NBN take-up “a bitter jest”, says Turnbull

1. The Coalition had between 1997 when they deregulated and 2007 when they lost government to deliver on all their various plans, and they didn’t.

   They also seem to forget their “terrible day” in September 2010 when Oakeshott and Windsor handed power to the ALP on the basis of the NBN. If they’d supported it, they’d probably be in power right now, as they so wantonly covet.

   • ‘They also seem to forget their “terrible day” in September 2010 when Oakeshott and Windsor handed power to the ALP on the basis of the NBN. If they’d supported it, they’d probably be in power right now, as they so wantonly covet.’

     You also forget that the NBN was amongst many presents Gillard handed out to the Independents, including Wilkie who was promised gambling reform and extra funding for the Royal Hobart Hospital, also Labor governs courtesy of the Independents AND the Greens, the Greens were promised Carbon Tax reform.

     To glibly say that all the Coalition had to do was have a ‘same as’ FTTH policy like Labor and that would have given them power is rubbish.

     • Sorry, but I think Michael is spot on…mind you it’s not surprising. I can’t think of a single intelligent thing that the Coalition has ever done for the telecom sector…ever.

     • I think I actually agree with Alain here atleast in part. The NBN was definitely a factor but it wasn’t the only reason.

       Abbott also offered huge sacks of presents, remember Tony Windsor has said Abbott told him ”the only thing I wouldn’t do is sell my arse – but I’d have to give serious thought to it” (http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-day-abbott-bared-his-soul-20110827-1jfgv.html)

       Tony Windsor consistently has said the primary reason is that, he felt Abbott would go to an election as soon as possible. He didn’t want that. It obviously makes sense for him to hold the balance of power as long as possible and therefore have significant influence.

       • There cedrtainly were other factors, but I (and most of the editorials at the time) think that the NBN was the true deciding factor. I think David Ramli put it best…
         “It remains somewhat of an irony that what didn’t appear a major electoral issue – the NBN – should eventually stand as a deciding factor, and one that must sit uncomfortably with the Coalition which gambled and lost with its cut-price broadband scheme”
         http://www.arnnet.com.au/article/359744/updated_-_nbn_key_independents_back_gillard_government/

         • We are talking about two different scenarios here, how the electorate voted, and what influenced all the Independents and Bob Brown to back Labor into power.

           The last election result was a hung Parliament, so if you ascertain the NBN was a deciding factor as many didn’t want the Labor NBN as those that wanted it.

           If you take current polling as any indicator the Labor NBN is a non event.

   • Ah but you also forget that they only put labor in power on the basis that the NBN had to be rolled out to rural areas first then the cities last.

     well the rural areas have been getting rolled out to first and they al only getting a handful of people bothering about hooking up to the NBN at best, some areas will have had $300,000+ spent in in roll out costs but no one hooked up at all.

     • I don’t entirely agree with you on the rural aspect Zag. Though NBNCo. has rolled out fibre to some regional areas I have yet to see a single fibre connection in rural Australia.

       City people may identify areas such as Wollongong or Bendigo as rural, but they clearly are not. Their population sizes are anything but rural, they are in fact major regional hubs. Rural areas are much smaller in population size and are often the ones that are forgotten by Government policy and handouts.

       To date I have yet to see a rural area connected to the NBN. My town of Broken Hill, NSW for instance is left in limbo despite the promised focus on regional and rural Australia. The areas targeted by NBNCo. are, in my opinion, wrong!

       Rather then NBNCo. target areas with poor to no broadband services they have targeted more competitive and lucrative markets. For example, you have Wollongong where there are no less then four ISPs with their own infrastructure in the local telephone exchange. Then you have Broken Hill where there is only one ISPs infrastructure and one wholesale providers… Telstra! Therefore there is no competition and ADSL services are not competitive like metro or major regional markets.

       If NBNCo. target areas like Broken Hill, where currently half the residents can’t get ADSL because Telstra say they can’t and then Telstra subsequently force those residents onto more costly wireless 3G services in order to get a broadband connection then the take-up rate onto the NBN would be far greater.

       So it is all about the areas in which NBNCo. have targeted opposed to people’s willingness to get onto the NBN. To date I am waiting to see NBNCo. lay a single fibre cable into a rural area!

       • singo, check out the coverage maps here:
         http://www.nbnco.com.au/our-network/coverage-maps.html

         Broken Hill is definitely on the list for fibre.

         Generally speaking, any town with more than 2000 people should be getting fibre, 1000 – 2000 population will be a coin-toss, and up to 1000 will probably be wireless, with satellite mopping up the remnants. Rules of thumb, mind you.

         – mark

2. Commentary about NBN takeup is silly and pointless. Their takeup will be near-on 100% when the copper is removed, when NBN connectivity will become a requirement to obtain a fixed-line telephone service.

   The only thing preventing that from happening is the seemingly endless round of delays as we wait for Telstra, their shareholders, and the ACCC to come to a network handover agreement with NBNCo.

   – mark

   • Precisely Mark.

     Further, given that it will be possible to have as many as six services terminating on the NTU – (for different kinds of service) – technically the uptake could actually go well beyond “100%”.

     • Possible, but perhaps unlikely.

       Power utilities (“smart grids”) have been the poster child for multiple services, but they’re a non-starter because the power utilities have absolutely no idea what the NBN is for, and can’t get their heads around how to interface to it without locking the NTU into the meter box with a tamper proof seal. They’ll keep using wireless for the foreseeable future.

       IPTV could conceivably be a “second service” on each NTU, but the current trend is for on-demand content delivered over your internet connection and shared within the house, so who in their right mind will want a second connection exclusively for a closed-box hands-off crypto-secured set-top-box that’s cloistered-off from everything else? Not me, and probably not many others.

       Multiple internet connections are feasible, but most people positively loathe dealing with one telco, and I can’t see why they’d opt to deal with several. It’s an industry where “everything on one bill” is actually a sales point, so how many people will want several bills, several helpdesks, several support nightmares from several ISPs? Not many, I’d wager.

       I reckon NBNCo will deploy 8 million NTUs with four ports each, and in the long term almost all of them will utilize exactly one port.

       – mark

       • I don’t disagree with that at all – in the first five to ten years.

         I can’t imagine that new service types won’t be available in the longer term though.

         • I’m sure there’ll be thousands of new service types, in the fullness of time.

           And they’ll all be delivered over the internet :)

           – mark

         • Many will, some won’t. Obviously I’m not going to call 600% though… *grin*

         • I’m inclined to agree with Mark on this one.

           One of the fundamental problems I see is that NBN Co is betting the farm on this multiple service provider model, hoping to get a separate rental payment from each service provider. Unfortunately for NBN Co, the one who can provide mutiple services via the one access is going to win on price. Like it or not, for most consumers, price wins over quality – where would Vodafone be if it didn’t :-)

           What this means is that IPTV delivered as a part of your ISP service will win over Foxtel delivered as a seconds service, even if Foxtel is ultimately delivered over a second NBN connection. In fact it is telling that Foxtel is not rushing to shift to the NBN although it may be used to extend its reach to non-HFC customers. What I find more interesting is Telstra’s move into movie and TV downloads in competition with their 50% owned Foxtel service through their 100% owned Bigpond service. Others are also offering IPTV as an add-on to their ISP service. Also, service bundling is already establishing iteself in the marketplace and can only be achieved profitably by cutting costs.

           As for the phone, this will probably end up being the freebie add-on to keep customers with the ISP service. It used to be that internet access was the add-on to a telephone service. Now, it is the other way around.

           This is where the fundamental problem for the whole NBN lies. The government wants to sell it off, so it must make a decent return for investors, but it can’t just charge the high access charges such a return requires. Their solution seems to be to try and collect multiple smaller charges to multiple service providers overlooking the problem that one service provider can provide all of the services from a single port for a single rental fee. Add to this the politically motivated requirement to service unprofitable regional areas against the commercial motivation to service the more profitable metropolitan areas and we have a recipe for an interesting few years ahead.

           Malcolm Turnbull’s comments are over the top, but so too are those who have swallowed the NBN PR machine hook, line, and sinker. The likelihood is that barring Labour enjoying some sort of miracle, we will have a coalition govenment after the next election. Unless NBN Co can turn things around and create such a groundswell of public support that the coalition dare not touch it, they will ‘fix’ it. Wishful thinking and promises that things will improve won’t be enough. This year, NBN Co is in for the fight of its life.

         • “In fact it is telling that Foxtel is not rushing to shift to the NBN although it may be used to extend its reach to non-HFC customers.”

           those non-hfc customers are already serviced by satellite, so there’s need to rush to extend its reach as its reach is already very well extended.

           and given their pending purchase of austar, they have pretty much 100% of the market anyway, so why rush to market a new method of delivery?

         • shh don’t mention the voice only service off the UNI-V port.

         • That’d be the UNI-V port that’s being provided for free by NBNCo to the lessor of the first UNI-D port on the NTD, and which isn’t available commercially from any provider at all without a bundled internet service? :-)

           Can’t see that it has a future. In ten years time analogue telephony will be ancient history, and NBNCo will be deploying NTDs without UNI-D ports and nobody will care at all.

           Bear that in mind during all the tiresome debates about battery-backup for emergency calls. One of the side effects of the NBN will be to obsolete analogue telephony altogether. And good riddance to it.

           – mark

         • How much is a voice only service off the UNI-V port Mark?

         • Page 25 of the NBNCo pricing overview document:
           http://www.nbnco.com.au/assets/documents/product-and-pricing-overview-dec-10.pdf

           The UNI-V port is available as a selectable option with the UNI-D, and pricing for the AVC is inclusive of 150kbps of TC_1 capacity to carry voice calls.

           The UNI-V isn’t available separately, so there’s no such thing as a “voice only” NBN service. A telco could conceivably synthesise one by provisioning a UNI-D/UNI-V bundle with minimal (12Mbps/1Mbps $24 per month) AVC capacity and simply not providing a username/password for the accompanying internet service, but who’d want to buy that?

           – mark

         • Both Quigley and Dan Flemming both hinted at the most recent forum that it is quite likely to come, but most people will have the internet connection anyway, and have that 150k/150k channel – (which will still be directed to the UNI-V port) – available to them anyway.

           I do see value in it, because grandma isn’t likely to have or want an internet connection, so there will be a market for it, but over time it would disappear.

           And as you suggest earlier – good riddance.

         • The 150/150kbps TC_1 commit doesn’t actually need to be directed at the UNI-V port. A service provider can, at their option, simply treat it as “free” committed bandwidth for the internet service.

           I gather some telcos will use QoS rules to map traffic between the end-user’s IP address(es) and their own VoIP session border controller into TC_1, providing guaranteed bandwidth to Nodephone, iiVoice, AdamTalk, etc. Makes support easier when you’re able to say that all customers, regardless of delivery method, have the same voice service, without needing to alter the script to accommodate customers who plug their phone into their UNI-V port instead of their router’s ATA/voice port. It’s an easy implementation decision to make in a world where nobody really wanted UNI-V ports in the first place.

           – mark

         • Again, I don’t disagree – and I think that a “pure voice-only product” will be a low volume item in the catalogue. From NBN Co’s point of view, it seems very much wait and see what the RSPs want as they complete on-boarding.

         • A UNI-V only service may be used by the ‘grannies’ but I think it will also make for an interesting threat from the small business market.

           There can be no doubt that the mobile data market is skyrocketing. While a fixed broadband service will always provide greater bandwidth than a wireless service, very few services actually need that bandwidth. Businesses will be faced with a choice of buying a fixed and a mobile data service, or just a mobile data service that does both. Sure, they won’t get the same bandwidth from a mobile service, but if they don’t need that bandwidth, what do they lose? In a way, it is the same force that drives fixed to mobile migration for telephone services.

           So, if a business was 100% mobile for telephony and data, why would they want UNI-V? One thing that VoIP does really badly and mobile services don’t do at all are modem-based data services such as fax and EFTPOS. Sure, eventually these may move to IP-based alternatives but that will take time due to the large amount of existing hardware and the cost of replacement. Plugging a fax machine into the analogue port of a router will be highly unreliable due to the free-running clock devices at each end (I’m talking about clocks in the digital electrocic sense, not real-time clocks). Jitter buffer over- and under-runs will cause dropped packets and eventually, dropped connections. The one major advantage I understand that the UNI-V has is that the clocks are synchronised to a central source, so although data throughput will be slow, it will be the only realiabe way of getting anything to work.

           The fax machine will ultimately disapopear, replaces by a MFC that emails scanned documents. EFTPOS will probably go mobile at least for the corner pizza shop. They won’t need an internet service and probably wouldn’t be willing to pay for one just to get a rarely used EFTPOS terminal going. A stand-alone UNI-V service would be a perfect interim step to retain existing equipment until they go 100% mobile. On second thoughts, maybe they’ll hang on to their UNI-V for their phone orders too.

           It is understandable that many of those who search the internet for stories on the NBN and comment on them cannot see the possibility that many people have no use for the services it offers, seeing everyone else’s needs as parallelling their own. The reality is that it is more than just the ‘grannies’ who will not be interested.

         • I’d suggest that you would be reaching the great-grandma stage to find an age group where the majority don’t have a mobile.

         • Yeah I know, thanks for the reinforcement, the Coalition will rightly have a field day with that one.

         • why not?

   • @Mark Newton

     ‘Commentary about NBN takeup is silly and pointless. Their takeup will be near-on 100% when the copper is removed,’

     Yes always interesting to read that the so called ‘success’ of the NBN takeup doesn’t hinge on it being technically superior (hey everyone wants it right?), but it is totally dependent on a political deal done with infrastructure owners to shut down their networks eliminating choice from the equation.

     • Nobody is better off by having a ‘choice’ in fixed-line providers.

       The whole concept of having competition in infrastructure is an incredibly stupid idea. We don’t have competing water mains, powerlines, railway lines or roads so why the hell are we trying to do it for fixed-line communications?

       The stupidity in the argument is breathtaking.

       • Of course you avoided the main thrust of the argument, that is the NBN uptake totally depends on the copper and HFC infrastructure being shut down, until that timeline is reached there be more residents in Australia using dial-up.

         • I dismiss it as being irrelevant.

           There only needs to be a single fixed-line phone network in the country. There is no need to have copper AND HFC networks in our streets merely for the sake of competition.

         • Well yeah I know why you want to see it as ‘irrelevant’, it’s really sad that the NBN cannot survive on its technical merits but needs billions to pay out infrastructure owners to shut down their networks so that residences are forced to use it.

         • But that’s fine. We only need a single network so it doesn’t matter that people need to be forced off the old system to make it economically viable. The whole point of building the NBN is to solve the problem created when the government sold Telstra without splitting it’s operations.

           Strategically, it is suicide to go roll out a FTTN network and have someone like Telstra roll past with their own fiber and make the whole network obsolete.

         • ‘We only need a single network so it doesn’t matter that people need to be forced off the old system to make it economically viable’

           Even if they don’t need it? – great, is that the good old ‘we know what’s best for you’ syndrome at work is it?

         • yes. even if they don’t need it.

         • I’m old enough to remember the thousands of people who claimed that they “didn’t need it” when the sewer was rolled-out in the suburbs of Sydney. I also remember the (sometimes) thousands of dollars co-contribution and private plumbing work that was required by private citizens to get the system up and running at their private premises.

           But can you imagine a today where individual homes dotted all over the cities, still had a pan outside in the backyard dunny??? And the dunny-man coming twice a week to empty them??? And those fun family gatherings where the overload filled-up the pan (and the spare), and we all had to make alternative shitting arrangements till dunny night???

           Fun, fun, fun.

           Roll-on the future I say… and roll-on the NBN.

         • The problem I see with this comment is the Government (assuming Labor) shutting down the copper network in an area which has a low take up rate due to the Opt In nature of the rollout.

           If you consider an area that has a take up rate of 70% (as an example) It will be a ballsy move to disconnect those 30% of people that remain on copper for whatever reason (renters, aged, those that just don’t get the whole NBN thing).

           I foresee the maintenance of the copper network will persist way longer then what anyone expects based on the fear of leaving people with no phone service.

         • It’s a good point Jackey J. Bit like all technologies which are superseded by the new, it does take time to transfer across.

           Because the punter needs to be convinced about the new, especially as the sellers of the old, see the writing on the wall and reduce their prices to get the last cent from their obsolete product.

           But in the end, we have seen what happens, the overwhelming majority of punters want the superior product. Some sooner some later.

         • ‘But in the end, we have seen what happens, the overwhelming majority of punters want the superior product.’

           Yeah we do, that’s why the fastest BB available today HFC at 100Mbps has 100% take-up of all residences that can get it.

           Hang on, not they don’t – oh well BS cliches about the NBN always sound good eh RS? even if the historical evidence says otherwise.

         • So close down HFC which isn’t needed after all, as you allude to and build a FTTP NBN for everyone, agreed.

           As for your usual, boy who cried wolf, desperation, that again leads me to this phrase.

           “It is better to be envied than pitied” – Herodotus

         • so if the HFC network doesn’t have such a high uptake why does it need to remain?
           why are you so against it being decommissioned?

           if it doesn’t have a high uptake now, why would it suddenly have a high uptake if it were made available on the NBN?

         • I agree.

           Fuirther to my earlier point about the sewer roll-out… opting-out was not allowed. Having the sewer installed was compulsary whether you wanted it or not.

           If you couldn’t afford it, the cost was in most cases paid by the local council, and added to your rates.

           It then became subject to the normal processes if you failed to pay it.

       • I agree wholeheartedly Marc.

         It is indeed a stupid idea, being perpetrated by stupid people.

         • Posting style never changes eh RS?

         • “As iron is eaten by rust, so are the envious consumed by envy”. Antisthenes

         • I dunno, the ALP and followers have been powered by envy for a very long time. Hasn’t slowed them down.

   • NBNCo are targeting a take-up rate of 70% (page 116 of NBNCo Corporate Plan).

   • Um, the reason why it matters is that in Australia the sale of fixed line services has been declining not going up or even flat lining.

     The above is why Telstra have been wanting to charge more for a fixed line rental instead of doing fixed pricing that never changes as once you start to lose services then you end up with lower ROI on services.

     the NBN will also have this problem as people who have a mobile phone generally save money by dropping the home phone line and just keep the mobile phone, because you generally get unlimited calls now to any mobile phone in Australia and you get cheap calling to a fixed line and you also get the net etc on the phone or tether it so you can get net on the computer or laptop as well all on the 1 service plus it’s generally cheaper for the mobile service overall over a fix line service.

     The other problem the NBN will face is the pure amount of money spent on NBN services and basically nothing is connected to it, if you read the comments about the pay rise or power bills going up many people will comment saying maybe if we drop the NBN then we;ll get that 40 billion back and it’ll stop prices from going up all the time.

     So you now have outside pressure from people who aren’t overly fused about a 40 billion dollar NBN company and would rather see it put into hospitals now.

     The other problem is that how many people would even be interested in spending money on a NBN connect out in the rural areas, I believe toowooba is the only highest up take area on the NBN but it goes past 30,000+ people homes and you only have 4,000 connected currently.

     • To quote Zag: “many people will comment saying maybe if we drop the NBN then we;ll get that 40 billion back and it’ll stop prices from going up all the time”

       That’s a fallacy rather like the belief that if you don’t buy a half-million dollar rental investment property, then you’ll get that $500,000 back to spend on anything else you like.

     • ” you generally get unlimited calls now to any mobile phone in Australia and you get cheap calling to a fixed line and you also get the net etc on the phone or tether it so you can get net on the computer or laptop as well all on the 1 service”

       This is fine for casual access, but doesn’t suit anyone who wants to “use” the internet for recreation or business.

       And bearing in mind that a telephone service will be seen by most providers as a free add-in with cheap calls, it means that mobile services will in future be seen by most people for what they actually are… a mobile ability to be used when you are away from home base, which is not as good, and is provided at a more expensive cost than the home service.

   • Yep totally agree, this provens that the business model of the NBN would of have been a COMPLETE failure if it had to compete with the current ADSL2 offerings from existing ISP’s. As people just don’t change unless the reason is good enough. But when the government waives its hand and installs a monopoly well then its hard for a Monopoly to not make money even if the costs will blow out which always happens when this government builds something. I want the NBN though its the one thing worth blowing billions on. At least you get a asset after finishing it. Unlike most other government spending which is mostly waste on waste.

3. “In addition, there is just no way that anyone could have accurately predicted the complexity of the NBN rollout process.” – On the contrary… a major criticism of the NBN all along is that it is too big, too ambitious… i.e. it is too much to bite off at once & that the size & complexity of it will make it impossible.

   Bear in mind that if the NBN project didn’t exist, commercial ISPs would have invested much more in infrastructure over the last 5 years & many more than 2,300 homes might have had fibre to the home already.

   It is quite likely that we have a worse national broadband infrastructure now primarily *because* of the NBN.

   • I believe Michael’s very first comment, relating to what actually occurred, pretty well disproves claims that ‘actual infrastructure’ investment would have occurred. And of course under that scenario we’d still have an incumbent with too much clout and a further reliance upon copper.

     There’s only 3 basic ways, I can see, why companies would involve themselves in the less lucrative areas. 1. If the network is built by the government and they access. 2. If a number of companies form a consortium and are heavily subsidised with taxpayer money, to build their own network, and the rest access. 3. If one company bites the bullet/receives same subsidies and everyone else accesses.

     Seems 2 and 3 have been tried and failed, which lead us to 1.

     With the current NBN the taxpayer gets a return, a superior network, Telstra no longer have overriding authority and the crux of much of the problem, a wholesaler who is also a retailer, is eliminated.

     And just to elaborate upon Renai’s comments a little further in relation to the opposition’s NBN policy or policies in general for that matter.

     Let’s not forget, the precarious hold the current government has on power. So having an opposition inflexibly negative and making policy on the fly, when they could be thrust into government at any moment, doesn’t sound like an opposition ready or able to take the reins, to me.

     • The Coalition gaining power or not in 2013 has nothing whatever to do with the NBN, or even if the Coalition have any BB policy at all.

       Remember also that the NBN Corporate Plan is predicting only 4% of targeted premises will have a FTTH connection by FY2013.

       • The opposition could, with any number of occurrences, be governing tomorrow, yet they have no policies and are unprepared for government alain, no matter who hard you wish.

         My guess, they don’t want to be in government with Abbott as leader.

         • The electorate as a whole doesn’t agree with you.

         • Incorrect again. You disagree with me the majority do not.

           December 2011

           Essential: “Tony Abbott has scored what is comfortably his worst ever result from Essential, with his approval down four to a new low of 32 per cent, disapproval upon to a new high of 53 per cent”.

           Newspoll: Abbott is down one on approval to 33 per cent and up two on disapproval to 57 per cent.

           Nielsen: Tony Abbott is steady on approval at 41 per cent and down one on disapproval to 53 per cent.

           I now refer you to this phrase from famous baseball umpire Bill Klem: “An angry player can’t argue with the back of an umpire who is walking away.

         • One issue with the disapproval figures. Only one electorate votes for Tony Abbott. Not the whole country. So have a look at the 2 party preferred numbers which approximates the election process, rather than a popularity poll for the PM. BIG difference. Labour loses. Now I am not convinced that the Libs will wind up the NBN. But if the NBN doesn’t roll out enough infrastructure before election day, then it does run the risk of having a sizeable chunk curtailed.

         • Exactly my point Brad.

           It is Abbot who is disliked, not the Coalition and point taken, he is one politician in but one seat alone.

           Thing is, we see our elections becoming more like the US Presidential campaigns, with the leaders more prominent, debating etc. I’d guess most people wouldn’t even know their local members and when they go to vote either just vote Labor or Liberal (or Greens) based upon their liking or disliking of the leaders!

           Howard was popular, so people voted Coalition. People liked Rudd, so in he went. Look at the last election. 2 leaders equally disliked and we have a hung parliament.

         • That’s because we were taking about Abbott, not Gillard, please try to keep up.

           Everyone knows Labor and Gillard are unpopular, but they may not be aware just how unpopular Abbott (as I already said , not the Coalition) actually is.

           So please don’t get all defensive, as it demonstrates just why you do as you do. It also shows Klem was wrong and angry player can indeed argue even when the umpire makes the correct call. Argue that what I said about Abbott was wrong!

           This leads me to a phrase from David Hare. “An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity”.

         • Of course in your usual stacked biased style you omitted Gillards disapproval rating and omitted the overwhelming preference for a Coalition Government over Labor.

         • Woops, wrong place. Try again.

           That’s because we were taking about Abbott, not Gillard, please try to keep up.

           Everyone knows Labor and Gillard are unpopular, but they may not be aware just how unpopular Abbott (as I already said , not the Coalition) actually is.

           So please don’t get all defensive, as it demonstrates just why you do as you do. It also shows Klem was wrong and angry player can indeed argue even when the umpire makes the correct call. Argue that what I said about Abbott was wrong!

           This leads me to a phrase from David Hare. “An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity”.

         • So in all that diversionary waffle that’s a yes then, based on the latest polling if a election was held this weekend the Coalition would win.

         • Argue that what I said about Abbott was wrong!

     • That is a complete joke as the NBN would not have even existed, if Telstra didn’t want to build a fibre network but only for their own customers.

       The were going to pay to maintain the copper network but allow all the 3rd parties what ever access to it and do so for free.

       The 3rd parties complained bitterly about how Telstra would have a firbre network and they wouldn’t get access to it.

       So the government blocked Telstra’s network and came up with their own NBN network which hasn’t delivered and Telstra probably would have been up and going with in a year around the whole of Australia.

       That’s what happened so far and now we have a government run NBN that hasn’t rolled out to any major city barely has anyone on it and has barely spend 1 billion so far on actual rolled out network and going by the OP he wants to include the green field customers in customer numbers but probably the real reason why the NBN don’t is because the NBN probably don’t have anything to hook up their networks to anyway.

   • What ever do you mean?

     Are you saying there would be no HFC or DSL services.

4. First of all, I have no political agenda. I loth politics. I loath anything to do with the economy. I don’t care who gets into government as long as they’re policies and approach are in-line with general human consensus, and rationale thought.

   I think it’s a known fact that no private ISP would ever provide the level of service and coverage that the NBN will provide. The private sector is only “more efficient” at delivering products than the public sector, because the two sectors have very different motives. The private sector is all about the bottom line, where as the public sector is all about the service and the quality of that service. With that in mind, there’s no way a private company would invest is any upgrade or rollout as significant as the NBN, or with as much quality, let alone coverage.

   It’s going to take the NBN 8 – 10 years to complete this rollout. Imagine how long it would take the private sector. They’d probably cherry pick the densely populated areas fairly quickly, but it’d probably be many decades until small towns 5000 – 20,000 residents see anything significantly better than ADSL; probably when the copper turned to rust.

   The NBN would have no place if Telstra weren’t such a ruthless corporation. Can you imagine if we didn’t have an NBN. Telstra’s monopoly along with their horrible business practices would go on forever. Selling Telstra in the first place was such a big mistake.

5. ITT: Turnbull confirms that more people on fibre = better.

6. @Renai

   ‘If 2012 is the year of delivery for Labor’s NBN policy, 2012 must be the year that the Coalition publishes the full details of its own alternative plan, or risk losing all credibility in the portfolio. ‘

   Well no not really, remember Labor went into the 2007 election with one plan which it put to the electorate and they voted on it, they then waited until they got into power then changed their minds and came up with the FTTH NBN 100% funded by the taxpayer to the tune of $43 billion dollars, with the proviso all existing fixed line BB infrastructure choices are shut down.

   On that basis the Coalition don’t have to do anything until months out from the election in 2013, then if they want to change their minds completely post election if they win.

   • ‘NBN 100% funded by the taxpayer to the tune of $43 billion dollars’

     I just have to ask alain, how much are your taxes going up by because of the NBN’s construction?

     Would the amount of tax you pay be smaller if the coalition plan was used?

     • It’s not as simple as stating where are the tax increases to pay for the NBN, it is also about a Government not willing to drop taxes because of the future burden of such a massive CAPEX but also it is less money from the allocation of the total purse that many would argue are needed more urgently in other areas.

       As far as your question about the Coalition plan anything less than FTTH to 93% of residences would have to be less cost than the Labor a ‘Rolls Royce’ for everyone strategy.

       • I was under the impression that the actual per year CAPEX of the NBN construction is actually quite small. On average, even if we take the higher 42b price tag, thats 4.2b per year?

         In the scheme of things, that isn’t a large amount and I’m sure this has been said before.

         Also be fair alain, you’re always digging at hubert cumberdale for using patchwork, yet you use your own silly buzz words like ‘Rolls Royce’. You had a fine answer (that I dont entirely agree with), yet you let it down by using a political tag line.

         • No ‘Rolls Royce’ is quire appropriate, as I have state before having fibre to the home to run a PSTN emulator and and a browser and email service (the reason the majority use the intenet) is the best definition of overkill in the history of overkill’s you will ever find.

           You see pro NBN pundits continually crap on about the need for the high speeds that FTTH can give us, when asked about why the highest speeds today under ADSL2+ and HFC are not even being used where available the question is usually met with defining silence.

           Why don’t all residences on 1500/256, 8000/384 ADSL take up 100Mbps HFC if they can get it?

         • overkill you say?

           i imagine that when the main power grid was first being rolled out to homes around the country that most houses would have only had one or two light fittings and possibly a wall outlet? maybe?
           and yet they were provided with enough power to run, well to run an entire household.

           i wonder how many light fittings and wall outlets the average home has now.

         • Comparing the NBN to Rolls Royce is an incorrect and rather silly comparison.

           What the government/NBNCo are providing us with, is infrastructure. So the actual appropriate comparison to make would the NBN is akin to the Australian standard, sealed road system, which we travel upon, not the car we choose to drive upon these roads.

         • I can see that you are using ‘Rolls Royce’ as a term for luxury, not as a car in a traffic analogy as wing commander seems to suggest. Your entire first paragraph of this response is simply inflammitory, I dont agree with a lot with what you say, but I dont egg you on to get mad in response.

           The NBN project is a lot more then “a PSTN emulator and a browser for email service” and you know this, the second part not even making sense as a “browser for an email serive” would be a POP client or something. If you wonder why you get childish taunts from those Pro NBN, it’s often because you bring it on yourself.

           I’d have to say that HFC isn’t widely used because of price. I’ve never lived in an HFC area or experienced using it, so thats all I can say on the matter.

           I’d have to say that this would differ to NBN products in that it’s been shown so far time and time again, that to the end user (at this point in time), monthly costs will be the same or cheaper for a superior service.

   • They went into the election with a plan to build an NBN, the type ‘somewhat similar (primarily, but not exclusively, based around FTTN)’ to which had been proposed by Telstra and G9/Terria. But following evaluation that this type of network was not viable the better FTTP NBN was then released.

     But then you know that.

     Of interest though, the opposition opposed this initial NBN, but have now embraced a similar, already evaluated as unviable, policy themselves.

     As for the $43 billion, interesting that in some people’s view it went from $43b to $36b, to $50b and now back to $43b. I could remind you the NBN will pay for itself.

     But again, you know that.

     Which leads me to refer you to a phrase by John Buchanan Robinson.

     “The egoist is fooled by no ideals: he discards them or uses them, as may suit his own interest”.

7. Renai, I’m surprised that you didn’t bother to mention the reasons that NBN is running late ie. extended timeline for the Telstra deal and ACCC approval.

   When the deal is done, the heat will be on to hit some key milestones

8. Bring it past here – I’ll make it 4001. I cant want to get off 50 year old copper lines with more connections than a crooked Politician!

9. The NBN is still a dead duck waiting to drown. . As the majority of internet user are going to mobile connections, not fixed to the end of fibre optic or any other fixed service It will drift along until it is seen as no longer a viable vote winner at which time it will be sold off at a huge loss of taxpayers money.

   • You’re a retard Gary, mobile connections are an emergency commodity at best they are a need for people that are too dumb to setup a landline connection/ too dumb to figure out that they they cost at a minimum 10x more than a landline connection, due to their inconsistency, unreliable nature and their expense in a price per Gigabyte perspective, they are for emergencies only. This so called “push” for mobile internet is fuelled by people with ipads and smart phones. people use these to checkout news, not as a replacement for high speed internet bandwidth requirements.

     • “This so called “push” for mobile internet is fuelled by people with ipads and smart phones.”

       And by companies with a vested interest in selling those services.

   • I disagree that the majority will choose wireless. WIreless is not suitable for super fast high quota internet.

     NBNCo are predicting that 13% will opt for wireless because it is cheaper (page 116 of NBNCo Corporate Plan). The interesting thing is that NBNCo are also predicting that 50% of fibre customers will opt for 12/1Mbps (e.g. cheapest plan) (page 118). I wonder if wireless operators can increase their marketshare beyond 13%. If they can then the NBN will become more expensive, particularly for premium users.

10. I would love to have the NBN at home, unfortunately I have found that my current exchange does not have the NBN rolled out in my area (in the Heart of Sydney) and that I am in a contract with my current ISP for another 11 months.
    Unless my ISP offers the NBN/ NBN speeds at a really good speed and reasonable data limit with no excess fees and a comparable speed to the optus 100mb/ps speed that their “supersonic” cable plans provide, I feel no reason to apply for the NBN if I cannot get it through my current provider and the prices are going to cost more for no speed/data benefit.

    • @me – “Unless my ISP offers the NBN/ NBN speeds at a really good speed and reasonable data limit with no excess fees and a comparable speed to the optus 100mb/ps speed that their “supersonic” cable plans provide, I feel no reason to apply for the NBN”

      Well first, Optus aren’t offering the 100mbps plans anymore…
      Telstra’s 100mbps download and 1mbps upload plans on 50GB is $89.95 (then you get discounts for bundling)
      Optus’ plan for the NBN on 120GB at 100mbps down and 40mbps upload is $79.99 (then you get discounts for bundling)

11. We know that Landline is better than mobile, so be quiet gary, I would and will never go with a mobile connection because they are extremely unreliable, the performance is very inconsistant. they have many, MANY more issues than a landline connection, they are expensive by a factor of minimum 10x compared to a landline connection and the only reason I would use one is for an emergency situation.
    I will constantly reiterate this for the idiots out there that do not have a landline connection and/or are too lazy or idiotic to set one up. Because they are inferior in every way.

    • “We know that Landline is better than mobile…”

      This would have to be one of the most asinine comments here. It is as idiotic as saying “we know that red is better than blue”. Whether a fixed service is better than a mobile service is 100% dependent on one’s requirements. If you need to have a data connection as you travel, then a fixed service is utterly worthless. If you run BitTorrent 24/7, then a mobile service will probably be too slow and, at the moment, too expensive.

      Both technologies will improve over time. What is interesting is that there are corresponding advances in technologies that reduce the bandwidth requirements of various applications. The most bandwidth hungry application we have today is video, yet codec standards for this media are steadily improving, providing better picture quality at lower and lower bandwidths. Who knows, we may end up with 1080p over dial-up :-) Even today, HDTV requires only a small fraction of the 100MB/s on offer via the NBN.

      • While codec performance is improving, video data rate requirement is still increasing. With formats such as 4k and 3D just getting released, those codecs will have to go quite a bit to be able to deliver.
        Even now on HDTV standards that have been around for well over a decade, the compression on HDTV transmissions are just barely adequate (depending on your screen and taste) at best, and horribly unacceptable for many (such as iTunes and Netflix).

        • There is a limit to how much quality the human eye can perceive. Broadband demand for video services will not increaser forever, in fact, just like audio, it will hit some peak and stay there (in case of Audio its 44000/24).

          Hell mp3’s (or aac’s), still, by far, outweigh the high quality when taking into account internet downloads. And the fact that SACD/DVD-A sales are abysal kind of proves this point

          Humans are not robots, they have perceptable senses, and whenever some media reaches “good enough” quality, the majority of people will stick to that

          The point that I am getting at here, is that full HD is already approaching the limit of what the human eye can perceive, and the only point of going higher than that is for bigger screen resolutions. However yet again, screen sizes have historically (since monitors have become consumer products) always really capped out at about 27″ for the general consumer market. Most people wouldn’t notice a difference for anything above full HD on 21″, and WQHD on 27″. The same reason why you don’t get people getting higher screen sizes is the same reason why generally most people don’t bother with music that is >2 channels, its a niche market

          The argument that there is evidence that there is demand in bandwidth applications (for the general population) will continue to increase at the same rate it has in the past has no substance. The internet only became consumer friendly 2 decades ago, and like most new technologies, it experiences an initial burst

          • @deteego

            Spot on! The only reason we have a ‘need’ for HDTV now is that TV screens are bigger and the pixels have therefore grown to the point where they are visible t typical viewing distances. The old rule of thumb was that the optimal viewing distance from a TV was to take the screen size in inches, halve it, and sit that many feet away (feet, inches – I did say it was an old rule of thumb). Therefore, the optimal position for viewing a 26″ TV (the largest you could buy for many years) was 13 feet or about 4m. Today, some people sit 2m away from 50 inch screens. If TVs get bigger and we decide to sit closer, then we may need something better than 1080p, but I really done see home IMAX coming any time soon.

            Us humans have two senses we tend to use for communication; our sight and our hearing. Of the two, our visual sense is the most bandwidth hungry real-time sense that we have. Once this can be satisfied, then the need for bandwidth is likely to plateau. Sure, the Internet is used for other things, but they are not real time. Will you care or even notice whether you next PC update takes 10 or 20 seconds to download? In fact, many of these forms of communication are likely to encounter bottlenecks away from the access, so fast access speeds are of lesser importance.

            Unless we start getting home IMAX screens or develop and additional bandwidth hungry sense, a network capable of streaming at most a few HDTV channels is all that most households will need.

12. Jumping the gun much ?

    FFS – Telstra (the largest ISP) havent even released their NBN plans yet.

13. For those who are interested, NBN Co has published the press release the reports mentioned:

    http://nbnco.com.au/news-and-events/news/nbn-hails-4000th-customer.html

14. The NBN often strikes me as a solution looking for a problem to solve. “In the future” and “emerging” or “new” technologies are phrases often used when talking about possible uses of the NBN. The bulk of end user network traffic currently is entertainment focused (eg.porn, file sharing and playing games etc.) which people can do right now. Anyone who thinks that these requirements will change in the short to medium term as a result of the NBN roll out is ignoring human nature.
    The implementation has been screwy from the start and loaded with ideology rather than good business sense. No sane business is going to invest in new networks because the NBN will make them worthless overnight … and the government has indicated it will throttle customer choice by whatever means necessary (ie.threats of legislation or other legal maneuvering) to increase the take up of the NBN and thereby lower the unit costs. The end result will ultimately be that the lowest priced NBN plan will become the new “floor” price for communication access with the low volume users (the many) subsidizing the high volume users (the few) either directly (through higher than necessary access and usage charges) or indirectly (through government subsidies).
    Starting the NBN roll out in some of the lowest populated areas as a political sop was also a mistake. The network should have targeted those areas with the highest unmet demand which is not small country towns and rural areas but rather large chunks of suburbia who can’t get fixed line data access because there are no free ports in the exchange or the copper is too poor condition or the customer is too far from the exchange or any of a million other reasons why DSL isn’t available. Forget cable since it’s limited to a very small and select few in Australia – not that you’d understand that based on the comments of many people.
    Do I think the coalition Lib/Nat’s would do any better than Labour? Probably not based on past experience (I’ll never forget senator Alston). At least they have someone in Turnball who has a vague handle on the technology and who (far more importantly in my opinion) isn’t so focused on providing a national broadband censorship scheme.

    • I’m with you on this one.

      I’m old enough to remember how in the early 1980’s, ISDN was going to take over the world. In the early 1990’s it was Broadband ISDN and ATM that was the way of the future. Had we built a network back then in anticipation of these wonderful new services that were just as much on the horizon as the NBN-based services today, we would have landed ourselves with a huge white elephant. I remember the old diskless workstation – a PC that did not hold any data or software locally but looked to the ‘network’ to provide everything. That died. Then came the network computer that had no software or storage of its own, but would get everthing from the network (it was how Java was going to spell the end of Microsoft). Can you buy one of these now? Now we have cloud computing where data and software is held in the ‘cloud’ (another name for the network) and operating systems such as Google’s Chrome OS are going to have the likes of Microsoft and Apple shaking in their boots. After the flurry of publicity, where is Chrome OS now? Have Apple and Microsoft filed for bankrupcy yet?

      We can all think of technologies that have died. The thing they all share in common was the vision at the time that they would change the world. Occasionally some do, but many don’t. I am concerned that the euphoria that seems to surround the NBN has caused many to brush aside the caution and common sense they would normally apply in other realms. Is it really sane to gamble $36B-$50B (I am not going to quibble about which amount is right as they are both big numbers) on building infrastructure designed to support exactly the same promised applications that were used to justify a Broadband ISDN network 20 years ago? I recall being very impressed in 1991 watching a demo of a High Definition video service carried over a Broadband ISDN connection. It was going to open the possibility of video phones, video conferencing, teleworking, and all of the other things the NBN is supposedly going to make possible today.

      Maybe the NBN will succeed where Brioadband ISDN failed. Maybe cloud computing will succeed where the diskless workstation failed. I just worry that as a taxpayer, I and subsidising this bet.

      Yes, we need to improve broadband access for those who have little or none. You do this by improving broadband for those who have little or none, not by providing a fourth fixed broadband network for the 24% of the population who already have three (ADSL and two HFC networks) to choose from. All the NBN has really done is delay the provision of broadband to the people who need it most. Don’t get me wrong. The coalition’s Opel idea was about as stupid an idea as one could get, but at least it did directly target the problem that needed to be solved.

      • Agreed $35.9b is a lot of money, but that’s for a state of the art network which will cover the entire nation, will be viable for many years, will repay itself in full and can be later sold with the funds going into the coffers for a rainy day.

        But what about the opposition’s $17b alternative? “As I understand it” –

        FTTH in all Greenfields. So they can see they must ready new areas for the future, but refuse to ready existing (0% FTTH in Brownfields).

        New FTTN and new fixed wireless, to just 47% of the population?

        Plus, they will utilise Network Co/Telstra’s existing HFC and ADSL, to reach the rest of the population, with it would seem, the monetary returns going to Network Co/Telstra?

        So $35.9b for totally new FTTP/fixed wireless/satellite network to the entire nation, which won’t (FTTP) need to be upgraded. With faster and more consistent up/down (FTTP) speeds. Or $17b for new FTTN//fixed wireless to only 47% (FTTH – 0% brownfield/100% Greenfield) and use the existing networks we have all whinged about at some stage, including ADSL with it exchange issues and HFC with it’s shared component.

        And then what about when, like Greenfields now, the opposition (then government) finally realise, hmm, we need FTTH after all?

        • You are making a lot of unsubstantiated assertions here.

          “Agreed $35.9b is a lot of money, but that’s for a state of the art network which will cover the entire nation…”

          Which bit is state of the art? The 100Mb/s fibre or the 12Mb/s wireless/satellite? If it is the fibre, then it is only 93% of the nation. If it is the wireless/satellite, then you are suggesting 12Mb/s is “state of the art” and by implication, it should be good enough for everyone.

          “…will be viable for many years…”

          The same can be said of many other plans.

          “…will repay itself in full and can be later sold with the funds going into the coffers for a rainy day.”

          This assumes investors actually fork out their money. Us taxpayers may be lucky and get our money back. We may not be so lucky if the investment community shuns the offer. The unsubstantiated assertion here is that the NBN will be a commercial success.

          “[The coalitions policy is] FTTH in all Greenfields. So they can see they must ready new areas for the future, but refuse to ready existing (0% FTTH in Brownfields).”

          The provision of FTTP for greenfields is common to both policies so is not a point of discrimination (I am not suggesting you are arguing otherwise). The issue is whether you rebuild completely for brownfields or reuse what is already there.

          “Plus, they will utilise Network Co/Telstra’s existing HFC and ADSL, to reach the rest of the population, with it would seem, the monetary returns going to Network Co/Telstra?”

          Shock, horror! If it makes economic sense, why not? Are you suggesting that spending $35.9B of taxpayers money just to piss off Telstra is a rational thing to do? Sounds like an extremely expensive hissy-fit to me.

          “So $35.9b for totally new FTTP/fixed wireless/satellite network to the entire nation, which won’t (FTTP) need to be upgraded.”

          The claim that a FTTP network won’t need to be upgraded has no more or less validity than claiming that a FTTN network won’t need to be upgraded. If the wireless/satellite networks won’t need to be upgraded, then clearly a 12/1 Mb/s service is adequate. If it is not, then it will need to be upgraded. What is adequate really boils down to the underlying need (see below), which is the biggest unsubstantiated assertion of them all.

          “…and HFC with it’s shared component.”

          The NBN has its shared components too. The CVC is effectively shared amongst blocks of users. While technically, telco’s could dimension this for 1:1 so everyone can use their purchased access capacity to its fullest, but that would be so horrendously expensive that no one living outside Vaulcluse and Toorak would be able to afford it. Every network has contention. There is no choice in that. All one can do is influence where that contention may be.

          What seems to be lacking in this whole debate is an objective, rational assessment of need and whether the taxpayer or private investment is the appropriate mechanism to satisfy that need. No one seems to be starting at the beginning. We get assumptions dressed up as axioms that we need to build the infrastructure. There is an old saying in the marketing world that a man buying a drill bit in a hardware store isn’t buying a drill bit, but is buying a hole. This is going to sound weird, but please stay with me – we don’t need hospitals, schools, or police stations either. What we as a society need is medical care, education, and law and order. It just so happens that the infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, and police stations are important components in providing that need. So, if the NBN is the answer, what is the question?

          I have read much about health services, the needs of industry and so on, but what no one has said is what that actual need is. Why does a patient *need* to talk to his doctor over a HD video link as distinct from a SD one? Is the doctor going to ask him to open his mouth over the camera, get him to stick an icy pole stick down his own throat, and say “ahhh”? For many patients, not having to go to the hospital will be great and a video link is probably the next best thing, but do we have to run optical fibre to 93% of premises to achieve that? We can do it today for those who do actually need it, so there really is no genuine need there. Wouldn’t a video link in the patient’s GP’s office to the specialist be superior for most cases? A 3-way consultation between the patient, his GP, and the specialist would be better than just a 2-way hookup for most cases.

          Assuming cloud computing succeeds where the previous attempts have failed, what are the bandwidth needs there? Will the humble pizza shop be shuffling gigabytes of data to and from the cloud to the point that a 100Mb/s link is a necessity? Big companies will, but they have a solution today. Just about any carrier worth its salt will run out an optical fibre link to those that need it today, so we don’t need an NBN to fix that.

          Many people have little or no broadband today, but as I have stated elsewhere, that is a different problem that requires a different solution.

          At this point, many people often start wafting on about applications that have not even been thought of yet. There are many services on the Internet that hadn’t been thought of just a few years ago, but in terms of game-changing technologies that place higher bandwidth requirements on a network, the most recent one I can think of is streaming video. The first time I heard about that was in 1995 – more than 15 years ago and was in the days of dial-up. The quality was rubbish in 1995, but that is why I called it game-changing in that it required an improvement in infrastructure to make it work properly. Have there been any since? Sure, we’ve got Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Skype to name but a few. None of them needed the sort of infrastructure shift steaming video needed. Even so, streaming video is just a technology, not the sort of underlying need I am seeking. The only service that would require high speed data to most premises is pay TV, but is that a genuine public need that the taxpayer should fund?

          If we can identify the true underlying public need or needs, we will be able to properly assess whether that need justifies public expense or whether it is appropriate to leave it to the private sector. Statements similar to “we need it, but we just don’t know why we need it right now” are as silly as they sound. You wouldn’t spend you own hard-earned money on such a flaky premise. Everyone seems to have started the discussion in the middle.

          Nobody built electricity generators before we had a use for electricity. Nobody built petrol stations before the invention of the car. Nobody built a telephone network before the invention of the telephone. Why is the ‘if you build it they will come’ mantra applicable this time?

          It may seem that I have wandered off track here, but I have really just come full circle. There are a lot of unsubstantiated assertions going on in this debate. Your post touched on a few of them. Most don’t even rate a mention by anyone and are simply assumed to be true.

    • Rather than a “solution looking for a problem to solve”, the NBN is in fact designed to solve three very distinct problems:

      1. The competitive difficulties and non-level playing field created by the sale (and maintenance) of Telstra as a vertically integrated monopoly.
      2. The dire state of investment in adequate broadband infrastructure outside the major cities and centres.
      3. The inadequate state of Australia’s current broadband infrastructure overall in order to meet the much greater bandwidth needs of the country over the next 40-50 years.

      Arguments over whether one area should have received fibre before another miss the point: the project is national, so everywhere in the 93% fibre footprint will be included eventually; and the considerations of where to build first have been entirely technical and engineering questions, not political ones.

      • ‘and the considerations of where to build first have been entirely technical and engineering questions, not political ones.’

        Really? tell us all about it Gwyntaglaw, what are the outstanding technical and engineering advantages of the first rollout areas of Smithton, Scottsdale and MidwayPoint in Tasmania over other areas in Australia?

        • Straw man, because the same empty question could (and would) be asked regardless of where it was initiated!

        • They’re small, and therefore relatively inexpensive trial areas. Imagine committing to an entire city like, say Hobart, and discovering issues that have to be repaired – the bigger the site, the more expensive it is to repair.

          This is entirely NORMAL practice.

          And since cost is one of your usual complaints, you should be happy with this.

          • So what ‘engineering and technical’ considerations determine where and when Telstra or Opticomm rollout FTTH into Greenfield estates?

          • Telstra or Opticomm rollout FTTH into Greenfield estates? really? they do? gee, thats…really…good then, sooooo many folks in those estates must be sooooo happy by now…

          • Arithmetic. Rather basic arithmetic actually.

            If the greenfields estate contains MORE than 100 allotments, NBN Co are responsible for the fibre installation.

            If it’s LESS than 100, Telstra, Opticomm or whoever else can do what they like – fibre or copper. It would be sensible for them to install fibre.

          • I was referring to BEFORE NBN, when FTTH was being rolled out into Greenfield estates all over Australia long before Labor gained power in 2007, I missed the 12-18 months trials of all of that before they rolled it out.

            You keep rabbiting on about how ‘touchy feely’ the NBN rollout must be, as if somehow the NBN Co is breaking new innovative ground here, and FTTH here or in the rest of the world it has never been done before.

          • Small housing estates of a few hundred allotments using nothing more complex than what is basically comparable to a RIM-build now, at best are hardly difficult builds.

          • Fiber links are hardly a new technology.
            Exactly how many trials do we need to do?
            What this is about is Labour trying to get their heads around how all this works. It is an unfortunate fact that a majority of Labour ministers have minimal to no experience working in the non-government sector. If a business generates the majority of it’s earnings from government contracts or via government legislated agreements it’s hardly operating in a normal private enterprise environment and the way the NBN has been structured reflects this lack of understanding.
            FYI I hear (entirely) circumstantial gossip from cable laying businesses I have dealings with that the NBN fiber footprint is significantly larger than officially published with strict non-disclosure agreements applying preventing anyone talking. Wouldn’t it be a good political gambit to make the NBN look weak now so that closer to the next election Labour could suddenly pull the rabbit out of the hat?

      • @Gwyntaglaw

        This is why it is so vital that one understands the problem first. If one has a clear understanding of the problem, the solution options can be checked against to see if they actually fix the problem.

        “1. The competitive difficulties and non-level playing field created by the sale (and maintenance) of Telstra as a vertically integrated monopoly.”

        This opens up a whole different area of unsubstantiated assertions that I won’t go into. For the sake of argument, I’ll accept that it is correct. So the question is whether the NBN will actually fix it. The current discussions between the ACCC and Telstra regarding the interim arrangements prove that it doesn’t. If the NBN was the fix, these undertakings would not be necessary. If an agreement that addresses the issue is reached, it could operate in spite of the existence of the NBN, and therefore the NBN itself is redundant. If no such agreement can be reached, it is not NBN’s fault, but again, NBN is irrelevant. Put simply, the NBN is like the stone in Stone Soup.

        “2. The dire state of investment in adequate broadband infrastructure outside the major cities and centres.”

        Emphatically stating the question as if it were an answer does not make it one. What is it that society needs that it is not getting because of the lack of “adequate” infrastructure? If there are services available to those in major cities and centres that are not available to those outside, then fix that problem. Remember, the NBN is being run to 24% of the population who already have the possibility of NBN-like speeds and are largely disinterested.

        “3. The inadequate state of Australia’s current broadband infrastructure overall in order to meet the much greater bandwidth needs of the country over the next
        40-50 years.”

        Which are? Surely, if Australia is in such dire straits, you should be able to list the top five services that are needed by society but cannot be delivered with today’s broadband technology. What if the next surge in ‘killer apps’ are those that are most useful roaming on tablet devices such as the iPad. It would be more than just a small error of judgement to have sunk all of our money into fixed line broadband infrastructure is mobility became more important than speed. It would be like betting everything you have on the wrong horse in a one horse race.

        “…the considerations of where to build first have been entirely technical and engineering questions, not political ones.”

        I agree that this is the way it should be. Sadly, it is not. For years, political parties have interfered in the delivery of infrastructure and the deal with the independents from the last election is merely the continuation of a long-standing tradition. There is no reason to believe that the NBN will create and improvement in the integrity of our politicians.

        It is all too easy to create justifications for decisions already made. I am fairly sure that you, like me, have a number purchases that were bought based on some fairly shaky justification after you had made the decision to buy that you later came to regret. It is really tough to be cold, hard, and objective about a purchasing decision, but if you can do this you will have fewer regrets. As a taxpayer, I expect no less from a government of any political persuasion. The minute there is good objective justification for the NBN such that it is either the only option or the most economically and socially responsible option, I will jump on the bandwagon. So far, I haven’t seen that. All I have seen are the dodgy ‘after the decision has been made’ excuses that usually end in tears.

15. I’d say take up figures mean next to nothing inside the first 24 months after an area has fibre run past residences. It’ll take up to that long for everyone to complete their current broadband contracts and be free to make the choice on using the NBN or not.

    You also have to remember that telstra will start forcing over a heap of residences at some time in the near future as it starts cashing in on the payments NBNco will make them for migrating their ADSL and HFC customers to the NBN. I’ve not heard of that process having yet begun.

    • The agreement with Telstra is that copper network is disconnected within 18 months after 90% of a Fibre Service Area is covered. I would expect Telstra will be keen to disconnect the copper because they receive a payment from NBNCo for transferred customers and maintaining the copper network costs money, therefore we could expect to see copper start to be turned off later this year.

16. OK – I knew the figures that Turnbull was quoting looked funny.

    They are in fact complete baloney.

    The first one – the target of 35,000 active connections – is SOLELY the measure of greenfields BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer). The question of whether this target was reached is really a measure of nothing more than how many such connections were hooked up on greenfields sites. There were key delays in establishing greenfields arrangements (legislatively and otherwise), and in any event, if the properties aren’t built and lived in, there can be no active connection. Conversely, if the properties are built and lived in, active connections will be made to 80-90% of such premises, unless they forgo all fixed line connections, since these are the premises that receive fibre INSTEAD of copper.

    And if I am not mistaken, since the figure did appear rather high – does this not include new estates around the country where fibre was laid by other providers, and where NBN Co takes over operation? Could it also include areas like South Brisbane, where Telstra simply replaced copper with FTTP? Really, without further clarification of what the 35,000 BOT figure was intended to represent, you can’t draw any definite conclusions (and certainly not as Turnbull has done).

    (By way of contrast, the number of FTTP brownfields active connections is only estimated to be 5,000 by June 2012 – highly achievable and even beatable within 6 months.)

    But the real howler is Turnbull’s statement that “there were meant to be …137,000 using [NBN’s fibre network] by June 2012”.

    I do not know for certain where this figure comes from. It does not appear on page 15 of the Corporate Plan, which is the source for the other figures. But I think I know how it was calculated.

    There are two tables on page 15 giving targets for June 2011, 2012 and 2013. In the first table is shown 132,000 under brownfields premises at June 2012. In the second table there is 5,000 under brownfields premises at June 2012. Add them together — hey presto, that’s 137,000 premises! What a target!

    Except that they are recording two completely different things – the first table is “Premises Passed or Covered” and the second is “Premises with Active Service”. The second is the only relevant figure for what Turnbull is claiming (ie 5,000). But he has not only misinterpreted the tables – he has double-counted them in a way that makes absolutely no sense! The second table is necessarily a sub-set of the first table – not something to be added to it.

    The whole thing is a mathematical error of idiotic proportions. But don’t expect any of the mainstream press to show him up for it. If you can’t even count… you can’t hold to account!

    • if your figures are correct (and i’m too lazy to check them for myself) this is a cock up of monumental proportions by Turnbull.

      i would be very keen to hear some feedback from him about how his figures were reached.

    • The numbers on page 15 are for each year. On page 77 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan, it lists the following numbers at the end of each year

      By the 30 June 2011 (FY2011):
      Fibre premises passed: 58,000
      Fibre premises connected: 35,000 (all BOT greenfields according to page 15)
      Wireless & Satellite premises covered: 165,000
      Wireless & Satellite premises connected: 0

      By the 30 June 2012 (FY2012):
      Fibre premises passed: 316,000
      Fibre premises connected: 137,000 (5000 brownfields, 5000 greenfields build)
      Wireless & Satellite premises covered: 179,000
      Wireless & Satellite premises connected: 13,000

      By the 30 June 2013 (FY2013):
      Fibre premises passed: 1,268,000
      Fibre premises connected: 511,000 (260,000 brownfields, 55,000 greenfields build)
      Wireless & Satellite premises covered: 447,000
      Wireless & Satellite premises connected: 55,000

      Secondly it’s worth noting that NBNCo are expecting only 70% of premises passed by fibre to connect (page 116)

      • I see – thank you Mathew for that correction. I withdraw my remarks about the calculation of the 137,000. The same figure can be derived from the table on p15 as well, but the p77 table does make it at least clearer where the figure comes from. It does not contain a breakdown into the brownfields, greenfields build and greenfields BOT, but does at least represent an aggregate of these three components.

        However, I stand by my first point, and would even like to amplify it further: until NBN Co provides specific information about the greenfields BOT figure – including actual achievements against this figure, or some sort of account of what it will represent – any comments are pointless.

        The most egregious error is to compare the actual BROWNFIELDS connections against the GREENFIELDS BOT target. This is comparing apples to oranges in a big way. When you measure the brownfields figures, there is no evidence that they are significantly behind target – though no one can say, since we are six months out of sync at present with the end-of-June target figures quoted. Based on the construction schedule released in December 2011, that side of things appears to be close to on-target (there was an initial lag of 2-3 months still due to Telstra negotiations delays, but no more than that).

        With regard to the 70% connection figure shown on p116 of the Corporate Plan, I believe that Mike Quigley and others have emphasised that they have adopted conservative estimates where possible. I believe that while you say “NBNCo are expecting only 70% of premises” to connect, this is more a conservative projection than an expectation as such. An expectation would be expressed more in terms of a range of possible outcomes.

        • 70% is a extremely optimistic projection, as is 7% return on the $43 billion rollout cost.

          The taxpayer will be propping up this turkey for ever.

          • Since the copper gets decommissioned, leaving no other fixed line option for the VAST majority of Australia, 70% is actually quite a pessimistic goal.

            Now, regular viewers know you’re about to retort with your usual “oh yes, it takes the forced decommissioning of the copper network to prop up the numbers” rhetoric.

            Argue it however you want, but as the project stands, that’s what is happening. Until the policy changes, there’s nothing to argue.

            Mind you, at 50% take up across the 12,000,000 premises expected to be covered by the NBN at completion, if every single one of those takes only the base package at $24.00pcm to NBN Co for wholesale AVC pricing, that’s $1.728b of revenue a year.

            Jump it up to 70%, and that’s $2.419b of revenue a year.

            Since realistically, uptake should get reasonably close to 100% – (lets use 90% for the sake of the argument) – you’re now looking at $3.11b of annual revenue.

            All without CVC pricing factored in – which is much harder to predict, given different RSPs will go for different contention ratios.

            Yeah, all companies with multi-billion dollar revenues are turkeys.

          • The problem is MW the NBN Co itself has stated that the NBN uptake faces and I quote ‘uncertain demand’, it is all very well making sweeping generalisations that once residences are forced onto the NBN how can it be nothing else but be profitable, but making assumptions that every residence that now has PSTN and or HFC will takeup a NBN data plan between now and 2022 is a fantasy.

            The problem also is the proverbial shit hasn’t hit the fan yet, at the moment the NBN rollout is a elective tyre kicking exercise in target areas, I liken it to having a VoIP modem with PSTN fallback, except it’s FTTH with PSTN fallback.

            Let’s see what happens when Telstra turns off the copper, at the moment the NBN is some esoteric future fairyland ‘yet another expensive Labor project’ concept for most residences in Australia, those mass forced migrations better go smoothly otherwise the Labor NBN is dead next election.

          • Enough of the immaturity and silly desperation, please. There are no forced mass migrations.

            A deal was made between two parties. An offer by the government/NBNCo and accepted by Telstra. Simple.

          • Sorry I missed the survey taken of all PSTN and HFC BB users who will be forced onto the NBN.

          • it was done on their behalf by way of telstra agreeing to it.

          • Which part of, a deal was made between the two parties, do you not understand?

          • If you believe Abbott’s comments over the weekend, the alternative plan from the Coalition to supposedly offer the same basic speeds as the NBN offers and that “nobody wants or needs”, then even their plan would face “uncertain demand”.

            There is inherent risk in carrying out any major project in any industry. There are also inherent risks in doing nothing.

            The Coalition wants to spend – (independently costed) – $17b to build a network that offers no increase in performance for the majority of Australia, will be obsolete – (and therefore wasted) – when what even they describe as the inevitable need for FTTH comes.

            That is what is poor economics is. They’ll piss $17b down a whole to look all awesomesauce in the short term, but commit Australia to wasting that $17b when the time comes to upgrade again, in only 5 or 10 years.

            By which time the NBN would be completed anyway.

            The Coalition are all about three-year political cycles, rather than doing something constructive for the next 40 or 50 years.

17. Yeah the small numbers have nothing to do with telstra, coalition blocks & rural areas being the primary starting point do they. Whatever floats you boat but just remember without labor there would be no NBN, nothing be cause apparently it’s better to sit on your ass and do nothing so when the next election comes you can pat yourself on the back with all the money saved. Haters gonna hate.

18. After Labor shut down the hybrid fiber networks and all other competition they will have left broadband at a lesser speed than had they let the private sector make own commercial arrangements. The NBN shut down Telstras copper network and purchased Telstras poles and ducts for a cost of $10b, instead the NBN should swap poles and ducts with Telstra and allow Telstra to build a second competitive network. For half the cost the NBN could pay for fiber to buildings for occupiers offering the highest percentage of total cost co-payment using any private provider with accreditation.

    • 1. “… they will have left broadband at a lesser speed than had they let the private sector make own commercial arrangements”. This is hard to take seriously. The private sector has had plenty of time to do this but has conspicuously failed to do so for anyone outside a few cherry-picked areas. Are you willing to back this claim up with solid arguments?

      2. The NBNCo-Telstra deal did not purchase Telstra’s poles and ducts – it leases them.

      3. I’m sure Telstra would love to build a second competitive network in areas where it suits them, and leave everyone else go hang. I’m not sure this is a positive outcome for everyone else though. In any event, Telstra made this deal, and they played hardball with NBNCo all the way to the end. I’m not convinced that Telstra needs any more breaks or concessions.

      4. I’m not sure I understand your suggestion to “pay for fiber [sic] to buildings for occupiers”. Do you mean multi-dwelling units, or free-standing houses? What you propose is quite similar to what may happen anyway, where NBNCo will arrange the fibre to the edge of the building, and the RSP will then manage the customer connection to the end user (they being accredited to do this). This is under discussion between the RSPs and NBNCo.

      • The private sector has had plenty of time to do this but has conspicuously failed to do so for anyone outside a few cherry-picked areas.

        You could have said the same thing about ADSL in 2000, or ADSL2+ in 2003.

        Be aware that some of these arguments may well come down to a mismatch of expectations.

        Believe me, the private sector would love nothing more than to build out as much network as humanly possible (carriers don’t make money by failing to build networks), but gathering together the required capital takes time. One of the effects of the NBN debate has been to compress the time expectations from the public, leading to “I want my pony right now, dammit,” impatience.

        It’s not like the private market has been dragging its heels. Australia comes in smack-bang in the middle of all the OECD broadband stats, so we’ve been neither leading nor following, we’ve just been “average.”

        There was never any realistic expectation that 100 Mbps would be delivered on any kind of wide scale in any kind of short term timeframe until Conroy’s announcement in 2009. Now, all of a sudden, the fact that the industry hasn’t delivered it in the proceeding two years is supposed to be some kind of evidence of market failure? Please, spare me.

        – mark

        • Mark,

          Gwyntaglaw may have spoken too broadly with respect to all future network investment.

          But it was in reply to what Loris implies, namely that the private sector would have built a network faster than NBNco proposes, and – even better – for less money!

          Also Mark, you speak of this potential investment (over what? 30 years?) though I personally can’t actually conceive of what nature that investment would have taken, certainly can’t conceive of how it would have improved the network access speed of those that actually need it, Those on 12+ megabits ADSL2 aren’t the ones that need the NBN, it’s everyone else outside of the sweet-spot range that need some kind of new infrastructure, and I seriously can’t conceive of how it would happen competitively without some kind of massive government intervention like we are seeing. IE to replace the current incumbent wholesaler and retailer.

          Every time I think about this, I keep thinking up more and more knock-on problems that can ultimately end up with 1 or 2 outcomes. Single government granted monopoly of the last mile [somehow]. Some kind of market based infrastructure competition that ends up as well as the HFC wars did. Those with, those without, and infrastructure players that have lost so much money on the venture they have decided they won’t go a single mile further unless a (really dumb) 3rd party comes in and they need to compete them into oblivion, right before upping prices and halting rollouts again.

          The NBN might be accelerating the timeline, and increasing expectations, but it is at least steering us toward what I believe is the better of the 2 outcomes I can think of.

          Though, acceleration isn’t necesarily a good thing. Hell, I’d be happy on my ADSL2+ for the next 5-10 years. But that is kind of selfish of me. I get 20/1. I suspect I am not in the majority.

          • Also Mark, you speak of this potential investment (over what? 30 years?) though I personally can’t actually conceive of what nature that investment would have taken, certainly can’t conceive of how it would have improved the network access speed of those that actually need it, Those on 12+ megabits ADSL2 aren’t the ones that need the NBN, it’s everyone else outside of the sweet-spot range that need some kind of new infrastructure, and I seriously can’t conceive of how it would happen competitively without some kind of massive government intervention like we are seeing. IE to replace the current incumbent wholesaler and retailer.

            At a pretty fundamental level, it’s now cheaper to deploy fibre networks than copper networks.

            That’s one reason explaining why Telstra prefers to deploy them now (cf: South Brisbane) and why companies like OptiComm have been building them in greenfields for the last few years. Given a choice between copper and fibre, fibre now wins every time.

            That factoid contains the crux of the answer to your question about the form the investment would take to get us from where we are now to a better place without the NBN’s intervention: New estates would prefer fibre for cost reasons, and old estates would be progressively migrated away from copper as it aged and saw its economics dominated by the cost of maintaining rickety old infrastructure rather than shiny new equivalents.

            Would it be a fast process? No. But it’s difficult to deny that it’d happen, unless you happen to believe that telcos would prefer high cost, high maintenance plant and equipment over cheap modern alternatives for the long term future.

            Every time I think about this, I keep thinking up more and more knock-on problems that can ultimately end up with 1 or 2 outcomes. Single government granted monopoly of the last mile [somehow]. Some kind of market based infrastructure competition that ends up as well as the HFC wars did. Those with, those without, and infrastructure players that have lost so much money on the venture they have decided they won’t go a single mile further unless a (really dumb) 3rd party comes in and they need to compete them into oblivion, right before upping prices and halting rollouts again.

            I don’t think it’s credible to assume that we’ll end up with a single government-granted monopoly of the last mile.

            That’s what the current plan looks like, but unless you believe the ALP is capable of winning six elections in a row (something they’ve never done before) to see the NBN build through to the end, you need to assume that at some point during its construction there’ll be a change of government and a new plan.

            My bet is that the Coalition’s plan will look something like OPEL on steroids: A big pile of money available to be drawn on by competitive network builders who are prepared to accept subsidies to build and operate networks in otherwise unprofitable areas; and almost all of that money will be absorbed by Telstra, who will reflexively out-bid everyone else. After all, they have about a century worth of experience at chasing Government money (eg: USO), and they’re better at it than just about anyone else, and they have lots of sunk monopoly-legacy investments that they can leverage to produce cheaper outcomes than their competitors if they so choose.

            The result will be NBNCo with a chunk of the market, Telstra with another chunk of the market, and everyone else mopping up the scraps. In particular, the competitive carriers who’ve done the most over the last ten years to build better broadband networks and push the state-of-the-art forward (by, for example, delivering your 20Mbps ADSL2+) will be shafted the most.

            The NBN might be accelerating the timeline, and increasing expectations, but it is at least steering us toward what I believe is the better of the 2 outcomes I can think of.
            Though, acceleration isn’t necesarily a good thing. Hell, I’d be happy on my ADSL2+ for the next 5-10 years. But that is kind of selfish of me. I get 20/1. I suspect I am not in the majority.

            Spare a thought for the residents of whatever suburb will happen to be the LAST one to get NBN service :)

            I wonder where that’ll be?

            – mark

          • “That’s one reason explaining why Telstra prefers to deploy them now (cf: South Brisbane) and why companies like OptiComm have been building them in greenfields for the last few years. Given a choice between copper and fibre, fibre now wins every time.
            That factoid contains the crux of the answer to your question about the form the investment would take to get us from where we are now to a better place without the NBN’s intervention: New estates would prefer fibre for cost reasons, and old estates would be progressively migrated away from copper as it aged and saw its economics dominated by the cost of maintaining rickety old infrastructure rather than shiny new equivalents..”

            the problem with those fibre deployments though is that the end user is unable to shop around for a better deal from a range of retail suppliers.
            don’t like the deal that is available? stiff shit.

          • That’s because the ACCC “declared” copper access networks many years ago, placing them under a fairly unique regulatory regime.

            They could declare fibre access networks with the stroke of a pen, and various non-Telstra carriers have been lobbying them to do so for quite some time.

            If anything, the presence of the NBN has prevented the ACCC from considering declaring fibre: Current Government policy is that there’ll only be one network builder, namely NBNCo, operating under a Special Access Undertaking lodged with the ACCC. In that environment, why would they go through the trouble (and, no doubt, extensive court action) to get Telstra’s fibre declared when Telstra is about to be removed from the equation?

            (and for what it’s worth, residents of Opticomm FTTH estates have a choice of provider; Telstra is the only Australian carrier who is so hostile to the free market that they refuse to compete whenever they can get away with it; if your physical infrastructure comes from literally anyone else, you can choose)

            – mark

    • Oh. Loris!

      My favourite commenter!

      Faster Internet than 32:1 fibre GPON!! Please tell me how!
      Telstra would build 16:1 GPON? No wait direct fibre!
      Even better, they would do it for less than nbnco!! (got any figures for that? I’ll take napkin bullshit numbers if you want).
      Also, how do you figure Telstra OR NBN co would make any money at all when BOTH build a fibre network? Because I’d like to point you to the Optus/Telstra HFC roll out. How much money did they both make? (please note he TOTAL cherry picked nature of those networks compared to nation wide fibre)
      Oh Loris. There ARE arguments against the NBN. There truly is. But what you have said so far, is not it even ballpark close.

19. “3. I’m sure Telstra would love to build a second competitive network in areas where it suits them, and leave everyone else go hang.”

    If you want to see how Telstra does business, just take a look at their South Brisbane fibre roll-out.

    Customers are being “forced” to take up a Telstra phone service, even if they only want Broadband. No option to just have internet and use your own self-sourced VoIP service.

    Telstra… ripping the customer off for every last buck.

20. Rennai,

    Only one problem with your BOT/greenfield numbers is the BOT policy was abandoned in late 2010 and NBN Co is now provider of last resort for broadacre developments. AS Mike Quigley told the Joint Committee on 5th July 2011 “We are not using a build-operate-transfer model now.”

    True developers can use another supplier but the legislated requirement to offer any new network on an open access layer two basis undermines their business case . The latest monthly greenfield rollout update on the NBN Co website (14 December 2011) indicates they have firm orders for fibre to 10,895 new blocks/houses but at the moment only 8197 are listed for completion by mid 2012.

    Regards,

    Kevin Morgan

    • Hmm. This would seem to make their numbers released this week even better?

21. No because despite what you seem to believe there are no greenfield BOT’s to be transferred – the BOT policy never got off the ground. So against the corporate plan projections for greenfield for 2012 of 172000 to be passed and 132,000 to be connected (which were envisaged mainly as BOT’s) work is in progress currently on only 8197 – that suggests a slight shortfall.

    Based on the current yearly brownfield rollout schedule only around 320000 will be passed with fibre (complete ready for connection) by mid 2013 – the corporate plan target is 950000.

    Regards

    Kevin Morgan.

    • I’m not really sure what you’re saying Kevin, but I feel a little uncertain taking what you’re saying for granted, given your past history heavily criticising the NBN — especially in the pages of a certain News Ltd national newspaper.

22. fair enough – you don’t have to take my word -the failure of the BOT policy to deliver any connections is a matter of public record and the projected rollout numbers are NBN Co numbers – at face value NBN Co will miss their targets by a very wide margin for both 2012 and 2013 unless they can pull something very large out of the hat in the next four months or so. It will be interesting to see the projections in the revised corporate plan .
    Regards,

    Kevin Morgan

23. “there is just no way that anyone could have accurately predicted the complexity of the NBN rollout process”.
    If the NBN hadn’t been planned on the back of an aircraft napkin it could have been.

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