blog It should come as no surprise to regular Delimiter readers that our National Broadband Network debate has been poisoned by a constant series of inaccurate and misleading statements. It’s the done thing, after all — politicians are doing it, newspapers are doing it, television stations are doing it — why wouldn’t everyone want to get in on the bandwagon? The Age reports (we recommend you click here for the full article):
“Mark Gregory, senior lecturer at RMIT’s school of electrical and computer engineering, said the public is being misled on how alternative technologies including hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) and fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) could be used to replace fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) and speed up the NBN rollout. “The Australian public is being hoodwinked by false statements that have been substantively disproved,” Gregory said.”
This is one of the things which your writer personally finds hard to deal with with respect to the NBN debate. The amount of false statements out there is so large, that as a journalist I find much of my time is necessarily devoted to correcting incredibly ‘out there’ comments made by politicians and other commentators. We spend so much time trying to educate people about the fundamental underpinnings of the NBN debate, the debate rarely rises above a certain lowest common denominator basis. It’s incredibly frustrating and demeaning to our national conversation, in my opinion.
Sometimes I almost want to start printing positive misstatements, just to balance out the conversation a little. For example, it would be personally amusing to me, if every time someone like Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey claimed 4G mobile broadband had the capacity to be “far superior” than the NBN’s fibre, I had the capacity to publish an article claiming that Hockey was wrong, and that fibre had the potential to be a “million times” faster than wireless, and that it cost “500 percent” less on every benchmark. It would be hilarious to see how the anti-NBN camp would react if those broadly in favour of the NBN started publishing their own incredibly inaccurate statements, instead of focusing on, you know, the facts.
But the facts don’t support a position that opposes the NBN enough to scrap the project completely…
Welcome to the world of Politics. All we can do is keep calling people on it and hoping we can convince enough people come election time that the NBN is important enough to change ones vote and that the NBN is still the best way forward.
I’d love to say Turnbull has a better plan because that would mean he’s improved on the NBN policy, but unfortunately he doesn’t, so we’re stuck with this less than ideal option until someone is willing to play ball.
That’s what Aaron Sorkin does. Amazing how he’s pretty much the only one. And even then, he’s incredibly restrained by comparison.
To be brutally honest I’m of the opinion that Turnbull’s words will have no bearing on the fate of the NBN under a coalition government. My interpretation of Abbott’s latest speech to the Institute of Public Affairs is that he wants to scrap the project entirely. It’s the old carrot and stick approach. Turnbull’s talk of FTTN is the carrot that the coalition is using to entice voters, whereas the stick will be Abbott and Hockey hacking and slashing the project at the first opportunity.
Welcome to my world. I have just about given up trying to explain to Joe Bloggs that Malcolm Turnbull is bowing to private interests and party political pressure because there is no other reason an educated IT aware adult would buy the wireless proposition as remotely feasible. I mean look around you, 4G may be fast but its unreliable and hideously expensive. Normal wireless is great for about 30 meters but needs high speed infrastructure behind it to handle any more than three people and its speed is inversely proportional to the numbers of people using it. Seriously you want towers on every block? Then the silly mantra of let use the existing last mile of copper…. really people. How do you think we got where we are right now? Using that “same” last mile of copper with all the problems you have right now. Then the speed which is inversely proportional to distance from exchange. Fibre to the premises solves all of these problems. But no, the media have it, they have so brainwashed the Australian public they all think wireless will solve everything. Its almost as bad as the climate change debate.
Indeed Kevin.
Having explained the pros (and cons) of the NBN and the Coalition’s possible alternatives to many, the inevitable response is…Being referred to as a leftist?
Like seriously WTF… wanting better comms for Australia, makes one a leftist in the minds of some? As a society don’t we want and deserve improvement? And if the private sector aren’t willing, then it’s up to the government…. isn’t that obvious/common sense?
I’d say what it does is demonstrates the bigotry of those who refuse to even want to hear both sides, let alone seriously weigh-up/compare them on their merits (other than which side of politics is overseeing it)
:(
“Like seriously WTF… wanting better comms for Australia, makes one a leftist in the minds of some?”
Indeed Alex. That is the sad state of political debate in this country unfortunately, those with an agenda use this sort of thing as a shaming tactic to silence anyone that dares to disagree with their views. It’s the same reason why we see so much hostility towards politicians like the independents, the Greens and Julian Assange.
Anyway when it comes to the NBN those opposed for political reasons they will use any misinformation they can against the NBN and think this is acceptable, clearly honesty is not important because history is written by the winners…
“as a society”
NBNAlex is clearly a commie.
Got me… comrades…LOL
If a journalist says it, its false. Cant be true.
If an academic says it, then it must be true.
Its true when they are saying Australians are becoming a pack of whingers. With the NBN debate, the public loves bad news.
“FACTS” != “CURRENT NARRATIVE”
““The Australian public is being hoodwinked by false statements that have been substantively disproved,” Gregory said.””
From the dept of the bleeding obvious!
“. It would be hilarious to see how the anti-NBN camp would react if those broadly in favour of the NBN started publishing their own incredibly inaccurate statements, instead of focusing on, you know, the facts.”
You’d get a kick up the backside from the Pro-NBN’ers too for stooping so low!
That about sums it up. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Then season with the faux indignation “How dare you contradict me!”.
I think we are so used to it now, it will take years for the many layers of Teflon to wear off.
Wry amusement abounds when we see what the apologists scribble down, in order to sway us from reasoned logic into the arcane darkness of confusion, fear and uncertainty, from whence no light, through fiber or any other medium, shines to offer hope of deliverance from the darkness of |insert despised Corporation here|.
Yep the debate goes on but it is nice to see that a bit of factual reasoning has hit the airwaves with the ABC reporting that Steve Dalby from iiNet thinks that the Labor NBN FTTP is the right way to go.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-05/iinet-calls-for-evaluation-of-nbn-policies/4610860 “Mr Dalby says any evaluation must be thorough and is confident a full analysis would show Labor’s National Broadband Network plan to be superior.
The problem is that the Coalition opinion will just ignore or brush away any companies supporting the NBN, claiming “Of course they support it, they get to access an new network without paying for it!”.
We all know that any analysis done of the NBN when/if the Coalition get into power, will be ridiculously biases and not handled in any way to ensure the best outcome for the country.
If, for some reason, a completely unbiased analysis was done of the FTTP plan and could show that it would be more advantageous to the country to have FTTN now with FTTP in the future, then I would support it personally, but we know that is unlikely to ever be the case.
Renai, I understand your temptation to match porky with porky, but a good compromise is to use powerful analogies, like the one in the article in The Age explaining how fibre means every driver has his/her own lane. The analogy is never perfect but is the only way ‘normal’ people will understand this complex world and enable them to imagine this future.
How about… (An imaginary) far-sighted plan in the 1930s to connect every home with copper telephone line. Malcolm Turnbull would say: “That’s a waste, and too expensive: we will put a telephone box on every block!”
Hope you don’t mind if I use that one from time to time ;)
I think a better analogy is more like dialup is walking, DSL is riding a bicycle (and distance from the exchange is analogous to starting at the top of a steep hill all the way to starting in a valley surrounded by mountains), FTTN is like a kitten powered moped with the same hill analogy, mobile broadband is like a bicycle taxi service that may or may not turn up and then you have to ride on the handle bars, while FTTP is like a harrier jump jet that runs on sunlight and moonbeams and costs just as much as the bicycle transport system we’ve been putting up with for years.
Actually in the 60’s many still depended on that telephone box. As a young guy I knew the numbers for quite a few phone boxes, arrange to call at a certain time.
However now the phone lines are connected to almost all premises with dial tone on the line it costs a small fortune to connect the service.???. One reason why renters are in so many cases choosing to just use a mobile. Why pay an exorbitant connection fee and a 2 year contract for possibly a one year tenancy.?
I often wonder if these folks realise the damage they are doing to Australia’s future with their house of lies…
Very good point tinman_au.
You’d have to surmise that of the ‘name’ NBN opponents, perhaps only MT really understands the value of the NBN and the others probably believe their uneducated waffle to be true…
Otherwise, if they do understand, it’s plain selfishness…
But, if this is so and with all due respect, does that make MT’s actions intentionally under-handed and the others just simply, foolishly misguided?
Here’s the thing, in this day and age, there is NO excuse to be “misguided” or “misinformed” when you are in the position to govern, or have aspirations to govern in the future.
The arguments have been argued many times, and both sides have had their weaknesses displayed and debunked, and anyone that continues to use debunked points to “win” is effectively an enemy of Australian societies future IMHO.
And I’m totally over the Liberals “Do/say whatever it takes” stance on gaining power for powers sake. the ALP may do a lot of dodgy things, but at least they keep most of that “in house” to the party.
how hard is it to make up positive falsehoods?
“with a full nbn roll out, it will reduce the amount of traffic on the roads, as people will be working from home more – therefore your yearly car rego fee’s will drop to under $100 per year”
“A Fibre to home internet connection has been shown to reduce electricity use for home owners by 50% ”
Then just chuck in lines like “sources from inside the company….” or , “experts in the field ” … or
“in the future …”
And voila, as valid as anything coming from the anti nbn brigrade atm
The fact that misinformation is coming from both sides does not excuse the spreading of misinformation. Period.
Attempting to point out that you can discredit some of the pro-NBN statements does not somehow forgive the transgressions of people like Turnbull.
It has been my observation that the misinformation spread from those against the NBN serves to do more damage than the misinformation spread by people for the project. For this reason, Renai and others have, rightly, focused on Turnbull and people like Alan Jones anti NBN statements.
In absence of this sort of behaviour I would expect Renai would provide objective analysis of the pro NBN misinformation. He is after all trying to provide an objective, educated, opinion on what communications policy is right for Australia.
Unfortunately, as I have said many times, we can only work with the cards we have on the table. If Turnbull really has a better policy, I wish to see it.
“Attempting to point out that you can discredit some of the pro-NBN statements does not somehow forgive the transgressions of people like Turnbull.”
Nailed it.
In other breaking news: sky blue, bears shit in woods, water is wet.
Though it is nice to see it in the inaccurately named main stream media.
“sky blue, bears shit in woods, water is wet”
Malcolm Turnbull – No the sky is a shade of azure…
The Australian – The sky is azure and a leading political technologist said it was so!
AFR – Reported earlier today the Sky is now considered Azure by important minds in the industry.
Alan Jones – I got this scientist from the Advanced Medical Institute who confirms the sky is a rigid azure
2GB News release – We will bend over for Alan Jones & AMI’s commentary %100
ABC – There is apparently a view being discussed the sky could be azure, you decide, here is the details
SMH – There is some discussion regarding the color of the sky during a clear day.
Bolt Report – Jesus would you stop telling us the sky is blue its wasting our money. Azure I tell ya!
You can imagine the rest….
I always thought azure was blue?
“The Australian public is being hoodwinked”
… says Mark Gregory opining that the coalition is misleading the public about the cost of renegotiating deals with Telstra and Optus.
However, an “expert” has said that the NBN could expect a 10 year delay and could cost up to $70+ billion if NBN Co continues the way that it is going today.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-22/nbn-rollout-could-be-delayed-by-10-years3a-expert/4589520
Perhaps it is Mark Gregory who is not being honest in these NBN debates.
COULD be
I could be hit by a meteorite right now. safdddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Don’t argue with me. Argue with Mark Gregory. He’s the guy who said it could cost up to $70+ billion.
So if Mark Gregory is right about the coalition “hoodwinking” the public, then, surely, he must be right that the NBN could cost up to $70 billion.
Actually he said it could cost that much and take that amount of time if the contractors keep working the way they are. His suggestion was for NBNCo to build their own company. I guess another option would be huge penalties on contractors. There has to be something to make them do the work or contractors will be contractors and do as little as possible for as much as possible.
Nice work trying to mislead there ;)
“expect a 10 year delay and could cost up to $70+ billion if NBN Co continues the way that it is going today.”
The “NBN Co continues the way that it is going today” should more accurate be “If NBN Co continues to believe contractors will do the job you pay them to do”
“So if Mark Gregory is right about the coalition “hoodwinking” the public, then, surely, he must be right that the NBN could cost up to $70 billion.”
Now the magic number is $90 billion. Let’s see just how credible those opposed to the NBN really are, do they stick to the $70 billion from “the expert” or do they use the all new (and much more scary sounding) $90 billion figure…
+1
He also said: “But Dr Gregory says the problems could be fixed if the NBN Co goes ahead with creating its own construction arm to build the network.”
The problem, yet again, is greedy Australian private enterprise cherry-picking lucrative areas…
If only they did. *sigh*
“However, an “expert” has said that the NBN could expect a 10 year delay and could cost up to $70+ billion if NBN Co continues the way that it is going today.”
I’m sure I could find another “expert” that will say it will cost more than $100 billion, so who are you going to believe? At the end of the day it really doesn’t matter how much the NBN ends up costing, if the proper NBN is built as planned it is unlikely the rollout will ever stop (new premises get built you know) so you add that expenditure to the total bill cost, however calling it a blowout or criticising this would be intellectually dishonest and basing your argument against NBN using this would be in no way valid.
NBN policy is an economic debate, not a technical debate. Nobody with serious standing denies that fiber has greater bandwidth capability than copper or wireless for last mile. The fundamental question is do the incremental economic benefits for the average household (not just narrow vested interests) justify the incremental economic cost of pushing fiber to every household.
This is the sort of question that is best addressed by academics in school of economics, business or commerce because they are professionally qualified to analyse these kinds of economic issues. NOT electrical engineering academics who are one-eyed technology fanatics with a vested interest in the most expensive option built as a taxpayer-funded plaything for them. Do you seriously think the Head of the “Institute of Broadband-Enabled Society” would advocate anything less than the gold-plated FTTP solution? This Mark Gregory guy even seriously suggested that the Australian Army should be drafted to build the NBN. All these engineering academics are FTTP fanatics who don’t care about good economic policy or cost.
The fact is tech geeks have zero care factor for good economic policy. All they want is taxpayer-funded FTTP to their doorsteps. Malcolm could write another zillion articles explaining why Labor policy is dud, it will just be derided as “political ideology”. The faster the Productivity Commission gets out their NBN report, the better. Then clueless people can stop their stupid attacks on others who actually know what they are talking about.
False. There are many many costs inherent to the fttn rollout that are not inherent to the ftth one – when debating the economic cost there is more than just the headline figures of ’37bn’ playing ’15bn’. There is actually quite a good deal of care for good economic policy and when you look behind the headline figures to lifetime costs on the network most people without an ideological bone to pick accept the ftth is actually the better bang for buck. Again, is it more economic to buy a dunger car nearly on its last legs, that constantly needs fixing, and money spent on it to keep it going? Or to spend a bit more on a car that is reliable and has lower lifetime costs, and will last for several times longer before needing bits replaced?
Most people will agree that the latter option is a smarter use of funds, despite the fact you are up for more initial cost. In that manner it is arguable the ftth policy is BOTH good tech AND economic policy. That was actually the finding of the expert panel overlooking the original fttn RFP, so its not just tech heads saying so. Incidentally there have been found economic benefits from such rollouts, so the ‘incremental costs’ over fttn are actually already being covered. In that economic sense, it is worth doing.
“do the incremental economic benefits for the average household (not just narrow vested interests) justify the incremental economic cost of pushing fiber to every household.”
You do realise a question ends with a question mark, right? What you have there is a statement.
You really have two assumptions there, so I’ll deal with each in turn. First is the assumption that the benefits of the FTTH NBN as it stands vs the alternatives (LNP FTTN, mobile broadband or leave-everything-as-it-is-and-keep-fixing-rotting-copper-as-it-fails) are incremental. That means you consider a system that uses several orders of magnitude less electricity to operate (which will affect every household when we have to pay more for electricity with additional load on the grids), that is essentially unaffected by the length of cable runs (vs VDSL2 which needs to be a maximum of around 400m before it drops below ADSL speeds), that is infinitely more robust and fault tolerant, that is infinitely more likely to survive natural disasters such as fire or flood and remain operational, that has at least 50 years of service while requiring potentially zero maintenance (and may possibly be in use in more than a century) compared with the decade or so that’s left in the copper, that’s an order of magnitude faster at the flick of a switch, with the potential for essentially unlimited upgrades at minimal cost (as only endpoint hardware needs upgrading) and that, most importantly, will bring the minimum service level for everything (but mobile broadband Internet connections) in Australia to at least 12.5mb/s (and will likely be 25mb/s by the time it’s complete) which will lead to a revolution in services delivered over the Internet commercially, in education, socially, and creatively; you consider this to be of ‘incremental’ economic benefit? Mate, you need to go and look up the term incremental, ’cause that’s a pretty shakey assumption.
The second assumption you make is that there are incremental economic costs per household to deliver the FTTH NBN. Let’s compare delivery of the two major competing technologies – FTTH & FTTN. FTTH will cost individual households zero dollars over the life of the project for connection. It will cost tax payers zero dollars. It will cost the Government zero dollars. That’s $0.00. The infrastructure is paid for initially with a loan in the form of government bonds, which is then repaid (plus interest) by users connected to the infrastructure. The cost recovery is calculated based on some extremely conservative estimates (most people connecting to the lowest speed tier), and so far there are so many more people connecting at the highest speed tier some analysts are predicting the ROI targets will be met years in advance. None of these estimates even take into consideration the strong demand from businesses for high speed broadband, which I feel will be substantial. Half the work force in the country is employed by small businesses who are highly constrained by poor Internet performance vs the prohibitive costs of private fibre.
If you’re still having difficulty with the concept, let me help you with an analogy. You want to buy an investment property. It will cost $500,000. You don’t have $500k, but you can get a bank loan to cover it. You do some research and discover that the suburb you are looking at has a zero vacancy rate – that is, rental properties can’t keep up with demand. This high demand means rents are jacked up, so while your loan repayments will be $500 per week, the rent you will take is $600 per week. That is such a good (low risk) proposal the bank is willing to lend you 100% of the properties value, so zero upfront costs to you. 20 years later you own the property outright and it hasn’t cost you a cent.
That is essentially how funding and repayment for the NBN works – instead of user money going to maintenance of Telstra’s aging copper network, propping up other divisions and shareholder profits, users will be paying back low interest government bond loans so that we (as a nation) own the infrastructure outright. After that NBN Co could reduce prices or simply funnel profits back to the federal government to offset the tax base.
Compare that with any other funding model. Nothing the coalition comes up with can improve upon the NBN funding unless they can negotiate a lower interest rate.
Now, what about the cost of network deployment? The LNP keep saying ‘faster & cheaper’, but refuse to release costings to justify their claims. All we have to go on is cost estimates from outside sources and examples of other FTTN deployments. All other FTTN deployments elsewhere in the world have been rolled out by incumbent Telcos over their own existing copper infrastructure which has been, importantly, maintained in much better condition than Telstra’s corroding infrastructure (and that’s not speculation, it’s based on statements from Telstra itself where they admitted the copper was reaching the end of its service life several years ago). As soon as you add multiple billions of dollars paid to Telstra for access to pits and ducts and to buy the copper network, all your cost efficiencies are used up.
So your FTTN will be no less expensive for the infrastructure and deployment, it will actually cost the Govt and tax payers a great deal more (as it will be a direct budget cost) so there will be tens of billions of dollars that will have to be taken out of funding for roads, schools and health care, the LNP government won’t end up with a profit injection to offset against the tax base, Telstra’s billion dollar annual maintenance bill won’t be eliminated and users won’t be promised a reduction of real costs to access the Internet.
So, with a healthy inclusion of facts, your question actually becomes “do the substantial economic benefits for the average household (not even talking about the substantial benefits for businesses and the country as a whole) justify the lower economic cost of pushing fiber to every household?” Logic suggests that the answer to that question must self evidently be yes – of course you should spend less to get more.
Now if your question asked if economists could review the debt funding model in comparison to a Govt subsidy model, I would of course support it. Although I would have to wonder why you’d need that validation when it is patently obvious which one is better.
Most of the rest of your statement is clearly heavily biassed nonsense, but I will suggest this – I have no problem with independent reviews of the NBN, even the Productivity Commission one, as long as the terms of reference are fair and the NBN rollout isn’t halted in the mean time. Even Mike Quigly suggested an independent review was undertaken, but Mr Turnbull rejected it with prejudice because he can’t control an independent review.
Excellent argument, but poor conclusion. The hole in your argument and the cause of your poor conclusion comes from the lack of understanding between what we need right now, and what is the best option for the future.
What do you think is the best option for the future?
Do you believe in the future?
You know Turnbull is telling porkies to the anti-FTTP side too, don’t you?
> NBN policy is an economic debate, not a technical debate. Nobody with serious standing denies that fiber has greater bandwidth capability than copper or wireless for last mile. The fundamental question is do the incremental economic benefits for the average household (not just narrow vested interests) justify the incremental economic cost of pushing fiber to every household.
One should also consider a third aspect: social impacts. NBNCo are predicting in the corporate plan that 50% will connect at 12/1Mbps. What is the impact of this?
> The fact is tech geeks have zero care factor for good economic policy. All they want is taxpayer-funded FTTP to their doorsteps.
Very true. Many of the tech geeks have been dazzled by 1Gbps being available and haven’t looked into the details of just how much that 1Gbps connection will cost.
Taxpayer funded… very true????
Haven’t we been down this road, ooh… about eleventy billion times? In other words, about half as many times as the 12/1Mbps/50%.
Seriously.
“Then clueless people can stop their stupid attacks on others who actually know what they are talking about.”
Great. Glad to hear it. I have to say it was getting a bit tiresome debunking the continuous stream of misinformation you and your ilk propagate. Good to see you’ve finally woken up and seen the error of your ways. Thanks for stopping by.
and it COULD
so what lots of things COULD happen
Above he said the public is being misled
not the public MAYBE being of COULD be but ARE BEING that is a massive difference.
The sky could be blue (States a possibility could be true or false)
The sky is Blue (States a fact it is true)
I am not arguing with him because he is correct on both comments it could cost $70 billion it is highly unlikely but not impossible. (States a possibility could be true or false)
the public is being misled (States a fact it is true)
So Gregory says the public is being misled by the Coalition? What does he mean by that? As far as I can tell he is saying that the coalition is lying about the cost of the renegotiation of Optus and Telstra. Where has the Coalition ever said that renegotiations will be zero cost? It’s a pretty big thing to say that Malcolm Turnbull is hoodwinking the public, especially since it is obvious even to the most casual observer of the NBN rollout that there will be some cost if the scope of the NBN is changed. I don’t need some professor from RMIT to tell me that.
You say that Gregory is stating fact that the Coalition is misleading the public over cost. Where exactly are Gregory’s statements of fact?
“Where has the Coalition ever said that renegotiations will be zero cost?”
He has said it repeatedly when questioned about copper costs. He states that Telstra would be happy to get the same money sooner by rolling out FTTN and doesn’t see that it should cost extra since it was being decommisioned anyway.
Its also to do with their dishonesty by not including that and other costs (access to copper being one) in their ‘third cheaper/faster’ mantra. Nor are they including costs to move beyond fttn to the home – particularly in the ‘pay 3grand and you can have it’ model, and in leaving those unspecified costs is hoodwinking the public into an incorrect belief on the costs of any new network.
“I had the capacity to publish an article claiming that Hockey was wrong, and that fibre had the potential to be a “million times” faster than wireless, …”
Well that isn’t true. Fibre has the potential to be much more than a million times faster than wireless! Think about it: there’s about 300GHz (order of 11) in microwaves and 30PHz (order of 16) in IR/light/UV. So that is a 100k times faster right there, but with fibre you don’t have to share any of it so with 10000 neighbours fibre has the potential to be a billion times faster!
According to Wikipedia, LTE-A will have peak efficiency of 15bps/Hz, with the biggest channel width 40MHz, which is 600Mbps total, shared between many people (thousands? more?). Is everyone going to have perfect reception all the time? Will every tower have a full 40MHz channel available?
NBNco are deploying 2.5GPON right now, which is ~2500Mbps shared between maximum 32 premises. So real life isn’t going to be millions, but as you can see the current fibre tech is much better than future wireless tech! To get 10GPON would only involve changing the electronics at the ends, not the cable itself, so there’s an upgrade path. LTE-A has been said to be maxxed out for wireless technology efficiency, so it’s pretty much as good as you can get: the only way to upgrade (relieve congestion) would be to allocate more bands.
Hmm, that GPON is over a million times faster than my first modem, which could do 2400bps (yes, about 240-300 characters per second, depending).
“fibre had the potential to be a “million times” faster than wireless, and that it cost “500 percent” less”
Actually, that would be factually true not a misstatment”
A single optical fiber can easily carry 10 Tbits/s over distances of about 20km without a repeater. Worked out on the cheapest wireless options, there is no comparison.
Fastest current wireless point to point technology works at 85GHz so is good for short distances only, I think about 250m has been demonstrated and peaked at about 6Gb/s.
You would need 1,666 of these running in parrallel and 80 repeaters for each to match one optic fiber strand.
In plain english, a single strand of fiber is equivalent to 133,280 times the performance of the fastest demonstrated wireless option, and note that the fiber version is in commercial production and will be used by NBNco for it’s transit link, the radio version is a laboraatory prototype.
+1
My favourite pick of worst misleading the public about wireless are when commentators deliberately confuse LTE-A (4G) and 802.11n (Wi-Fi). Two different technologies called “wireless” with completely different uses.
Having to explain this difference to relatives whenever the topic arises shows how bad it is. They put hate on the NBN simply because it’s a Labor policy and the media said so.
Just assert with supreme confidence that “4G is not real wireless, it is only “mobile””. Then explain that “WiFi is real wireless”, and that “it comes from a cable in your wall”. “Installing fibre basically makes the cables bigger”. Just change the labels and they’ll come to the correct understanding, if not semantically or literally accurate.
I’m one of those with limited technical knowledge. What is the known capacity of 4G or other mobile networks to provide a large number of users with high speed connections, compared to fibre feeding a household wi-fi network?
This article should give you an idea of the issues with wireless John
http://www.ehow.com/info_8703104_limits-wireless-bandwidth.html
In a nutshell, rain, lightening and lots of users (as in, but not limited to, a city centre) are all things that effect wireless bandwidth considerably.
The information rate on a 4G network is around 150Mbps to 300Mbps per cell, about on par with WiFi 802.11n.
However the cell utilisation is much higher. You would expect around 2-10 users on a home WiFi connection compared to around about up to a couple of hundred on a 4G network cell.
Assuming adequate back haul you can expect about 10-60Mbps on a 4G cell depending on a number of factors, Telstra for example gave me about 15Mbps in Sydney, however Vodafone 4G in Auckland (NZ) will give around 50Mbps (although that is expected to drop to around 25Mbps by the time the network reaches saturation, as the Telstra network has). This is compared to WiFi where you can reasonably expect 50-100Mbps, assuming all your devices are 802.11n compatible.
The problem is, WiFi in most people’s homes today is powered by ADSL2+, which means that although you can get 50-100Mbps using this technology, you’ll likely only get 10Mbps. This gives a false impression that 4G connections are “faster”. FTTH deployments, and the DOCSIS 3.0 cable services offered by Telstra and Optus which offer around 100Mbps in current configurations will increase this so that you can utilise more of your WiFi.
The key difference however is not raw information transfer, it’s scalability, 4G networks don’t scale very well. To overcome this Telcos attempt to provide disincentive towards their usage, so that they can a) under provision the network and b) increase their ARPU. This is why quota is typically about 10x times the price on fixed line connections.
We could theoretically provide a 4G network able to service the entire country to the level we currently utilise both the fixed line and mobile wireless networks, there is often a myth spread that says there isn’t enough spectrum to do it, however, to do so would be extremely cost ineffective, and even worse if we continue to demand increases of information at the rate we have been for the past 2 decades it will actually start to become physically impossible as well within a few decades. Interesting to note that although we have increased spectral efficiency with new wireless technologies (the amount of bits we can squeeze through a particular “block” of bandwidth) we have also increased spectral requirements. In other words our ability to more efficiently utilise spectrum is advancing slower than demand is.
We can get around this by using our home wired connections to provide WiFi. This also has an added advantage that if you require a hard line at home for something, like on demand high definition TV access, which is unreliable over both 4G and WiFi technologies, you can easily run a cable from your NTU (network termination unit, a.k.a. modem), and your TV.
Using WifFi at home has its own problems, interference being one of them. If you live in a MDU you may understand what I mean by this: you turn on your laptop and tell it to connect to a WiFi network, and there can be dozens to chose from. In the 2.4GHz area, there are only three unique spots for WiFi, and only another 5 or 6 in the 5GHz band. That’s not a lot to work with.
It’s a complicated situation, and difficult to sum up quickly. If there was one statement I would use to try and answer your question it would be you can expect to download about 10 times more data on a fibre feed Wi-Fi network than over 4G, and the former will be fast reliably compared to 4G despite delivering equivalent peak information rates to users.
NB: I have tried to stick to current generation technology for this explanation, I am aware of 802.11ac and it’s ability to deliver 1Gbps speed to home WiFi. If you were feeling you need to point this out I will point out some LTE-Advanced trials in Europe as well.
Thanks very much NightKhaos, for your generous response. In essence this is not hard to summarise to a broad audience: Large pipeline feeding 3 or 4 users within 20 m Vs large pipeline feeding 200+ users over 1-2 km?
That fits, yes. I guess maybe it is easier to sum up than I thought :)
Except it’s not a very large pipe, it quite a small, restricted one which is why mobile broadband networks suffer so badly from contention (where lots of users are trying to use the network at the same time). To eliminate contention to the point where it is usable in high density areas during peak times they would need ten times the tower density, which is going to be a pretty hard sell.
> It’s a complicated situation, and difficult to sum up quickly. If there was one statement I would use to try and answer your question it would be you can expect to download about 10 times more data on a fibre feed Wi-Fi network than over 4G, and the former will be fast reliably compared to 4G despite delivering equivalent peak information rates to users.
True, but the question is how much data will the basic user be able to live with (basic as in the 50% on 12/1Mbps) and then determine how much of this the 4G network could support.
This is the problem with speed tiers on the NBN. The base speed tier (and arguably 25/5Mps as well) will be slower than 4G. Asking people on a limited budget to fork out $40+ a month for the same speed on a fixed connection may not work, when people can buy significantly more data on a mobile plan with that same $40.
“True, but the question is how much data will the basic user be able to live with (basic as in the 50% on 12/1Mbps) and then determine how much of this the 4G network could support.”
It would really help if you didn’t use false assumptions in your arguments. The largest take up rate on the NBN is the 100/40 plan with something in excess of 40% so this is the area where you need to be looking at data usage. The capacity of the LTE network (it isn’t up to 4G.specs yet) is entirely dependent on the numbers using it and it already suffers problems with not being ubiquitous and enormous variations in performance and reliability. They tell me it is great in some areas of Sydney but I can only get it using Telstra which is as dear as poison..
“Asking people on a limited budget to fork out $40+ a month for the same speed on a fixed connection may not work, when people can buy significantly more data on a mobile plan with that same $40”
On Mobile Broadband $50 gets you 8Gb of data with a guaranteed speed of at least 2GB/s on the Telstra 4G network when you are in some limited areas, if not them the speed is going to drop and drop substantially. (Source: Telstra 4G coverage map) On the iiNet NBN plan 12/1 you get 20GB + 20GB for $50 ( http://www.iinet.net.au/nbn/nbn-plan-residential.html ) Now I will be nice and only count the 20GB peak usage and this is 2.5 time the amount of data on the Telstra 4G network. The speed of the NBN network is always close to 12mbps while the speed of the Telstra 4G network varies depending on where you are and how many other people are using the network.
The majority of those people on a limited budget will find that they can switch to an NBN plan with a VOIP phone and a long term prepaid mobile plan and will be no worse off than what they are now. Most will be better off. VOIP calls generally are free to landline numbers and the cost of calls to mobiles is generally less than half what is charged by mobile carriers
The mobile phone network is not a substitute for the NBN. It is a complimentary network. Efforts to substitute the NBN with a mobile phone network are ludicrous and the only people who I can imagine pushing such a scheme are mobile phone companies and their sycophants.
“I have tried to stick to current generation technology for this explanation, I am aware of 802.11ac and it’s ability to deliver 1Gbps speed to home WiFi. If you were feeling you need to point this out I will point out some LTE-Advanced trials in Europe as well.”
I can buy a 802.11ac access point right now such as Asus RT-AC66U.
I really don’t want to get into things like adoption rates and technology penetration rates. Suffice it to say that 802.11ac won’t provide an impact for a while. The majority of people still have 802.11n capable devices and routers.
I’m sure you’re aware upgrading your router to ac does not automatically allow you to use ac like speeds because the router will engage legacy support for n devices.
The pipe feeding the LTE base would be a gigabit, the size of the pipe planed for an individual house on NBN is a gigabit.
The comparison is 1 gigabit each or 1 gigabit per suburb. Do the math.
> It would really help if you didn’t use false assumptions in your arguments. The largest take up rate on the NBN is the 100/40 plan with something in excess of 40% so this is the area where you need to be looking at data usage
I have never argued that demand for the high speeds and high downloads do not exist. The question is how much of the market this segment comprises. We are still in the early adopter phase of the project so you would expect the majority of connections to be from those people who take an interest in their internet connection.
The 100Mbps users are in a completely different segment of the market. As different as BMW and Chery car buyers.
> The majority of those people on a limited budget will find that they can switch to an NBN plan with a VOIP phone and a long term prepaid mobile plan and will be no worse off than what they are now. Most will be better off. VOIP calls generally are free to landline numbers and the cost of calls to mobiles is generally less than half what is charged by mobile carriers
For $35-$40 one can easily buy a mobile phone plan which includes unlimited standard & mobile calls and SMS plus 5GB of data. With that sort of plan, VOIP is irrelevant.
With Optus, access to social media normally provides free access to social media sites, for too many Australians that covers the bulk of their internet usage.
The final point is that the person needs to buy a 50Mbps or even 100Mbps plan to see a noticeable difference in performance and that pushes us up to $70+ extra a month.
We. Have. Been. Over. This.
Your lead into this particular subject was barely relevant to the original question asked by John T. He was asking about the technical differences between FTTH and LTE/4G, not what people will do with the market under schemes to bring these two technologies, and especially not how that behaviour might play out on the NBN.
There is no new data to add either. Everyone here is aware of your concerns, as stated I even share them, but we disagree on a solution.
By continuing pushing this line you are actually not helping the debate at all.
I said earlier in the comments that although there are some falsehoods spread by the pro NBN camp these in no way forgive the transgression of the Opposition. This point applies here too.
Tell me, while ranting on the Internet about this particular problem have you once voiced your concerns with your local member or the DBCDE? Have you once articulated this concern to anyone in a position to actually make a difference?
I previously attempted to play devils advocate to you, hopping to explain how your concerns were not a deal breaker, but it’s clear to me that’s not enough for you. Unfortunately no one here, or on Whirlpool, can actually do anything about this.
Your local member and the DBCDE, on the other hand, can. And because of that, everyone here who knows that, who are intelligent enough to understand the problems, and foresee them early, followed the relevant process, and contacted their local member. And they did one other thing, which you should do. You must have come to the debate late, because almost everyone is past the send letter to the MP stage, or the respond to submissions, etc.
This website comments function is for commenting on the developing news. If you’re truly serious about using this website as intended, please use the forum below, with a canned letter addressing this issue, to send to your local member. Allow members of this community to critique it, and then if you manage to get a good enough response, other people will send it.
However, again playing devils advocate, I would wait until after the election to do this, because a) your local member may change and b) NBN might be scrapped as we know it, making your concerns moot. The reason is in this particular case the specifics of the NBN are coming second to if we actually get the NBN this election. If the Coalition were more open minded you would send it now, and hope one of the policies on the table come election time reflects your concerns, then, naturally, vote for that party.
I’m guessing you’re young and not overly familiar with how the political process works. What you are doing is known as soap boxing. The problem with soap boxing is that although you tend to get the word out, usually not to anyone in a position to do anything about it. Only people with lots of political or industry clout get that privilege, like Simon Hackett.
I hate to break this to you, but in the eyes of the politicians, you’re currently no body. A vote, nothing more. They don’t care if you agree with the specifics of a policy, only that you’ll vote for them.
I look forward to your canned response on the forums and will most definitely offer my advice on how to improve it. We have until October before sending it will be most effective.
However, the Delimiter forum community is small, you might be better off on Whirlpool. There, however, expect a chorus of people who don’t care at all and feel that for some reason you actually need to know that.
> Tell me, while ranting on the Internet about this particular problem have you once voiced your concerns with your local member or the DBCDE? Have you once articulated this concern to anyone in a position to actually make a difference?
Yes. I’ve discussed it with the current Labor Member and the Liberal Candidate
> I hate to break this to you, but in the eyes of the politicians, you’re currently no body. A vote, nothing more. They don’t care if you agree with the specifics of a policy, only that you’ll vote for them.
Valid, but at the moment on a particular local issue I am making noise and being listened to. I had two members of parliament, staffer for another member, the Liberal candidate and other key figures turn up to discuss the issues.
Well that’s great. So let me reiterate:
You’ve been heard.
“The question is how much of the market this segment comprises.” Hey the figures are out 40% plus of people connecting to the NBN are doing it at 100/40 Mbps. Your claim of 50% on 12/1 is obviously bullshit because the next highest adoption is 25/5 Mbps and that is around the 25% mark.so there isn’t 50% of the market available.
“With Optus, access to social media normally provides free access to social media sites, for too many Australians that covers the bulk of their internet usage.” I think you will find that Optus are ending the free access to social network sites as are almost all of the carriers.
“For $35-$40 one can easily buy a mobile phone plan which includes unlimited standard & mobile calls and SMS plus 5GB of data. With that sort of plan, VOIP is irrelevant.” Not at the price in the 4G configuration you were sprouting about earlier. Have you seen the ABS figures for fixed and mobile broadband? Fixed broadband data download is over 90% of data traffic and mobile data is less than 10%.
“The final point is that the person needs to buy a 50Mbps or even 100Mbps plan to see a noticeable difference in performance and that pushes us up to $70+ extra a month.” What utter bullshit Mathew!!. Are you deliberately lying? I have already pointed you to the Telstra coverage map which shows conclusively the vast majority of people are not even getting anything like 40Mbps which is the top speed on Telstra’s 4G network and has a guaranteed minimum speed of 2Mbps The next step down which covers most of the populated Metro area is a maximum of 1.1Mbps. Are you trying to tell us that people are not going to notice a 10 times increase in speed? How about getting your facts right.
The facts are that there is a place for Mobile Phones and mobile phone internet and there is a place for a fixed line phone and for fixed line broadband internet. It is really time that you did some basic research in to both systems and worked out where they fit now and will possibly fit in the future.
> ey the figures are out 40% plus of people connecting to the NBN are doing it at 100/40 Mbps. Your claim of 50% on 12/1 is obviously bullshit
Two very simple points: 40% are early adopters. You would expect them to select the higher speeds because they care. Second point: go read the NBNCo Corporate Plan. There is a slight chance you might actually understand the vast gap between people’s expectations and what NBNCo are actually planning. Slight hint: most people think it is equivalent to Google Fibre, but it isn’t even close.
> “The final point is that the person needs to buy a 50Mbps or even 100Mbps plan to see a noticeable difference in performance and that pushes us up to $70+ extra a month.” What utter bullshit Mathew!!. Are you deliberately lying? I have already pointed you to the Telstra coverage map which shows conclusively the vast majority of people are not even getting anything like 40Mbps.
I’m not lying. You need to consider what the network map will look like in 10 years time. Are you aware that Telstra are actively installing 4G in areas where NBNCo are rolling out? NBNCo barely changed their estimates on 12/1Mbps users when they increased the number of 100/40Mbps users. Are the 50% on 12/1Mbps likely to care about faster speeds when they won’t spend an extra $5/month to more than double their speed? I’m sure many posters in this thread would pay much more than that to double their current speed.
“Two very simple points: 40% are early adopters. You would expect them to select the higher speeds because they care. Second point: go read the NBNCo Corporate Plan. There is a slight chance you might actually understand the vast gap between people’s expectations and what NBNCo are actually planning. Slight hint: most people think it is equivalent to Google Fibre, but it isn’t even close.”
Now you are showing your bias. The fact is that in real life, you know not in a forward plan full of guesses and estimates, the adoption rate of 50% for the 12/1 speed is not happening and wont happen. This simply means that your original argument is defeated by the facts. I have read the NBN Co Corporate Plan and it was prepared on the worst case basis as far as I can tell. It is not something that is set in stone it is a bloody plan, and PLANS CHANGE if they didn’t it would be a waste of time having them. As to Google Fibre I would think very few Australians know what it is, or give a rats about it. I certainly don’t because it is something being rolled out for the septics. You are clutching at straws Mathew you have been shown to be using false information for your argument so you promptly try and change your reasoning. This is the typical strategy that the Liberal Party have been using with their arguments about the NBN spreading lies, fear, uncertainty and doubt I think you must be one of the Liberal Party robotic stooges that are about the place.
“I’m not lying. You need to consider what the network map will look like in 10 years time.”
The simple fact is that the NBN should be completed in 10 years time and to be honest I hope that in 10 years the whole of Australia is covered for true 4G for mobile phones. I am talking about the here and now however and the simple fact is that the mobile network is creamed by the NBN network with 10X the speed and 2.5 times the data at the same cost of $50.
Your whole argument has been demolished. The real life figures after over 12 months of NBN adoption show that the adopters of 12/1 Mbps are less than 25% of the total. Current download speeds to the majority of Telstra customers is less than 1/10th of the minimum speed on the NBN. The amount of data offered for download on a basic $50 plan is 2.5 times higher on an NBN plan.
Put simply the chance of Mobile Internet affecting the NBN adoption is somewhere between buckleys and none
All you seem to be trying to do Mathew is justify the stupid comment from a couple of Liberal stooges that mobile broadband would replace the NBN. That is patent nonsense and even they have been smart enough to not repeat it. Perhaps you should take heed.
If the NBN must be built, it must be built under a Coalition government.
Labor are too incompetent to manage such an important and costly project such as this one. We have seen from past history that Labor usually introduce big policies(such as medicare and HECS for example) but it takes a coalition government to fix them up and make them economically viable. Afterall this is what the coalition is all about, making government sustainable.
Clearly the NBN management are incompetent and this Labor government are failing to do anything about it for fear of making it look like a failure… which at the moment it is. Only by voting in a Coalition government will we be able to reform the NBN so you can get your internet faster and cheaper.
How are the NBN management incompetent?
Are you joking??
They’ve missed every single target they have set for themselves, every single time. They are about 1 MILLION PREMISES behind on their 2010 corporate plan, now even on their updated late 2012 corporate plan they are going to be about 200,000 off.
Their financial plan is based on rosey projections which were never going to happen which means the price of the entire thing will balloon. Will Quigley and his team be getting the sack for their failings? Of course not, that’ll make Senator Conjob look bad… best to keep pouring money onto the fire and hope it turns into gold.
This here makes for some good reading, though Ill assume you’ll stick your fingers in your ears and go lalalala not listening because it’s in a Murdoch rag rather than disputing it’s points:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/opinion/quigley-must-go-because-nbn-is-failing/story-e6frg9if-1226608008370
You do realise the only target they have missed that was within their reasonable ability to control was the June 2013 target?
You do realise that successfully meeting targets isn’t the soul metric you measure competency by?
Throwing an article at me that uses the same falsehoods as justification that you are doesn’t back up your point.
Typical News Ltd report that fails to evaluate the reasons, just their spin.
At least the AFR is making some attempt to ascertain the issues even if they add their own spin
“If the NBN must be built, it must be built under a Coalition government.”
I think you’ll find that most here (including myself) don’t care who builds it so long as it is built and built properly as planned. However your insistence on a coalition government overseeing the construction suggests your reasons for opposing it are political. I should also point out that the current government is effectively a coalition government…
“Only by voting in a Coalition government will we be able to reform the NBN so you can get your internet faster and cheaper.”
Sorry but what you are suggesting is not guaranteed at all. They will not be able to build a FttN patchwork any “faster” given that it may be 2015 before anything is even started, with a 6 year build time the completion date would be not much different to the proper NBN plan. They will not be able to guarantee cheaper either (this is simply deliberate deception on the coalitions part actually) it’s more likely that you’ll be paying the same price as you pay now for a vastly inferior product to the proper NBN build.
btw next time you post a comment please try to keep the blatant electioneering to a minimum, I am able to ignore the superfluous crap but many others here will not take your comments seriously which is understandable given the obvious political bias.
Agreed on the political commentary. Delimiter should add that to the guidelines. Hey, now and then politics is needed in a discussion. In this post it wasn’t, it was purely politics for politics sake. TheTruthHurts, I think you will find that most on here has in the past voted for a Liberal government. They are interested in the best communications system for Australia, not in electioneering. The fact that so many will vote Labor because they feel the Coalition alternative is so short sighted and in the long run wasteful speaks volumes. I’d be quite happy to vote for the Coalition, but I can’t because to do so I’d need to see some good policy and it just isn’t there.
May i suggest a closer look at the actual historical record rather than the version you obviously blindly believe
The NBN could cost 11 trillion. Gold plate everything. Job done.
This does not dictate that a project will cost 11 trillion, just that it could. Understand what Turnbull and his party is doing here. It’s fighting fact with supposition based example.
It has instead, repeated and wilfully suggested, and made claims of what it “might” and “could” cost. It’s never held an official, policy based postion on an NBN alternative. So presuming there *is* an alternative is going beyond the party line.
And that should be of considerable concern. It doesn’t really matter what Turnbull claims at this point. It’s simply smoke and mirrors.
Abbott has simply claimed it’s a rort and will be axed. Funding will be removed (thus the investment becomes a cost) and diverted elsewhere.
Last statements are that $50 billion will be saved by winding NBNco back/ down. Abbott’s government will look and act very similarly to the current LNP government in QLD.
Investment is not the platform. Cuts and taxes are. NBN will cease to exist beyond sporadic patches where there’s existing contracts. This is the future under a liberal government under Abbott leadership.
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