4G faster than the NBN? I don’t think so

154

blog Today’s dose of National Broadband Network-related FUD comes from the West Australian newspaper, which has done some testing of Telstra’s 4G mobile broadband network in Perth and come to the conclusion that “Wireless 4G leaves NBN in its wake”. Riiiiight.

The newspaper reports (we encourage you to click through and read the whole ridiculous article):

“A new wave of 4G wireless broadband networks will eclipse the speed of some fibre plans before the National Broadband Network even rolls through Perth streets. Testing of Telstra’s 4G long-term evolution network in Perth, which is limited to areas close to the CBD, clocked average download speeds exceeding most ADSL2+ connections – and treble the speed of the cheapest NBN plan in one location.”

Now on paper, there might appear to be some truth to the idea that Telstra’s 4G network might be faster than some NBN plans. Delimiter’s been testing Telstra’s 4G network as well (in Sydney), and speeds higher than the NBN’s entry-level 12Mbps plans are not unusual. As the West Australian notes, it’s possibly to get anywhere up to 20Mbps or so on the fledgling wireless network, and peak speeds can even range higher than the next NBN speed tier, 25Mbps.

But what the article fails to mention (and you can’t blame them really, it’s not as if they had time to research the matter … wait, yes they did) is that these are not the sorts of speeds which you can consistently expect from Telstra’s network on a day in, day out basis. Our testing of the network showed wild variability between locations. If you travel from Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs through to the North Shore and then out to North Ryde, you will get high speeds in several locations, but in other locations the network will be much more highly congested, and you’ll count yourself very lucky to get speeds anywhere near as fast as an ADSL connection (most people on ADSL get lower than 16Mbps or so).

As new smartphones launch on Telstra’s 4G network and the company sells more mobile broadband connections (there are currently only a little over 100,000 connections on the 4G network, compared to 13.2 million on its 3G network), it will get harder and harder to achieve even ADSL-like speeds through the company’s wireless infrastructure, even as it keeps on upgrading the theoretical speeds available through its cell towers.

We’re already seeing this impact on Telstra’s 3G network, which is still suffering congestion problems in CBD areas. In fact, the rollout of Telstra’s 4G network, which sits side by side with its 3G network, is partially designed to alleviate these sorts of problems in the long-term, by shifting heavy 3G users onto the new 4G infrastructure.

In addition, the speeds which you can achieve on Telstra’s Next G network are also not consistent. Even during the one usage session, you’ll see wildly variable speeds through 4G. If you’re trying to download a large file in the middle of the night, you’ll probably get OK speeds from wireless infrastructure. During rush hour, or if a few extra people start streaming YouTube simultaneously for some reason, your experience won’t be the same. Hence the nebulous term “up to”, when talking about wireless broadband speeds.

In comparison, the NBN will not suffer these kinds of congestion issues or variability issues, as it uses a fundamentally different kind of technology — fibre-optic cable — which, practically speaking, has very few bandwidth limitations, at least for the foreseeable future. When Telstra says download speeds on its 4G network range “from 2Mbps to 40Mbps”, it means real-world speeds will be anywhere in that area. When NBN Co says 25Mbps, it means … actually 25Mbps, all the time, no matter how many other people are using the network.

In addition, although some service providers will offer 12Mbps speeds under the NBN’s fibre, I expect most customers will actually take up faster-speed plans — 25Mbps or 50Mbps — as these will be the plans that will allow them to more fully take advantage of the NBN’s fibre-optic cables. What this means in practice is that most people will see minimum speeds on the NBN which are at least equal to or better than the current maximum speeds available on Telstra’s 4G network.

But wait, just how wrong can the West Australian be? If you look at the slightly longer term, it can be very wrong indeed.

Sure, Telstra’s 4G network will eventually achieve faster and faster speeds, as the network infrastructure is upgraded and wireless technology becomes better. However, the long-term future for the NBN is even better than that of Telstra’s 4G network. Long-term, the NBN can be upgraded to support gigabit speeds. That is, 1000Mbps or similar. Will Telstra’s 4G network ever offer gigabit per second speeds? Not in the foreseeable future. Right now, it will be a very hard ask even to get it to do something a tenth that speed over the next decade or so — 100Mbps. And that’s still a theoretical peak speed, not the consistent throughput which the NBN will offer.

In this context, I feel the only appropriate headline for the West Australian’s article might be something rather the opposite of what it wrote. Maybe something like NBN leaves wireless 4G in its wake? But then, that would be factually accurate; an attribute which most Australian media outlets don’t seem capable of applying to their coverage of the NBN.

Image credit: Telstra

154 COMMENTS

  1. Another tech journalist who doesn’t seem to understand how 4G (and other wireless boradband) works.

    We need a picture on butchers paper in orange crayon that explains that once your connection hits a tower, the whole thing is based on fiber. Or that peak speeds and general use under tower load are not the same.

    Sigh.

    • You mean like when you explain to a 3 year old that he doesn’t get to eat his birthday cake all by himself – he needs to SHARE it with the other people at his party?

    • I some what agree with you but in a different way.

      The thing people forget is that NBN isn’t installed every where and no CBDs or major cities will have it for quite a while so is 4G faster than NBN yes it would be because the NBN isn’t around.

      The other problem I have with people talking about the NBN is they keep thinking the NBN will always give them the highest speed 24/7, why they think this I have no idea because the net does not work like this and never has.

      You could attempt to download a torrent but if the other side is a dial up connection with all the data you will only get what that dial up connection will give you nothing higher so that 100gigabit connection will go no faster than 7 to 10kb the whole time.

      I find it utterly absurd that people think a 25Mbps connection will always give them 2.5megs download speed from every server on the net, do these people really think every server is sitting 1 hop over and it’s a 1000gigabit connection from every server, lol.

      Surely these people will have looked at the their DSL connections and see it doesn’t even do max speeds 95% of the DSL connection 24/7, if that’s the case right now how do these people think they’ll ever max out a NBN connection 100% of the time.

      To be honest labor isn’t going to get in and the NBNCo have done nothing but mess about with the entire roll out quite normal for a government dept really. So it’s quite doubtful they’ll ever roll out into the cities.

      The closest the NBN will come to me is about 15 klm away and it’s still a 2nd phase trial roll out.

      I have a better chance getting 4G from one of the 4 mobile telcos before labor are voted out the door.

      • @Zag

        But 4G is not installed in lots of places either. You can just as easily say that NBN beats 4G in those places. That line of argument is just as silly as saying that walking beats a jumbo jet because planes don’t fly from my front door.

        As for your complaints of server speed, there is a big difference. With a fibre plan, your speed is determined by the link to server. With a copper plan, your top speed not only depends on the link to server, it also depends on your distance to the exchange, which ever is lower. With a mobile wireless pan, your speed not only depends on the link to the server and the distance to the tower, it also depends on what other people are doing in the same cell segment as you. If lots of people are using the network as you would expect in a population dense area like a CBD, your speed is likely to be very poor.

        Fibre is an enabler. It removes a level of speed and contention constraints that are present in the other technologies. It is like tarmac roads vs gravel roads. Sure we can still get everywhere on gravel roads, and sure it is cheaper to roll out, but the economy will take a huge hit if we rely on degraded infrastructure like that.

        • @Austcc

          Yes 4G isn’t everywhere just yet but it’s all over the city areas right now and expanding far quicker than the NBN is even being rolled out.

          4G for Telstra isn’t in trail anymore it’s an open product so anyone can just get a 4G device and bang your on 4G network as long as you get a singal otherwise it’s 3G.

          For eample Telstra might have 10,000 towers well 4,000 toers are now 4G and ready to go.
          Optus 4G will be out in a cuple of months.

          Vodafone 4G will be online at the end of this year.

          As for the server side well it’s up to the server what you get FTP servers only allow 8 connections and a web server only allows 20 by default. then you have the speed of the connections which can be changed in the config.

          SOme web servers these days will disconnected IP trying to ask for too many connections or even ban them for being a hog, so it can be up to the admin as to what actually happens on a server and what it puts out.

      • Unfortunately, your understanding of the purpose of the NBN is incomplete.
        It’s obvious that not all content-hosting servers are currently able to push out at 100Mbps.
        It’s not about being able to download from one source at 100mbps, it’s about bandwidth!
        This means being able to download from multiple sources at their max speed simultaneously!
        Eg; Say you have a family of 4 and each person likes to watch their own TV shows individually. You may be able to stream a show from iTunes at, say, 25mbps. Your 100mbps connection allows for all 4 people on the same connection to stream at 25mbps simultaneously.

      • “The other problem I have with people talking about the NBN is they keep thinking the NBN will always give them the highest speed 24/7, why they think this I have no idea because the net does not work like this and never has.”

        Looks like that is about to change and no reason why it shouldn’t, that’s progress for you, you know technology keeps improving etc.

        “You could attempt to download a torrent but if the other side is a dial up connection with all the data you will only get what that dial up connection will give you nothing higher so that 100gigabit connection will go no faster than 7 to 10kb the whole time.”

        You clearly have no idea how torrents work. Furthermore you seem to have this belief that because “the other side” is limited then that’s no reason to improve the last mile here. So who takes the first step? It’s similar that other inane argument about undersea cables; Cant upgrade the last mile because the “undersea cables wont support it”, can’t upgrade the undersea cables because the is no demand for it because the last mile hasn’t been upgraded, can’t upgrade the last mile because the “undersea cables wont support it” etc etc etc. It’s a network, so where do you start? Go on tell us.

        “I find it utterly absurd that people think a 25Mbps connection will always give them 2.5megs download speed from every server on the net”

        What’s really absurd is this flaw in your argument. Assuming that a 25mbps connection is only as useful as one “server” at the other end.

        “Surely these people will have looked at the their DSL connections and see it doesn’t even do max speeds 95% of the DSL connection 24/7”

        Mine does. I can max out my connection anytime. Both up and down, 24/7… Unless you are referring to the fact that ADSL2+ speed depends on length and condition of the copper in which case NO, I only get ~50% of ADSL2+ max speed which is quite pitiful, maybe it’s time to upgrade to fibre, what do you think?

        “To be honest labor isn’t going to get in and the NBNCo have done nothing but mess about with the entire roll out quite normal for a government dept really.”

        Now we get to the real issue; the political one. I noticed a new trend of paid shills changing their approach over the last few months, they’ll try to talk a bit of tech now (most of it factually wrong) and then move onto the “gobermint bad” rhetoric. Ok so labor isn’t going to “get in” so you believe THIS is a reason not to roll out the NBN???

        “So it’s quite doubtful they’ll ever roll out into the cities.”

        Meanwhile in regional areas they are saying EXACTLY the same thing. There seems to be quite a lot of demand for NBN fibre connections, so I have no doubt it’ll be a financial success now. Any government would be crazy not to roll out such a network and absolute morons to cancel one that was already in progress.

        “The closest the NBN will come to me is about 15 klm away and it’s still a 2nd phase trial roll out.”

        Oh yes, the old boo hoo I’m not getting NBN fibre so no one else should get it either argument. Amazing just how many of you there are, 7% yet there seems to be more of you posting on tech sites that those in the 93% who get fibre… There seems to be quite a lot of demand for NBN fibre connections, so I have no doubt it’ll be a financial success now. Any government would be crazy not to roll out such a network and absolute morons to cancel one that was already in progress.

        • “I find it utterly absurd that people think a 25Mbps connection will always give them 2.5megs download speed from every server on the net”

          What’s really absurd is this flaw in your argument. Assuming that a 25mbps connection is only as useful as one “server” at the other end.

          Not only that, but assuming it’s only as useful as the worse server. I can guarantee that your connection to YouTube (the “popular” videos at least) will always saturate your “last mile” connection, whether it’s 1Mb/s or 1Gb/s. That’s just one example, of course, but generally, the idea that home users will be upgraded to 100Mb/s+ while “servers” will still be stuck on 10Mb/s is just nonsensical.

          • @ Dean

            Youtube never will fill up your bandwidth as their servers would never be configed to do that.

            Youtube has around 400 million people downloading videos every second of the day, it would be a silly thing to do that when it’s never needed to pump out that much bandwidth for 1 connection.

            For a video they only need to send you enough data to display and then just enough extra to stay ahead of the video stream being displayed so if a video stream only needed 30Kb to display a video then you might add an extra 20Kb to stream ahead so they only need to send you 50KB all up for the whole video, if they send more then it’s a waste of bandwidth.

            The stopping on youtube videos is from ping times and packet loss, you can get that on all connections doesn’t matter what you used.

        • “Looks like that is about to change and no reason why it shouldn’t, that’s progress for you, you know technology keeps improving etc.”

          Sure so if we take the current future of tech right now PC will be a thing of the past and replaced by phones and tablets. if that’s the case why would you invest in any sort of fixed line connections when everyone is going for a mobile world and tech?

          “You clearly have no idea how torrents work. Furthermore you seem to have this belief that because “the other side” is limited then that’s no reason to improve the last mile here. So who takes the first step? It’s similar that other inane argument about undersea cables; Cant upgrade the last mile because the “undersea cables wont support it”, can’t upgrade the undersea cables because the is no demand for it because the last mile hasn’t been upgraded, can’t upgrade the last mile because the “undersea cables wont support it” etc etc etc. It’s a network, so where do you start? Go on tell us.”

          I maybe understand them far better than you know.
          The other side isn’t always the limiting factor but what the other side is wanting to give you, is more the limiting factor, like I said in torrents have 10 dial connections that could be 70Kb sent to you but you also need to be connected to all 10 diail connections plus have them sending you their full data rate, which will hardly ever happen as a torrent is a completely shared packet stream so every new person will always be given a packet first as that reduces the burden for everyone else but that also means you won’t get that 70Kb either as the packets get shared around.

          Also you’ll have the links speeds between countries and with 22 million people sitting on the 1 NBN do you really think you’ll max out your fibre connection to overseas sites? lol.

          “What’s really absurd is this flaw in your argument. Assuming that a 25mbps connection is only as useful as one “server” at the other end.”

          Everyone on these sites even the article says the NBN will give faster speeds to everything and it’ll always be at the full rate what happens when it’s not at the full rate. NBN a utter waste of time then? there’s getting your hopes up and then extrating it to the max.

          “Mine does. I can max out my connection anytime. Both up and down, 24/7… Unless you are referring to the fact that ADSL2+ speed depends on length and condition of the copper in which case NO, I only get ~50% of ADSL2+ max speed which is quite pitiful, maybe it’s time to upgrade to fibre, what do you think?”

          LOL, doesn’t really matter to me as I can’t get any DSL connection so any mobile data is faster than a DSL connection for me so would I fuss about an NBN connection that might take another 5 years to come around or want faster mobile data that would happen in a few months.

          “Now we get to the real issue; the political one. I noticed a new trend of paid shills changing their approach over the last few months, they’ll try to talk a bit of tech now (most of it factually wrong) and then move onto the “gobermint bad” rhetoric. Ok so labor isn’t going to “get in” so you believe THIS is a reason not to roll out the NBN???

          Meanwhile in regional areas they are saying EXACTLY the same thing. There seems to be quite a lot of demand for NBN fibre connections, so I have no doubt it’ll be a financial success now. Any government would be crazy not to roll out such a network and absolute morons to cancel one that was already in progress. ”

          It does matter because if labour doesn’t get in you’ll find the NBN will have it’s slush fund removed, meaning no money to pay to Telstra and Telstra aren’t going to hand their network over for free.

          Many people are wanting the NBN to be wiped and have whats left of the money put into the bank so the taxes and other more costly things be reduced.

          AFter all we now have a carbon tax and a mining tax just so this government can get back in the black yet there’s a company with 30 something billion and still can’t decide how to rollout a cable network across australia after 5 years of having the money.

          If that’s the current path what do you think the next 1.5 years are going to be

          “Oh yes, the old boo hoo I’m not getting NBN fibre so no one else should get it either argument. Amazing just how many of you there are, 7% yet there seems to be more of you posting on tech sites that those in the 93% who get fibre… There seems to be quite a lot of demand for NBN fibre connections, so I have no doubt it’ll be a financial success now. Any government would be crazy not to roll out such a network and absolute morons to cancel one that was already in progress.”

          Oh I’m in an area that will get it but who knows when it’d be rolled out it’s not on the current books and is looking to be a good 5 something years away going by the current rollout press release.

          Would I get the NBN? maybe… but it’d be a 5+ year wait and to be honest that’s pretty damn poor seeing I’ll probably be in a new house that probably won’t have the NBN because the company got wiped out before then making the whole thing a waste of time to even think about.

          No idea where you are do have to even looked at the current rollout you could be in an area that won’t see the NBN untill 2018 and many inner city areas are in the 2028 bracket, why would anyone in an inner city area even fuss about the NBN or vote to try and keep it when they won’t see a connection for anouther 25 years.

          That’s the funny thing

          you have people on here saying the NBN will be great but you’ll just have to wait out 12 years and it’ll be great and when many people just couldn’t careless about it, after all many people probably have 6G by then.

          • @ Zag

            Won’t see a connection for 25 years?

            Oh 12 years?

            No 2028?

            6G (and still congested, LOL).

            Is there anything “factual” you’d like to add, which may give your comment at least minimal cred?

    • Beat the nbn? lets try aiming to supply dialup speeds and reliability first which 3g doesnt offer.

    • so what? 4g doesn’t just grow a tower on its own! its still hooked to optic fibres…
      less than 10% use 4g at the moment, that means if even 50% get on 4g, Telstra’s towers r going to shit themselves with traffic, which means the speed is going to drop dramatically. so STFU Telstra, n stop trolling imo.

    • Cost of NBN to taxpayer = monthly interest on (aprox $60,000,000,000/taxpayers) + monthly plan
      Cost of 4G to taxpayer = monthly plan (the carriers wear the installation costs)

      The plans on offer by NBN are not unlimited bandwidth. The vast majority of the plans offered are capped to perform under the preformance you get from 4G.

      I’d rather live longer with a better health system than have my tax money spent on something that we already have and don’t fully utilise as it is. So movies and games will play\download better/faster than on ADSL. Really is that the best use of $60 Billion???

      If we were a small high densly populated country NBN might make sense. We are one of the least densely populated countries in the world.

      • @ Chris,

        Sorry bud, but your credibility is zero from line 1, stating $60B.

        The documented cost of the NBN is $36B ($27B coming from Governmental sources). If you have actual evidence to suggest otherwise let’s see it, otherwise or you are WRONG and circulating FUD.

        Also nice contradiction saying $60B + interest then saying my tax dollars.

        So is it coming from debt or you tax dollars…?

        Seriously…!

        • You can include on that the revenue Australia brings in *because* we have the NBN. Over the period of 10 years, Australia is set to reap the rewards of the NBN to the tune of $12 billion from overseas sponsors who are actually investing in Australia and the technical achievement of our network.

          Without the NBN they go elsewhere, and so does their money.

  2. The sad truth about many of our media organisations is that the facts don’t suit their agenda.

  3. I wonder how long before some starts defending the West Australian’s article?
    The worst thing is it will be linked for years to come by the FUDsters as “proof” that wireless is the way to go for broadband.

    • I wonder how long before some starts defending the West Australian’s article?

      wonder no longer. :)

      while not defending the article entirely (i nearly spat my breakfast over my monitor when i read the headline), to be fair, they do state right at the very bottom of the article….

      Given the network has only been in place since late last year and most Telstra customers do not have the technology to access it yet, it is possible The West was also the only user connecting to 4G in the area at that time. As more users sign up, congestion is likely to affect speeds.

      keep in mind also that the owner of the west (kerry stokes) was until recently in direct competition with telstra 4G broadband via one of his other companies – Vivid Wireless, which was recently sold off to optus.

      so is there a hidden agenda in this article? i don’t know.

  4. Awesome, more hit and run incompetent & biased journalism from the majors! Just what we needed!

    Now thinking we should have that Press council on roids after all!

  5. In their defense (though it pains me to do so), they do outline the limitations of the 4G network on the final line of the piece…

    • but by then the damage is done and non-techo readers will have a false impression of reality!

  6. After groaning and contemplating self-harm, my reaction to the piece was to reframe the headline. Something like:

    “Snail leaves parked Ferrari in its wake”

    or

    “My granny could run faster than Usain Bolt [who happened to be asleep at the time]”

    • Why pay $xxx,000 for a Ferrari or even a bike, when you can ride a Mercedes (bus) for just $5. :)

      And it has 50 seats too, not just 2. :)

      These journalists need to learn about capacity, not just raw speed.

  7. After groaning and contemplating self-harm, my reaction to the piece was to reframe the headline. Something like:

    “Snail leaves parked Ferrari in its wake”

    or

    “My granny could run faster than Usain Bolt [who happened to be asleep at the time]”

    • I was thinking more like

      “Car proven to carry more people than bus” when the bus is sitting in the depot…

  8. So … I googled the author of the piece …

    “Social Media Editor at The West Australian”

    BWHAHAHAHAHAHA … is this for real?

    I knew the Worst was a rubbish paper, but this is taking the mickey to a whole new level!

    BWHAHAHA

  9. I don’t think 4G will ever leave the NBN for dead in terms of speed, availability and reliability.
    As such, the headline alone is completely wrong.

  10. I guess the West article could be a variation of a “paid for ad for telstra”, interstingly they do not allow comments on the article.
    Highly misleading , noticed it is one of the most popular viewed subjects so subject very dear to the online public’s heart

  11. > When NBN Co says 25Mbps, it means … actually 25Mbps, all the time, no matter how many other people are using the network.

    This is not true. NBNCo are primarily selling AVC as a Peak Information Rate (PIR) which the NBNCo Corporate Plan glossary defines on page 157 as:
    The theoretical speed that an End-User could receive if there were no other End-Users using at the same time. PIR is limited by the speed of the physical port of connection.

    Compare this with Committed Information Rate (CIR) on page 152:
    The guaranteed amount of bandwidth that NBN Co will provide to End-Users.

    Quoting the section on Pricing (page 100 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan):
    All NBN Access Seekers will be required to select an AVC based on a Peak Information Rate (PIR) speed.

    As noted on page 101, you may opt to purchase a higher traffic classes. For Traffic class 1, AVC CIR 5/5Mbps will cost $334/month + AVC PIR charge (minimum of $27).

    While there is nothing to suggest that an AVC PIR plan won’t achieve the full speed, NBNCo are not guaranteeing that it will happen. Further you have to consider this statement from page 103:
    The Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) in the product construct is an aggregation point where the Access Seekers can choose to contend their traffic to create differentiation.

    • Mathew, contention ratios (typical Resi is 20-1 vs 4-1 for Biz) are designed to allow everyone to have the bandwidth they need to do what they want whenever they want with their net connection – it’s simply the law of averages being put into practise and it means that ppl will get their advertised speed the vast majority of the time.

      • PS, under the NBN, premium ISP’s can differentiate themselves by having lower contention ratios enabling customers to have higher performing services even when the network is at peak times.

        This already happens now when you compare ISP’s like iiNode with budget ISP’s like TPG.

        • You ah!

          Forget about the backbone it’ll only be so large if you have 1,000’s or 10,000’s of people on a backbone it’ll only take so long before it’s full.

          but that is what you get for only having 1 network trying to be everything to everyone in 1 country and no allowing anything else to exist that could compete against it.

          you’ll see what I mean if the NBN ever gets rolled out to major areas.

          • If that were an actual problem, then we’d be doing pretty good because it means there’s a use for all that bandwidth after all. Backbones can be upgraded.

          • @zag – you’re sort of right. There is still a theoretical limit, but we wont be seeing it any time soon. Think of copper as moving data at the speed of sound, while fibre is at the speed of light. Both have limits, but when you pass that slower one there is a hell of a lot of legroom left before you get near the 2nd one.

            My sister has gone around the world lecturing on this, and fully understands the technical limitations the copper network faces. FTTN doesnt solve them, thanks to that key last portion STILL creating a speed bottleneck for anyone on the premises. The FTTN ‘solution’ may hide that bottleneck for a while, but its still going to be there, and still going to need to be addressed at some point.

      • I agree in that I don’t expect congestion on the NBNCo network, even if everyone had 100Mbps connections and 1TB quotas, but accuracy is required.

        At the PoI where NBNCo and the RSP connect, I anticipate congestion may occur during peak times for the cheaper RSPs as they seek to save on CVC costs.

        • The ISP’s have very good tools to manage their backhaul already, those that dont spend the money on improving backhaul will likely do so on purpose and customers will move to other ISP’s if they arent happy (as they do already).

      • “it’s simply the law of averages being put into practise and it means that ppl will get their advertised speed the vast majority of the time.”

        Nailed it.

    • You plaster this stuff all over every thread here and in Whirlpool, and have for over a year. Want to give it a rest? Most people have been on here commenting quite a while and no matter what the discussion you post about CVC. Yes, it could be under provisioned. Yes, if data usage increases at a high rate over coming years it will be expensive.

      I can’t see anyone paying really high internet prices as they simply will not do it. Market pressure and regulation will determine a sensible price for the data volume.

      I guess I will read your repeated posts over and over as no one else has managed to get you to STFU.

        • You mean on Delimiter? It’s all over the place. If you are talk NBN docos, I can’t remember exactly where but it was 50%. Of course using that figure is pretty bogus as many more people than they expected have been taking the faster plans. It’d be interesting to get current figures on that.

          • Sorry I was being facetious…

            Having myself seen our friend post the same spiel at every forum, everywhere for the last what 12 months.

            BTW – it’s pg 118… although I’ve never looked (never had to, having been informed by our friend everyday ;-)

          • “BTW – it’s pg 118… although I’ve never looked (never had to, having been informed by our friend everyday ;-)”

            You should actually look at it Alex, it is quite enlightening :-) Not for any NBNco information of course but just to verify the erroneous information cited. Notice in 2028 it’s actually 36% on 12/1mbps and not 40% (Based on the graph that also means a colossal 58% will be on 100/40mbps and higher connections). However the actual reality is we don’t know who will be on what by then and it would be sheer idiocy to make any predictions based on this conservative information… If it’s true NBNco are planning to make 1gbps connections available this year ahead of schedule the whole graph can be tossed out the window and based on the figures I just pasted below it very well should be.

          • “Of course using that figure is pretty bogus as many more people than they expected have been taking the faster plans. It’d be interesting to get current figures on that.”

            Correct. The current (latest) figures are:

            13% on 12/1mbps
            20% on 25/5mbps
            30% on 50/20mbps
            37% on 100/40mbps

            The document you are looking for is “nbn-co-product-roadmap.pdf” (Server date: 23-11-2011).

            Imagine that. The NBNco corporate plan says that only 7% would be on 100/40mbps by the end of 2012, even if you consider the delays and the early adopters that’s a mammoth 30% jump AND the numbers for the plans are virtually inverted. Everyone is shunning the 12/1mbps plans. People are obviously seeing the value in paying the same as they do for now for ADSL2+ and jumping onto the NBN to get a better/faster deal. It’s all there in black and white… on page 7 of the NBNco product roadmap.

          • What is the source for these figures so that they can be verified? I haven’t seen a public document with speed tier breakdown. In fact NBNCo have been very quiet about take-up.

            Secondly these figures should be viewed in light of take-up figures – 29% at Willunga is the best) and many places are much lower than this. I would assume that those most interested in the NBN would connect first and at higher speeds, while those who don’t care connect last and on the cheapest plans. The speeds are faster than expected, but it doesn’t change the fact that speed tiers will deny many the benefits of the NBN and hold the nation back.

          • “What is the source for these figures so that they can be verified?”

            I’ll remember this line next time you bring up the corporate plan.

            “I haven’t seen a public document with speed tier breakdown.”

            It’s on page 7 of the NBNco product roadmap.

            “In fact NBNCo have been very quiet about take-up.”

            It’s on page 7 of the NBNco product roadmap.

            “Secondly these figures should be viewed in light of take-up figures – 29% at Willunga is the best) and many places are much lower than this. ”

            What is the source for these figures so that they can be verified?

            “I would assume that those most interested in the NBN would connect first and at higher speeds”

            Makes no difference. It proves you are wrong regardless. You’ll realise this eventually…

            “while those who don’t care connect last and on the cheapest plans.”

            Those who don’t care are in the 13% who choose 12/1mbps. Those who care are in the whopping 87% who choose 25/5mbps and higher. Thanks for confirming that.

            “The speeds are faster than expected”

            No, I’m pretty sure they are exactly as expected. NBNco have always offered these speed plans up to 100/40mbps.

            “but it doesn’t change the fact that speed tiers will deny many the benefits of the NBN and hold the nation back.”

            False. This is the best way to ensure people don’t pay anymore than they want. What you are endorsing is people paying more for 100/40mbps plans even if they don’t want/need it, which is absurd. Everyone has a choice and it’s clear from the graph (page 7 of the NBNco product roadmap) that people are choosing faster plans based on what they are paying now. You are wrong. Just accept it and apologise.

  12. The “article” was very lazy, there are already many real reviews of Telstras 4G available. It can only be concluded that it’s main objective was to say something negative about the NBN else you wouldn’t even need to mention it.

  13. > However, the long-term future for the NBN is even better than that of Telstra’s 4G network. Long-term, the NBN can be upgraded to support gigabit speeds. That is, 1000Mbps or similar.

    This statement would be insightful if NBNCo didn’t have speed tiers, but it does. If you look at the predicted take-up of speeds in the NBNCo Corporate Plan (page 118), then all that the Telstra, Optus and Vodafone(?) networks need to reliably achieve to service *50% of the market is 12/1Mbps*. 12Mbps download speed is likely to be easily achievable in many locations especially when the heavy users migrate to fibre. While on the upload side, speed tests suggest 2:1 (download:upload) or higher ratios.

    4G won’t suit the mid-heavy users, but how many of those are there? 4G also has the advantage in that many people already pay for a smart phone plan which includes a couple of GB. This provides an easy way to check how well the 4G network works in various locations and tethered to a tablet or laptop is essentially free.

    • Thinking in the now as usual Mathew, look what happened with facebook etc when DSL became widespread, with the increase in speeds apps will be written to take advantage of the higher bandwidth and indirectly encourage folk to buy faster net connections.

      • Except that NBNCo are forecasting 50% at 12/1Mbps now and 40% at 12/1Mbps in 2028. This suggests barely anyone at the slowest speed upgrades. Similar behaviour was noticed with ADSL1 where people who initially chose 256/64Kbps rarely upgraded.

        • Mathew, ppl are on average getting 6mbps now vs the min 12mbps, even that is the difference between no IPTV and usable IPTV!

          I can tell you this from experience, eg Fetch TV which is a very basic fairly low bandwidth IPTV service is only available in a LITE form for anyone with 8mbps or less, but with 12mbps or more becomes a very usable service.

          AppleTV is another good example, on a 5mbps connection it take 30mins to buffer 720p movies, on a 12mbps connection the 1080p movie content takes only about 7 mins to buffer, on 25mbps it’s basically instant HD Movie watching.

        • “Except that NBNCo are forecasting 50% at 12/1Mbps now and 40% at 12/1Mbps in 2028. This suggests barely anyone at the slowest speed upgrades. Similar behaviour was noticed with ADSL1 where people who initially chose 256/64Kbps rarely upgraded.”

          I understand what you’re trying to get at here. You’re point is consistently maintained at: People at lower ends of the consumer market are unlikely to find a use for an NBN-based connection. In some circumstances it would technically be more expensive for them. Above in your statement, I’ve highlighted two key words I want you to identify. Forecasting and Suggests. Both of these words are exactly why you’ve consistently missed the point on Low-End connections.

          As previously a salesperson of telecommunication products (ok lets face it, i worked at allphones while finishing my degrees in engineering) – Most people will come in to store and select a plan for wireless broadband or a smartphone which would match their usage. This would generally be about 49-59 per month for a smartphone (so we’re expecting between 1-2GB of data) or a 29-39 per month for broadband (between 4-10GB of useage).

          “4G won’t suit the mid-heavy users, but how many of those are there?”

          Whats in that NBN Report is not reflecting accurately whats happening on the ground. Dont take the Business Case as gospel – its not accurate.

          At low usage levels, we wouldnt recommend ADSL to someone – because if its just a connection for that person AND they’re unlikely to use anything more than email or basic access. However, people with families almost always dont select these plans. Children are massive consumers of data, this is (in my opinion) more directly related to a changing technologically oriented generation rather than one who didnt grow up with the majority of technological advancements. Those parents in those families become larger users of data after a while too, purely because of the kids doing things that the parents want to be involved in. This would then manifest in the customer returning to store, either upgrading to higher end data plans (so 12-16GB +) or swapping to ADSL. At a mid-range price point, ADSL becomes more cost-effective.

          Now you’ve probably read this and gone – AHA! See? I’m right.
          No – you’re sort of right and wrong, but not at the same time. Mathew, you’re basing your assesments of the situation on a forecast and suggestion, provided by NBNCo in conservative estimates. Its by those same forecasts, that Cisco themselves AND the CSIRO both believe that within the next 20 years data useage on fixed-line systems will increase. This is exactly what I’ve stated above. Data is increasing.

          People are interested in the internet, then as they then change habits from an old Nokia with no ability to reach the internet, the banking or watch some silly youtube video that a friends linked on facebook – those habits change. They use more data. They become more confident. They change. The generation’s now changed, they do too (Gen X to Y and so forth). This isnt indicated in NBNCos report.

          Id suggest to you to revisit your thinking here. You’re seeing it as people with low usage will stay that way. It wont. I’ve seen it in 10 years of shop-front sales, now I’m the one building the network. People have changed dramatically in 10 years. We’re now drowning in congestion, because that usage has changed, the plans have changed, the market has changed.

      • “with the increase in speeds apps will be written to take advantage of the higher bandwidth and indirectly encourage folk to buy faster net connections.”

        Right again djos. This probably explains why 100/40mbps is NBNcos most popular plan, people are not stupid. It also explains why some ISPs aren’t even bothering with 12/1mbps on fibre, they know their customers are simply not interested in these slow speeds and will choose 25/5mbps and higher.

  14. So while I agree that the West’s article is slightly “sensational” (but that’s what journalists do to an otherwise mundane story isn’t it?), you haven’t exactly written a moderate article yourself.

    Is the Telstra 4G network in Perth faster than some NBN fibre plans? It would appear so at the present time. Yes congestion may happen, but its not present at the moment, and the NBN just like ADSL is susceptible to oversubscription and congenstion, it just might happen further down the link.

    Is Telstra 4G available in Perth now, whereas the NBN is not? Yes

    Is the article ridiculous or wrong? No more than your response.

    Has wireless 4G left the NBN in its wake? In Perth the answer has to be yes. The NBN isn’t even available.

    • Ah but…

      There’s a difference between right and wrong, no matter how sensationalist articles are.

      Renai is right, West is wrong… this does not leave the NBN for dead… period

    • “the NBN just like ADSL is susceptible to oversubscription and congenstion”

      This statement is incorrect, unless you are talking about a far more distant future than the rest of us are talking about.

      • Id say that even ADSL is not susceptible to any “technical” congestion. 4G is though, there is only so much bandwidth to share. ADSL however, where it is congested, is congested due to underprovisioning or insufficient bachhaul capacity. Both of these are easily fixed and is often times what seperates budget ISPs from the good ones. (Unless they are at the mercy of Telstra exchange backhaul congestion then your just wait and wait for them to actually upgrade and fix it, but still not a technical limitation)

      • > “the NBN just like ADSL is susceptible to oversubscription and congenstion”
        > This statement is incorrect, unless you are talking about a far more distant future than the rest of us are talking about.

        Quoting from page 103 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan:
        “The Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) in the product construct is an aggregation point where the Access Seekers can choose to contend their traffic to create differentiation.”

        Contention is the starting point for congestion.

        • “Contention is the starting point for congestion.”

          Yes it is. This is where you’ve made a point – albeit not a great one. The CVC tier is what the RSP will be buying from NBNCo. Its their job to ensure that they’re purchasing an adequate product for the job. If they have a whole lot of smaller usage customers on 25/5 and someone comes along that needs 100/25 and wants to pay for it – the RSP can opt to upgrade this by changing their tier of CVC. So if they did upgrade, those people on 25/5 would be getting a way better ride, all because one person caused an upgrade of the RSP’s CVC indirectly.

          Its up to the RSP and their own market forces to determine what products they will offer. While the CVC can be a point of congestion, it also cant be – because as an RSP you’d only need a handful of higher-end customers at 100/25 to pay for the upgrade. What you claim is a “problem” isnt as “problematic” as you indicate. If you couldnt get 100/25 from one RSP but can from another on the same POI, then what would you do as a consumer? Move.

          Problem solved.

      • You are incorrect Renai.
        Internode have already pointed out that when they provisioned 100Meg of CVC in Tassie they ran into congestion issues with only a single 100Meg user amongst the other NBN users bursting to 100Meg and swallowing the entire CVC.
        If ISPs under provision CVC, end users will get congestion. Day 1.
        If you don’t think this will happen, just troll whirlpool for complaints of peak time congestion.

        Regards,
        Douglas.

        • “complaints of peak time congestion”

          bwahahahahahaha

          I’d wager that “peak time congestion” on the NBN is still exponentially faster than the maximum speeds available on any other Australian telecommunications network.

        • Hey Douglas perhaps you could explain what service providers can do to fix congestion on 4G. Is it as simple as the NBN solution?

        • You misunderstand, Douglas.

          It is the perogative of the Retail Service Provider as to whether or not they choose to purchase enough CVC capacity to support a given number of connections.

          Example:
          ISP1 and ISP2 each have 110 customers.

          ISP1 purchases 2xCVC capacity each with capacity for 100 users at 100mbps at any given POI and charges their customers $100 per service connection.
          ISP1 actually connects up to, but not exceeding, 100 users on the first CVC and 10 on the second.

          ISP2 only purchases 1xCVC capacity for 100 users at 100mbps at any given POI but charges their customers only $90 per service connection.
          ISP2 instead, connects 110 users on their only CVC.

          Because ISP1 has to pay NBN Co for 2xCVC, ISP1 must pass the per-customer-share cost onto their customers.
          Therefore, ISP1’s customers simply pay a premium for the guaranteed bandwidth.

          Because ISP2 only has to pay NBN Co for 1xCVC, ISP2 has to pass less of a per-customer-share of the cost onto their customers.
          Therefore, ISP2’s customers pay less but are willing to accept that they might have an amount of congestion at peak times.

    • “and the NBN just like ADSL is susceptible to oversubscription and congenstion, it just might happen further down the link.”

      In the situation where everyone on your FDH has a 100/40mbps connection and is hammering it at the EXACLTY same time you will still get 78mbps down. Which is about 78% of it’s capacity. Compare that to 4G which could go as low as 5%. The main problem with ADSL is not oversubscription, the speeds achievable are usually below 50% what is it is capable of due to distance and line quality. Fibre wins.

      “Has wireless 4G left the NBN in its wake? In Perth the answer has to be yes. The NBN isn’t even available.”

      Has dialup left NBN in its wake? In Chinkapook the answer has to be yes. The NBN isn’t even available.

    • Saying that service X’s *maximum* speed is higher than service Y’s *minimum* speed is about as informative as a wet carrot.

      If an ISP really wanted to, they could offer a (say) 4Mbps/4Mbps unlimited NBN plan (drop in replacement for some SHDSL services, but cheaper) and 4G’s highest speed would then be ten times faster than the NBN’s lowest speed.

      Then another ISP offers a 150k/150k connection (intended for VoIP only), and now Telstra 4G is 266 times faster!

      See how ridiculous this is? Telstra’s 4G service got “faster” by a competitor offering a slower service – even though the 100Mbps services are still available and still faster.

      Clearly, the comparison is stupid, and people who don’t bother to read past the headlines are going to be mislead.

  15. I read WA article this morning and was disappointed that they didn’t give readers the opportunity to post a comment.

    I’m glad that Delimiter is on the ball and I hope that this article gets back to the writer Louise Burke “Social Media Editor”

    • I think she’s found out about it. she’s responding to some delimiter readers on twitter if you’d like to talk directly: @Louiseontwitr

      Some great ones so far:
      “FYI Amcom, based in Perth, offers 1000Mbps private fibre, so some ppl already have this”
      “If these results are possible now, what will wireless look like in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?”

      • “If these results are possible now, what will wireless look like in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?”
        Higher “upto” speeds and more wireless enabled devices, reaching the theoretical limitations of wireless. In real terms, still unreliable an unable to deliver on it’s hype in the real world.

      • Most likely doesn’t no the cost of the AMCOM fiber.
        BTW would be on it here if it was built on the other side of the road from where it is now.
        Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where as long as your in a reasonably populated area your available fix lined communication services isn’t determined by luck of location.

    • Minor media responses to mass media are so ill-informed about democracy and mass media work.

      Uncritical reprint of a press release is standard in journalism. Whirlpool, Delimiter or whatever publishing media. Geeks, nerds, juniors – GROW UP!

      Retired Chief Information Officer (medical: 1984), Australian Capital Territory

      • This article has nothing to do with democratic issues and is all about the technology.

        By the same right, mass-media are generally so ill-informed about technology and technological innovation that, in order to understand the basics of physics, they have to go out and perform their own tests (as occurred in the West’s article) – and they still manage get the results so wrong!!!

        Unbiased press releases are far and few between these days, but these aforementioned “geeks, nerds” are the ones who actually understand the technology and the science underpinning the technology.

        For these and all other people who are factually informed, it is their public responsibility to hold the ill-informed mass-media to account.

        Also, the throwing of a previously-held occupation is somewhat meaningless on the internet, having said that and for the benefit of the doubt, assuming you are a former CIO, you should hopefully understand the technology better than most.

        Assuming you do understand the technology and also the current state of broadband tech in Australia, you will also hopefully understand why some people are so focussed on getting the NBN’s factual message across and correcting the failures of mass-media journalists.

        Working in the IT sector myself (as meaningless as saying that here might be), I have had the great privilege of working with some excellent CIOs who actually understand the technology we use from the ground-up and aren’t just “managers for the sake of managing”. I sincerely hope you were one of the former.

        • Unfortunately many of the CIO’s i’ve had the misfortune of working with have worked their way up through Finance Depts and merely see the IT function as a cost centre to be pared back to the bone at the expense of the organisation as a whole!

  16. fo course 4G is faster; it will reach my house well and truly before the nebulous NBN will…

      • I was being sarcastic; I live about 6k from the exchange in a large regional area. The NBN will not happen here ergo 4G is faster. Get it?

          • OK, sorry. But it’s all good if we’re on the same page.

            BTW, I would dearly like one of those fibre thingies to my door, but alas I do not have the confidence in this government or the NBN to deliver it.

  17. To be honest, I sort of stopped reading the original story, after the headline.

    And then, painfully, I read it.

    Having reached peak-derp by comparing “spot” speeds (as this is somehow 1:1 with minimum required speeds across the entire deployment) with “NBN”, whatever that is — one presumes it’s all the same thing, right? I mean, fibre is SO like wireless, right?! And that 4G, it’s SO much better than.. uh.. 4G!? — ignoring the fact that the same technology is in play, never mind that the author forgets to put any context around their testing.. < insert acute braincell death here />

    See, the thing is, I wouldn’t expect a Neurological Specialist to understand half of what an Astrophysicist might, but Joe Public out there is probably going to assume that a social media person is somehow interchangeable with a network specialist; and thus will absorb the aforementioned article without engaging much if any thought.

    Which is all a bit sad, really.

  18. Doesn’t 3G+ offer speeds faster than (most peoples’ experience of) ADSL2+, too? Don’t know why all those ISPs bothered installing expensive DSLAMs, then~

    Anyway, NBN is not a fibre only network, as implied in the article.

    : p

    • “Doesn’t 3G+ offer speeds faster than (most peoples’ experience of) ADSL2+, too? Don’t know why all those ISPs bothered installing expensive DSLAMs, then~”

      Even 3G is supposedly faster than my ADSL2+ connection (I sync at 5Mbps/1Mbps) yet when I’m browsing the web on my daily train commute I’m not so concerned about the speed (well…) as I am about maintaining a connection. It frequently drops back to 2G, and sometimes will just not connect at all. Compared to wireless my “slower” ADSL2+ is a godsend. There is no way that I would ever consider dumping a fixed line connection for something as unstable as a wireless one. They really need to work on that before even attempting to compete with the NBN on speed. For mobility there is no choice but to use wireless (although the free wifi on limited Translink services in Brisbane is *much* better than using 3G).

  19. Another question is how far will Telstra spread their 4G network?
    If the debate is only going to be about inner city users, then already available cable speeds, and 4G are delivering what most future NBN customers would probably be happy with.
    One of the things Conroy keeps saying (rightly in my opinion), is we don’t know what speeds we’ll be needing in 5 to 10 years time.
    The Apple TV buffering point above is a good example.
    Secondly, we don’t know what jobs we’ll all be doing.
    The cities are clogged. If more of us could effectively work outside the city Australia would be a better place.
    I’m trying to collaborate with a work colleague in the UK. I have the absolute fastest net connection money can buy in my area, but it took me two hours to send a 190mb file over the weekend.
    On this project we are dealing with gigs of data. I just can’t do it on my connection. I would gladly pay one of the higher broadband plans under the NBN to get trouble free 50 to 100mbps.
    I’d make more money, the ISP would make more money, and the government would get more tax dollars from us both.

  20. Excellent article Renai. After reading The West’s article I couldn’t believe my eyes and contemplated writing my own article pointing out how wrong they were, but then I saw you beat me to the punch. Good on you :)

    My favorite part of the article would have to be the last line:

    “it is possible The West was also the only user connecting to 4G in the area at that time. As more users sign up, congestion is likely to affect speeds.”

    Well of course it is going to be fast if there is no congestion. It’s like saying I can drive at 100km/h during peak hour…. if I’m the only one on the road.

    I also like the “likely to affect speeds”, it’s like saying if your car is running out of fuel, it is likely you will need to walk to the petrol station.

  21. Actually, the NBN doesn’t even need to be “upgraded” to support Gigabit speeds: The last mile is 2.4Gigabit GPON and the ONTs have Gigabit Interfaces in them already. NBNCo just have to decide to allow that speed as a product option.

    As pointed out, there are other Fibre providers around the country who are either already doing so, or have successfully tested it but not yet product-ised it (TransACT – although most of their existing FTTH ONTs don’t have GigE ports.)

  22. Another entertainer and corporate shill pretending to be a journalist, writing advertorials disguised as news.

  23. The thing that is stupid here is they are comparing two things that are _totally different_

    1. The peak observed speed of the 4G network (i.e. what’s the ‘best’ we see)

    2. The _artificially rate limited_ entry level speed of the NBN.

    This is like me comparing the performance of my shitty old Lancer with that of a Formula 1 car…that happens to have no wheels. Wow. Look which one is faster! Amazing!

    As already observed by others in part, the actual bandwidth on a 4G cell is in the order of ~300Mbps, shared between all users of that cell, and also shared between uploads and downloads (often not a trivial number, but I’m unable to find a public source I can share). This means that assuming the carrier totally uncapped everything possible, and restricted to a single user, with all traffic in one direction only, you’d still never get above 300Mbps.

    A fair comparison is then looking at NBNCo’s GPON technology – 2.488Gbps downlink plus 1.244Gbps of upstream bandwidth. And that’s shared between 32 users.

    A much fairer comparison would be comparing the fastest observable speed on 4G to the fastest available speed on NBN. But of course that would require honesty or factual reporting, something the original article doesn’t seem to care about – especially seeing as comments are off meaning no discussion can happen :)

    Note that in both cases I’m talking about the technology in use now. Yes, we all know that there’s still more coming in terms of wireless standards…but having said that, 10GE PON is too :)

  24. Personally on the gold coast my 4g device will often operate at speeds of up to 70Mbps, Once 4g covers the entire 3G (or next g in Telstra marketing slang) footprint this will suffice for quite a few people who use less than say 5-10 gb data per month, not to mention its portable…

    • WOW, and to think that i download files larger then 5GB quite often, so a 4G connection would last me two days at most. As others have said mobile/wireless is complementary to a fixed/fibre connection with a generous download allowance. No 3G/4G connection is ever going to get you that because of it being a shared medium.

      • Agreed, until wireless plans come even close to the download limit compared to the NBN it does not have a snowball hope in hell to have as many customers compared with the NBN.

        I only find wireless useful for out and about situations on my tablet or laptop but at home and work wireless isn’t even in the same par as fixed connection internet.

  25. This is what you get when you have a shiela who is the ‘Social Media Editor’ trying to do technical reports.

    • Not sure of the relevance of the ‘sheila’ part of your comment though.

      Just call it what it is – lazy as shit journalism :)

    • If she is the Editor for Social Media, does that mean that we can sure her for publishing all the illegal items in social media?

  26. Wait to see the unbiased NBN view of the related Community News tomorrow,

    It contains quoting “techies”, chalk and cheese in what sounds like Whirlpool talk. In the end it poses the question do u want to pay for an upgradable network now or an interim and rebuild later also would u prefer symmetrical NBN broadband with a minimum of 100mbps and ability to upgrade for decades ($43 billion all up) or a mixed bag of asymmetrical goods ($6 bill short term with no guarantees)

  27. I have a 3G connection that can download at 7Mbps in the early hours of the morning. It almost feels exactly the same as being on my old 8Mbit ADSL plan we just disconnected. If I was a FUDster I would say yippee wireless is the future it’s as good as my old connection! But It isn’t….
    At 6am in the morning that’s where the good story ends. Lets fast forward to 6pm, where loading a low quality youtube video is impossible, browsing multiple webpages causes timeouts, and I have to sit and wait for an individual page to load. I didn’t mistakenly switch to a dialup connection, FUDsters, this is what shared capacity is all about, and just to think this is in a world where the the vast majority of Australians are still using fixed line broadband. If the wireless is struggling to cope with the 20% that that use wireless only, imagine if I was sharing it with 100%.

  28. “I expect most customers will actually take up faster-speed plans — 25Mbps or 50Mbps — as these will be the plans that will allow them to more fully take advantage of the NBN’s fibre-optic cables.”

    Reality check, plenty of users are not joining the NBN in the numbers touted, never mind paying big bucks for faster speeds. Take up rates is real problem for the NBN (and a lack of coverage area), but instead of looking at actual data you rely on your own expectation? You need a reality check mate.

    • He did say “he expects”… It was his opinion only.

      But in relation to similar claims that you make but from those who actually are in the business and know, here’s what Michael Malone says…

      “Mr Malone said there was a lot of misinformation about the take up of the NBN suggesting it was behind its target.

      In fact it was ”running bang on target”, but the real test would be if it could achieve its target of about 100,000 connections in 12 months.

      But take up was a weak measure, he said….”

      http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/aust-can-afford-nbn-risks-industry-expert-says-20120224-1ttnj.html

      But of course you’d know better ;-)

    • Actually the take up has been faster than they expected. Over double what the take up was in other countries like the UK when they rolled out super fast BB. In the end once Telstra and others have moved people over from ADSL to FTTN and the copper is decomissioned it should be at least the same as ADSL. Or are you arguing people will just not get an internet connnection or will pay the huge premium and go 4G, at least until it’s totally congested like 3G.

  29. Don’t let pro-NBN bias get in the way of another FUD piece to justify the additional cost for network performance that your general internet user is unlikely to appreciate.

    The article in the West Australian made it clear that the comparison was made against entry level plans for the NBN for which it provided benchmarks that are correct.

    These articles are now as boring as the other extreme.

    • Don’t let your anti-NBN bias get in the way of defending another FUD piece to judtify the false claims of 4G leaving the NBN in it’s wake. Or try to justify the additional cost of paying for decent data volumes on a wireless plan.

      The article in the West Australian compared the entry level plan against the best speed attainable with 4G to make the claim the 4G was superior. They provided benchmarks that were not a valid comparison.

      Your post are looking as stupid as ever,

      • “Your post are looking as stupid as ever,”

        We’ll see in the next twelve months whose posts look more stupid. The fact that this has to be paid for will hopefully be realised by then.

        • So, you are saying that in 12 months the NBN will slow down and 4G will increase in speed and the article will then be accurate? I don’t think so. Tour post will still be stupidly trying to defend it for political reasons.
          Yes, we will have to pay for it, and since they are spending a fraction of a fraction of a percent of government spending to produce something that returns an income it seems like a good investment.
          For less than the amount of tax break on beer per year we get modern telecomminications infrastructure.

        • “The fact that this has to be paid for will hopefully be realised by then”

          No shit Sherlock and guess who pays, it’s us the customers, we will pay ALL the money back and then some. My share is ~$3500 and I promise to pay it all back in 35 monthly installments of $100. Stop your whining now.

  30. 4G at brisbane CBD inside the telstra shop is over 30Mbps, while usually is between 5-10Mbps in other areas.

    So, 4G CAN be faster then NBN for sure if it is close to the transmitter tower.

  31. Fibre facts:

    1. Fibre is infinitely upgradeable (speed of light data processing).
    2. Fibre has a huge, i mean huge bandwidth (no network congestion).
    3. Fibre is super reliable (point 2).
    4. Fibre is fast!, really fast! (1gig already achieved and possible in the future).
    5. Fibre Upgrades are easy as replacing tech boxes as the infrastructure will already be in place (fibre).
    6. Fibre doesn’t require cancer causing towers to be put all over your neighborhood.
    7. Fibre is future proof.

    Wireless has its place but saying that it can even compete with Fibre (NBN) is just a joke, anyone who disputes this obviously has never researched the matter, just ignorantly blind to the truth or plain silly.

    G’day.

    • I always laugh whenever I read “future proof” in the context of technology. Haven’t you learned anything in the past 10 or 20 years, or were you born post-Facebook?

      Just like wireless, fibre has its place, but who’s not to say (and there is data from reliable sources to suggest there are growing trends toward this) that wireless, despite its shortcomings in providing comparable bandwidth to fibre, is a more appropriate mode of using broadband?

        • Don’t work him up too much, he may have to go beat his wife to release his frustration.

        • Fantastic, so you’re stating that Fibre is faster than wireless. Who would have thought? It’s the same dumb argument flaunted by all the pro-NBN fudsters that fails to sell the NBN to your typical user.

          And what about those NBN users on Satellite and LTE? Let’s talk hypocrisy.

          This is the same approach that Conroy has taken in selling the NBN, much to its detriment and it leaves a lot of scope for services such as third party 4G.

          It starts to look a bit ridiculous when you’re trying to sell the notion of quantum computing to someone who’s main interest is streaming video or posting on Facebook.

          Perhaps Conroy should release a PR stating the infinite possibilities of NBN’s quantum enabled network and call everyone an idiot who doesn’t understand it.

          • @JT,

            “Fantastic, so you’re stating that Fibre is faster than wireless. Who would have thought? It’s the same dumb argument flaunted by all the pro-NBN fudsters that fails to sell the NBN to your typical user.”

            Firstly “pro fudster”, oxymoron if I ever heard it, *rolls eyes*

            What the problem is, is a lack of any vision at all by ultra-conservatives, who can’t or won’t accept change. Even change for the better (and the NBN IS technically better than what we have now and the opposition’s alternative).

            Being so, these types will try anything to pour cold water on the NBN (especially because those terrible lefties are building it so it can’t be any good – I’m not listening). Too expensive, white elephant, too science fiction, but our roads, hospitals, quick what else can we fucking whinge about… *sigh*

            For example, well documented e-health benefits talked about by NBNCo and being experienced abroad, which will (according to studies already carried) cut health costs. Instead of these critics saying, “ok, with better speeds etc, maybe” and if so, that could actually help my grandfather, mother, or my neighbours mother or whoever… No, they simply refuse to accept any the possibility, even having seen the massive changes over the last decade or so. Fingers in ears, I’m not listening, Tony said…!

            So while ever the NBN is intentionally derailed by those with a vested interest (especially our media, opposing politicians and their faithful apostles) and every positive denied, there is no hope of the NBN being sold to the layman and your parting sarcastic remark, proves it!

      • @JT

        You know what makes me laugh…? Hypocritical, contradictory stupid people.

        For example those mindless critics 9and this isn’t directed at you per se`) who say things like…

        “100Mbps is a waste, because we don’t need it now and won’t in the foreseeable future”.

        Then, they say…

        Fibre isn’t future proof because *something better* will be invented, which we should then use.

        But if we don’t need 100Mbps, why TF would we need something better than fibre/26tbps and why would anyone bother inventing it?

        • The only contradiction here is the NBN. On the one hand, it’s claimed that wireless is an unacceptable medium, however a similar technology (still part of the LTE family) and an even slower one (Satellite) is still considered acceptable for deployment under the NBN.

          • Incorrect

            No one has said wireless is an unacceptable technology at all. Typical critic, who when push comes to shove, exaggerates.

            What is being said, is, wireless and fixed are “COMPLEMENTARY” (sorry for shouting but I wanted you to hear this time, so there’s no doubt).

            Wireless is not going to make fixed obsolete as fixed is how the hard slog is performed and wireless is inferior for such usages (ABS stats prove this) and it’s a given that people will always want wireless for on the go too.

          • “The only contradiction here is the NBN. On the one hand, it’s claimed that wireless is an unacceptable medium”

            There are no contradictions and it’s not necessarily an unacceptable medium, in this case it’s simply a stupid one to use if you intend to cover over 12 million premises and expect it to run fine and with no congestion. This is where the fibre comes in.

            “is still considered acceptable for deployment under the NBN.”

            Do you consider $200 billion an acceptable price to cover 100% of the country with fibre?

      • The way I think about it is the fibre isn’t the technology, it is the transmission medium. It is the boxes at either end of the fibre which is the technology. Upgrading fibre makes as much sense as saying you are going to upgrade the air for a wireless network.

        Where some people see a disadvantage to fibre (fixed connection, physical medium) it is actually an advantage… fibre is directional and discrete where with wireless, all the signals compete with each other over the same medium.

      • “Just like wireless, fibre has its place, but who’s not to say (and there is data from reliable sources to suggest there are growing trends toward this) that wireless, despite its shortcomings in providing comparable bandwidth to fibre, is a more appropriate mode of using broadband?”

        Yes, there are more mobile devices. But, fixed broadband data volume is growing at a much higher rate than mobile. Mobile has it’s place, volume isn’t one of them and that is what the new infrastructure is designed to provide.

  32. No comment. Looks like NBN is a long way off for me. So I have no way of checking.Most likely will be 5G or 6G before I get NBN.

    • Sadly John come 2013 if the opposition get in and can the NBN, it my be 15 or 16G, before you get anything!

  33. ‘But what the article fails to mention (and you can’t blame them really, it’s not as if they had time to research the matter … wait, yes they did) is that these are not the sorts of speeds which you can consistently expect from Telstra’s network on a day in, day out basis.’

    Well the article did mention it actually.

    ‘The network extended up Albany Highway to the edges of East Victoria Park before dropping off to a 3G network.’

    ‘Given the network has only been in place since late last year and most Telstra customers do not have the technology to access it yet, it is possible The West was also the only user connecting to 4G in the area at that time. As more users sign up, congestion is likely to affect speeds.’

    As usual the pro-NBN lynch mob then dominates the discussion with more one-eyed blather, this Labor Government and their NBN white elephant as we know it is gone, the electorate cannot wait to get rid of them – get over it.

  34. Just to throw in another perspective over this Fibre vs wireless debate. Can anyone name a country that’s building a wireless only network?

    As far as I know the answer is no.

    In terms of private investment all over the world as well as government deployments I see companies rolling out fixed line fibre. Wouldn’t Australia be silly if broke away from that trend? Eventually there will be an application that is going to require huge amounts of bandwidth that will require the use of of fixed line fibre or dedicated high speed wireless and we would look awfully silly if our citizens couldn’t connect to it because a few conservatives thought what we have is good enough and that we should only let our private industries build shared capacity wireless networks.

      • Lucky for us it’s being payed for by Government bonds being sold then and not general tax revenue!

        • +1 exactly right djos.

          Bonds, securities, BAF etc…

          NOT OUR INCOME TAXES.

          Now ask him where the Coalition is going to fund their $17B plan?

  35. The key problem with fixed line broadband is that it’s fixed…. That’s a pretty crucial and unsolvable problem for the technology considering the main consumers of data are no longer fixed.

    • @ Eric – “considering the main consumers of data are no longer fixed”

      Bzzt! Sorry… time to go back to the drawing board for some facts…

      The vast majority of internet downloads are from fixed-line connections.

      Also, the amount of data downloaded over fixed-line connections increased by a larger percentage than the amount of data downloaded over wireless connections between both December-2010 to June-2011 and again between June-2011 and December-2011.

      This means not only is more data being downloaded over fixed-line connections than over wireless, but the amount of data being downloaded over fixed-line connections is increasing faster than that over wireless too.

      To quote directly from the Australian Bureau of Statistics data on Internet Activity, Australia, Dec 2011:

      “Data downloaded by fixed-line broadband accounted for 93% of all internet downloads, and increased by 26.4% since June 2011. Data downloaded using wireless broadband continued to grow, with a 20.9% increase compared to June 2011.”

      http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/8153.0Chapter7Dec%202011

      • Correct Geoff U, thanks for saving me from providing the same URL, to another who simply does not know, yet again!.

  36. megabits per second = mbps. MegaBYTES per second = Mbps. This article has both accronym, and word usage errors, often in the same sentence, making some points unreadable. The premise of the article however, is correct.

    • Close, mate…

      It’s actually all about the b/B, not the K/M/G/T prefix.

      bps = bits per second
      Bps = Bytes per second

      Therefore:
      Mbps = Megabits per second
      MBps = MegaBytes per second

      So all references in the article that say “Mbps” are correct.

  37. so what? 4g doesn’t just grow a tower on its own! its still hooked to optic fibres…
    less than 10% use 4g at the moment, that means if even 50% get on 4g, Telstra’s towers r going to shit themselves with traffic, which means the speed is going to drop dramatically. so STFU Telstra, n stop trolling imo.

    • Lj, Posted 10/05/2012 at 8:47 pm

      “so what? 4g doesn’t just grow a tower on its own! its still hooked to optic fibres… ”

      Strange. So satellite & microwave dishes do not exist? After microwave, perhaps laser-waves will define the next maximum speed limit (line of sight only), without fibre-cable links.

      • So we should just wait and hope, fingers crossed for 10, 20, 30 years, that “laser waves” will occur or should we act and act now?

        I think Bob Katter of all people summed such a position up best when he said…

        “I haven’t heard the opposition put forward a single solitary piece of technology, and yet they think we should wait for some sort of science fiction fantasy to jump out from behind a bush and provide a service,” Mr Katter said. “Well, too bad for you. We’ve got an offer on the table and we’re going to take it.”

  38. The thing that got me about the article, was they didn’t allow comments, specifically I expect because they new this was just a sensationalist article. This is really starting to tick me off when they do this,

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