s your level playing field.

          • “There really is no wholesale competition now. ” (corrected spelling).

            Well there is, there is multiple choice of wholesale suppliers of ADSL2+ at most high population density exchanges, if you don’t like the Telstra Wholesale price check out Optus or iiNet and resell that.

            You also conveniently overlook that one booming wholesale product Naked DSL is not even available from Telstra, and many ISP’s resell the Optus and iiNet service and BigPond don’t even sell it at the retail level.

            The ‘level playing field’ under the NBN is a fiction, it is less level than it is today, your blind faith that there will not be ‘ridiculous wholesale charges’ under the NBN is just wishful thinking, wait till the honeymoon is over where current pricing is low or not existent just to get ISP’s to co-operate and punters to use it..

          • There is competition in metro areas. 10% of exchanges have multiple DSLAM providers. And the rest of Australia?

            What about those whose exchange has no spare ports? And those behind a RIM? What about those who lose line sync during rain?

            The level playing field people speak of is recognition that fixed line access is a natural monopoly and the best provider of that is a single, neutral infrastructure company.

          • The NBN Co is neutral is it, that’s why Conroy is introducing legislation to ensure there are no competitors and too make sure it has the two biggest Telco’s customer base onboard by buying them.

            So much for being neutral.

          • Can’t help but feel we’re all coughing up $billions to tickle Conroy’s ego… and that’s a big and insatiable ego, just listen to the guy talk.

          • Goflman, a loathsome politician (Conroy) can still be the figurehead for an important job done by someone who knows how to do it (Quigley).

            Let Conroy strut and shout. If anyone remembers him, it will be only for his stupidity and intransigence over Internet censorsip.

        • The ‘industry’ loves the NBN because they don’t have to pay for it, let’s see how enthusiastic they are if they had to contribute to the build cost based on their customer numbers!

          • The NBN rollout is a free lunch and the stranded assets could also be a free lunch.

            http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/telcos-to-seek-compensation-if-bypassed-by-nbn/story-e6frg8zx-1225942947425

            It is really quite simple the industry is right behind the NBN rollout because the high risk high cost flaky ROI is being bankrolled by the taxpayer, ISP’s and Telco’s will just take the margin cream off the top and retail it back to the taxpayers who own it anyway.

            If the NBN uptake is not high enough they just flog wireless data plans where increasingly the consumer is buying into, the NBN is a bottomless pit in which taxpayer funds will be thrown in to keep it going, you think the Telco’s/ISP’s care the NBN bleeds billions?

            Not likely, they will be queued up at the ACCC because it isn’t cheap enough!

          • That is not an argument against the NBN, that is an argument about how it is implemented.

            You really should read the ACCC discussion paper on NBN’s POI plans.

  39. Why are people bringing up FTTN?

    It’s the worst of both worlds.

    ISPs’ current investment in DSLAMs will be stranded yet we won’t have weaned ourselves off the copper.

    It would not be as expensive but the ROI would be lower and 20 years down the track we have to come back and go FTTH and then we obsolete a lot of the FTTN “in the field” equipment.

  40. no sane proponent of a 43billion, no cost benefit analysis, ftth/nbn would dare introduce roi to the argument. i take it you are having a lend of us.

    • I’m not actually.

      If you want to do a CBA on just FTTH then you need to put a value on intangibles that stretch a unknown duration into the future.

      If you want to compare FTTN to FTTH they both include this component and it effectively cancels out the uncertainty.

      FTTN has higher constructions costs per Mb/s gained at the client site. It is also less scalable and has higher maintenance costs. It might be cheaper but the ROI will be lower.

      It also has most of the negatives such as stranded assets and reworking of wholesale products (especially for things like alarm circuits, monitoring circuits).

      • “If you want to do a CBA on just FTTH then you need to put a value on intangibles that stretch a unknown duration into the future.”

        Yeah I hear that line a lot: “The benefits of giving everyone a Ferrari when the speed limit is currently maxed at 80km/hr in most places is far too intangible for us to be bothered even calculating so just go out and buy everyone a Ferrari already, ok…. well, go and do it now!”

        “FTTN has higher constructions costs per Mb/s gained at the client site. It is also less scalable and has higher maintenance costs. It might be cheaper but the ROI will be lower.”

        Are you basing that on the 100Mbps or the fantasy 1GBbps? If you base it on the reality figure (remember if everyone is on 1GBbps no one will be able to achieve 1Gbps) or based on what speed most people actually need then FTTN kills FTTH on cost per MB ACTUALLY USED BY REAL PEOPLE (that’s excluding hard code porn movie downloaders of course!).

        Verizon in the USA has just canned their FTTH rollout – why, no ROI – just a massive black hole that they were throwing money into while HFC and FTTN operators were laughing at them saying “we told you, you idealistic, ignorant fools” but yeah, that’s just what’s happening in the real world. In this fanciful land Conroy plans on eliminating all competing technologies – how much is Optus going to want in compensation for dismantling their HFC network – just to satisfy Conroy’s ego?

        “It [FTTN] also has most of the negatives such as stranded assets and reworking of wholesale products (especially for things like alarm circuits, monitoring circuits).”

        FTTH via passive splitters (32/fiber back to the exchange) is not the ideal, future proof system everyone is talking about. If you’re only getting a time slice on a shared connection back to the exchange then if we ever do need 1Gbps connections for whatever in the future then GPON won’t cut it I wouldn’t think. It’s a lie to say it’s future proof.

        What’s more likely to be needed in the future is active nodes, like in FTTN, that allow for more intelligent bandwidth sharing that the prehistoric ‘time slice’ sharing of the GPON technologies.

        I reckon the quickest way for us all to get faster speed is go FTTN now and those that want to pay to have fibre extended from the node to their doorstep can pay for it themselves. Others who are happy with much cheaper 40-100mpbs via FTTN can stay on that. All this nonsense of removing competing technologies makes me think Conroy is suffering some kind of paranoia that his boat may not float and so he fills the ocean with sand until it’s only 2 foot deep.

        • It may just be that I hate analogies when we could just debate the actual thing, but I’m not sure I understand your Ferrari analogy. If you want to do “car on highway” analogies wouldn’t the users/applications/utilisation be the “cars” and the infrastructure the “highway”. So the NBN would be the autobahn and everyone can upgrade their car when they need to go faster.

          I’m basing that on the current capabilities of FTTH vs FTTN technologies. The scalability of fibre as the equipment at both ends is upgraded (FSA node + NTU) vs that of hybrid (exchange + street cabinet + CPE). The maintenance costs of a passive network vs the active kerb cabinets.

          Verizon have stopped rolling out FiOS because they are private company which requires commercial ROI in hard cash. Intangible benefits are meaningless to Verizon’s shareholders. NBN Co will require a lower ROI in $ terms because of the public ownership.

          You are right that GPON has limitations because of it’s shared nature. The scalability is not in the particular PON technology chosen by NBN Co but in the installed fibre plant. As newer PON specifications mature and become economically viable then the NBN can be upgraded.

          • “So the NBN would be the autobahn and everyone can upgrade their car when they need to go faster.”

            To get even more accurate: the NBN is like the autobahn with no single lane off ramps – instead an 8 lane highway is built to every individual home’s driveway. Sounds a tad expensive. As everyone is still sharing the main 8 lane highway they can do 300km/h on their private stretch of 8 lane highway but once they hit the shared sections of the highway they are all sitting at 30km/h because the road is so jammed.

            “You are right that GPON has limitations because of it’s shared nature. The scalability is not in the particular PON technology chosen by NBN Co but in the installed fibre plant. As newer PON specifications mature and become economically viable then the NBN can be upgraded.”

            In other words doing Fiber to the Home now is not the ‘set and forget’ technology that will satisfy our needs for the forseeable future with no further upgrade costs like the NBN proponents like to falsely claim. Upgrades will require customer end and exchange end equipment upgrades – most likely passive nodes will need to be converted to active nodes – so building FTTN node cabinets won’t be throw away assets if we went with FTTN in the short term then FTTH later for those who have a need for 1Gbps.

            People seem to underestimate the cost saving of building thousands of nodes and only having to get fiber to each node compared to the excessive expense of running fiber to millions of homes and the extra interaction that requires from the ‘government’s little helpers’ – rewiring homes, digging up footpaths, front yards, drilling holes through walls, ceilings etc.,… yeah, we all know how good the guvment were at getting into our rooves to install pink batts. With FTTN the last mile of copper – that’s already there and already paid for and already connected – remains completely untouched.

            VDSL2 is quite an impressive FTTN standard, low cost and speeds increasing every year (just like dial up modem technology got better each year) which is probably why most of the telcos in the world provide their customers with high speed broadband at 30-80mbps now (higher with next gen technology next year). We’ll be stuck on slow ADSL for years waiting for a snail paced ‘full fiber’ roll out. In a few years the millions who’s homes haven’t been fiber connected will be unable to view most websites at 2-5Mbps ADSL speeds because web developers will assume most people in the world have FTTN/VDSL2 speeds. We’ll be the laughing stock of the western world when it comes to broadband.

            I’d rather have 20-50mbps within 6 months via FTTN than wait 5-8 years for a FTTH connection that may never happen if the government runs out of cash for the project. 2 of my sons still don’t have laptops as promised in the 2007 election because that program ‘ran out of money’. If they can’t even deliver on a tiny project like that how the hell can they deliver on a $43 billion project?

          • How about we dispense with the analogies and just talk about reality?

            Assumptions:
            – NBN Co will deploy GPON
            – each fibre upstream of the splitter will support 32 ONTs
            – all 32 customers have subscribed to the maximum speed plan available

            If all 32 customers are utilising as much bandwidth as they can have then:
            – downstream – 2.4 Gb/s / 32 ~= 75 Mb/s
            – upstream – 1.2 Gb/s / 32 ~= 37 Mb/s

            These speeds would be the maximum committed information rate (CIR) that NBN Co could reasonably wholesale. Any speeds above that would include a component of excess information rate (EIR).

            However, reality is likely to a bit different than that.

            Not everyone will sign up for higher speeds, they might just appreciate the reliability and low latency.

            Not everyone will use as much bandwidth as possible all the time. Effective information rate will be somewhere between the CIR and their plan speed depending on the simultaneous utilisation by others. If there is only 1 customer online and their plan allows it theoretically they could use the full bandwidth provided by GPON.

            I expect that will meet our needs for about 20 years. We could then replace GPON with whatever version of PON is mature and economical at the time. Given that a large proportion of the cost of the NBN is in rolling out the fibre, upgrades at the edges will offer a cheaper and easier increase in performance.

          • “If all 32 customers are utilising as much bandwidth as they can have then:
            – downstream – 2.4 Gb/s / 32 ~= 75 Mb/s
            – upstream – 1.2 Gb/s / 32 ~= 37 Mb/s”

            So the NBN claim of ‘guaranteed 100Mbps’ was innaccurate (if not then deceitful) and the “ooh we just realized we can possibly get 1Gbps” claim dumped on the electorate before the election was just plain fraud.

            FTTH sure seems an excessively expensive way to achieve 75Mb/s when new generation FTTN technologies can deliver similar speeds over the last mile of existing copper without laying fiber to millions of homes and simply reusing the last mile of existing copper that is already there and, importantly, without needing to touch the wiring in people’s homes.

            So FTTN is just too inexpensive, too sensible, too fast to implement for this guvment by far.

          • ‘Tis the season for cost benefit analyses, so let’s have a long term CBA about FTTN too as well as the Opposition’s plan.

          • Hell let’s have a cost benefit analysis of coat benefit analysis’s. We need to make sure they aren’t a waste of taxpayer’s time and money right?

          • Simon,

            My point was let’s have a really good long term look at ALL proposed “solutions” to the problem instead of us all blathering on interminably about the alleged short life of fibre and lack of overseas cabling despite there being no shortage of reliable sources that deal with these issues.

            I think when that is done the current NBN proposal will be the best, but let us put the issue to bed once and for all and get on with our day (and night) jobs.

            We leave other projects up to experts, yet in this case everyone has a go no matter how ill informed.

  41. So basically, the problem isn’t NBN (or least the technology behind it)…Its Senator Conroy and how he’s going about it.

    • Correct – we all want faster bandwidth but the methods by which we can achieve it are many. We just don’t want a $43billion dollar monster government monopoly rammed down our throat and sold as the ‘best option for us’ without affording us the dignity of properly evaluating alternatives that have proved wildly successful at only a fraction of the cost in most other developed countries.

  42. I believe that “The Australian”‘s rabid attacks on the NBN have very little to do with it’s merit or otherwise (or even reality) and everything to do with it’s owner also owning 25% of Foxtel, which will suddenly be exposed to a lot of serious competition should a high speed internet delivery system (ala NBN) get built.

    Is the NBN a threat to Foxtel?
    Why do you think Telstra (who own HALF of Foxtel) has suddenly started trialling internet TV with it’s first dip of the toe being the T-Box?

    • they have a reason to complain given nbn co’s attitude of eliminating all potentially competing technologies to force people onto the nbn. in no other democratic country would that be allowed but in Austarlia we’re so uniformed and gullible that we eat up that crap and go “yeah sounds ok”.

      companies with competing technologies will be paid billions in compensation to bend over. billions that labor will tax YOU for the pleasure. guvment money means increased taxes and more debt which screws this great country.

      • Dear me, “more debt”. Are you going to include “a great big new tax” and “stop the boats”?

        Australia is in an excellent economic position, especially compared to other supposedly first world countries.

        We’ve heard a great deal about how the Big 4 banks have to keep on borrowing to succeed. Apparently the government isn’t allowed that business option.

  43. “guvment money means increased taxes and more debt which screws this great country.”

    I have not seen any commentators agreeing with this view by comparison with other countries. Is this is what “drawing a long bow” means?

    • Not specifically in relation to the NBN, spending too much money and so needing to go into big debt and increase taxes, in general, screws up any country in the long run. Been watching the news in the last 12 months? … countries all over Europe are screwed up because they got into too much debt, spending their brains out trying ‘please the masses’ (i.e. get re-elected at any cost) and now they’re having street demonstrations and riots as they try to reduce spending and reign in the debts (or at least stop them from growing). Greece, France, UK, Spain, Portugal… all examples of what happens when guvments go crazy with YOUR money.

      I’m not speaking directly to the NBN here but it’s just a generally insane approach for guvments to seek re-election by crazy, unfunded, badly cost/benefit analysed, cost blow out, poorly implemented, management by abdication style programs. We all know the current list of failures…. get ready to add another to the list in a few years.

  44. NSW went into debt to built the Cityrail network and the Harbour Bridge. What a terrible idea that was.

  45. Golfman:
    “countries all over Europe are screwed up because they got into too much debt, spending their brains out trying ‘please the masses’ (i.e. get re-elected at any cost) ”

    Sounds like John Howard.

    The difference between Australia and Europe was that we have tonnes of coal, iron ore, aluminium etc etc that we have been spending.

    When John Howard first came to power, Australia still had a large manufacturing sector.
    John “freed up the wharves” alright. Loading up empty containers for the return back overseas is much quicker than having to worry about whats inside.

    Today, the only industry we have is the one that comes as a free ride, letting other countries strip mine us for peanuts.
    That’s ok while the minerals hold out, but eventually, like all finite resources, they run out or nobody wants to buy.

    When your grandchildren are providing the cheap labor for China’s high tech industries you can pat yourself on the back and congratulate yourself that you supported Tony Abbott when he killed off our last chance to get into the high tech race because you wanted a couple of extra bucks today rather than investing in tomorrow.

    • “When John Howard first came to power, Australia still had a large manufacturing sector.
      John “freed up the wharves” alright. Loading up empty containers for the return back overseas is much quicker than having to worry about whats inside.”

      Like most in most western countries over the last 20 years, the manufacturing industry has been drastically reduced and now takes place in, predominantly, Asia. We all ate the big brown smelling thing they call “free trade” (promoted by George Dubbelyah Bush et al) not realizing that when you compete with countries who pay their workers $2/day employed in companies don’t have to pay worker’s comp nor ensure safe working conditions you will always lose.

      In hindsight, while the concept sounds good, the “free” trade has failed dismally for western nations – now mostly in debt. The trend to export our manufacturing and agriculture to Asia is accelerating under 3 years of Labor and the last nail in the coffin will be a carbon tax – because we all know damn well Asian countries won’t introduce one – which will make the cost difference in manufacturing local vs manufacturing in Asia even larger.

      But let’s not let reality get in the way of a good story.

  46. Golfman:
    “given nbn co’s attitude of eliminating all potentially competing technologies to force people onto the nbn. in no other democratic country would that be allowed”

    Actually it happens in EVERY democratic country.
    When the monopoly, Bell was broken up in the US, each of the subsidiaries was given a monopoly over the geographic are they cover.
    You do no see duplicate power lines, you do not see airports side by side competing for business.
    The reason is simply, un-necessarily duplicating infrastructure doubles the cost for no net benefit to the public.
    Competition is provided by the retailers, be they ISP’s airlines or whatever.
    A fair deal for the customer is delivered by a regulated wholesaler providing access to all on a level playing field.

    • Goresh in speaking about the US situation said:
      “You do no see duplicate power lines, you do not see airports side by side competing for business.
      The reason is simply, un-necessarily duplicating infrastructure doubles the cost for no net benefit to the public.”

      That is not the case in the USA, in fact Verizon canned their FTTH rollout because they could not compete with FTTN rollouts in the same areas. People weren’t prepared to pay the extra dollars to cover the grotesquely expensive fiber to the home roll out when they are already getting 30-50Mpbs via FTTN.

      Conroy is proposing the very duplication you despise. He recently proposed that Optus run their network over the NBN, making their existing HFC network capable of speeds of 80-90Mbps redundant and in the process making their huge investment in back haul cabling also redundant. You can’t argue against duplication and then push the NBN unless you remove duplication by forcing competitors to tear down their existing residential and back haul infrastructure – a horribly, wasteful, insane idea that Conroy seems to be pushing. So do we hand out multiple billions to Optus in compensation so that the government can force the destruction of what is currently Australias highest speed broadband network?

      If you’re thinking that the NBN is starting to sound grotesquely expensive, wasteful and that high speed broadband could be delivered to Australians using much more private funding in ways that don’t cost the Australian tax payer billions then you’re starting to understand the NBN – well done! Now speak up and inform others about this hideously draconian approach to achieving high speed broadband.

  47. Martin Barry:
    “How about we dispense with the analogies and just talk about reality?

    Assumptions:
    – NBN Co will deploy GPON
    – each fibre upstream of the splitter will support 32 ONTs
    – all 32 customers have subscribed to the maximum speed plan available

    If all 32 customers are utilising as much bandwidth as they can have then:
    – downstream – 2.4 Gb/s / 32 ~= 75 Mb/s
    – upstream – 1.2 Gb/s / 32 ~= 37 Mb/s”

    OK lets.
    Instead we have a fiber to the node system with a peak speed of 100Mb/s.
    Lets make the same assumption as you, that there are 32 customers (though we know there are actually a lot more than 32 on each segment).
    – downstream – 100Mb/s /32 = 3.12Mb/s
    On a highly utilized system, the customer experience is likely to be much worse.
    On a highly utilized NBN, it will NEVER drop below 75Mb/s

    • @Goresh said

      “Instead we have a fiber to the node system with a peak speed of 100Mb/s.
      Lets make the same assumption as you, that there are 32 customers (though we know there are actually a lot more than 32 on each segment).
      – downstream – 100Mb/s /32 = 3.12Mb/s”

      You misunderstand. The 100Mb/s is from the existing copper (already paid for, already laid, already running through your front yard, roof and walls – no extra costs involved) to the node. That’s a dedicated line where you get the whole 100Mb/s to yourself back to the node. From the node back to the exchange is multiple fiber lines each with multi Gigabyte capacity, shared using proper standard bandwidth sharing that is possible because the nodes are active (powered) rather than the old fashioned TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) that’s required with Fiber to the Home using GPON (passive node).

      With the next generation of FTTN technologies it would not be outside the realm of possibility that higher sustained speeds could be possible via FTTN’s active nodes that with an expensive FTTH rollout using passive GPON “nodes”. Wouldn’t that be funny – the cheaper sensible solution being faster than the overly expensive sledgehammer approach.

      • You must have an amazing copper line in your house.

        The copper network (especially the last mile) badly needs replacing. It is decaying fast, and is simply not capable of the communications we need.

        As mentioned in comments above (did you not read them?), many people have bad copper lines, or are stuck behind RIMS/pair-gain.

        It’s the last mile which causes >90% of the technical faults called in to Telstra.

        We can’t depend on our copper lines. We need an investment in a better-quality connection.

  48. Me:
    “Australia has this quaint notion of freedom of the press.”

    Yes. Under the Australian system, the owner of the cable TV network Foxtel can use it’s ownership of it’s newspaper, The Australian, to launch a media campaign to kill off a dangerous competitor to that cable network, the NBN.

  49. Paul Jones:
    “I’ve always wondered why they started where they did myself actually.”

    Because the local authorities, kind of like the Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane, finally got tired of the federal coalition governments utter failure to provide the telecommunications services that they are required to under the constitution, and arranged to do what the coalition refused to do through a decade in government.

    The new federal Labor government stepped in in Tasmania and took over the existing project and took on the constitutional obligation that John Howard wouldn’t.

  50. alain:
    “NBN will be ‘compulsory popular’ when Telstra’s pulls the copper out and there is the transfer of the Telstra HFC and Optus HFC customers but then again the NBN is not all about ‘competitive’ choice in the long term is it?”

    So when the monopoly copper cable is shut down, people will move to the monopoly fiber provider?

    Please explain how replacing a choice of one with another choice of one reduces competition?

  51. Sorry, didn’t point out that there is no requirement either contractual or legal for Optus HFC customers to switch to a service on NBN. Telstra has announced it intends to switch it’s customers in accord with it’s agreement with NBNco, but no such requirement has even been mooted for Optus.
    Given that the two HFC networks cover almost exactly the same geographic areas, the choice to use HFC should remain.

  52. “Sorry, didn’t point out that there is no requirement either contractual or legal for Optus HFC customers to switch to a service on NBN.”

    Maybe you should read up on this:

    Google:

    nbn optus compensation

    Yet more of your hard earned tax dollars being paid to make redundant a fully working Optus system, currently providing users (people I know have this working right now!) with speeds of around 80-90Mb/s…

    If you were Optus and a government was making “NBN specific” amendments that remove parts of the ‘anti competitive’ sections of the trade practices act just so that the government could operate an NBN monopoly then you’d probably be demanding compensation also – and rightly so.

  53. Optus seems to be in frequent strife with ACCC for puffery. This time the fine print for the Optus Premium service says “for Australian content only”. It could well be RSPs on the NBN could offer a competitive deal that would trump Optus, in which case, why buy them out?

    As to “fully working” it was originally intended for multicasting, is it really competitive with the focus of the NBN?

  54. “As to “fully working” it was originally intended for multicasting, is it really competitive with the focus of the NBN?”

    It’s a coax cable capable of incredible speeds limited only by the technology at either end – which is always advancing.

    In the USA HFC seems to be more than adequate for most people’s needs – between HFC and FTTN the expensive, grand plans for FTTH are an unnecessary waste of money which is why Verizon and pulled out before it send the company broke.

    My mate with his typical speed of 84Mbps over Optus HFC would certainly regard it as being competitive with the NBN. The only way the NBN will work is if they deliberately kill off all competition and spend $billions of tax payer dollars and go into even more debt. The success of the NBN won’t have anything to do with it’s merchantability or because it’s the only “viable” option to provide Australians with high speed broadband. It will be because they will legislate to kill off all competing options… it’s sounding less Australian with every passing day.

    And don’t forget… fiber is not likely to run past your door for years to come yet so if you don’t have a HFC option you’ll be stuck on crappy ADSL for many years to come. FTTN on the other hand, could get you 40-50Mbps in 3-6 months if we’d just start building the nodes and up to 100Mbps with the next generation of FTTN technology.

  55. And those like http://nbnexplained.org/wordpress/technical-points/the-fttn-first-debate/ who say it is either a quick or backward fix don’t know what they are talking about and you do?

    I know NBN is not coming tomorrow which is why we (and Mr Son of SoftBank) should start now.

    “It’s a coax cable capable of incredible speeds limited only by the technology at either end – which is always advancing.” … which, in relation to fibre, is not advancing?

    Could Verizon’s change of plan have anything to do with the different investment perspective of private vs public enterprise. Would Verizon have built the Harbour Bridge in 1932? Do we need it the size it is now?

    You should go to the bar and represent litigants with poor cases, at least you would get paid that way. Sometimes.

  56. You know as a Tasmanian, all this talk of HFC and coax cable gives me the shits. Why? Because we don’t have a cm of coax in Tasmania. There is only ADSL and wireless here and all our pay TV services are delivered via satellite from Austar.

    I have friends that STILL can’t get ADSL at their exchange, either due to no availability in their area, or no free ports. Worse still, they aren’t in 3G coverage area to turn to wireless as an alternative!

    If you think about it, there is very little reason for ISPs to invest anything in many areas of Tasmania, because we simply don’t have the numbers to make it financially viable. Tasmania is littered with small towns, farms and scenic tourist destinations with no broadband.

    Why do you think that in the last Federal election Tasmanians overwhelming voted for Labor? A far higher percentage than anywhere else in Australia.

    We ALL want the NBN down here. We’ve been waiting forever for decent broadband from Telstra and their competitors and they haven’t delivered.

    It’s time for the government to step up to fix this, which it has. And yet rich little mainlanders already enjoying fast broadband can’t understand the need for it. To be honest it really pisses me off.

    • “It’s time for the government to step up to fix this, which it has. And yet rich little mainlanders already enjoying fast broadband can’t understand the need for it. To be honest it really pisses me off.”

      Simon,

      Dare I say it, some of us can and some of us do.

    • @Simon Reidy
      “It’s time for the government to step up to fix this, which it has. And yet rich little mainlanders already enjoying fast broadband can’t understand the need for it.”

      You obviously don’t have a problem with the ‘rich little mainlanders’ subsidising your FTTH rollout bigtime either so you can buy it at the same price as they do, even though in reality you should be paying 5-10 times more?

      • Damn right. It’s known as “equality” and “the future”. Concepts you seem to have trouble grasping.

        • I grasp it all right, the “rich little mainlanders” are paying for your subsidised FTTH connection, you are all for that, jeez there are no surprises there.

          It’s a lot like the Telco industry and other businesses that will make a buck out of the NBN being right behind the rollout – as long as they don’t have to pay for it that is.

  57. Thankyou Richard. It’s nice to hear from people with common sense, that have the vision and empathy to think beyond their own personal broadband circumstances.

    Why comments were mainly aimed at a certain somebody else above who will remain nameless. Hint: He enjoys golf.

  58. “It’s time for the government to step up to fix this, which it has. And yet rich little mainlanders already enjoying fast broadband can’t understand the need for it. To be honest it really pisses me off.”

    Sorry but I’m not a rich little mainander. Just a mainlander outside of a HFC area and so am not currently enjoying fast broadband. I’ve got slow ADSL and like many of us I’m going to be stuck on this slow ADSL for many years to come because the NBN is insisting on a large scale, inherently snail paced, FTTH rollout – I’m not real happy with being stuck on ADSL for 5-8 years while waiting for the magic fiber to run past my door (if that even happens before the guvment cost blowouts and rorts cause them to can it).

    I desire high speed bandwidth as much as anyone so I want something that can be delivered in months rather than years. FTTN can happen in months as opposed to FTTH happening in years… many, many years. Those who want 100mbps instead of 80-100Mbps can pay to have their ‘last mile’ copper replaced by fiber. I imagine some businesses and doctor’s surgeries might do this but why every house needs 100Mpbs instead of 80-100Mbps is beyond me.

  59. So without mentioning up/down issues in the following quotes,

    “If someone is going to contrast FTTN against FTTP/FTTH, it’s important that they understand that the technical and economic differences between them mean that there’s no upgrade path from one to the other. This notion that FTTN is a “stepping stone” to something else is pure fantasy. If an FTTN network is built you’d better like it, because it’ll be around for a long, long time to come.””

    and

    “No ADSL2+ DSLAM will ever provide a link faster than 24Mbit/sec (+/- fudge factors) without a forklift upgrade regardless of how far technology marches. If an FTTN network is built and all the cabinets are filled with ADSL2+ DSLAMs, it’ll never get faster.”

    from http://nbnexplained.org/wordpress/technical-points/the-fttn-first-debate/

    doesn’t deter you from imposing your solution and its added long term costs on everyone else?

    • @Richard to be fair to FTTN it would probably use something like VDSL to achieve higher speeds. However to make that work you need to get the node closer to the premises. So then you need tens of thousands of nodes (and FTTN ones are the size of two large fridges side by side) making the installation and maintenance a bit of a nightmare. You also don’t have a controlled cut over. For FTTH you can have both networks in parallel and do a staged cut over of the suburb. For FTTN you have to cut over large numbers of homes simultaneously in order to avoid excessive field work.

      • @Martin,

        You didn’t mention copper line quality issues. What happens when they won’t happen the VDSL? And does anyone know how much of the existing network needs renewing to get it to VDSL. Replace them with more copper?

  60. The NBN attack is no different to the insulation attack. Forget facts just keep hammering away. The Australian would be the most blatantly biased newspaper in my (lots of) years of newspaper reading. It used to provide a conservative but balanced couterpoint to the SMH but is simply not worth buying any more. There is nothing to generate thought or private debate with oneself.

    Just stop buying it as it is useless.

  61. yeah right… people have no right to complain about the insulation program which was:

    – rushed out without considering alternatives
    – rushed out without any risk analysis or business case analysis
    – incompetently managed and an open door to shonky operators
    – resulted in the deaths of four young men
    – resulted in countless roof fires

    if u dont think the Australian should be reporting these facts then you need to go live in Iran, North Korea or China where the media is not allowed to criticize the guvment. no doubt if a coalition guvment had done these things u’d be banging a different drum: fortunately the coalition dont have a record of clueless incompetence when it comes to managing guvment programs

    • The Australian should report on the story but should tell the full story and tell it once (twice maybe). On a daily basis is a bit over the top. I read of statistics to the effect that there have been house fires caused by faulty insulation for some time and that the numbers have declined. Did the Oz report that? Or that supervising tradesmen is a state responsibility? If the home owners had borrowed the money for the insulation from banks would the lenders have been responsible for shoddy work?

      How much longer does it need to go on before this type of “journalism” becomes counter productive?

      As to the Coalition’s credentials in contract administration, how have their defence contracts panned out? Do you favour Helen Coonan’s call for a High Speed Train?

  62. Golfman:
    “- rushed out without considering alternatives”

    The whole point was to spend STIMULUS money quickly.
    Had they held off longer there would have been no point spending the money.
    Having said that, many alternatives were considered.

    “- rushed out without any risk analysis or business case analysis”

    Again, the whole POINT was to get money into the economy quickly.
    As for risk analysis, as has been highlighted, it WAS done, the main risk’s identified where the ones to the government.

    – incompetently managed and an open door to shonky operators

    When you get money from the bank to instal insulation, they do not manage the project, as the borrower, that is your problem.
    When John Howard did the home owners grant, was he responsible for each and every case of shoddy workmanship? I can identify plenty of cases of shoddy workmanship under that scheme

    “- resulted in the deaths of four young men”

    Any workplace death is a tragedy. In at least one case, here in Queensland, the employer attempted to reduce their liability for the young man’s death and attempted to put the case that the federal government shared responsibility for the death.
    This court of law, presented with all the evidence, found that the federal government bore no responsibility what-so-ever for the death.
    Of course, this finding was never reported in The Australian.

    “- resulted in countless roof fires”

    Actually, about 100, easily counted during that year. The year before (and each year before that) there were about 80 fires. Over teh year since, there have been about 100 fires, an increase of about 20 over the “normal” level of 80 fires per year prior to the scheme.
    At first glance, this would SEEM to be an increase and of course, The Australian reported it as such.
    The Australian conveniently NEGLECTED to mention, that that was 80 fires from about 76,000 installations. Under the scheme there were 200 fires from 1,100,000 installations.
    When you take into account the number of installations, you get 0.105% of installations had fires before the scheme and (assuming the worst case that all 200 fires over 2 years came form installations done under the scheme) 0.018% of installations had fires.
    In other words, installations under the scheme were about 6 times SAFER than before the scheme.

    • Wow, the spin you put on that disaster of a program puts means that Julia Gillard’s job is threatened. You’ve demonstrated an ability to spin which makes her look like a semi honest politician. Go for labor pre-election in the next election, you’ve got a great future ahead of you in the spin party.

      • @Golfman I’m not exactly sure how bringing facts into the discussion counts as spin. No one is denying that there were bad installations, fires and even deaths during the government’s insulation program. But it needs to be put in context. There were bad installations, fires and even deaths before the government’s insulation program. The was a lower incidence per installation during the program. It’s no consolation to those that lost someone, but statistically things improved.

  63. Golfman
    “FTTN can happen in months as opposed to FTTH happening in years… many, many years.”

    And where did you dream this up from?
    80Mb/s from FTTN would require VSDL and a node every 300 meters. Basically, you would still need to run a fiber past every house to the node. The savings in time and money over direst fiber would be negligible.

    The option proposed by the Telco’s for FTTN were for 6Mb/s to the customer and 6Mb/s reserved for the operator. IE standard ADSL+ speeds, meaning nodes every few kilometers.
    No improvement at all for those living near the exchanges, and maybe a doubling or tripling of speed for the rest. Better than nothing I guess, but hardly a revolution.

    • “And where did you dream this up from?
      80Mb/s from FTTN would require VSDL and a node every 300 meters. Basically, you would still need to run a fiber past every house to the node. The savings in time and money over direst fiber would be negligible.”

      Now I know you are really all about spin and not about having an open and fair debate of FTTH vs FTTN. I assume you have heard of VDSL2 by now as you represent yourself as someone who is informed on the topic. The savings of FTTN over FTTH are not negligible – rather FTTN is estimated to be 10x cheaper to rollout – not that NBN fan boys would be interested in saving taxpayers money.

      http://www.itnews.com.au/News/236611,us-telco-claims-100-mbps-on-copper.aspx

      Two separate companies have now have proven technology that achieves 100Mbps over copper at 1000m (up to 300Mbps over 400m!) Nodes only need to be built every 1000m not 300m. How many homes are in a 1km radius in residential areas – the savings in not having to replace copper with fiber in the hundreds of homes per node don’t need Einstein like analysis to see the cost saving over full fiber roll out.

      Leave space in each cabinet for fiber termination equipment so those who want to pay the extra $ to have their house or business connected with fibre ‘all the way’. They can get their fiber in a way which doesn’t have to be subsidized by debt to all our grandchildren and sacrificing money for hospitals, proper public transport, roads and education.

      • Golfman,

        “How many homes are in a 1km radius in residential areas”

        At a guess, about 1 in 6. The average distance between home and exchange across Australia is more than 3 Km. Which is why most people don’t really get the best that even ADSL2+ has to offer, let alone other technologies.

        Regarding the VDSL2 developments you refer to: before anything gets deployed, it needs to be standardised. The Ikanos technology isn’t yet standardised – that would take years. At the moment, it’s a technology demonstration that might raise enough capital to get developed into a mass market product. That doesn’t make it something a carrier can buy off-the-shelf today.

  64. Interestingly of course, those now championing the coalition line that 12Mb/s is fast enough conveniently forget that that same coalition went to the electorate in 2007 claiming that there was absolutely no need for ANY broadband network and that Labor’s 6Mb/s FTTN was complete overkill.

    • “Interestingly of course, those now championing the coalition line that 12Mb/s is fast enough conveniently forget that that same coalition went to the electorate in 2007 claiming that there was absolutely no need for ANY broadband network and that Labor’s 6Mb/s FTTN was complete overkill.”

      I presume you aren’t refering to me. I have never championed the coalition line that 12Mb/s is fast enough. For me this isn’t a labor vs liberal debate but for many it obviously is. I’m just pushing for the most cost effective broadband approach that gets us speeds that are at least world standard over the next few five years instead of sitting on third world ADSL while we wait for fiber to pass our doorsteps – if it ever does.

      If labor went with FTTN as a phase 1 to an eventual or ‘opt in’ FTTH then I’d be praising them for making a financially responsible decision. Switzerland did a phase 1 FTTN layout in years ago and are kicking out ADSL butt. Their FTTN rollout has been profitable and paid for, they are now enhancing it to FTTH – yes a two phase approach works…

  65. Those who think FTTN is an upgrade path should look to the AT&T experience in the USA.

    They started out with FTTN but are now ripping out (not upgrading) the FTTN network in favour of FTTP ala NBNco.

  66. “They started out with FTTN but are now ripping out (not upgrading) the FTTN network in favour of FTTP ala NBNco.”

    You spinfully neglect to mention that Verizon are stopping their FTTH/FTTP rollout:

    http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/27/verizon-shelves-plans-for-future-fios-rollouts-relocations-to-m/

    Rather than ripping out their FTTN networks they are finding that people are so happy with FTTH that they aren’t prepared to pay the extra $ for something they obviously don’t need, obviously, because if they did they’d pay the extra $.

    And exactly what part of an FTTN network would they be ‘ripping up’? They wouldn’t rip out the fiber from the exchange to the FTTN nodes – you reuse that. You would only be replacing the copper from node to home with fiber but you would have to do that anyway in an FTTH rollout – FTTN allows you to avoid/defer that with the corresponding $billion$ in rollout savings.

    The only thing you throw away is the VDSL2 DSLAMs but the investement in these is typically paid for by the time FTTH rolls out and they don’t ALL have to be ripped out for people who are happy with up to 50-100mpbs depending on their distance from the node. FTTN allows selective/incremental upgrading to FTTN in which case you only replace ‘some’ of the VDSL2 DSLAMs with fiber termination equipment over time.

    • @Golfman you really need to stop using Verizon as a comparison. It stopped because it had already cherry picked the best areas where a commercial ROI was easily achievable. Sounds familiar? Sound a little like two HFC roll outs a little closer to home?

  67. “How many homes are in a 1km radius in residential areas”

    “At a guess, about 1 in 6. The average distance between home and exchange across Australia is more than 3 Km. Which is why most people don’t really get the best that even ADSL2+ has to offer, let alone other technologies.”

    That’s the great thing about FTTN… it effectively brings the exchange to within 1km of most people – dependent on the number of nodes you want to build. The ‘node’ in FTTN is not the exchange. It’s a fiber connected node that effectively shortens the copper length by ‘bringing a mini exchange in a cabinet’ out into the ‘burbs’. Most European countries, USA and NZ do things this way. Germany is virtually fully FTTN now – and those Germans are pretty smart, ok, not quite the master race, but still, pretty smart :)

    • @Golfman you made me laugh. You should come to Germany and listen to the industry talk. They would love to go FTTH. However the EU would declare any government assistance as an illegal subsidy. They are so keen to maintain commercial competition that they are happy to sacrifice any chance of a forklift upgrade of the network.

      • you make the german case sound bad yet their fttn kills the current adsl we’re stuck with for years to come. who’s laughing now? not us!

        Even NZ can laugh at us now and for many years into the future as the gubmint focuses the nbn rollout on regional areas and marginal electorates. better move to a marginal if ur not already in one.;)

  68. Golfman
    “The ‘node’ in FTTN is not the exchange. It’s a fiber connected node that effectively shortens the copper length by ‘bringing a mini exchange in a cabinet’ out into the ‘burbs’.”

    Two problems with this.
    1/ The reason most people don’t have xDSL NOW is because there aren’t enough copper pairs available.
    Putting in new nodes wont help with this simply because you are still lacking the copper pairs to make the connection.
    2/ Existing copper cables are routed back to the exchange, not to convenient node locations.

    Both of these problems need to be addressed by ploughing in new cables.
    The cost for ploughing in cable is the same whether fiber or copper, why not just plough in fiber?

  69. Golfman
    “You spinfully neglect to mention that Verizon are stopping their FTTH/FTTP rollout:”

    YOU spinfully neglect to quote the article which says that having already cabled 18 states, they have covered all the areas they want to cover.
    Presumably, if there wasn’t a market demand they would have stopped at 1 or 2 states rather than rolling out to 18 out of 50 and that it will continue to be rolled out to all the areas promised to date, which includes the overbuild of existing “lesser” networks.

  70. golfman:
    “And exactly what part of an FTTN network would they be ‘ripping up’? They wouldn’t rip out the fiber from the exchange to the FTTN nodes – you reuse that.”

    No you don’t. You leave it in place while you overbuild the new network. It contains a very small number of fiber cores, typically about 8, 6 of which are “dark” ie spares.
    It is useless to you for the new network since the new network is “direct fiber” which provides an individual fiber all the way from the premises to the exchange.
    “Shared fiber” networks are used by those companies that lacked the foresight to build “direct fiber” networks and offer vastly inferior data speeds to direct fiber due to the need for sharing the bandwidth of the fiber from the node back to the exchange.

    In practice a direct fiber network costs only about 10% more than shared fiber because there is no need for any powered equipment in the distribution network while shared fiber needs mux equipment at every node to split off the bandwidth from the exchange to distribute to the customers.

  71. “they have covered all the areas they want to cover.”

    Verizon’s problem is that it costs 10x to rollout FTTH than FTTN and so people with existing FTTN with half the speed of Verizon’s FiOS are not prepared to pay the extra money because they don’t need the extra speed. Verizon aren’t making money on their FTTH network and the pick up is nothing like what they would expect – so they’re canning it. They are completing the rollout to areas they have committed to because they have entered into contracts with the municipal authorities in those areas. They legally must complete those rollouts but they have made it public that they are not seeking any more municipalities to rollout FTTH to.

    Those “lesser” networks are the very networks that people are happy with already and aren’t prepared to pay a premium to get more speed. The NBN approach seeks to eliminate all competitive *lesser* but adequate technologies to ensure it’s $43 Billion (+cost blow outs, mismanagement, rorts and interest on debt) becomes a “success” – I use that word extremely lightly. Even if we had a private monopoly like Telstra commit to deliver a high speed network on it’s own I doubt the Australian people as a whole would outlay that much money.

    • I’m not saying that our current technologies are satisfactory. They are nothing like the “lesser” technologies in the US that you refer to. I’m all for getting some of the US style “lesser” technologies as quick and as cheaply as possible (i.e. FTTN via private sector builds in a legislative framework that permits competition) because even their “lesser” technologies make our current ADSL and dialup look like they’re from the stone age.

  72. Golfman:
    “This is not about politics as most labor supporters try to make out. The election is over, no one won the election but one team won the post election pork barreling – so effectively the election is over and won. ”

    As was widely reported in the press, even The Australian gave it a footnote, it was the coalition that attempted to pork barrel after the election. Abbott offered more cash to each and every one of the independents to try to buy their vote, but every one of them besides Katter, who used a different criteria to the others, rejected Abbott’s largesse as over the top.

    What Abbott is about now is winning the next election by trying to block each and every government initiative, regardless of merit, in order to paint the government as ineffectual at the next election.

  73. Golfman:
    :How convenient to ignore the facts – it must be bliss to be so delusional as to say “high speed is great and we must fiber to the home at *any* cost” even though the rest of the world by and large have settled on just as effective but less expensive options like HFC and FTTN”

    Countries who think fiber to the premises is a good idea and are currently building networks:
    China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Canada, United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, New Zealand.

    Industrialized countries that won’t have substantial or near universal FTTP networks in 10 years time:
    Australia (if the coalition succeeds in killing it off).

  74. Golfman:
    “Sure we all want fast internet. We also want a 300km/hr train between the major cities and we all would like no traffic and hospitals without waiting lists and a public school system that actually provides schooling for our kids in a disciplined environment where kids actually have a chance to learn but all these things compete for funding. We can’t have them all, up front, in one go. In a world of limited resources you need to be very careful when dividing up the public funds.”

    But we COULD have had them all over the decade the Howard government was in power if only they had seen nation building as a priority for governments rather than simply buying the next election by pork barreling marginal electorates. In real terms allowing for inflation, teh Howard governemnt reduced spending in all these areas every year.

    • We may have been lucky. Howard might have gone for FTTN, then it would have been even harder to convince the likes of golfman it wasn’t done properly and we should re-configure and re-build for a faster, long term solution.

      There has been too much emphasis on what we need now rather than what we need to do to get the result we WILL need when the project (whatever it is) is fully installed.

  75. Golfman:
    “fttn is a great stepping stone towards ftth. just ask the swiss. sorry bout the typing – from mu phone”

    Interesting that you mention the Swiss. Maybe you should read the LATEST news.
    Swisscom has been granted a monopoly in exchange for changing the roll-out to FTTP.
    They have been using shared fiber because of the extensive existing network for cable TV.
    Of course, direct fiber is used where htere is not existing infrastructure.

    • Swisscom have *completed* their FTTN roll out. They are not ‘stopping FTTN’ rollout and ‘starting FTTH’ instead. They are entering a phase 2 of a sensible approach: FTTN first and then extending it to FTTH. They have entered phase 2 and are replacing copper from nodes to the homes with fiber – reusing the cabinets and the fiber already laid from the nodes back to the exchange. Their FTTN rollout has been financially viable and paid for – now they can afford an FTTH phase 2.

  76. Golfman:
    “Please give me 3 examples of government run infrastructure that is running at a profit or at least providing adequate service without costing the tax payers billions. ”

    The exception that proves the rule of course being telecommunications.
    John Howard netted in the vicinity of $70 billion all up from the sale of Telstra.

    To all intents and purposes, NBNco will be a new Telstra that the next coalition government can sell off again to fund pork-barreling elections.

    • @Goresh

      “To all intents and purposes, NBNco will be a new Telstra that the next coalition government can sell off again to fund pork-barreling elections.”

      Hang on a minute – the labor government’s own ‘sell’ for the NBN is that it will be a commercial entity that they CAN sell off in the future – that’s how they got around the awkward scenario of having to include the $43 billlion in their election costings. Because they claim it to be a commercial venture that can be sold for profit (or no net loss) then it doesn’t need to be included in the election costings. If you’re saying NBN shouldn’t be sold then you’ve just blasted a $43 billion hole in labor’s election costings – all too late now though :)

      The revenue model of the NBN doesn’t stack up too well… nobody in the know thinks that it will be worth anywhere near $43 billion. So the Australian tax payer will likely eventually do a ‘fire sale’ to some lucky private company who will end up with a FTTH network at about 1/3 of its construction cost… nice work lads! More money well spent… and at that point we’ll have a government monopoly become a privately owned monopoly … yes, Telstra all over again!

  77. If labor hadn’t saddled Australia and the Coalition with such huge debts when they came to power in 1996 then they wouldn’t have had to pay back $90 billion in labor debt – by current estimates that amount of money alone could have built 2, yes TWO FTTH NBNs… so blame labor’s mismanagement and addiction to wastage and debt on why we don’t have decent high speed broadband right now.

    but not only did the coalition pay back that $90 billion in debt they put another $40 billion in the kitty and future fund – which was designed for future projects …. but what happened? Labor blew that cash that was carefully managed and saved by the coalition and the Australian people within a couple of years of coming to power in 2007…. once again, don’t blame the coalition for “things we haven’t got that we should have got”. Blame it on the mugs who keep blowing our money mindlessly … the labor party.

    @Goresh
    Spin yourself into some delusional enlightnment that somehow Howard was irresponsible with our future by paying back labor debt instead of spiralling us further into debt and the consequent mess that so many western countries now find themselves in.

    And Kevin and now Julia are trying to get us back into the ‘debt is good’ frame of mind… yeah, let’s keep borrowing $100 million a day… we know the coalition will be back in a few years to clean up the labor mess – and then we’lll complain that they don’t spend enough on infrastructure…. a completely irrational attitude.

    • Banks have lots of debts, do you stress about that? I’d suggest all business have debts too. Tony Abbott has a housing loan which is more multiples of his income than government debt is of government income.

      One day, government ill implement accrual accounting and all this arguemtn about debt will be seen in a more sensible perspective. Failure to consider long term and short term assets and liabilities is over simplification gone mad.

      Meantime keep taking the Costello pills.

  78. Golfman:
    “That’s the great thing about FTTN… it effectively brings the exchange to within 1km of most people – dependent on the number of nodes you want to build.”

    The wonderful thing about FTTP is that the distance from the node to the house is nil.
    My street is over 1km long as are most. If you are going to run a fiber down almost every street to get within 1km of each customer, why not DO EVERY street and take the fiber to the premises?

    • Do you not see the difference in effort (=cost + stuff ups + mismanagement) between
      a) running fiber to one FTTN cabinet and then connect that node to 200 exisiting homes via the copper pairs that already run to the pillar already situated where you’d build the cabinet; and;
      b) running fiber to a GPON node and then running fiber individually to each of the 200 existing homes and then rewiring the internal wiring to each of those 200 homes, digging up front yards, drilling holes in walls and getting into people’s ceiling space. The cost of the fiber is negligible compared to the labour costs involved in laying it and bringing it into the home. Good luck with all going smoothly and happening in a timely manner.

      Of course we all want fiber to the home one day but I’m not prepared to sit around on crappy ADSL for 5-8 years watching the regions and marginal seats get their fiber rollout first. For me, just give me 50Mbps in the short term and I’m happy to pay for my individual fiber layout to the node if needed later.

      Knowing that labor haven’t been able to deliver the ‘laptops to schools’ program due to cost blowouts (a mere $1billion program) you’d have to be a zealot or a real keen punter to bet on a $43 billion fiber to your door rollout happening before the gubmint gets cold feet on that cost.

  79. Golfman:
    “If labor hadn’t saddled Australia and the Coalition with such huge debts when they came to power in 1996 then they wouldn’t have had to pay back $90 billion in labor debt”

    Conveniently forgetting of course that as a percentage of GDP, the debt that John Howard as Prime Minister inherited from Labor was less than what Labor inherited from John Howard as treasurer.
    The simple fact is that John Howard collected much more from infrastructure sales than was owed by the government. In effect he sold the house to pay out the mortgage.
    Nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t take a financial genius to do that.
    When the house is a rental property returning an income and the interest you are paying is far less than the income (and Telstra alone was paying a bigger dividend than the entire interest bill for the government debt) then only a financial moron would sell it.
    Guess what that makes John Howard.

  80. golfman”
    “Do you not see the difference in effort (=cost + stuff ups + mismanagement) between
    a) running fiber to one FTTN cabinet and then connect that node to 200 exisiting homes via the copper pairs that already run to the pillar already situated where you’d build the cabinet; and;”

    This assumes that Telstra ran their copper cables in a layout that lines up perfectly with where you want to build your nodes. I would rate this as fairly unlikely

    “b) running fiber to a GPON node and then running fiber individually to each of the 200 existing homes and then rewiring the internal wiring to each of those 200 homes, digging up front yards, drilling holes in walls and getting into people’s ceiling space. The cost of the fiber is negligible compared to the labour costs involved in laying it and bringing it into the home. Good luck with all going smoothly and happening in a timely manner.”

    NBNco has said that it will use GPON where appropriate and direct fiber where IT is appropriate.
    Where there is existing fiber and the copper cable junctions suit, this would be appropriate.
    Where you are running a whole new fiber cable, then you would go direct fiber.

    “Of course we all want fiber to the home one day but I’m not prepared to sit around on crappy ADSL for 5-8 years watching the regions and marginal seats get their fiber rollout first. For me, just give me 50Mbps in the short term and I’m happy to pay for my individual fiber layout to the node if needed later.”

    The problem is that you wont get 50Mb/s in the short term either way. That would require a node within about 300m of the premises and that would mean ploughing in all new cables anyway.

    IINet for instance has only used VDSL where it has FTTP and the premises is a large apartment block. It then uses VDSL to go from the fiber node on the building to the individual apartments.

    Knowing that labor haven’t been able to deliver the ‘laptops to schools’ program due to cost blowouts (a mere $1billion program) you’d have to be a zealot or a real keen punter to bet on a $43 billion fiber to your door rollout happening before the gubmint gets cold feet on that cost.

  81. Golfman:
    “Knowing that labor haven’t been able to deliver the ‘laptops to schools’ program due to cost blowouts (a mere $1billion program) ”

    Actually it was never a “laptops to schools” program. It was the “COMPUTERS in schools” program.
    My children’s school now boasts several new computers and enhanced networking (by diverting the P&C money from computers to support structure) which is more than it ever received in a decade of coalition government.

  82. “The problem is that you wont get 50Mb/s in the short term either way. That would require a node within about 300m of the premises and that would mean ploughing in all new cables anyway.”

    50Mb/s up to 1km with VDSL2 is more common now and next gen technology gets 100Mb/s up to 1km – field proven already. The only ploughing required is to run fiber to a single node in each neighbourhood as opposed to wiring up hundreds of individual homes.

  83. Golfman:
    “Spin yourself into some delusional enlightnment that somehow Howard was irresponsible with our future by paying back labor debt instead of spiralling us further into debt and the consequent mess that so many western countries now find themselves in.”

    Actually, NATIONAL debt, which was the debt that John Howard dragged around the country on a trailer actually TRIPLED under Howard. While it is true that he paid out government debt, it was at the expense of “fire sales” of government assets.
    The first tranche of Telstra shares for instance jumped in value by over $12 billion in the weeks after they were floated. That would be about $18 billion in todays money, more than halft the cost of building the NBN that Howard wasted in a single act of incompetence.
    The sales agency, OASITO did no checking of invoices at all, it simply paid them.

    The sale of DASFLEET was badly bungled and led to litigation with Macquarie Bank that was still being resolved when the ANAO went back to do a follow-up audit on the debacle years later.

    OASITO oversaw a comprehensive program of public service IT outsourcing that was opposed by nearly every agency head in the Service, and which was so badly bungled that entire departments frequently went days without functioning IT from their new private sector providers.

    In 2001, the ANAO looked at the sale of Commonwealth property and its leaseback to the Public Service and found that some departments like Foreign Affairs and Trade were paying so much rent for properties they had previously owned that it was a net cost to the Commonwealth – one agency was predicted to lose nearly $100m over the course of its 20-year lease.

    A review of the greenhouse programs established by the Howard Government as a cover for its inaction on climate change found that what carbon abatement the programs had obtained had been secured at prices ranging up to $150 a tonne.

  84. Howard asset sales to cover a mere $90 billion debt:
    Commonwealth Bank (3rd tranche) $3.39 billion
    Commonwealth Funds Management $62.5 million
    Brisbane Airport $1.4 billion
    Melbourne Airport $1.3 billion
    Perth Airport $643 million
    Telstra (first tranche) $14.3 billion (half it’s market value)
    Adelaide Airport $467 million
    Darwin & Alice Springs airport $108 million
    Canberra airport $65 million
    Hobart airport $35 million
    Australian Industry Development Corporation $200 million
    Commonwealth Bank (4th tranche) $1.77 billion
    Broadcast Australia (Towers then onsold to Macquarie bank who doubled their money)
    National Rail Corporation and Freightcorp $1.05 billion

    The list goes on and on. It totals well over the $90 billion debt, even allowing for teh firesale prices. Where did the rest of the money go?

    • Leave out the fact that it was labor who started the sell offs. They started the CBA sell off: “Over my dead body”, Paul Keating. Hypocrites.
      State labor governments have sold of power assets (Victoria did and NSW tried to).
      BTW I’m not seeing $90 billion in total unless some of the millions you quoted were meant to be billions.

  85. Golfman:
    “50Mb/s up to 1km with VDSL2 is more common now and next gen technology gets 100Mb/s up to 1km – field proven already. The only ploughing required is to run fiber to a single node in each neighbourhood as opposed to wiring up hundreds of individual homes.”

    That’s assuming a brand new copper pair that has not experienced a couple of decades of weathering and oxidation. That’s 1km as the cable runs, not 1km as the crow flies. As I said, my street and most other streets are more than 1km long, so that will require a fiber run down almost every street anyway.
    That also assumes that there is a suitable cable junction in the right place and also that every customer is off the air while each individual copper pair is cut over, one by one, from the copper to the fiber link.

  86. “That’s assuming a brand new copper pair that has not experienced a couple of decades of weathering and oxidation.”

    Copper’s oxidation process forms an adherent protective coating (unlike iron which flakes off). In addition copper pairs are in a protective, waterproof plastic sheath – which doesn’t break down if it’s under the ground out of sunlight and aerial pairs are enclosed in tough UV resistant sheaths. Age is therefore not a problem for copper. Do you really think our copper network is older than those in Europe or the USA. FTTN wouldn’t be working so well in so many other countries who also have old copper if copper’s age was a problem.

    “so that will require a fiber run down almost every street anyway”
    Not every street, only streets like yours and only if your street doesn’t have copper runs going along cross streets that can pick up the node in the next street. They had to try to reduce length of copper runs when they were laying out the cable originally so you might be surprised to find things like I found in our area – rather than the main 50 cores following a road that was very windy and looped back on itself… they created an easement and laid the cable in a short cut root that cut the length by about 1.5 km to a set of houses at the end of the street.
    In any case there’s a massive difference between pulling a single bundled fiber cable down a street to a node and running an individual fiber cable to each and every home in that street. You’re talking orders of magnitude difference in effort. The single bundle running to a single node is a single pull all terminating at the same place – the node. Carefully splicing and directing and threading individual fibers to each house you pass is like creating an intricate tapestry down every street.

    “every customer is off the air while each individual copper pair is cut over, one by one, from the copper to the fiber link.”
    I thought we were talking about the differences between FTTN and FTTH. The same ‘temporary disconnection’ will occur on a house by house basis when the house is disconnected from copper and connected to fiber in the FTTH case also (after extensive rewiring of optic fiber inside and outside the property boundary)

    • Golfman, you are truly obsessed. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone flog a dead horse this hard before.

      How are you going to cope with your frustration watching houses get connected around you, given FTTH IS going ahead. Will you turn it down out of protest?

      • @Simon

        Ok, this is a bit long but it’s my last attempt to trigger the right ‘due diligence’ neurons in the readers out there:

        Please don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing I would like more than have a 100mpbs fiber connection – technically, it would be truly excellent …. but you’ve got to look at the facts and be very careful about what you wish for.

        Those who don’t live in a marginal electorate or a regional area have got to be suffering from some kind of Conroy induced delusional episode if they think that full fiber rollout is going to happen in their area in next few years.

        Let’s look at the facts: There’s probably another 2 to 3 elections before the NBN is complete. Now when this gubmint is working out where to focus the fiber rollouts you would be stark raving mad to think that the money committed will be evenly distributed across the country (cities, regions, outback, marginal seats, safe labor sears, safe liberal seats) and thinking there is no chance funding will be siphoned off for a “new hospital” here, a “new rail link” there, a “new trade centre” here, a “new gubmint super clinic” there – remember they promised multiples of all those things during the last election and the money has to come from somewhere if they don’t want to plough us into even more debt. Currently borrowing $100 million/day…let’s make it $200m/day or $300m/day – whatever you’re comfortable with.

        A more intelligent person would entertain the thought that, as each election draws close, that this gubmint is going to funnel NBN funds into marginal or independent electorates so that more of them get their shiny new 100mbps before each polling day.

        If people are so naive to don’t think that politically controlled NBN fund redirection won’t occur then think again – because IT ALREADY HAS!

        Remember Oakeshott and Windsor? JG offered a huge pork barrel to the regions by focusing NBN rollouts to them so that she could win gubmint. Does she really care about the regions? Of course not, she only redirected NBN focus to the regions for political gain.

        And that’s exactly what will happen during the entire course of the NBN rollout – and possibly regardless of who is in power!

        It’s a very stupid and risky move for anyone who isn’t in a marginal electorate or a regional town to be pushing for a full fiber NBN rollout because you’re basically committing everyone in other areas to crappy ADSL for many, many years to come because, as JG demonstrated after the election, she is willing to allow political gain to influence NBN rollout focus. To think this won’t happen again would be extremely unintelligent.

        What we need NOW is low risk, high speed that is at least *close* to the average that USA and European countries are getting now in such a way that it doesn’t cost a bomb and is not as open to political manipulation. An FTTN rollout could provide that and happen in 12-18 months not 5-8 years. It could happen much cheaper and with much greater private sector involvement which isn’t exposed to the political tinkering that has ALREADY beset the NBN.

        Those who are crying out for a full fiber rollout are basically, on everyone else’s behalf, begging the gubmint to most of us on crappy ADSL for another 5-8 years in the hope that one day they’ll get their glittering prize. Given the past record this government has on rolling out programs there’s a high chance that
        – the costs will blow out beyond imagination – and will likely be canned, contrained or cut back,
        – rorting by dodgy operators will occur
        – financial liabilities will be incurred by the gubmint (you the taxpayer) as dodgy operators crack driveways, paths, walls and roof tiles as they trounce over your place to install new cable

        If you live in Vaucluse, Killara, Penrith, Bankstown, Faulker or Tourak and you’re pushing for a full fiber NBN then you’d better grow used to your crappy ADSL connection because you’ll be stuck with it for a loooooong time to come.

        This gubmint has, many times, proven itself to be “program execution challenged”. So to ensure we all get an NBN that lets us catch up to the world’s current average speeds in the next 12-18 months please do us all a favour and push towards setting them a “simpler, cheaper, no risk” NBN challenge. One with much less of their involvement to screw things up and politically influence the program’s direction.

        It’s much better to give a government that has demonstrated incompetence with small $1billion-$8billion (sorry schools halls ended up doubling to $16billion) programs, a smaller, low risk program that involves much greater private industry funding and management, with MUCH greater ROI than a $43 billion program with ROI so doubtful they can only provide ‘hand waving’, ‘build it and they will come’ style evidence instead of a proper business case analysis.

        Here’s a summary of a FTTN style NBN rollout that WOULD save you from your ASDL woes in a very short time and at much less expense:

        Technically we know FTTN works
        – it does in so many other western countries (NZ, Germany, USA, Switzerland – most western countries have it!).

        Financially we know FTTN works
        – We also know that FTTN is 5-10 times cheaper to rollout – which means a much greater private sector investment (i.e. less tax payer dollars spent = less tax – if that’s important to you)

        Contrary to the FUD FTTN is upgradable to FTTH at a later date – when it is financially feasible!
        – We know that FTTN can be extended to full fiber to the home FTTH if sufficient spare fiber is laid to the nodes to allow for this future growth – a tiny incremental investment at the time the fiber to the nodes is rolled out.

        Telstra can be coerced or forced to share their infrastructure
        – Gubmints make the laws. The NBN is prepared to send $11billion Telstra’s way. If the gubmint had more balls and less of OUR money they could get Telstra to come to any party we want them to come to – including rolling out FTTN now and enforce access to nodes like other ISPs have access to Telstra exchanges now.

        On the other hand:

        Finacially we know FTTH is risky:
        – Many FTTH plans are currently on hold, deferred or cancelled due to the GFC… (Italy, Spain, USA all have ‘on hold’ rollouts) why? Because it’s so damn expensive and the ROI just isn’t there for many of them. If that happens to us we’ll have a two class Australia – those houses who got FTTH before the program was canned and those who missed out….

        FTTH is ideal for high density countries – which Australia is not
        – Many Asian countries are rolling out FTTH because they have such high density cities that they can connect thousands of households along relatively small sections of fiber with high ROI. Australia’s low density isn’t like that at all.

        I know I have been accused of flogging a dead horse but I hope, if nothing else, I have got people at least talking about FTTN and not just swallowing the steaming pile of proverbial FUD that Conroy is trying to feed us.

        In all honesty I really don’t have to push FTTN to get FTTN … in all likelihood the FTTH program will falter from cost blowouts, further GFC rumblings and government mismanagement and will default back to a FTTN style rollout for most people anyway.

        I’m just trying to short cut the whole expensive debacle and save you and me, Australian tax payers, >$43 billion in the process ;)

        Au revoir suckers!

        • @golfman
          Your constant entreaties in favour of FTTN, tedious though they may be, would carry more weight if you were to cite some sources for the many assertions you make about, for example, the fantastic success with which, and the extent to which other countries are using FTTN.

          Where does all this information come from and at which stage will you counter the material at http://nbnexplained.org/wordpress/technical-points/the-fttn-first-debate/?

          The lucky residents of “Vaucluse, Killara, Penrith, Bankstown, Faulker or Tourak” may have access to HFC, but according to http://goo.gl/yaS83, the promised 100 Mb on HFC may translate in practice to as little as 10 Mb, so how are Malcolm Turnbull’s promises of 12 Mb to be achieved without upgrading the existing network to a much greater extent than he has been suggesting? In which case, as Tony Windsor suggests, one might as well do the job properly.

          Looked at from the perspective of the times, which looked most unlikely: building the Harbour Bridge, building the Opera House, or building the NBN? And remember the seven years which we spent stressing about how the Sydney Olympics was going to be a failure?

          • “The lucky residents of “Vaucluse, Killara, Penrith, Bankstown, Faulker or Tourak” may have access to HFC, but according to http://goo.gl/yaS83, the promised 100 Mb on HFC may translate in practice to as little as 10 Mb, so how are Malcolm Turnbull’s promises of 12 Mb to be achieved without upgrading the existing network to a much greater extent than he has been suggesting? In which case, as Tony Windsor suggests, one might as well do the job properly.”

            Hence my point. If they push for FTTH they’ll be saddled with HFC for many, many years to come (5-8 years) while waiting for their fiber connection but if they pushed for FTTN they could get 50mpbs in a 12-18 months (and even higher speeds with the next generation FTTN technologies)

          • @Golfman why do you think a FTTN roll out will only take 12-18 months? I agree that it would not take as long as a FTTH deployment but it would still be 3-4 years, possibly more if there needs to be reworking of the copper within suburbs to reach the nearest node.

          • “why do you think a FTTN roll out will only take 12-18 months?”

            From this earlier Telstra FTTN rollout plan seen here:

            http://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=844929&nodeId=6df7e3e8dfb502f1758872667c368071&fn=Optus%20appendix%20A%20-%20NBN%20deployment%20timing.pdf

            On the timing of the FTTN rollout, Telstra has stated publicly that:
            “within 9 to 12 months [of receiving the necessary assurances from the Government] Telstra will begin switching on the first FTTN enabled exchanges. From 9 to 36 months Telstra will activate the FTTN network progressively as each exchange area is upgraded. We expect to complete up to 33% of exchange areas within the first 18 months and up to 67% within 36 months…”

            33% of exchange areas in the first 18months!!!

            And here in this ABC article from 2007:

            http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/07/1944591.htm

            “Telstra says it would be ready to start rolling out a high-speed fibre-optic broadband network within two weeks if the Federal Government and competition watchdog gave it the green light to proceed.”

            Start in within 2 weeks! I’ll have some of that please!

            Now this was back when the government was only prepared to pump a mere $4.7 billion into the project. Let’s say we double that so now we’re spending only 1/4 of the $43 billion current plan and we set up a fair, competitive playing field so that any competitor can bid on building nodes and see if we can’t get the whole of metro and regional town area wired up with FTTN in 12 months!

            On the other hand, in a FTTH rollout I can guarantee you that Oakeshott and Windsor’s electorates will be fully fibered before the next election… and most of the marginal seats… but for everyone else – forget it!

            FTTN is a stock standard, turn key, risk free solution – it’s all been done a million times before in other countries. All the equipment is mature, off the shelf, plug and play. In the current scenario all coppers eventually concentrate at existing cylindrical metal pillars (you’ve probably seen them) so if you build the nodes right next to them there is no need to ‘re-lay’ any copper. Further out from the exchange there may be a need to build nodes where there is no pillar but by building the node near to where the existing multicore coppers run in their underground ducts then you avoid any relaying of copper there as well.

            FTTN is only held back by politics and politicians. Technically and implementation wise it’s a no brainer. FTTH on the other hand is a high risk process held back by not just politics and politicians. Technically it is superior but it’s implementation involves a massive infrastructure project orders of magnitude greater than FTTN as fiber is rolled out to every home instead of just to a neighbourhood node. The houses themselves also require rewiring. FTTH is thus, high cost and therefore high risk of abandonment when people realize that ROI and cost are actually important – regardless of whether it’s a private or gubmint endeavour.

            Everyone quotes the building of the harbour bridge – a government investment in infrastructure. Sure it was a great investment but why do I still have to pay $4 every freakin day to travel across the bloody thing when it was built over 70 freakin years ago? How long will our grand kids be paying for the $43 billion in extra debt the NBN in it’s current FTTH form will incur? We’ll be paying for it three times:
            1 Via our taxes for the debt it incurs
            2. Via our taxes for the debt that is incurred for the compensation to Telstra and Optus whose networks are made redundant by it
            3 We’ll be paying through the nose on the monthly subscription as they force the closure of competing, cheaper alternatives. And remember the NBN’s financial model assumes an ever increasing monthly subscription cost!

            That really stinks!

  87. After my last smart arse comment I feel I should actually say Kudos to both Goresh and Golfman for a very interesting and civil debate. Your knowledge of these matters dwarfs my own, so I’m finding this very interesting. By all means keep it up :)

      • “Your constant entreaties in favour of FTTN, tedious though they may be, would carry more weight if you were to cite some sources for the many assertions you make about, for example, the fantastic success with which, and the extent to which other countries are using FTTN.”

        Gees, where’s the trust these days? ;)

        Ok, as a background there are a two main generations of FTTN technologies deployed around the world now: VDSL and VDSL2 (a new VDSL generation which can hit 100mbps over 1km of copper, 300mbps over 300m is now in field trials).

        I provide two wikipedia links that list which countries are using which FTTN generation VDSL 1 or VDSL 2:

        Countries using VDSL (1):

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bitrate_digital_subscriber_line

        Countries using VDSL2

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2

        • Let’s stick with current published standards, because NBN Co needs to pick a viable technology now.

          So if it’s VDSL2 the downstream limit is 200Mb/s. But that’s right next to the node. At 500m you would only get 100Mb/s, 1km 50Mb/s and beyond 1.6km it’s no better than ADSL2+. So either we don’t get much improvement or we deploy a *lot* of nodes. Either way the ROI is lower than FTTH.

          VDSL also suffers from severe crosstalk problems. This may limit actual throughput to less than the theoretical maximum speeds.

        • Golfman:
          “I provide two wikipedia links that list which countries are using which FTTN generation VDSL 1 or VDSL 2:

          Countries using VDSL (1):

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bitrate_digital_subscriber_line

          Countries using VDSL2

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2

          And countries building FTTP. Note that this will list many countries in the above FTTN lists who started that way but are now going FTTP:

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country

          China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Canada, United States, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, New Zealand.

  88. It’s good to see people finally discussing the FTTN alternative. It means Conroy hasn’t been 100% effective in whitewashing the whole debate.

    “So if it’s VDSL2 the downstream limit is 200Mb/s. But that’s right next to the node. At 500m you would only get 100Mb/s, 1km 50Mb/s and beyond 1.6km it’s no better than ADSL2+. So either we don’t get much improvement or we deploy a *lot* of nodes.”

    Every node you build connects to up to 300 homes. That’s 300 homes you don’t have to purchase fiber for and lay fiber to and 300 homes that don’t have to be rewired past their boundary for fiber! More nodes = more savings over FTTH!. Labour costs are very high in this country whereas equipment is a commoditized and relatively cheap as it’s made in China or India.

    Plus you still need to build nodes with FTTH anyway. FTTH nodes are smaller than FTTN nodes but you still have to go through all the same paperwork and planning and construction effort to establish them.

    “Either way the ROI is lower than FTTH.”

    You’ve crawled out on a very thin, lonely branch with that statement. No one from the FTTH camp is claiming it has a higher ROI than FTTN. They are too scared to even produce a business case analysis because they are scared to make FTTH’s extremely low (or negative) ROI public.

    • Golfman:
      “Either way the ROI is lower than FTTH.”

      You’ve crawled out on a very thin, lonely branch with that statement. No one from the FTTH camp is claiming it has a higher ROI than FTTN. They are too scared to even produce a business case analysis because they are scared to make FTTH’s extremely low (or negative) ROI public.”

      I will point you at this article from 2006. In it Lehman’s (yeah THEY have a great record for assessing risks/ROI) take Verizon to task over ROI on the FTTP vs AT&T’s FTTN. The important thing to keep in mind of course is that AT&T are no overbuilding their FTTN with FTTP.

      “”The market is very skeptical of FiOS spending,” Bath wrote, “We believe that if Verizon shares continue to lag its peers and the broader market, it may substantially scale back its fiber build before the end of 2006, due to poor economics and the technical and regulatory delays associated with rolling out video.”

      A Verizon spokesman acknowledged that FTTP deployment currently is more expensive than FTTN, but argued that FTTP was a superior strategy in the long run. “This is a short- and long-term strategy,” the spokesman said. “The strategy is to future-proof the network. We don’t want to spend again. We think it’s very likely, to be competitive, other companies are going to have to go this route anyway.””

      http://connectedplanetonline.com/fttp/news/lehman_verizon_fttp_010406/

  89. One problem with FTTN is the fact that they have to be powered. Direct fiber needs no power and even PON is unpowered.
    Do not underestimate the additional costs of having electricity connected, the delay involved while tens of thousands of nodes are connected and the ongoing cost of electricity.

    • This is a key point, with increasing instances of power cuts. We get quite a few in this regional town, so I have a generator. The landline goes on working when the power goes down.

      We’d really need a communication connection which didn’t require active power.

      (BTW, ours is a safe Liberal seat.)

      • “(BTW, ours is a safe Liberal seat.)”

        Damn shame about that… I reckon Ms JG should have your fiber installed within the next 10 years, if you’re lucky.

        My advice if you want fiber in 5 years instead of 10 years – move to a marginal or independently held seat.

  90. Golfman:
    “Every node you build connects to up to 300 homes.”

    Assuming the best possible configuration, the node is on a 4-way intersection that just happens to have a 4-way cable junction (pretty rare), and your node is feeding 75 homes along each cable. Allowing a 30m front for each 1/4 acre block plus 20 meter lead in makes our longest cable run 3.7km, which is no better than what we already have just with nodes at the exchange.
    To get it down to under 1/2 a km to get a decent speed gain and we have a node every 10 houses.
    If you are going to run a fiber to every 10 houses, you may as well run fiber all the way since you have had to trench past all of tehm anyway, and this is a best case scenario remember.

    FTTN makes sense (for true broadband) where you already have extensive cable TV networks that you can re-use. It does NOT make sense where you have decades old copper pairs.

    • Your calculations fly in the face of the evidence. Massive world wide rollouts of FTTN via VDSL and VDSL2. If your figures were right (10 houses per node to get a decent speed – come on, with figures like that you must be one of the numbers men working for NBN Co) no one would be rolling out FTTN networks.

      “Telstra wanted total deregulation ”

      Telstra has to realize that what they want and what they get are two different things. All it takes is someone in gubmint with more balls that money. It’s worth looking at the opposition’s approach whereby the private sector can bid on an area by area basis on providing high speed by whatever means is suitable for that area. The people, via the gubmint, can then choose the most cost effective, satisfactory option with very minimal outlay from the public. It could even be that individual councils put in proposals so that local government build (via experienced contractors) and manage their own rollout. There’s room in there for Telstra if they want to play ball and compete. If not we’ll just use their backhaul capabilities at a government determined price.

      Under that model the most appropriate technology is applied to an individual area rather than the draconian approach of ‘fiber to everyone except 7% of the population. For some areas that might be FTTH for others it might be FTTN for others it might be whatever. I think we just have to realize that pushing for FTTH for most areas is a massive task that will have a snail paced rollout because it is massively labour intensive. To push for FTTH is to put your hand up and say “I’m happy with crappy ADSL or dialup for many, many years to come”.

      • Golfman:
        “Your calculations fly in the face of the evidence. Massive world wide rollouts of FTTN via VDSL and VDSL2.”

        Then fact that service is provided by VDSL does NOT mean that they are getting data rates at the top end of VDSL capability. Certainly VDSL does not perform worse than ADSL+ so why wouldn’t you just install VDSL? Looking up ACTUAL TYPI(CAL cuustomer speeds on VDSL as against theoretical, next door to the node speeds, seems to centre around a user experience of about 4Mb/s.
        See following comments lifted from conferences. Excuse the deletion of identifying details as I dont want to get sued:

        “And they’re not bad … My friend has 4mbit/2mbit VDSL in Strathfield Regal court apartment…”
        “I’m in South Korea right now and I’m paying about 45 bux a month for 4 mbps down/up VDSL”
        “I am with XXXXXXX at the moment, $39/month unlimited 512k plan, plus free modem and $0 installation upfront fee, it’s a bargain! But be aware that after 2 weeks later the speed drop a lot when more people in the building signed in. The avarage speed now is about 140k , not happy :(.”
        “I just got it at the Eastgate Gardens apartment in Bondi Junction and am not happy. Bittorrent speds max out at 24 KB/S IN TOTAL”

        • There’s something seriously wrong with the connections of the people that are complaining. 140k? He’s got some serious issues that are nothing to do with VDSL when even ADSL and ADSL+ give much better than that.

          • New housing areas should definitely be rolling out fiber – to roll out anything out in new housing areas would be plain stupid. If you’ve got open trenches to thousands of new homes then you’d be mad not to put in the latest fiber technology.

            For the 10,000,000 existing dwellings with copper in Australia – it’s a different story altogether.

            RIMS in residential areas are no longer a problem if the nodes are located ‘after’ the RIM. They’ll should be able to experience up to around 50-100mbps if <1000m from a FTTN node.

  91. Golfman:
    “Let’s say we double that so now we’re spending only 1/4 of the $43 billion current plan and we set up a fair, competitive playing field so that any competitor can bid on building nodes and see if we can’t get the whole of metro and regional town area wired up with FTTN in 12 months!”

    Therein lies the problem. In exchange for building this network, Telstra wanted total deregulation of the market so it could charge whatever price it wanted to for access. Effectively it would be able to leverage off the existing network to undercut any competitor and then bump the price back up once they were out of the game.

  92. The other thing to remember about the “broadband” network Telstra was proposing was that it had a guaranteed speed of only 6Mb/s (actually 12Mb/s but the other 6Mb/s was to be reserved exclusively for Telstra supplied services).

    • “The other thing to remember about the “broadband” network Telstra was proposing was that it had a guaranteed speed of only 6Mb/s (actually 12Mb/s but the other 6Mb/s was to be reserved exclusively for Telstra supplied services).”

      That is the ‘guaranteed speed’, i.e. the worst case scenario for houses on the extremities. This figure helps dictate the spacing of their nodes. Most people would get speeds much faster than that. Forget reserving 6Mbps for Telstra’s services – that’s a joke. We won’t accept that – we want the whole bandwidth thank you very much.

      You must be aware that there’s a lot of vested interests around the supply of broadband. Some ISPs provide symmetrical connections of 1m/1m, 2m/2m, 4m/4m to mainly businesses. I was quoted $1000 for install and about $300/month for the 1m/1m connection! A 1 mbps connection! That is gravy train style income for them. What a joke! I can get 50m/16m in NZ via their FTTN network for residential rates… Imagine what would happen if a FTTN network would be made available in 18 months that could offer 50m/16m for residential rates…. many ISPs (including Telstra) would see that lucrative gravy train derail overnight.

      If I were such an ISP I would be pushing for FTTH because then my current gravy trains get to ‘roll on’ for many years to come.

      You have to be aware that the whole FTTH/FTTN thing is not just about technology. It’s about cost of implementation, it’s about what other competing technologies are affected and in what sort of time frame. By pushing for FTTH you’re jumping on some ISP’s bandwagon’s without even knowing it.

      As for FTTN nodes being active/powered: JG’s introducing a carbon tax which will magically force everyone to switch to green power – apparently ;) … Also, passive PON’s may not be the ‘future proof’ nirvana some proclaim them to be.

      • Golfman:
        “This figure helps dictate the spacing of their nodes.”

        Yes, my point exactly. Halve the distance between the nodes and quadruple the price because area is the square of distance. Unfortunately performance vs is not linear, it is also a power law. Halving the distance does NOT double the speed, To get decent speeds you end up with fiber to the curb anyway, so why not run it into the house.

        “Forget reserving 6Mbps for Telstra’s services – that’s a joke.”
        The joke is on us. If Telstra foots the bill, Telstra determines the conditions, take it or leave it.
        Try to put in to many demands on what the tenderer has to provide and in the end, they wont bother putting in a compliant tender because it becomes uneconomical. Of wait, that’s exactly what happened.

        “Imagine what would happen if a FTTN network would be made available in 18 months that could offer 50m/16m for residential rates”

        What’s the point in wasting effort on imaginary fantasies?

        “If I were such an ISP I would be pushing for FTTH”
        I am sorry, I can’t follow the logic at all? ISP’s currently providing fixed line broadband really don’t give a damn what technology the wholesale provider uses,. Why would they?
        Telstra who own the copper network and Optus who don’t own the copper network are both in favour of the NBN. All those ISP’s who provide access via wireless technology, logically, are against it.

        “As for FTTN nodes being active/powered: JG’s introducing a carbon tax which will magically force everyone to switch to green power – apparently ;) … Also, passive PON’s may not be the ‘future proof’ nirvana some proclaim them to be.”

        Powered devices mean a considerable cost in having electricity connected even if the actual power drawn is minimal. No power requirement means this expense is simply avoided. Powered devices eventually wear out. The piece of glass that a dinosaur cut his foot on will still cut your foot today.
        The only danger passive PON’s face it that they will not be able to separate out the different laser wavelengths as capacity demands escalate. On current technology this is still many orders of magnitude greater than the capacity that a FTTN network.

        • “ISP’s currently providing fixed line broadband really don’t give a damn what technology the wholesale provider uses,. Why would they?”

          Many ISPs have installed their own DSLAM equipment and others even lay special cable for customers who are prepared to pay for it. These extra services are typically purchased by businesses who pay dearly for them – for uplink speeds of 1 or 2 MB, for which they charge anywhere from $300-$1000 per month. Any technology that is going to offer speeds much greater than that – either FTTN or FTTH – would put an end to their gravy train.

      • You know, for someone who doesn’t think this is about “Labor vs Liberal”, you certainly seem to have it in for the “gubmint”.

        I don’t like Julia Gillard, I didn’t vote Labor, but I have to admit this is the first federal government in over a decade to invest in community infrastructure: health, education and communications.

        And a carbon tax isn’t “magical”: it isn’t “sufficiently advanced technology” for that label. ;)

        A carbon tax will encourage people to switch to green power (assuming they haven’t done that yet) by making green power the cheaper alternative. Electricity will be more expensive in general, but it’s been going up in leaps and bounds for years now. I doubt if it would have stopped doing that because we “delayed” pricing carbon.

        • Hahah! Carbon tax – you’re so naive if you think it will reduce carbon. It’s just another tax. You don’t control the electricity company. They will just pass any tax onto you, the consumer, the government gets that money in extra tax to do what… well continue to waste it like they always do.

          In the mean time no green alternatives can compete with the carbon based fuels – even with the added carbon tax – so carbon fuels will continue to remain the cheapest option… so how the hell will that reduce carbon emissions?

          … meanwhile … as what little remains of Australia’s manufacturing and agriculture are exposed to higher energy costs people like you and me will buy less of the more expensive Australian products and more of the cheaper imported products produced in countries who don’t give a rats ass about carbon emissions – so the carbon tax’s net effect is:

          – increase in goods and services
          – increase in government revenue (a Claytons GST increase you might call it)
          – no net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as we simply export our carbon producing industries and agriculture to countries that produce our green house gases at their place.

          Yes, brilliant idea… how did they think of that? It’s pure geeeeenius!

          • “Carbon tax – you’re so naive if you think it will reduce carbon. It’s just another tax. You don’t control the electricity company. They will just pass any tax onto you, the consumer”

            @Golfman perhaps you should read a little economic theory if you really think there is a problem with that. It’s called a pricing signal and it will encourage lower consumption of carbon by creating a price differential with low carbon sources. Consumers can choose the greener, cheaper options. Generators (and manufacturers) can choose the greener, cheaper inputs to maintain price competitiveness.

          • “@Golfman perhaps you should read a little economic theory if you really think there is a problem with that.”

            There definitely is a problem with it and the very economic theory you talk of should be the big hint that will help you see that.

            “It’s called a pricing signal and it will encourage lower consumption of carbon by creating a price differential with low carbon sources. Consumers can choose the greener, cheaper options. Generators (and manufacturers) can choose the greener, cheaper inputs to maintain price competitiveness.”

            Ok, so you’re saying higher prices will encourage people to seek out lower cost alternatives…. ok, there’s the problem with the carbon tax. Why would the seeking out of lower prices be limited to power and not every other item Austrlian’s purchase like manufactured goods and food? A carbon tax increases the cost of Australian made goods. As you would agree, the conversion to greener alternatives in the power industry will not happen overnight and so for an extended period of time there will be an even greater price differential between Australian made goods and those imported from overseas – the pricing signal you create will further increase imports (from countries with no carbon tax) and put more Australians out of work as their companies become less competitive as they must pass on price increases rendered on them by the carbon tax – they also can’t convert to green power overnight.

            Does economic theory you speak of support the above or oppose it? If it opposes it please point out the fault in the above argument.

            We’re also ignoring the fact that the price differential between green energy and the well established carbon based energy sources is massive. The carbon tax doesn’t close the gap, it just reduces it slightly but probably not enough to make a switch to green mandatory.

            The most developed and widely used, carbon free power source is, of course, nuclear power and Australia has a huge supply of it – but for some reason people are ‘spooked’ by it so a very effective solution with ZERO carbon emissions is left by the wayside while governments introduce solar panel programs that they have to cancel because they can’t afford them because the lunatics promised those lucky enough to afford them 60cents/kwh for 7 years! Genius! Pure genius!!!

            When you think of the other technologies (wind turbine, wave energy, huge convection generators) they would have been able to develop with the same amount of money it makes you want to scream.

            It’s all about the perception – the governments want to be *seen* to be green – regardless of how stupid or unsustainable the programs they introduce are… so long as it *looks* good. Unfortunately that’s our money they’re blowing!

          • Ah, the devil is in the details.

            Yes, internalising environmental costs will make things more expensive. That’s the whole point.

            You can smooth over the transition and give companies and consumers time to adjust by slowly raising the tax (or lowering the number of permits in an ETS) to it’s optimal level.

            You can prevent unfair competition from imports by applying tariffs to those products that come from countries without a carbon tax or an ETS. Tariffs are usually frowned upon because they distort trade. However, if the distortion is to encourage lower carbon usage then we need to decide if we want to be a leader on this issue and, if so, we have little choice but to do this.

          • “You can prevent unfair competition from imports by applying tariffs to those products that come from countries without a carbon tax or an ETS. Tariffs are usually frowned upon because they distort trade. However, if the distortion is to encourage lower carbon usage then we need to decide if we want to be a leader on this issue and, if so, we have little choice but to do this.”

            The free market zombies might have something to say about that.

            For years I’ve been saying we should be putting tariffs on imports from countries that exploit child labour or countries that don’t provide basic worker’s conditions such as decent pay, safety from injury and safety from exposure to toxic chemicals but that would mean tariffs on goods from some of our biggest trading partners so it hasn’t got much chance of flying.

            I’d be fully supportive of tariffs on goods from countries that don’t respect the earth in any number of ways: air pollution, water pollution, carbon emissions, destruction of forests etc., and I really think we should be – scientists recognize that reducing the destruction of forests is just as as important as reducing CO2 emissions – not to mention the endangered species we’d be saving.

            Tariffs would be a great way to get other countries to respect the earth as much as we do but free market zombiness has struck most of our politicians and they like to label anyone who mentions anything that sounds like protectionism as ‘economic neanderthals’ – which is sad.

  93. Golfman:
    “Turn all that around to a government owned monopoly and we all pay – we pay to build the thing (even those that don’t want to pay for the monstrosity) and then we have to keep paying to use it.”

    We paid to build Telecom Australia and we paid to use it.
    Of course, the $4 billion plus it paid into general revenue as a dividend meant $4 billion LESS in tax we had to pay. In the end, as is proposed for the NBN, it was sold and provided a $70 billion windfall to the government from the proceeds.

    • So your plan is to build another government monopoly and then sell it off. It must be sold off because that is how labor got to leave the $43 out of their election costings – by saying that it is a commercial venture and intend to sell it of at a profit or ‘break even’ (funny I know) they could leave out that small $43 billion figure in their costings – which would have been a rather large hole in the side of an already unfloatable ship. So when it is sold off we have a large private monopoly controlling the nations core internet infrastructure – isn’t that the problem they were trying to solve in the first place?

      When it comes to the approach taken to our nation’s broadband network nothing much seems to make sense or add up.

  94. Golfman sings the praises of FTTN because he thinks he will get a faster service sooner, but the long term situation for the nation is a second order issue. Even his much quoted Verizon realises the limitations of anything less than FTTH and that fibre has an upgradeable future.

    “Verizon Field Trial of 10/10 Gigabit-per-Second XG PON2 Technology Demonstrates Blistering-Fast Two-Way Speed Over Existing FiOS Network Fiber.

    “… we are expecting new applications to drive our customers’ upstream bandwidth usage on the wireline network,” said Vincent O’Byrne Verizon director-technology.  “While the bandwidth demand today is highly asymmetric, applications such as telemedicine, remote file storage and backups, video hosting, remote computing and other cloud-based services, to name a few, will drive up the upstream bandwidth demand over our network.”

    http://investor.verizon.com/news/view.aspx?NewsID=1090

    and

    “No faux fiber
    Even though some broadband Internet service providers use fiber optics in addition to coaxial cable, Verizon FiOS is the only major network that delivers ultra-fast Internet on 100% fiber optics straight to your home.”
    http://www22.verizon.com/residential/fiosinternet

    There may be price resistance and uptake lethagy if people think life after NBN will be same old same old but a bit faster. But when we really get out of first gear, people may open their wallets a bit. After all, with digital TV, many people are not confining their technology budgets to a set top box but are buying large flat screens and are paying for Foxtel, despite Freeview, and there being no more hours in the day to consume yet more content.

  95. “… we are expecting new applications to drive our customers’ upstream bandwidth usage on the wireline network,” said Vincent O’Byrne Verizon director-technology.

    Their expectations are so high that they are planning on commencing any new FiOS (FTTH) rollouts. Of course they have to bang on about ‘the future’ and ‘expectations’ – it’s called trying to create market demand.

    Look, I’ll say it again – there’s nothing I’d like more than fibre rolled out to my doorstep next week but you have to be realistic and pragmatic. These mugs couldn’t even install insulation in people’s houses nor build the school buildings that the schools actually wanted within the realms of average industry pricing. If you think an elaborate, labor intensive, infrastructure build of the mammoth magnitude the NBN is then you’d have to be off with the pixies.

    I’d recommend we set the ‘competence challenged’ feral gubmint and much less risky, less costly, ‘faster to roll out’ challenge so that we can at least get world average speeds in the foreseeable future (12-18 months) because right now my 4mbps ADSL connection really sucks… right now…. I don’t want to be stuck on it for another 5-8 years or more (living in a safe seat here)

  96. What was this about insulation and building school buildings? I hadn’t heard anything about that? Is there some sort of a problem?

    If solving YOUR problem quickly, leads to a longer and more expensive arrival at the ultimate destination, would you then be critical of government waste?

    Some people are perpetually hard to please.

  97. A solution that provides the high speed broadband needs for now and into the future is not a waste unless you believe that Australia’s foray into dial up modems and ADSL was also a waste – fiber has been around for years. It was around when I was at uni doing elect eng in the 80’s.

    By your logic we were wasteful to invest in dial up modems and ADSL modems over the years – we should have laid fiber to the home back in the eighties to be the hi tech powerhouse of the world – fiber technology was available and usable back then.

    PON (as used by the NBN’s FTTH rollout) is wasteful. It’s not as future proof as you think. We will need to upgrade that in the future if bandwidth requirements increase much past 100mbps. By your reckoning we should not use PON and go for some other technology that will withstand the test of time.

    Why not run an individual fiber cable back to the exchange for everyone? One day we might need that – it would be wasteful not to envisage that need and act on it now.

  98. “If solving YOUR problem quickly, leads to a longer and more expensive arrival at the ultimate destination, would you then be critical of government waste?”

    It’s not wasteful to choose a technology that has good ROI and can pay for itself in a short time. What is wasteful it to borrow to the hills, incurring massive debt (not that NBNers seem to have any concern for costings, blow outs or debt) on a technology that provides speeds we don’t even need yet when much cheaper technologies can satisfy our needs much sooner with much greater private involvement and less tax payer dollars. That cheaper rollout ALSO allows for those who do need greater speed to pay for a fiber rollout from the node to their place on a case by case ‘user pays’ basis – so the high speed option is available without forcing the Australian population to foot the cost for those that need it when clearly not all need it now nor will for many years to come.

  99. Golfman:
    “It’s not wasteful to choose a technology that has good ROI and can pay for itself in a short time.”

    What IS wasteful is to spend money on technology that has already been made obsolete.
    In the end, a chain is no stronger than the weakest link and a broadband system no fater than teh slowest section. In FTTN, that slowest link, the copper cable pair, was designed at the same time they were building steam locomotives.

  100. Golfman:
    “By your logic we were wasteful to invest in dial up modems and ADSL modems over the years – we should have laid fiber to the home back in the eighties to be the hi tech powerhouse of the world – fiber technology was available and usable back then.”

    Sadly, back then the cheap terminal equipment available today didn’t exist. Having said that FTTP is not a new idea. Home Run Architecture, also known as point-to-point architecture, was possible and used experimentally in the late 1980’s in cities throughout the world. This type of architecture requires a fiber to run from the central office to each home or business as well as placing a costly laser at each end. For large businesses, it is still used sometimes today because of its huge amount of capacity.
    Recent advances in technology have made it possible to bring each home its own fiber optic service. This service can provide voice, data, and video products to them. This is now economically possible by using a [[Passive Optical Network]] or PON. Advances in basic microelectronic and optical technologies lower costs from $1500-3000 to below $1000 for an installation to a residence. This is about the equivalent of a new copper pipeline. Since copper only provides voice and limited data service, fiber is the future.

  101. Golfman:
    “So your plan is to build another government monopoly and then sell it off. It must be sold off because that is how labor got to leave the $43 out of their election costings”

    No different to John Howard bumping up the federal tax take 2% to turn a 1.5% deficit into a 0.5% surplus and selling off $200 billion in assets to pay of a $90 billion loan and somehow claiming to be a financial genius.

    The simple fact is that debt to purchase income producing infrastructure, like an NBN or my rental properties is GOOD debt in that the income earned offsets the interest paid. In the end the country is richer for having an NBN and I am richer for having rental properties. Much richer than if either of us simply left the money in the bank or worse, spent it on something else.

    • “The simple fact is that debt to purchase income producing infrastructure, like an NBN or my rental properties is GOOD debt in that the income earned offsets the interest paid.”

      You’re now talking about broadband in terms of return on investment like you’re talking about rental properties and their return on investment – yet the NBN supporters are quite happy not to have a business case analysis to determine the very ROI you promote – why would that be? Hand waving and general “we just know it will be good” arguments don’t cut it in the world of harsh economic realities.

      I bet you didn’t become a real estate mogul prior to doing some figures, working out how much you were going to get from working class people to help pay your mortgages for you as you assume the role of capitalist pig while you still continue to vote labor – you hypocrite! You’ve sold out on the cause man! Ben Chifley would be rolling in his grave right now. You would have measured up how much of their income you could get comparison to how much you have to pay to your capitalist entitlement institution – your bank (please take this comment in the jest that was intended ;) )

      Ok, so say that FTTN via the current generation of VDSL gives most people 30-60mpbs and costs 1/5 of the cost of a FTTH rollout (some experiences say it’s 1/10 the cost but lets be conservative). In pure business return terms would FTTH, giving 100mbps – an extra 70-40mpbs over FTTN provide returns that are 5 times greater than FTTN? If not then your “NBN as an investment” argument becomes an argument FOR FTTN.

      You also neglect to figure in the COST of LOST of business opportunities Australia will encounter by waiting the many extra years we are left behind by the rest of the world as we wallow with our crappy ADSL connections for years while the rest of the world enjoy 30-60mpbs on their predominantly FTTN or HFC connections. That will cost Australia some serious dollars – especially as cloud computing is taking over the world NOW not in 5-8 years time when those in non marginal seats and non regional areas would *maybe* get their Holy Grail fiber rollouts.

  102. Golfman:
    “A solution that provides the high speed broadband needs for now and into the future is not a waste”

    And therein lies the rub. FTTN, even according to the people who advocate it and the companies installing it, will NOT provide th broadband speeds required in the future. It has simply been expedient to squeeze a couple of extra years out of existing, outdated infrastructure. As the cost of FTTP equipment has fallen, many of the companies that previously advocated FTTN have switched to FTTP.

    The cost saving of doing FTTN is very small now and it is falling rapidly. For a project that will take the better part of a decade, it makes no sense at all to lock into what will be the more expensive option, FTTN, long before it’s completion.

  103. Golfman:
    “Look, I’ll say it again – there’s nothing I’d like more than fibre rolled out to my doorstep next week but you have to be realistic and pragmatic. These mugs couldn’t even install insulation in people’s houses nor build the school buildings that the schools actually wanted within the realms of average industry pricing.”

    Neither statement is even remotely accurate.
    Even conceding problems with the schemes, the insulation scheme actually saw more homes instal roofing insulation than in the totality of the Howard decade of government.
    During the years of Work Choices, an average of 9 people were electrocuted working in private residences. In the year after work choices, it was half that number.
    Under the school building scheme, some schools may not have got exactly what they wanted, but what they DID get is still more than they got under a decade of the Howard government.

    The NBN has only delivered a small number of services to date, but for a company only a year old it has certainly done better than the coalition effort that after a decade of inaction finally took “action” with it’s OPEL initiative that was finally terminated by the Labor government almost a year later having failed to build a single piece of infrastructure nor even turn over a single clod of earth for the project.

    The coalition has the luxury of poking holes in Labor’s achievements without fear of them doing the same since it is impossible to poke a hole in coalition achievements when they achieved nothing to poke holes into.

    • “Under the school building scheme, some schools may not have got exactly what they wanted”

      Spending billions of tax payer dollars to ram things down peoples’ throats that they don’t need or want seems to be a common theme with this government – never once stopping to think how money could be spent more wisely.

      The next project to follow this draconian, dictatorial, extremely wasteful and flipant theme: NBN via FTTH.

  104. “Advances in basic microelectronic and optical technologies lower costs from $1500-3000 to below $1000 for an installation to a residence.”

    No one is saying the equipment cost required for a FTTH NBN is expensive. These days electronics are cheap and the fiber itself is really a hi-tech form of nylon fishing line ;).

    What remains high in western countries is:
    – the cost of the labour intensive process of laying of new cable to houses
    – the cost of the labour intensive process of laying cable from the property boundary to a suitable access point on a wall inside the house

    I’m not sure how many households there are in Australia but to carry out the above for each of them is going to take a really, really, really long time and cost a really, really, really, really large amount of our hard earned tax payer money (well not really, it’s more like, buy now, pay later with many, many, many years of paying back the debt we need to pay for it)

    FTTN on the other hand, reuses most of the existing infrastructure: no laying of cable to each household, no new wiring from property boundaries to the inside of each house. The only new infrastructure is laying of fiber to nodes built in neighbourhoods – a massive saving over the above massively extensive, expensive and snail paced infrastructure builds.

    The fiber layout to the nodes for an FTTN layout can even be reused for a future FTTH layout.

    The FTTH mantra – “give me really expensive high speed but not just yet, not for a really, really long time.”

  105. Golfman:
    “I bet you didn’t become a real estate mogul prior to doing some figures, working out how much you were going to get from working class people to help pay your mortgages for you as you assume the role of capitalist pig while you still continue to vote labor – you hypocrite! ”

    It is always easy to spot the side of the debate that realizes that it’s argument is without merit.
    It switches from debating the issues to personal attacks.

    “Ben Chifley would be rolling in his grave right now.”
    It is Robert Menzies I pity. He must be spinning in his grave at what his party has become.
    When Robert Menzies laid the coax cable between Sydney-Melbourne-Canberra giving us our first Interstate Direct Dialing, was he looking at turning a short term profit or building a nation?
    When he gave us International Direct Dial, did he say telegraph provides a good enough link for our nation to the world, what possible use could people have for 80 telephone circuits overseas.

    Back then the Liberal Party stood for PROGRESS. Menzies gave us Mawson Station in Antarctica, the National Astronomical Observatory, Radio Australia. It stood for a FAIR GO. Menzies gave us the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

    Tony Abbott’s Liberal Party looks to the past because that’s where the only greatness and vision it can point to lies. Menzies looked to the 21st century, Tony Abbott seeks inspiration from the 19th.

  106. Golfman:
    “What remains high in western countries is:
    – the cost of the labour intensive process of laying of new cable to houses
    – the cost of the labour intensive process of laying cable from the property boundary to a suitable access point on a wall inside the house”

    As I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring, if you are going to put the nodes of a FTTN system close enough to houses for any decent speed gain, you are going to be ploughing cable past most houses anyway. As you yourself concede in your own post, the cable cost is negligible. Why not run enough fibers for every house rather than just one for the node since it will actually cost no more?

    The cost of laying cable from the road to the house is very expensive (currently Telstra charge a flat $300, $400 if it is only for a temporary service) if you have to bring a whole crew back to dig in 20m of cable. If you do it while doing the run down the street, it is an order of magnitude cheaper. In most countries, like Canada and the USA, a telephone is considered an essential service and you cannot build a house without provision for it.

    • “As I keep pointing out and you keep ignoring, if you are going to put the nodes of a FTTN system close enough to houses for any decent speed gain, you are going to be ploughing cable past most houses anyway.”

      I have never ignored your comments. I’m saying that your claim is wrong or clearly FTTN would not be rolled out successfully in so many other countries. Germany is ALL FTTN. Most European countries have extensive FTTN networks now.

      If everything you say about the difference in costing and achievable speeds between FTTH and last mile solutions like FTTN was correct then FTTH would be the clear choice for countries all around the world – but obviously it is not so there’s a flaw in your hand waving arguments or every country would be full steam ahead with FTTH rollouts and they wouldn’t be cancelling them (Verizon) or deferring them (Greece). In fact in Greece a private sector infrastructure project has just been announced to rollout an FTTN network… why, because it makes economic sense, it has ROI and it’s affordable – all things FTTH isn’t!

      “As you yourself concede in your own post, the cable cost is negligible. Why not run enough fibers for every house rather than just one for the node since it will actually cost no more?”

      Those two sentences indicate that you’ve been ignoring me. “The cost of the cable is negligible so why not run fibers for every house…” That doesn’t make sense. The cost of the cable is cheap, yes, but the cost of running the fiber to each house and then from the property boundary to the house and then rewiring the house itself is not cheap. It’s the intensive labo[u]r involvement that adds both time and money and making this a massive infrastructure build that won’t be ready for use for many, many years to come, rather than doing the sensible thing, like most other countries, including NZ, and reusing the last mile copper to get us up to speed with the rest of the world in 18 months and then incrementally upgrade with total fiber to those who want/need it – like hospitals, schools, doctors surgeries, businesses, or even private households that need 100Mbps instead of 30-60mbps.

      An FTTH NBN – “Give me really expensive high speed broadband some day, but I’m happy to stay on ADSL and dialup for most of this decade until it’s ready”

      • Greece!

        Is there any other policy or practice we should look to Greece to emulate? NZ seems to be having a bob each way by promoting FTTN and FTTH at the same time.

        Is there reliable data on the state of the copper throughout the nation? And you are still on about re-wiring houses? A more reasoned and less repetitious approach might win more (or even some) support for an argument that might have merit. But most of the time it just sounds like a rant. Perhaps you should contribute to James Valentine’s segment of the same name on 702BL.

        • “Is there any other policy or practice we should look to Greece to emulate?”

          No, definitely don’t follow Greece on their crazy scheme to do a FTTH rollout – something the evidently now can’t afford.

          “NZ seems to be having a bob each way by promoting FTTN and FTTH at the same time.”

          Their FTTN rollouts have ROI and give NZers speeds that make our ADSL look like dialup.

      • “An FTTH NBN – “Give me really expensive high speed broadband some day, but I’m happy to stay on ADSL and dialup for most of this decade until it’s ready”” – Golfman

        That’s actually exactly how I feel about it. Although it won’t be “some day” as you put it, but definitely in the next 8 years. And likely a hell of a lot sooner given I live in Tasmania. I can see the roll out happening with my own eyes here. It’s not like it’s some pipe dream (no pun intended) that isn’t eventuating.

        • Lucky you, living in Tasmania. Apparently Tasmania was chosen because it already was undergoing a state based FTTN rollout so you already had fiber going to lots of locations where nodes would be located. Good old Tassie – choosing the smart, cost effective option, FTTN, like most countries in the world do – and then Canberra comes in and takes advantage of the in progress FTTN rollout and goes, hey look how fast we did the FTTH rollout….

          I don’t live in Tasmania, I don’t live in Oakeshott or Windsor’s electorate and I don’t live in a marginal seat so if the NBN rolls out this decade I’m guessing my area’s rollout is scheduled towards the year 2018 or 2019 rather than 2015.

          Give me 30-60mbps via FTTN next year please!!! Waiting till possibly 2018 to get off this stinking ADSL connection is not something I’m prepared to do silently! Sorry all you NBN fan boys but you’re just not thinking things through.

      • Germany is not all FTTN. Deutsche Telekom has been very picky about where upgrades occur.

        And even amongst the areas that are FTTN most are only capable of supporting plan speeds no better than ADSL2+.

        • Obviously the FTTN is concentrated in the cities and towns – like any fiber based rollout (FTTN or FTTH) in Australia would be also. The NBN won’t rollout fiber to farmer Joe whose property that is 20km from town and whose house is a further 3km down his driveway. His only hope is wireless from a line of tower on a hill near his property – that remains unchanged which ever way the NBN goes.

          BTW – for those who are doubting the feasibility of a 2 phase FTTN then FTTH rollout for speed of rollout, reduced cost and ROI on each phase take a read of this new Alcatel technology articule that answers to that very need by having node technology that can support VDSL (FTTN) and GPON (FTTH) connections to allow incremental fiber network build while providing high speed via last mile copper in the interim. So you can build nodes that terminate copper or fiber connections: ie. no need to roll out fiber to every house (because not everyone needs it or wants it going by the Tasmanian NBN experience). Those that want the Australian Tax Payer to fork out $43 billion for their benefit to satisfy their perceived need for 100mbps can pay to have fiber run to their place – user pays! You want it, great, pay for it. Don’t force everyone to pay for it upfront when we can get world standard speeds at a fraction of the cost via FTTN.

          http://www.lightwaveonline.com/fttx/news/Alcatel-Lucent-upgrades-ISAM-FTTN-capabilities-105775863.html

  107. Golfman:
    “Spending billions of tax payer dollars to ram things down peoples’ throats that they don’t need or want seems to be a common theme with this government”

    Billions of dollars were spent quickly to avoid the problems that places like Europe and the USA experienced. WE didn’t have to print money and debase our currency like the US.
    This is due in no small part to the speed with which the insulation and BER schemes were rolled out.
    Nothing was rammed down anyone’s throat. Nobody HAD to get insulation, no school HAD to build.

  108. I weary of this Golfman. You appear unable to argue the case against the NBN on technical, or financial grounds but must resort to a simple political bias, “It is a Labor project so it must be bad”.

    How about we argue the point on facts and figures not on the way grandaddy voted.
    The truth is that I have voted for the Liberal Party in the past and, if it upheld it’s own ideals, I would probably vote for them again. That has nothing what-so-ever to do with the merits or otherwise of an NBN, so how about we try to stay on topic.

  109. “I weary of this Golfman. You appear unable to argue the case against the NBN on technical, or financial grounds but must resort to a simple political bias, “It is a Labor project so it must be bad”.”

    Your earlier calculations that arrive at the amazing conclusion that we need 1 FTTN node per every 10 houses to get adequate speed is just laughable and not backed up by any facts or the experience of worldwide FTTN rollouts and shows that you are the one who is not interested in mature, fact based, technologically sound arguments.

    I have never once given the reason that “it’s a labor project so it must be bad”. You are grossly misinterpreting me and putting spin on the facts of what I’ve said. What I have said is that it’s a massive infrastructure spend (not that this bothers you) and labor doesn’t have a great track record in the execution of much smaller projects so the confidence the Australian people could have in them executing a massive one would be rightly constrained.

    You want to claim everything they did over the last three years was just great yet by their own admission they had ‘lost their way’ and had to change their leader within the first term of gubmint. Why are you arguing for the record of a party when the party itself doesn’t even seem to want to defend it and used their bad record as a reason for their leadership change?

    “How about we argue the point on facts and figures not on the way grandaddy voted.”

    (Let me just give you a heads up that if you ask questions like that and make fact devoid, assumptions about people and their upbringing it can tend to make you look like an arrogant, pandering git.)

    I don’t vote the way my granddady voted. My granddaddy was an Irish migrant and staunch labor supporter. He was a nice guy but he always left out two things whenever I had a political discussion with him: logic and reason – but that didn’t matter because he always had his Irish temper to fall back on to compensate :)

    • Golfman:
      “BTW – for those who are doubting the feasibility of a 2 phase FTTN then FTTH rollout for speed of rollout, reduced cost and ROI on each phase take a read of this new Alcatel technology articule that answers to that very need by having node technology that can support VDSL (FTTN) and GPON (FTTH) connections to allow incremental fiber network build while providing high speed via last mile copper in the interim.”

      http://www.lightwaveonline.com/fttx/news/Alcatel-Lucent-upgrades-ISAM-FTTN-capabilities-105775863.html

      The article basically provides another example of an FTTN provider upgrading to FTTH.

      It in no way suggests that you should build FTTN and then upgrade, rather it provides a means for those who went the FTTN path to move to FTTH without scrapping all of their earlier investment.

      “By adding GPON capabilities to our 7302 ISAM and 7330 ISAM FTTN platforms, we are helping our customers to launch their next-generation fiber projects from a solid, familiar and installed base,” said Dave Geary, head of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireline activities.

Comments are closed.