The perfect demonstration of
an NBN false dichotomy

1. As I have said to you elsewhere Renai, it compares the Guaranteed speeds of each policy in the next term of Federal Government.

   Labor Fibre: You get 1000Mbps guaranteed if you have/get fibre and want to pay the plan cost, else 25/5 is available via Fixed Wireless and Satellite with upgrades to those systems on the roadmap.

   Liberal FttN: Only 25Mbps guaranteed. You *MIGHT* get more but that is down to dumb luck. If you want more, you might be able to pay for a fibre extension.

   That’s the choice people are making at the next election. They are choosing who governs for the next term, not for the next two terms. They are the two offers on the table when it comes to broadband, and anything else only muddies the waters.

   • Again that’s a false dichotomy.

     Labor’s NBN plan will only be (halfway?) finished by the end of the next term of the Federal Government, meaning that practically, millions of Australian premises will see no upgrade in that three-year period compared to what they have today.

     In comparison, the Coalition policy would see all Australians receive between 25Mbps and 100Mbps by the end of that same three-year period.

     Again, you see how the actual situation on the ground is more complex than FTTP versus FTTN?

     • I will bet you $100 dollars that if Liberals get in that in 2016 we will not have a guaranteed speed of 25Mbps for all Australians and that they will abandon the goal of 50Mbps by 2019 all together.

       • I actually believe that the Coalition won’t meet its stated NBN rollout targets — just as Labor has not met its either.

         • I think that the Liberals will be lucky to have even started their rollout by 2016. There is so much negotiating and work to be done before it starts, and Turnbull seems to have this attitude that it will all just magically happen. Copper handed over for free, Telstra playing nice, the ACCC not being worried about anything, Abbott happily stumping up the cash when there is slashing going on everywhere else.

           As it stands at the moment,Turnbull is going to need to spend a lot of time in Olivanders Wand Shop prior to September, trying to find the magic NBN wand to make all his “promises” actually happen.

         • Spot on! Both sides are using the same people to build in the same places, so both sides will run into many of the same construction issue.

         • +1

         • The whole point of using copper already in the ground is that less building work is involved. Making best use of what you have, rather than throwing everything away and starting from fresh. New Zealand got 80% coverage of FTTN with 4 years work. Not as good as the proposed NBN speed, not as good as the proposed NBN coverage, but the difference is that in NZ they actually finished the job.

           I might point out that in NZ, Chorus are doing some additional FTTN work even as we speak, they are catching up some outlying towns with the Rural Broadband Initiative which involves a mix of direct fiber to key sites (e.g. schools) and FTTN for regular houses (more roadside cabinets). They are also building extra wireless towers (generally connected to the fiber backbone for obvious reasons).

         • It’s also not as good as the FTTN possibilites claimed by the liberal party. But why would we use a real life examples, when we can promote a goal.

         • Fact 1: Chorus FTTN upgrades were ADSL based and designed with a goal speed of 10Mbps. As an example I can only get 9Mbps, but that’s mainly because of shit house wiring. A select few can get VDSL where it is offered, I can’t because my line length is too long.

           Fact 2: Upon doing the CBA of using the node upgrade to provide UFB is was discovered that the line length that Chorus had chosen was too short to achieve the goals of of UFB. Instead of further shortening it Chorus is now instead providing a FTTH rollout to around 70%. I am slated to get it by the end of the year.

           Fact 3: The continuing work in rural communities was devised to try and appease the people in rural communities, about 30% of the population, who won’t be getting UFB by providing them much needed backhaul upgrades and improved mobile coverage. This project is known as the Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI), a joint project between Chorus and Vodafone. I
           The RBI is considered a joke by most rural residents as in very few cases will it actually improve Broadband speeds. It’s main advantage, and why it is supported, is the much needed Vodafone coverage upgrade.

           In other words comparing New Zealands FTTN network rollout with Turnbull’s proposal is disingenuous because they have completely different goals and purposes. If anything the path New Zealand are taking proves that Turnbull’s proposals are a waste of time.

           Of course you’re cry Apples vs Oranges at that too. So how about we agree to, as Renai has been asking us too for the past month, to rationally compare the options on the table and not bring in useless (yes, useless) comparisons with things like what my homeland are doing, or what American are doing, or what even BT are doing.

           Don’t misunderstand, they are useful, but to a very limited degree, and the Chorus rollout isn’t really at all considering the topology they choose and the results they got.

         • “I actually believe that the Coalition won’t meet its stated NBN rollout targets — just as Labor has not met its either.”
           Which brings me to the thing I want to point out.
           “The evidence so far supports the theory that Labor’s version of the NBN will take significantly longer than the Coalition’s”
           Are you crazy? No it doesn’t! The evidence, perhaps, shows that Labor’s version will take longer than they thought it would. It does not show that the Coalition’s plan will be faster.

         • FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTP. That’s a fact.

         • I honestly don’t see how that’s relevant. If it’s a fact that requires no evidence, why did you bring up evidence in the first place? On the flip side if it does require evidence then this is clearly not it, because the numbers we have only relate to FttP.

         • Yes it is, once you get started.

           Most people assume Turnbull can wave a magic wand and it’ll all happen.

           How disappointed will these people be when they discover its another 3 year delay?

           How disappointed will these people be when either we get to 2020 and discover that FTTN is either obsolete or uneconomic and we have to recommence the FTTH build, or alternately how disappointed will these people be when the discover that FTTH is a crock but they have to pay it off for another decade before anyone can afford FTTH?

           This is the kind of horror story the Liberals are leading us into, and it won’t just be on broadband.

         • er.. “FTTN is a crock”.. but you knew that.

         • FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTH… As long as they get started at the same time from the same starting position. This is not the case as FTTH is already progressing and has all the required regulatory and contractual arrangements in place. FTTN will need to have much of this reworked before any construction can progress, as well as the actual real-world financing, engineering and network design. As long as you don’t have to repair or replace cables that are insufficient for adequate FTTN VDSL(2) performance.

           So there are fundamental assumptions that need to be met in order for your assertion to hold up, fundamental assumptions that we know are based on very uncertain reality. But we can say for sure that they aren’t starting from the same point at the same time, which calls into question any assumption that FTTN can be completed as quickly as FTTH, let alone sooner.

         • “FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTP. That’s a fact.”

           Assuming that YOU own the copper network, YOU have already remediated the copper as required for data, YOU have the required skilled workforce and YOU have a detailed plan for the rollout already in place including contracts with manufacturers to supply the 10’s of thousands of nodes they will have to build for you.

           YOU meaning of course the company rolling out the FTTN.

           If any of the above are not in place, any suggestion of FTTN being a faster deployment is just conjecture.

         • “FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTP. That’s a fact.”

           Can you point me to a non-incumbent roll-out thats deployed FTTN Renai?

           I’m actually curious to know if anyone else in the world has even attempted such a thing, I haven’t run across any yet with all my FTTx searching (though that doesn’t mean there haven’t been any of course. You seem pretty confident about it, so I figured there must be one somewhere!).

         • Of course the Liberals won’t meet their stated targets. And that’s not just construction delay either. That’s also the 3 years of delay setting the project up.

           When its all said and done, the FTTH network will be complete around 2022. FTTN might be complete around 2020 or so.

           When Turnbull says “sooner” who is he fooling? The only real “sooner” is the process that delivers a fully fibre network sooner. FTTN is an exercise in simply putting that off, and costing more money in the process.

         • Ah, but what about the guaranteed speeds alluded to by AJ?

         • ..and the guaranteed speeds?

       • +1 AJ

     • I highly doubt the coalition will deliver 25mbps within 3 years. I remember how long it took labor after 2007 to work out that FTTN was unviable, which took 2 years (2009), then to get regulatory approvals + telstra/optus deals on the new FTTP plan. They may not start before 2016. At least the current FTTP plan provides some level of certainty over the future of telecommunications.

     • > In comparison, the Coalition policy would see all Australians receive between 25Mbps and 100Mbps by the end of that same three-year period.

       Oh, look! It’s a flying pig. How did it get to fly? I don’t know. Silly pig.

       • But seriously, upload speeds were the main focus of that website. And 5 Mbps won’t just be something that 10% of users will have, it’ll be near enough the median. As such, I consider this website quite on the mark concerning uploads, which was its main focus. Downloads, not so much I’ll admit.

         • And it’s not like 1 Gbps will continue to either stay expensive ( http://i.imgur.com/quvof8D.png ) or be the top end of PON with 10GPON and 40GPON coming along. So, the dichotomy, while it misrepresented the download speeds in the coalition plan and to a lesser extent upload speeds to, is not as stark as one may think going into the future.

     • “Again, you see how the actual situation on the ground is more complex than FTTP versus FTTN?”

       That’s a cop out, we’re talking about guaranteed speeds of a technology, not feelpinions from politicians. These are hard facts, no amount of “this is more complex than you think” & false balance will explain away technical capabilities of both technologies.

       Fact: VDSL2 is a “best effort” service, even 25Mbps can’t be 100% guaranteed.
       Fact: GPON’s actual speed is 1Gbps, nothing theoretical there.
       Fact: vectoring doesn’t give any benefit above 500m from VDSL2 card
       Fact: 100Mbps services require 0.60 copper & vectoring above 100m from VDSL2 card
       Fact: Australia’s copper network rarely uses 0.60 copper in built up areas
       Fact: The NBN came about because Australia’s copper network is so bad
       Fact: The Coalition policy is littered with misinformation, vague speak & outright lies ($94b figure)

       The list goes on, & if you’d read through the backlog of articles on my site, you’d have seen all the research I’d done rather than tweeting “you can’t just throw around claims such as “lying”, without presenting some evidence. You leave yourself open to a defamation suit”.

       To be honest, I’m now of the opinion that Delimiter is of no value to Australian technology as you’re now using the same bullshit lines as Turnbull was using on me 6 months ago.

       • It’s the vituperative hate in this which makes me want to discount your entire line of ‘factual’ reasoning altogether. (and yes 90% of your facts are facts, but you fall over due to emotions at the end)

         Renai has been upfront on his preferences, stated his assumptions and provided a fair (and not falsely “balanced”) coverage. Renai’s commentary on the one-eyed, dogmatic approach is only confirmed by the vitriol you spray as spittle across your keyboard….

         Chill man, raw technology absolutes occur so rarely that I would have thought a fair amount of pragmatism would have eventually been thumped into peoples skulls by now.

       • > Fact: vectoring doesn’t give any benefit above 500m from VDSL2 card

         > Fact: 100Mbps services require 0.60 copper & vectoring above 100m from VDSL2 card

         Not sure if you can really consider these to be facts.

       • “GPON’s actual speed is 1Gbps, nothing theoretical there.”

         G-PON’s actual speed it 2.488Gbs down and 1.244 up to each and every user.
         Software determines what speed the customer can access because it must be shared.
         NBNco will allow individual customers to access 1Gbs in December because they will have enough back-haul in place to deal with it by then.

     • You could enable 100 mbit over three years. Swap out ADSL2 dslam infrastructure, put in VDSL2, tell end users to suck up the ~$150 or so for a VDLS2 router.

       Basically that’s for Telstra owned infrastructure. And ISPs could too. You’ll get “up to” 100mbit. But likely a lot less. Particularly over a single copper pair.

       To re-work the Telstra infrastructure agreement, deploy 40,000+ nodes (and mini-nodes – NODECEPTION), re-terminate millions of copper pairs inside of 3 years is an almost impossible logistical and technical nightmare.

       There are council agreements, hardware purchases for all the new VDSL2 kit, new copper runs, old copper replacements; then there’s the inclusion of potential for fibre use.

       We can’t count “in-build” in this case, because we can’t count that now, it’s considered an irrelevance.

       Faith doesn’t build networks. People, hardware and policies do. And the later doesn’t work well against mythical time scales.

       • I initially read NO DECEPTION instead of NODE-CEPTION.

         That aside, the LBN plan, well, rather well researched bunch of promises still needs verification on node numbers, infrastructure condition, upgrade paths, costs, delivery time frames and deliverable speeds.

         All that of course is to come in the form of a LNP cost benifit analysis and review of the roll-out to date. Not that I personally hold out much hope for those reports to stating anything other than exactly what Turnbull would wants them to.

         I hold little hope of either party meeting their time frames or budgets, however only FTTP will meet promised DL and UL speeds at this stage. In relation to time frames, at least the NBN has contractors on the ground and the major negotiations and legal aspects behind it. In comparison, the delivery of the LBN seems full of uncertainty and possessing a certain “cross that bridge when we come to it” mentality.

         Those that are arguing for the FTTN LBN are doing so with a large degree of faith.

     • @ Renai… ” Labor’s NBN plan will only be (halfway?) finished by the end of the next term of the Federal Government, meaning that practically, millions of Australian premises will see no upgrade in that three-year period compared to what they have today.

       In comparison, the Coalition policy would see all Australians receive between 25Mbps and 100Mbps by the end of that same three-year period.

       Again, you see how the actual situation on the ground is more complex than FTTP versus FTTN?”

       —-

       Indeed Renai it is much more complex, because you also have the flip-side to your scenario…people in a similar situation to me (and I am aware it’s not just about me, but this is an actual so…) who are scheduled to have the NBN constructed “from Sept 2014”, who, if the Coalition win the election and roll out FttN, will surely, instead be waiting longer for an inferior outcome

       :(

       • Very true :(

     • Renai,

       You’re leaving out the 3 year delay involved in getting FTTN under construction.

       In that case a fairer comparison would be around 2018, when the NBN as it is, even with current delays, is over half constructed, versus about the mid way point for a FTTN network.

       At that point we’ve had 4 years of availability of 1Gbps on the NBN versus a full implementation of FTTN with vectoring.

       And at about the same time 10GPON will have matured and may be trialed in some places.

       Now, what that leaves us is a comparison between FTTN with vectoring, that gives us in some cases closer to 100Mbps, near a Node, but more often around 80Mbps allowing for the state of the copper. At 500m the vendor’s claims of 80Mbps with vectoring may amount to again, a spread between 50Mbps and 80Mbps. And at the far reach (lets call it 750m) the vendor’s claims of 50Mbps will be fully stretched. Meaning typically 35Mbps to 50Mbps.

       In addition the variable and unpredictable state of the copper means that even with vectoring, it can be expected that some significant number of addresses may only see ADSL2 type speeds. And the other faults that are common on the copper network that cause dropouts, such as shot noise, momentary disconnects and so on. Vectoring won’t fix those.

       So as well as the network not performing as Turnbull claims (Yes, it will be reasonably fast for most) it will also have its reliability issues.

       More vexed still is the issue of uplink. Now VDSL exposes its weakness by allocating further room for uplink but doing so at the higher end of the frequency range, which again means that sub-optimal copper will lose uplink speed first.

       As a consequence, it will be very common to find uplinks of around 5Mbps to 10Mbps (depending on the profile) and quite often less than 5Mbps. In this respect James was being quite fair.

       Certainly the performance of a VDSL based network will be even more variable when it comes to uplink.

       Now where that gets us, is if we do a comparison of maximum “guaranteed” speeds we’re comparing downlink of 1Gbps versus downlink of 50Mbps (yes, I’m being fair) and a here’s where the rot sets in and this is why James focused on uplink. We’re comparing 400Mbps versus 5Mbps.

       A ratio of 20:1 down and 80:1 up.

       For all the flak James copped, his site gives a pretty reasonable (if simplistic) idea of the enormous gulf in capability.

       Once again, Renai, I’d like to draw attention to the wider picture.

       Why are you defending the indefensbile? This entire debate seems to hinge on one presumption. That FTTN is substantially cheaper than FTTH. And that alone justifies putting off building a FTTH network.

       Problem is, we’ve reached the point where that just isn’t true. The Liberals estimate of $29.6 billion for the actual capital expenditure gives us a rough idea of what the government (aka taxpayer) has to borrow. On the other side is the NBN whose total borrowing requirement is more like $36B, of which the government expects to raise $30.5B. And the reason for the difference is that NBNco expects to have a business case and a risk level commensurate with commercial borrowing for the difference.

       So what we’re now defending, Renai, is “saving” less than a billion dollars. Huh? Why is this worth it?

       Oh, but it gets worse.

       The problem with a FTTN network is, its temporary. There is no possible future in which fibre has not replaced copper. So the cost of a FTTN network is not an alternative to the cost of a FTTH network. Rather its additional spending on the path to a fully fibre network.

       So why, Renai, are you defending spending more money on something whose entire consequence is to delay the inevitable?

     • Yes, but if Labor retain government at least it is likely we will ALL get the FTTH NBN (even with delays, after another three years FTTH will be too far progressed to roll back or alter) . If the LNP are voted in we will eventually get FTTN whether or not that happens in their first term – by the time that three years is up they will almost certainly have progressed far enough that FTTN will be an unavoidable reality for a very significant proportion of the country.

2. “Essentially what Brotchie is doing is comparing the theoretical maximum speed of Labor’s NBN policy with the Coalition’s theoretical minimum speed.”

   Actually 1000/400 is a plan that is available in December it is not theoretical and will be available to anyone. The coalitions speed is the only guaranteed speed it is a lottery based on line length and copper condition to call it a minimum speed as if you can just ask for the maximum speed and get it is silly.

   So guaranteed 1000/400 or guaranteed 25/5.

   FttN speed is not a choice.

   • “According to the pair’s media release, the Coalition’s policy is based on the core pledge that the group will deliver download speeds of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps by the end of 2016 — effectively the end of its first term in power — and 50Mbps to 100Mbps by the end of 2019, effectively the end of its second term. According to the Coalition’s statement this morning, the 25Mbps to 100Mbps pledge applies to “all premises”, while the higher pledge by 2019 applies to “90 percent of fixed line users”.”

     http://delimiter.com.au/2013/04/09/coalition-releases-long-awaited-rival-nbn-policy/

     Where are people getting this 25Mbps from? The Coalition policy is minimum 50Mbps to 90 percent of fixed-line connections.

     • The reason we don’t believe it is that in no other market in the world have they been able to guarantee 50Mbps on any dsl tech unless the loop is 100-200 m which we will not have and vectoring is actually worse on anything longer than ~400m from what I have read.

       Flat out it does not add up

       • Show me proof that what they are saying is even possible because based on what I have seen and based on Geoff Huston’s blog yesterday he does not think they will be able to do 50Mbps this is a person that just yesterday you said we should listen to what has changed between now and then?

         and if it is not possible then we are pissing $30 billion up against a wall

     • It should be noted that the Coalitions policy doesn’t (yet) set minimum line length for the copper tail.

       This is a critical-path component to the minimum speeds any FTTN network can achieve. VDSL drop-off over copper is steep, the Coalition is already discussing “node inception” where there are mini-nodes.

       We do not have a documented statement on last-mile line structure. That’s a technical requirement within any VDSL2 deployment. It wouldn’t matter which party is the author of any such policy.

       The policy should state minimum deliverables; it doesn’t.

       So, frankly, until policy sets actual minimum speeds, and what the network is expected to guarantee, we can’t make any kind of concrete statements.

       Bravado aside, I think the site is a bit of a stupid miss-step. It’s no better than the garbage the Australian has been pumping out. Facts are being buried by political spin and obfuscation.

       And it’s “just the facts, ma’am” that are important. They are what any resulting network will be built on. Policy won’t define the minutia. But it should define the deliverables.

       Turnbull’s current policy provides speeds without context. This is only ever going to result in confusion and “best guess”.

       • — correction, the above should read “maximum line length”.

     • Renai wrote…
       Where are people getting this 25Mbps from? The Coalition policy is minimum 50Mbps to 90 percent of fixed-line connections.

       Under the coalition policy there 93% of premises will be on a fixed line network. That means that 9.3% of all premises served by the fixed line network will not get 50Mbps.

       I think it would be uncontested that the 9.3% will come from those served by FTTN, it is unimaginable that a FTTP could deliver 50Mbps.

       Those 9.3% with less than 50Mbps are not going to be remote users as they would be served by satellite or fixed wireless. Where are they going to come from?

       This is what has been coined NodeLotto, will your number come up? Could your neighbour be getting 50+Mbps when you only get something less than 50Mbps but greater than 25Mbps?

       The coalition policy still calls for $30Billion dollars to be spent (or thereabout) and delivers a much more uncertain outcome.

       Both policies should be judged by the guaranteed minimum speeds (both up and down) available to the overwhelming majority of premises.

       • I say again … The Coalition has pledged 50Mbps to 100Mbps yo the overwhelming majority of Australia. Isn’t 50Mbps the speed they should be judged on, not 25Mbps?

         • “The Coalition policy is minimum 50Mbps to 90 percent of fixed-line connections.”

           But Renai, as I and numerous other commentators have pointed out to you – ad nauseum – this is a wish-list. It’s a Tinkerbell policy. It is NOT a guarantee. And the reason it is not a guarantee, whatever that nice Mr Turnbull might suggest to the contrary, is that it is physically impossible to provide one – at least until you have tested the line; remediated any problems and ensured that the node is sufficiently close to achieve that speed. It appears that Turnbull idolises that equally fine chap, Goebbels – if you say a lie enough times, it morphs into a true statement….

           My argument with you is that you keep writing in such a way as to suggest this IS guaranteed. Might I suggest that something along the lines of “The Coalition policy ASSUMES a minimum 50Mbps to 90 percent of fixed-line connections” is more factual. After all, you constantly tell us you want ‘evidence based reporting’. And, I’m sorry – there ain’t none to back up Turnbull’s spurious claims!

         • can i ask you to provide evidence where renai has written (in his own words) that the coalition policy is gauranteed for 50 or 25 or whatever the number is?

           it’s certainly not in this article. i see no reference to this wording by renai.

         • If you look a couple of messages above yours you will see that Renai wrote (at 12:55 approx):
           “I say again … The Coalition has pledged 50Mbps to 100Mbps yo the overwhelming majority of Australia. Isn’t 50Mbps the speed they should be judged on, not 25Mbps?”

           Pledged = guaranteed in my lexicon.

         • you must be joking.

           for one, pledged and guaranteed and totally different. just because you pledge something (with the best of intentions), many different factors (within and outside of your control) can derail this pledge. guaranteeing this is a totally different thing.

           and two, renai is only quoting what the coalition has actually said. the coalition is pledging this, not renai.

           big difference on both of these points.

           renai’s ‘accuser’ states that he is writing as if the pledge is a guarantee. i fail to see how stating exactly what the coalition has said is therefore placing a guarantee on this pledge.

           you can’t have it both ways. how is quoting what the coalition policy says the wrong way of doing it? the ‘accuser’ then provides an example of ‘the coalition policy assumes’. that’s ridiculous as it puts words in the coalition’s mouth.

         • From the horse’s mouth (not “unscripted comments”):

           http://www.liberal.org.au/fast-affordable-sooner-coalitions-plan-better-nbn

           “Under the Coalition’s NBN all premises will have access to download speeds 25mbps to 100mbps by the end of 2016. The minimum speed will rise to 50mbps by the end of 2019 for 90 per cent of fixed line users.”

           It’s not FTTP speeds but it’s what they’re promising.

         • but the original query was that renai was writing as if it were guaranteed.

           i see no evidence of this.

         • THEY SAID THEY WOULD DO IT.

           WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT???

           READ THE FUCKING POLICY DOCUMENT IF YOU WANT FURTHER INFORMATION.

           For fuck’s sake.

         • @ Renai – “why more do you want?”
           Explanation of how they are going to 50mbps to 90% (amongst some many other things). Turnbull has promised 25mbps minimum, which can be acheived via placing nodes in such a way to make the copper loops a suitable length for 25mbps. After that, any increase is “supposed” to rely on vectoring to acheive a minimum of 50mbps. As far as I am aware, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but no one knows if vectoring will even work over our copper lines as it needs a specific configuration of lines to work properly.
           The only person I believe in all this is the owner of the copper – Telstra via David Thodey. Thodey has said that he thinks Telstra’s copper can do 25mbps. He has made no guarantees above that. Turnbull therefore cant make any guarantees above that. Bottom line is, Turnbull can say what he likes but it is Telstra who will have the final say.

         • “no one knows if vectoring will even work over our copper lines”

           Look, a quick Google search will show that there’s a lot of optimism about it:

           http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/techzine/vdsl2-vectoring-delivers-on-its-promise/

           http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/vectoring-could-boost-coalitions-nbn-speeds-20130502-2iue3.html

           http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/09/idUSnMKW5114a+e0+MKW20130409

           Sure, it’s not conclusive, but I do believe Telstra would have called bullshit on this one publicly if it wasn’t possible to some extent.

         • @Cresoto Vectoring is Vectoring.

           It may not get exactly the same results as other attempts; but it will provide *better* broadband outcomes.

           Having said that; according to <a href="http://blog.ecitele.com/Pages/Post.aspx?PostID=60&Author=ECI%20Staff&quot; that website with one infographic, Vectoring doesn’t take your worst-case 25 megabit link and make it 50 megabits. That link is talking about 0.4mm copper; (someone with better knowledge – is this applicable to Australia? – I have seen comments that 0.6mm is NOT representative FWIW… )

           It takes your worst case 25 megabit link and makes it about 40 megabits. So we will have to wait and see how it behaves in our local conditions.

         • “Sure, it’s not conclusive, but I do believe Telstra would have called bullshit on this one publicly if it wasn’t possible to some extent.”

           Its definitely not conclusive. All the article I have seen, including toe ones you quoted say it depends on the length and condition of the copper loop. Turnbull can only have a short term affect on one of these things – line length – and thats if Telstra lets him. The other thing about vectoring is that it is largely just coming out of trial. Telstra will no doubt want to run their own trials, before they say what can and cant be done with vectoring. No point doing that until they know they have to, i.e. the Libs win the election. Given the speed of Telstra’s trials and testing in the past, Turnbull doesnt want to be holding his breath for it.

           I cant see how it would be in Telstra’s interest to bite the hand that is likely to feed it very well. Why would Thodey want to upset the apple cart before he negotiates the next payday for his shareholders? TLS shareprice is soaring to high of which hasnt been see since before Sol and his posse. Investors are actually starting to be positive about TLS again. Thodey has given just enough support to Turnbull that he can say he can get his policy off the ground. Thats all Thodey needs to do for the moment.

         • 25/50/100, who cares. The difference will be imdeiately obvious. There also no published results of upload speeds beyond 10Mbps that I could implemented right now. With any xDSL equipment upload is the hardest bit as you are dealing with low power consumer equipment that has to deal with the interference on the way back up the line.

           Also basing current purchasing decisions on vendor promises is always a bad plan. IMO unless it is here right now, it’s vaporware.

         • Who cares???! Who cares?!!!

         • Maybe I used the wrong wording, what I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter what FttN speeds you stack up against 1000/400, the difference will be staggering. Try doing a big file copy over 100Mb ethernet, then 1000Mb and you will soon see the difference.

           I would dearly love to even have 50/10Mb right now. However if we are going to fund this with tax payer money, go to the effort of rolling it out and spend more than half the cost of doing it properly and only deliver it slightly sooner (if the Liberals can keep to their targets, which I highly doubt as they face the same issues), it has to be much better than a 10% solution.

         • Theoretically you’re right, but in six years in office, Labor has failed to upgrade my broadband connection, and in fact, has failed to upgrade anyone’s broadband connection beyond a few thousand satellite users and 70,000 people on the copper. At this stage, I’m willing to give anyone a chance who thinks they can speed things up.

         • +1
           I don’t think anybody disputes that FTTP is a better technical solution (apart from Alan Jones and ray Hadley).
           If the NBNCo had been running a tighter ship and actually reached their forecasts, it would have been a lot harder for the Coalition to turn back the throttle to FTTN.
           At the end of the day we will all end up with much better broadband than we have now, and much better than the rest of the world for that matter and upgradeable.

           The coalition have announced their policy (FTTN)
           All signs and polls point to an absolute slaughter of the ALP on September 14
           We are getting FTTN

           Move along people, nothing to see here :)

         • So who will the coalition be contracting to do this work faster?

           Seriously; if the coalition hire a different construction company; the other one fires its techs, the new one hires those techs. I can’t imagine it being any faster to construct; except that they will be constructing a smaller slower network for close to the same cost! (certainly with the same maximum commitment from the government, so in a way the same cost!)

         • “Labor has failed to upgrade my broadband connection” – And this is the crux of the problem. The premises I own with my Wife isn’t scheduled to happen and probably won’t happen until towards the end of the rollout. But it doesn’t change my argument, because you have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.

           I’d much rather the Coalition focus on the rollout issues and put a plan in place to address them, than spend money on a shortsighted solution. This is what we should be arguing about. Not nit picking about the promise of 25/50/100Mb and that the comparison site is flawed because it’s basing it on the minimum, not the maximum.

         • I have ADSL2, I’m happy to wait the 15+ months from now to get a proper FTTP connection. I haven’t been waiting 6 years of Labor to improve my broadband connection, mostly I’ve been waiting 8 years for Telstra to upgrade my “sub-exchange” (according to Internode) from ADSL1 to ADSL2.

           How long ago did the NBN rollout actually start? Some emotive language from Renai, nicely avoiding the “technical quibbles” which go along with a tech rollout such as this.

         • “At this stage, I’m willing to give anyone a chance who thinks they can speed things up.”

           Speed things up? Yes, they’ve not met their recent targets. But their original business plan in 2010 stated they’d be finished in 2021 and they haven’t changed that target. So far what’s happened is that the ramp up is not happening as quickly as they expected. I personally want to see if they can ramp up to where they need to be before I’m ready to give up on this policy. And yes that means giving them 3 more years and seeing where they get to.

           Yet you want to trust a party that has lied endlessly for the last few years about broadband to complete it quicker. You’ve covered the lies and half truths that have been told by Turnbull et al over the last few years. Here’s one example: http://delimiter.com.au/2012/03/01/turnbull-again-misleads-the-public-on-nbn/. Why are you so quick to trust that they’re now telling the truth all of a sudden? I honestly would like to know why you suddenly believe them because as a member of the IT industry, I find it difficult to get over all the things they’ve said, like being called “stupid”: http://delimiter.com.au/2013/01/31/stupid-quasi-religious-turnbull-slams-fibre-fans/. I normally lean towards the liberal side of politics but I am disgusted with the things Turnbull has been saying. While the current leadership remains I will not support the Liberals.

         • The best way to give people a chance to have faster broadband, Renai, is to sit back, relax, and realise that without a Liberal government, the NBN as we know it will continue to progress. And we will all be getting a future proof network.

           Voting for the Liberals means contrary to wide expectation that the current NBN roll out will be disrupted if not halted, and FTTN will gradually creep through process, only commencing construction in 2016.

           A lucky few might get FTTN quicker. That’s if they happen to be in the category in which they won’t get fibre till 2021. But lots of people – millions – might actually be forced to wait longer because they’re in the category of either being in the 3 year plan or people who might have gotten fibre post 2016 but instead have to wait for their portion of the FTTN rollout.

           So.. a few people “better” off – except that now they’re stuck with FTTN and will have to wait for that mistake to be fixed. But most people will definitely be worse off. They will actually wait longer, and only get FTTN and then join the rest of the debacle.

         • This is not really a management issue – these are external factors, inadequately accounted for in published forecasts. Changing the management will change little about real construction work.

           The Coalition will not be able to roll out the NBN faster, but they’ll have a crack at rolling out less. A smaller job; maybe they’ll get it done faster. Keep in mind when you make statements like ‘anyone else could do it’ that the outcomes are not the same – the Coalition is not planning to roll the NBN out faster than Labor because it’s not planning to roll the NBN out.

           The Coalition probably will not roll out FTTN any sooner, because not only do the aforementioned external factors including skill and labour shortages exist, but they will effectively be starting again from scratch. Contract negotiation, tendering, technology selection, pilot rollout, testing, network design, etc. etc.

           You said that Labor hasn’t managed to connect your premises to faster internet in the last six years – well, what has the Coalition done? If the Coalition are voted into power, how much sooner will you receive your internet, if at all sooner? And what value have you lost in the process?

         • “At this stage, I’m willing to give anyone a chance who thinks they can speed things up.”

           I hope this is a careless use of language. Surely, you don’t really mean “anyone” and that the only requirement is that they just “think’ they can do it.

         • Actually, unless the server is at the end of your street, you won’t notice any difference at all between 25Meg and 1000Meg doing a file transfer.

           Do some research on the relationship between latency, throughout and TCP window sizes.

           http://bradhedlund.com/2008/12/19/how-to-calculate-tcp-throughput-for-long-distance-links/

           With 30ms latency, the best throughput you will get on a single TCP stream (the file copy you referred to which requires a reliable transport protocol) is only 17Mbps.

           Something many people forget when talking about speeds on the NBN.

           Regards,
           Douglas.

         • So; when I download stuff from steam at work on their 100 megabit per second link, when it says “5 megabytes per second” I am only getting 17 megabits?

           And all those times I maxed out my downlink speed on ADSL with 45ms+ latency (worse latency!!) downloading at 20 megabits per second; it was a lie??

           I don’t think that website means what you think it means. I haven’t even read it and have come to that conclusion.

         • Because Steam aggregates multiple TCP streams.

         • Just because TCP slows down due to the latency required for handshaking doesn’t mean that speeds will forever be limited by that. UDP with the softwares own error retransmission protocols are already used only many applications just because of this. TCP protocol isn’t law, it’s just an option, a lazy one really.

         • That article is really old and not really applicable with modern TCP/IP stacks. Take a look at this:
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_window_scale_option

         • That is not 100% right but not wrong either. We can also look at it like this, at most peoples offices and homes they already have a 100mbit connection.. to their ADSL modem. If they put in Gigabit ethernet it will not make their modem any faster.

           1 Gigabit? HDD’s struggle with anything more than 100 mbit, we are moving away from having big iron on our desktops so this will stay much the same.

           Web servers.. I can not serve a Gigabit stream to a single person even from my AU server. I am tapped out at a single stream of 100mbit. The CDN networks do have capacity but not for even hundreds of gigabit streams and there is no way they will just give this bandwidth away for free. It would cost apple more than the total cost of their 2GB file to have it on demand at gigabit speeds to everyone.

           I really would have to study the options much more for me to be able to say if FTTP or FTTN then FTTP eventually any is a better option.

           I am sure that Labor is shite thou.

         • Just to nit pick. I’m running a decent solid state system disk. Quite easily write 2Gbps on it. These things are going to become more common too.

         • Adam, every hard drive in the last decade can do 100 mbits. Drive speed is currently measured in mega BYTES. And yes, 100 mega BYTES is normal for older drives. If 8 bits = 1 byte then a 100 mega byte drive stores data at 800 mega bits per second.

         • If you are going by the 2020 (end of 2019) timeframe then yes. It is why I said it is mostly fair, I was looking at the 2017 timeframe (end of 2016).

           But as you should appreciate, there is no download without an upload path, I think the site has been very generous using 5Mbps up for FTTN. There are some that have interpreted some recent musing of Malcolm as suggesting that the 25Mbps is aggregate bandwidth. ie If you have 5Mbps down you will have 20Mbps up.

           Aren’t you suspicious that Malcolm has not committed to upload? I find it difficult to describe it as a broadband policy when it omits that.

           But it also should be noted that NBNco the FTTP NTD also supports 4 services, so you could easily run multipath TCP with RSP diversity for 4000/1600Mbps (less overheads) without having to shell out for upgrades.

         • “Isn’t 50Mbps the speed they should be judged on, not 25Mbps?”

           By the end of the roll-out NBNco will be looking at 10G-PON (it’s in their documents) so we should be comparing 50Mbs to 10Gbs by that reasoning surely?

     • As I mentioned elsewhere…comparing fastest with slowest is a bit rich either way.

       The difference of course being that 93% of Australians would have the fastest FttP NBN speeds offered, available to them, whereas, only a small portion (22% according to the article) of those, in green fields or ‘additionally’, whose copper is cactus or those who are willing to pay for their own connections, will have similar speeds available via the CBN (Coalition Broadband Network).

       And let’s face it, if you are paying for your own FttP connection, those figures should not be included in the CBN stats anyway?

       So the majority (71% according to the article) of Aussies would have a maximum of 100Mbps available to them on the CBN vs. 93% – 1Gbps on the NBN (to be honest I’m not sure of the quoted upload speeds)…

       Of course let’s not forget too, that FttP is capable of much greater than 1Gbps (and FttN is possibly capable of greater than 100Mbps too), but 1Gbps and 100Mbps have respectively been announced and are ergo our evidence for basis on this evidence based forum…

       IMO, by comparing the speeds that would be available via FttP to 93% vs FttN to 71% and/or NBN FttP 93% vs CBN FttP 22%… either way, clearly demonstrates, the NBN is still the obvious winner, by a country mile.

       But I’m sure we all knew that anyway and this is all just smoke and mirrors for MT to try to justify what I believe is his second place/silver/runner-up is good enough, broadband plan.

       • “So the majority (71% according to the article) of Aussies would have a maximum of 100Mbps available to them on the CBN vs. 93% – 1Gbps on the NBN (to be honest I’m not sure of the quoted upload speeds)…”

         This is not really a fair statement. Under Labors NBN people can choose to take the 1Gbps but under the coalitions FTTN policy there is no choice of 100Mbps because you’d have to be right next to the node to achieve this speed. Basically you get what you’re given and we can only go on the guaranteed minimum which is 25Mbps from 2016 and from 50Mbps 2019 for 90% of those on FTTN. Maybe it would have been fairer if the comparison website used the average maximum connection speed if you see what I mean but we don’t honestly know what that would be. ADSL2 is capable of 24Mbps but the average maximum is about 12Mbps I believe. I personally get 8Mbps on ADSL2.

         • I’m hearing you Dave…

           I was just trying to cut out the if’s and use what each side was claiming they would supply, for comparison sake.

           :)

       • @Alex: “…only a small portion (22% according to the article) of those, in green fields or ‘additionally’, whose copper is cactus or those who are willing to pay for their own connections, will have similar speeds available via the CBN (Coalition Broadband Network).”

         The “whose copper is cactus or those who are willing to pay for their own connections” part of this just created a light-bulb above my head… I wonder how many people who aren’t willing to pay for their own fibre run, but do want FTTP, may just happen to… ‘encourage’… their copper towards the ‘cactus’ end of the spectrum with the aid of various consumer- or industrial-level gardening implements, judicious leaching of H2SO4 into the area of the copper run, etc….?

         • I believe it has already been suggested here at Delimiter, that this could (theoretically anyway) occur.

         • Just on the subject of those acids, if you use the cheaper industrial ones there is more likely to be a residue. There are strict sulfide limits in waste water and through what is found in nature; if there has been a sulfuric acid leak, it is usually pretty obvious.

     • At this stage I’d rank the expression “core pledge” somewhere below “weasel words”.

     • So that’s 90% of 71%, right?

3. Even comparing best case scenario FttN with FttP, the difference will still be staggering. I dropped an email to James suggesting he give a drop down of comparrisons, so that then the arguments will not have a leg to stand on.

   I maintain that the Coalitions policy is short sighted. When Conroy tabled FttN in 2007, I told him, in person, the exact same thing. I also maintain that why spend 60% of the cost on a 10% solution.

4. I don’t see a problem with the comparison.

   Under Labor’s NBN anyone can get a guarenteed 1Gb, more in future.
   Under the Coalition plan the guarenteed speed is only 25Mb.

   In future the Coalition’s plan may, if you are lucky, get you a bit over 100Mb.
   Compared to FTTH which could go to 100s of Gb without stress, there is a point to comparing
   the plans with the sort of magnitude difference they are showing.

   What are you meant to do? Show a Nissan Micra is as fast as a speed limited Ferrari? What sort of useful comparison is that?

   Hey, if you were just comparing what is available now, I see the point in complaining. But I believe what he was trying to show is the future potential of each, and that’s where the sort of differences he shows are appropriate.

5. Meeting this pledge for 25mps FTTN by the end of 2016 is ludicrous…..

   1. firstly they need to strike a new deal with Telstra
   2. then Telstra needs to get shareholder approval
   3. extensive network planning for FTTN and probably field line testing
   3. meanwhile, the current FTTP rollout will continue under LBN

   So, won’t most of the available contractors already be busy doing FTTP as part of the 3 year NBNco rollout plan?

   So just who is going to be rolling out this FTTN? Turnbull’s mythical Telstra work force he claims are available (are they all just sitting idle in a shed earning money doing nothing waiting for the LNP to win an election?)

   Guaranteed 25mps means a some copper will also have to be replaced before the end of 2016, except don’t a lot of Telstra’s ducts need to be fixed first too?

   • I had thought about that earlier today. Will the LBN have testing sites like there was with the NBN? Or are they going to just draw up a plan in next to no time a drop it in the ground and fix any problems on the fly?

   • You forgot the three reports/studies they’ll do when they get in too, they’ve promised they wont take longer than 6 months I think.

6. The problem Renai is that both you and Malcolm are looking at it the wrong way.

   When spending tens of billions of dollars (which either party is doing or will do) the Australian public have the right to demand a a network that is transformative.

   This is delivered through ubiquity foremost. And by that I mean the overwhelming majority of premisees have access to equivalent services at equivalent pricing.

   Many in this debate seem to be getting buried in the technology when it is of no direct importance. It does not matter if one premise is served by FTTN and the other by FTTP if the services are equivalent.

   You can argue whether he should have used 1000/400 for the FTTP (it is a planned product and has been trialed) but then you could argue that he shouldn’t have used 5Mbps up for the FTTN as MT refuses to place any guarantee on minimums.

   Perhaps you could argue that he should have used 50Mbps for FTTN? But 10% of fixed line subscribers (9.3% of total subscribers) will not get that. By 2020 it is quiet possible that even the satellite and fixed wireless customers will be getting more than that unlucky 9.3%, they could even be in inner city areas.

   A FTTN build entrenches the current digital divide, it does not enable those that need or want high speeds to get them. It enables high speeds to those that have good copper and short loop lengths that live close to the Node. It may require less funding but it does not use it efficiently IMHO.

   The reason the FTTP is being questioned today is mostly because of the build timeframe. We should have started the build earlier and from possibly from a FTTN base.

   There was a time for FTTN, that was at the beginning of the century but we missed that boat and it is why we are in the position we are now. The first mistake was not building FTTN earlier, lets not make the second mistake building FTTN late.

   It should not be acceptable to accept that you may get 50/10Mbps but your neighbour only gets 33/7Mbps even if they want/need 50Mbps.

   The site in question compares the minimum guaranteed access speed available to the majority of premise under both policies. In other words it compares the “ubiquitous” aspects of both policies. It is a fair comparison (mostly).

   • I agree wholeheartedly about ubiquity.

     You don’t go and borrow tens of billions of tax payers dollars without offering something that has a future.

     And worse, the entire “value proposition” for this debacle – that FTTN is substantially cheaper could never be true even to begin with. And now we see that even on its own terms, the best you could hope for a fractional “saving”.

     Why borrow tens of billions of dollars of tax payers money to build something temporary?

7. It’s a great way to get headlines. I’m not sure when social web sites will be able to give full 40Mbps or even 100Mbps upload. I’m sure with the NBN, cloud services in Australia and sending files between NBN users could reach full upload speed.

   It’s too bad people aren’t as interested in the comments made by Conroy on oursay debate.
   Conroy – “Malcom Turnbull wants to spend $29b The Gillard government is going to borrow about $31b”
   So for $2b of government investment/spending we get FTTP.

   • Well I’m certainly focused on the bigger picture and the long term. And it doesn’t surprise me that FTTN comes out as so expensive that it doesn’t justify its short lifespan.

     Sooner? for a lucky few.
     Cheaper? NO. Its MORE expensive.

     Turnbull has sold some great big fat lies and its time the industry press just simply stopped playing games of false balance and told it like it is. FTTN is a complete and utter debacle. Its not just wrong on technical merits. Its costing us more. Its taking us backwards economically.

8. I want to know more about the pricing structure. Will it be like ADSL2+ where connections are not tiered and you pay for as much speed and bandwidth as your copper can take. Or will they say you have signed up to the top tier 100Mps but on get 25Mbs because of the copper? Will there be 4 categories of NBN plans across ISPs: Wireless, Sat, FTTH, FTTN? If you have a copper fault, will the copper be repaired but marked as just another one in the suburb displaying corrosion (This is what happened to me, Telstra said your suburb is basically filled with rotting copper, and it has been noted. Have a nice day)

   • Turnbull has stated ISPs will set speeds. This is despite the fact that, since day dot, it’s been the wholesaler and technical line capabilities that set the speed minimums.

     Want to know what the guaranteed minimum for ADSL2+ is? 0 kbps.

     This is why “up to” is popular vernacular for ADSL. It will also be popular vernacular for VDSL2, unless an agreed maximum line length is set that will ensure 100mbit in all but the worst conditions.

     Unless Turnbull sets minimum speeds in policy, both up and down, and the network is built to ensure the minimums are deliverable; then it’s a turkey shoot. And with the amount being spent, I don’t think “ISPs set the speeds” is really a good goal to shoot for.

     This is in stark contrast to the current fibre build, where minimums are, I beleive, defined in the Policy. The wholesaler must deploy to match the policy.

     • I don’t see how the ISP can set the line speed. If I sign up 100Mbs plan, and the line doesn’t do that there is nothing the ISP can do, and as I stated it will be like telstra where the NBNco will likely wait till all of the copper lines are at breaking point before they will look into it. This isn’t because I don’t have faith in NBNco, I just don’t think they will be allowed to throw money at bad copper.

     • I too currently enjoy the guaranteed minimum ADSL speed of 0Mbps :)

       Oh and Renai, I’m not in the 3 year plan, and there is absolutely no way I’m going to want FTTN since all I will be doing is paying for it, and then paying for the fibre that will replace it.

       Why build the network twice?

9. You made a good point Renai, the minimum speed of both plans is the same as well. The wireless and satellite networks will be the slowest leg of the network for both plans and have the same speed since they are planning on using the same equipment.

   • It would appear though for that unlucky 3% that will be left on Wireless technologies would be more likely to receive fibre eventually under the NBN compared to the LBN.

     The NBN is only allowed to make a certain level of return, above which it will need to either, lower plan costs, increase downloads, increase speeds or reinvest in extending the network. The LBN is unlikely to have those resources due to opening itself up to competition in the most lucrative areas.

     And as much as I know that Wireless is not the way of the future, future generations of wireless technology will be able to compete better against the LBN’s 50Mbps than NBN’s 1000Mbps.

     • Exactly.

       If you’re in the rural 7% and you want fibre extended beyond 93% then what you need is fibre to get to 93% in the first place. That aint going to happen under the Liberals.

   • One of the really sad things about that site is that neither FTTP or FTTN will actually be able to get the speeds he shows (unless you’re downloading from your RSP). The 1000Mbps plans wont actually run that fast, but then neither will the 25Mbps ones…

10. I believe the website is valid in my scenario. I live on a battle axe block and there is 220m from my road front to the house and we’re at the very end of a court. We’re due to get fibre under Labors plan which will give us access to 1Gbps and I assume we’ll get FTTN under the coalitions plan. I can only assume that we’ll only get the guaranteed 25Mbps with I assume a 5Mbps upload. I will very likely pay for fibre if the coalition offer it assuming it’s a fixed install fee rather than based on distance which may well be too expensive.

    Now based on my scenario obviously Labors NBN is way better for us. And assuming that I believe the promised costs from both parties Labors NBN will cost about 25% more and will take about 2 years longer. I understand that they haven’t met their targets to date but then I have my doubts that the coalition will meet their targets either. I remember reading about BT in the UK having issues getting power to the nodes which caused cost and time blowouts and I doubt the councils over here will make it an easy proposition to install nodes. Based on these figures and the difference in service that will be delivered to approximately 70% of the country I have to say the coalitions policy looks like a huge waste of money.

    I was open to a policy from the coalition that made sense both to us personally and the country and I’m afraid I believe they have fallen short.

11. Speaking of false dichotomies, you highlight the delays in the alp’s nbn, but take the utterly unrealistic projection that the coalition will succeed in delivering 25mbps to everyone by 2016 at face value

12. Speaking of false dichotomies, you highlight the delays in the alp’s nbn, but take the utterly unrealistic projection that the coalition will succeed in delivering 25mbps to everyone by 2016 at face value.

    • So true.

13. “However, the Coalition is also promising to deploy FTTP to some 22 percent of premises — those premises, such as greenfields estates, where it makes sense to do FTTP. If you compare speeds with these premises — a fifth of Australian premises! — with Labor’s vision, you would have to say the speeds will be the same.”

    They are doing so because greenfield estates are still seeing Telstra and others deploying fibre. Be careful about this because unless it’s an NBN build, then you cannot claim it’s part of the footprint.

    Sure, it may be capable of the same sorts of speeds, but that is now a three-way (*chuckle*) comparison.

    I agree. It’s not all black and white. And the Coalition Policy does address a lot of concerns. But it needs work. It needs to canonize minimum deliverables so the build can and will deliver on promises. Right now, it’s still well-and-truly open to interpretation.

    Turnbull can do better, Renai, we just need to push him to do so. Deciding it’s “close enough” now doesn’t put any pressure on to have the Policy refined to deliver better outcomes for all concerned.

14. “In the global technology community, there has been a tendency over the past three decades to attempt to categorise all discussions into black/white dichotomies.”

    Yes it’s very similar to the Liberal/ Labour or minor parties debate just over a shorter period, what is being shown again is that the ability to change a persons viewpoint is as hard with technology as it is with Politics or Religion.
    Whilst you may want to have a conversation based upon facts the ability to do so is diminished by the degree that participants are divergent from the centre multiplied by the size of their ego (willingness to admit wrongful choice).

    “You know what I’m talking about — Windows/Linux, iOS/Android, Outlook/Lotus Notes, Facebook/Twitter; the list goes on. Each side always has its supporters, and each only rarely admit that the other side has any merit at all, despite the fact that both can often coexist comfortably.”

    There has been and will be many instances where both sides have stated that each product has it’s merits in isolation of the situation experienced in Australia today.

    “This is precisely what we’re dealing with here when it comes to FTTN and FTTP.”

    Except it’s not. The discussions we have been having, have mostly been about relevance to the situation in Australia today…

    In Australia today we have a government entity that has started to roll out FTTH as part of a mandate to improve the national telecommunications infrastructure in Australia.
    The decision to install FTTH was after failing to find a private company to partner with to install FTTN, from this the industry expert panel that was used to find the partner company advised the government that it should “go it alone and go FTTH” as based on their findings.

    It’s this history which you and the Delimiter readers have and understand which makes it hard for them to provide positive response to the oppositions NBN “policy” as they understand the technology.
    What is galling to this group so gauchely called “FTTH fanbois” is that they are doing this for the best interests of the future of Australia as they are trying to focus on the technology not the politics(mostly).

    It has been stated that the only reason for wanting to install FTTN is that it’s Faster and Cheaper, it’s not much cheaper and it’s faster is not the usability of the product but claimed ability to complete the roll out of at a quicker pace.
    The comments on cheaper have stopped as it’s only a “smidge” cheaper and we have seen how much delay there is to the current NBN to know that stopping it and starting with another type is not how you get things to be done quicker as the products have different technology bases, let alone all of the other considerations like the manufacture, transport, planning approvals, electricity connections and contract renegotiation’s that are required to be done.

    There are a large number of people who believe that there’s a snow balls chance in hell that Faster and Cheaper can be achieved, then if it’s completed it needs to be pulled out to install the FTTH that is already started!

    It sounds like a Hollywood comedy!

15. Has there been any published estimate of the running costs (power/servicing/repairs/upgrades) of the Node equipment (where the fibre joins the copper)?

    • Don’t take these as gospel but the last reasonable figures I saw were for a powered Node costing around the $100K mark. Some have said $130K (I really don’t care). That’s some billions of dollars.

      Power? Hard to tell. A few Watts to maybe 10 Watts per line. So tens of MegaWatts all up. At industrial rates of 13c/KWHr that’s tens of millions in power bill.

      The worst part though is that the copper is currently costing $1B per year. And that’s to satisfy the present rules which simply ask for a line fit for voice. VDSL imposes higher standards on that so that cost could easily double. And if we discover that even a small fraction of copper lines are simply too degenerate to work with VDSL what that does is force wholesale replacement of entire cables. The debacle just keeps getting better. All of this to save money.. oops.. no.. it doesn’t. Not even on its own terms. And once the copper is replaced with fibre, we’ll have just spent more billions just putting off the inevitable.

16. my problem with MT’s comment

    “The website linked to is inaccurate and intended to mislead. Senator Conroy’s new online BFF starts out by quoting Tony Abbott as saying he’s confident 25 megabits per second will be enough bandwidth for an average household. Labor and their apologists are attempting to twist this remark into something it is not, and present it as meaning the Coalition’s NBN will have a maximum download speed of 25 megabits per second.”

    I’d like Malcolm to then explain what Abbott was really saying … if the others have it so wrong. (however – i’d take any IT related comment from Abbott with a grain of salt)

    Plus there’s been a lot of pot / kettle remarks from MT lately in regards to being inaccurate and misleading.

    My belief is the LNP have brought out a broadband plan , not because they believe we need one – but only to try and nullify the ALP’s nbn as a political issue. So the plan should be viewed with a degree of skepticism

17. After working on the copper network for almost 8 years I will be in shock if many people connected to a node will get the 25mb

    • What I think is a shocker is that Turnbull is doing exacatly what he criticised Conroy about – only worse. One of Turnbulls main criticisms with Labors NBN is that is chose a technology to provide the solution. Turnbull has done exactly the same by choosing FTTN and HFC. On top of that, to make matters worse, he has also chosen vectoing as the solution in the future. This is all of course without any detailed study, input from the sector, or the “all important” CBA.
      Not only does Turnbull need to answer how he is going to deliver what he has said, he needs to substantiate why he can choose winners when others cant.If people are truly concerned about the dichotemies, they must relaise that its comong from both sides, not just the “NBN fanbois”.

      • It perpetually tickled my funny bone how Turnbull said a CBA will “find the best technology”. And at the same time, Turnbull has picked a technology. One of those must be a lie.

18. “Essentially what Brotchie is doing is comparing the theoretical maximum speed of Labor’s NBN policy with the Coalition’s theoretical minimum speed.”

    I’d like to point out; that this statement is false. The “theoretical maximum speed of Labor’s NBN Policy” is also its theoretical minimum speed. It isn’t its minimum speed product; but it is the technologies theoretical minimum speed.

    Your other comments regarding the minimum speed actually being mis-quoted (IE the website SHOULD show 50/?) I do not dispute that. But claiming that 1000/400 is not the theoretical minimum speed and should not be compared to the coalitions 25 or 50 megabit minimum is incorrect.

    This site is clearly set to compare technologies, not products – as proof of that, the one thing he DIDN’T show in that comparison, was the rate that your bank-account would be draining paying for a 1000/400 service, compared to a 25/5 service.

19. I’m not gonna get very involved, but suffice to say 3 out of 4 of James’ example’s were actually about uploads Renai.

    I can see how and even agree with to a certain extent that the 1000Mbps vs 25Mbps comparison is unfair and misleading. But not the uploads. We’ve been given ZERO guarantees of uploads on the Coalition plan.

    So 3/4 of James’ site is right and fair….but Mr Turnbull chooses to only fight against the 1/4 that is easy because he cannot guarantee uploads.a

    And just to be facetious, no, 50Mbps should not be the benchmark for comparison on FTTN. There isn’t a single FTTN network (not including FTTB) on the planet which guarantees 50Mbps to every home. 25Mbps, yes, there’s precedent. But not 50Mbps and we have no information on how Turnbull would guarantee this….other than a very vague “vectoring”….

    • Right on the money, as usual!

    • “There isn’t a single FTTN network (not including FTTB) on the planet which guarantees 50Mbps to every home”

      No? I just pulled this out of Google:

      http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27951049-DSL-Bell-FTTN-50-Mbps-tier

      As for the uploads … look, I think Brotchie’s site is even more misleading in that regard. Take his examples:

      “You have just received the digital copies of your wedding photos from the photographer. You’re eager to upload them to Facebook for all to see. There are 100 high quality photos each 10MB in size.”

      Personally, I upload dozens of photos a day to Delimiter, and they’re usually a maximum of 100k in a decent size. Uploading 10MB photos to Facebook is madness and a waste of resources. Sure, you could, but there’d be no point — 10MB is printing quality, not web quality. A more reasonable comparison would be, say, uploading 100 photos of size each, say 300k, which would be excellent JPG quality for the web. That’s what, 30MB? That’s what people are doing every day right now. If someone needs print quality to do an individual print, that’s different. But you don’t send a gigabyte of photos to Facebook. I’m not even sure if that’s possible or when it would be possible.

      “You have just picked up the dog you’ve always wanted! You’ve recorded picking him up, his first arrival home, and him playing with his new toys. You’ve then edited these scenes into a video and want to upload it to YouTube. How long is it going to take before the world sees your bouncy baby?”

      Speaking as someone who uploads hour-long press conferences in 720p to YouTube, I can say that 200MB is way too large a file size for this assumption. Normally I wouldn’t bother uploading anything larger than 60-80MB or so — and that’s an hour long press conference at 720p. A video of your puppy on YouTube is not going to take 200MB. And even so, if you assume a 5Mbps upload speed with a 200MB file and not the potentially higher upload speeds I suspect FTTN will deliver, the 5min or so which Brotchie predicts isn’t that big a deal. Will video file sizes get bigger as people shift everything to 1080p and eventually 4K? Yes. But will uploading videos of puppies be an issue on FTTN? No. No, it won’t be. And if you need to upload video professionally, you probably won’t use FTTN for that.

      There’s an artificial comparison being created here. The terms Brotchie is creating aren’t precisely real-world examples. They’re slanted against FTTN from the start. Will we see bandwith requirements increasing massively in the future? Yes, indeed we will. And the FTTN, as I have written previously, is not the best policy and it’s not the end game. But will it hold the bandwidth tide back for a while? Sure. And it’ll be a damn sight better than ADSL, which, I remind people, is what we currently have, and is what actually works, more or less.

      • “There’s an artificial comparison being created here. The terms Brotchie is creating aren’t precisely real-world examples. They’re slanted against FTTN from the start.”
        I completely disagree. Just about everyone I know are not super tech savvy, and definitely do not optimise the pictures they take for the web. They either attach their camera to their computer, or insert their memory card and copy the photos to their computer or storage as is. I agree 10MB per image is a bit large, but 3-5MB is very much the norm for a 6-8 megapixel camera. The same hold true for video files people take with their cameras and smart phones.

        The big point that shouldnt be forgotten though is, when people have good upload speeds they will use them more. People will load far more photos and visdeo into the cloud for safe keeping as well as doing offline backups that they previously didnt do as it was too painfully slow.

        • Even my mum has a camera that delivers 3-5MB sized photos and you can imagine the fun emailing a few dozen of those..

      • Try uploading multi-gigabyte files to youtube, over ADSL2+ over (at best) 1.6Mbit. If you are publishing high-quality HD content, it’s a many-hour process. Streaming via twitch.tv is also very sad making.

        Two examples. Then there’s my ongoing debate over how much I can manage, realistically to backup to Amazon (cost is actually the least of my issues; time cost is now > storage cost).

        It’s one of the key drivers in cloud models, distributed content and streaming services. I’m genuinely surprised you’d make that sort of claim.

      • @Renai

        No? I just pulled this out of Google:

        Sorry Renai, but you just proved my point there. There are dozens of operators that OFFER 50Mbps plans. BT, AT&T, Bell, NTT, etc. None GUARANTEE 50Mbps to all those who pay for the tier. And THAT is what the Coalition are expecting to do with nothing but vectoring. Can you not see my point here?? You cannot GUARANTEE it. You can offer it, but it doesn’t mean they will get it. That’s unacceptable.

        As for uploads, yes, alot of what you’ve said is true. And of all people, you probably upload alot more than others. But I still think you’re missing the point a little. If someone is in a 25Mbps area and gets 25Mbps down and 5Mbps up as a minimum, but they would like to start a hobby of making short films, or taking photos on a blog or just being the family repository for all things digital…..they have to cough up Anywhere from $1.5-5K for fibre. That’s it. They have no other choice.

        Now, you might say, but that’s their choice. Of course it is. But the Coalition plan INHERENTLY limits that choice. I’ve never uploaded anything but a single youTube video until I started using Google Music. I get a solid (usually) 8Mbps on ADSL. But a wavering 400-900Kbps uploads. It took me 3 DAYS to upload 600 songs to Google Music…..Now, sure, 5Mbps is a great improvement. But you’re still talking tens of minutes for music and hours for video. We’re talking content creation here and it’s being ignored entirely. Web 30. is all ABOUT content creation. But the Coalition policy specifically limits that.

        I don’t have a problem with FTTN. I think FTTN in much of the last 10-20% and then using the revenue from the 80-90% to build fibre further out would’ve been preferable to wireless for example. But I DO believe that by going FTTN to the majority first, there is going to be at LEAST a decade of lost opportunity of creativity, efficiency and productivity because of the inherent lack of fast and STABLE uploads across the FTTN network. I don’t believe the Coalition can get their 25Mbps minimum in less than 4 years and I don’t believe they can ever get 50Mbps minimum to 90% of the footprint.

        There is NO demonstration in the real world that can show that’s possible. ALL real-world scenarios specifically state that it’s theoretical and depends on line length, quality and gauge. ALL of which are huge unknowns in the Australian copper network.

        The Coalition plan guarantees numbers that cannot be guaranteed. THAT is my issue with it. And that is what James was trying to point out. Labor’s speeds are guaranteed (on a wholesale level). The Coalition can’t even do that, depending on any number of factors.

        • hey mate,

          I personally know that Turnbull has done a massive amount of research, talked extensively to the vendors and telcos, gone on multiple study trips etc, to develop this policy. If he says they’re planning on getting 50Mbps to 90 percent of fixed-line users, then I believe that he believes that it’s possible based on the available evidence.

          If he doesn’t deliver on that promise, I’ll be the first to report it. But at this stage, I’m willing to concede that he has more information about this than I do, and is privy to more inside data from telcos such as Telstra.

          With respect to this:

          “There is NO demonstration in the real world that can show that’s possible. ALL real-world scenarios specifically state that it’s theoretical and depends on line length, quality and gauge. ALL of which are huge unknowns in the Australian copper network.”

          Telstra has this information — it’s not an unknown. They have very detailed information about how the copper network functions and what it is capable of. They’ve done countless trials internally, and have giant databases full of information and maps of the copper. We’re not dealing with an unknown here. Just because the public doesn’t have that information, doesn’t mean Telstrea doesn’t have it.

          Look, I know you’re well-intentioned, like the other readers who are annoyed about Turnbull’s FTTN plan. And, like you, I’m disappointed. I prefer the Labor plan and it annoys me that Turnbull wants to change it.

          But you can’t take all the publicly available evidence and try and make it add up to a conclusion which shows the Coalition’s NBN plan just won’t work. We’re not privy to all the information. And a decade as a telco reporter tells me that things are always — always — very different on the ground to the way that the online theories go.

          I know for certain that if Telstra didn’t think Mal’s plan was possible, it would have come out and said that by now. Thodey’s not afraid of doing things like that. I am 100 percent sure that Turnbull has had high-level discussions with Telstra about this, as well as probably low-level engineering discussions, and that there is some form of tacit agreement that what Turnbull is proposing is possible. Otherwise, Turnbull wouldn’t be going ahead with it.

          Is there some room around the edges for variability? You betcha. I don’t think Turnbull’s plan will be delivered in practice as well as he says on paper, and I don’t think the 50Mbps and 25Mbps promises will be stuck to perfectly. However, what I do think is that they’re figures in the ballpark that most people think are quite possible. You can’t get that specific with copper, but the evidence so far is that Turnbull’s plan is reasonable.

          I know y’all don’t want to hear this. You want me to rant and scream and find 1,000 ways why the Mal plan is not possible and should be abolished and it’s not fair and where is my NBN fibre and I want it now. And you can scream at me all you want for doing that.

          But while you’re doing that, you might recall that I’ve been around the block a few times and seen quite a few plans come and go. I was a telco reporter before Sol Trujillo was appointed to lead Telstra and I reported on Telstra’s FTTN plan then. I dealt with Conroy when he was Shadow and Coonan when she was Minister. I dealt with Paul O’Sullivan when he led Optus and I’ve dealt with all the other shadows and Conroy as Minister. I’ve sat in thousands of technical briefings about broadband and I’ve seen it all.

          Turnbull’s plan, as I’ve said a thousand times already, is feasible, it will deliver real benefits, and it’s the second-best telecommunications policy Australia has ever seen. It’s not as good as Labor’s vision on any measure, and I’ve openly stated that hundreds of times now. But all the whinging, bitching and on-paper technical arguments in the world won’t change the fact that most in the telecommunications industry view it as possible and many view it as one of several logical upgrade paths for the copper, as it has been for half a decade already in countries such as France.

          Is Turnbull precisely technically right on everything he claims? No. But I am damn sure he’s in the right ballpark, having spoken to the right experts, and he knows where he’s going. That will not change.

          I know bullshit when I see it. And I know credible, well-researched, telecommunications policy as well. I’ll be the first to report it and slam him when the Mal plan goes bad. But until then I’m going to keep an open mind and trust my instincts and my knowledge on this one.

          Fair enough?

          Renai

          • Hey Renai,

            Look, my problem stems from the idea that all will be fun and games with an FTTN rollout. I know you’ve said you don’t think it will and I also believe that. But Turnbull thinks it will. Yet you don’t believe him, so why do you think he can guarantee those speeds?? Vendors will say they can achieve speeds, but they NEVER say they can guarantee it. That’s my first problem. My other problem ultimately boils down to this:

            FTTN isn’t an inherently “evil” technology. On the contrary, for many incumbents it is a perfect way to increase the supply for data and make a reasonable return on CAPEX outlaid. It is a technology based around the idea of old-school internet- we consume, not create. And a technology based around incremental upgrades, not organic ones.

            Ultimately, if FTTN takes, say, 8 years, instead of 6, to give us guaranteed 50Mbps (which I still cannot see how that’s possible, even taking into account future upgrades) with a maximum of 120Mbps for “some portion” of users and FTTHoD otherwise. That means, if the NBN were to take the same time, we’ve gotten much worse value for money. If the NBN took an extra 2 years beyond where it does? Does that make it still good value for money because FTTN might be 2 years earlier and, at that stage, about 1/20th the speed for 90%?

            I see you looking at the Coalition policy and saying “It’s a good policy, it’s a solid policy and a workable policy”. Yes. It is. but it isn’t the best one And I’m sorry, but when it comes down to it, why would you vote for a worse policy on the off chance it might be a bit quicker (and unlikely cheaper) than the alternative already being built.

            Do you believe the NBN will take an extra 5 years? Or 8? Like MT suggests? And that’s why you believe FTTN is a better deal because it’s more likely to be finished sooner? Is it simply because you’ve lost faith in NBNCo. to do the work? Because they’ll be doing most of it under the Coalition as well.

            Sorry Renai, but you seem to be treating this now as if the Coalition policy is the only one likely to ever succeed and therefore the best policy, as far as I can tell?? Like the Coalition policy IS in isolation and NBNCo. have already failed to build the NBN.

          • By the way Renai,

            I trust your reporting alot more than I do Turnbull. Not because I believe Turnbull hasn’t done his research or talked to vendors. I’m sure he has. But I’m also sure he never tells the other side of the story. That’s what politicians do.

            But I struggle to understand why you believe Turnbull verbatim on guaranteed speeds. Yes, vendors and Telstra no doubt have alot more info than is available publicly. I have no qualms about that. But we’re talking about 90-95% of the premises numbers here. Do you REALLY think Telstra could guarantee that sort of maintenance has been carried out enough to guarantee 90% of lines can handle that??

          • So you believe Turnbull because he’s done a lot of research?

            Hate to tell you that the best con artists of all time are famous for their level of research. I especially loved the care and attention to detail given by Mr. Frank Abagnale of “Catch me if you Can” fame.

            Turnbull has done his research in order to flesh out his “policy” document in a way that looks superficially plausible. It adds more detail in order to be able to skillfully deflect attention from its fatal flaws. And to either divide or distract commentators.

            Its a job well done.. and well researched.

          • 1. I DO NOT THINK FTTN IS A BETTER DEAL

            I personally think it is a worst deal.

            However, I am able to intellectually understand, which many people here are not, that it makes sense for a fiscally conservative Coalition Opposition to pitch it as an alternate option to a big-spending FTTP policy, which is taking too long to deliver. I am personally happy to wait for FTTP as a “do it once, do it right”, measure, but I am able to understand that not everyone sees it that way, and that for those of a different philosophical persuasion (small government), that they may wish for a more intermediary plan from the Coalition, which will do something to satiate our broadband needs for the short-to-mid-term and get constructed quicker and cheaper than FTTP.

            Someone once said that the mark of an educated man was the ability to hold two contradictory ideals in his mind at the same time. I am that man. I personally prefer Labor’s FTTP vision, but I can see how the Coalition’s FTTN NBN makes sense from the perspective of the Liberal philosophy, and objectively on any benchmark I can find, it’s a plausible, less visionary alternative to the NBN on a range of measures.

            2. Why do I believe Turnbull?

            Because I know he’s done his research. In fact, Turnbull has done a BUTTLOAD more research than Conroy and KRudd did before coming up with NBN Mark 1 (2007) or NBN Mark 2 (2009). How do I know this? Because I talk to ppl in the industry, important people, and Turnbull has talked to pretty much all of them at length. He’s been overseas, he’s been to the NBN trenches, he’s seen it all, and I consider him a very informed and somewhat expert commentator at this point — pretty much on par with Conroy, which is extraordinary when you consider that Conroy’s been the actual Minister for six years.

            I know Turnbul’s putting a political spin on it all, but I am very confident that he knows the technical and commercial details well enough to be in the right ball park.

            I know y’all don’t have the relationship that I do with the politicians — all you see is a 10 second ridiculous sound grab on TV or an interview on the 7:30 Report. But I have a sense for when they’re bullshitting and when they’re not. Most politicians are skin deep and bullshit pretty much all the time. Others, such as Turnbull (and this is extremely rare) research deeply on all issues, but only tell the parts of the truth which will serve them. Mal is spinning things, no doubt, and on occasion he’s been outright misleading. However, there is a very strong kernel of truth to all he does. As a journalist I can’t help but give that credit.

            As for the FTTP NBN? Yes, I think it will take much longer than expected. Right now I think it will probably take 15 years or so. I think this thing is grossly more complex than anyone, even Telstra, realised.

            Renai

            PS: You know what my actual benchmark is right now for either policy? Not the theory. But actual rollout. I want to see cable in the ground, whether it’s to the node or premise. I haven’t seen jack for the last decade. First side that actually gets this shit happening with good project management gets my ultimate seal of approval. I want better broadband. To my house. ASAP. Of either variety.

          • Ok Renai.

            Cheers for taking the time. I think I understand your position better now.

            I understand why you’ve lost confidence in the FTTP build. I can’t say I’m particularly confident. I think 15 years is a bit much, but almost certainly longer than the 8 they think. I’m more confident on the cost side of things after the Senate Committee Hearings. But not on the time side.

            I understand where you hold the Coalition’s policy. And in a more conservative time I might agree with you. I’m a swing voter, but brought up conservative. I enjoyed Howard’s “reign”, although disagree now with a few things that I understand better, but still feel he did a decent job. But I don’t feel now is the time for us to be cutting spending all over the place. Particularly not on the digital economy. It’s been HORRIBLY neglected under Howard (one thing he has only himself to answer for) and I think Labor’s spend, while it might take longer than anticipated, is a better idea because of the freedom it gives us in the decades to come. And on the digital economy which is what will sustain us as a country in the coming decades, that’s vital.

            If we end up with the Coalition, I’m not going to move countries or anything, now that I know what their plan is. And I’m not naive enough to think they won’t do anything when they get in. They have come far too far to back out now. They could feasibly raise the FTTP over 50% too, quite easily. And even 25Mbps minimum is something, though I still question its’ reality on FTTN in regional areas.

            But my issue stems with the misleading case Turnbull is making for FTTN being “no different to consumers than FTTP because they won’t use those speeds”. Mainly based around the idea, as I said before, of artificially limiting content creation and even some limits on content consumption, because of speed restrictions on those not wealthy enough to consider a few thousand dollars reasonable to spend on fibre upgrades (which we still have no info on by the way, just “like BT”). The Coalition is not only acting conservative in spending, but in restricting the country from embracing or inventing new technologies based on ubiquitous, reliable, high speed connectivity.

            I don’t want to see our country at the bottom of the pile when it comes to emerging new technologies. And I KNOW the NBN isn’t the only thing that will determine that. But it IS a major consideration.

          • I ask this of people who advocate government spending;

            What basis do you have for arguing that increased government expenditure boosts economic activity?

            -Keynesian models tend to discred the effect of fiscal stimuli in a small open economy, as well as being heavily reliant upon the assumption of a balanced budget in the medium term.

            -Given that stimulus packages may be appropiate when would you say is the right term to return to “neutral” [less than 1% deficit or surplus] or when would the right time to begin balancing debt be? Would it be when unemployment is at 5%, (pretty damn close to the NAIRU), when interest rates are non-zero (giving monetary policy room to move), inflation is at 2-3%, and revenue is still growing.

            -The economic multiplier effect of the government stimulus based upon their own figures (ignoring external influences, big assumption) was only 0.5 which does not agree with keynesian theory.

            If it is based upon an alternate model I’m happy to learn about it.

          • @Michael

            That’s some wonderful quotes there from Keynesian economics textbooks.

            I’m not even going to try and assume I’m close to understanding all the subtleties of government spending. I never will be, not even if I was the Treasurer. Contrary to what some believe, that doesn’t make you automatically God of economics.

            Facts:

            – Wayne Swan brought Australia through the worst economic crisis in 75 years. Yes, he had a surplus to start with, but he still did it. And was praised for doing so. WITH stimulus.

            – Australia’s national debt is the smallest of any Western country. And yes, it needs to shrink. But not at the expense of economic weakening. When? I don’t know. But from what I’ve read, now is the time to be targeting spending, not cutting it across the board. In other words, tightening the belt. Not locking the pantry.

            – The NBN WILL produce economic net gain. How much, yes, is difficult to quantify, though many people have done their own calculations showing an increase in anywhere from 0.5% to 3% of GDP over 20 years. And no, a CBA is unlikely to be able to quantify it. Or an Audit. Or any other check the Coalition want to do and waste time and money on.

            – The NBN is NOT stimulus. It is infrastructure building for the coming decades. Unless you consider road building or rail building stimulus, under normal economic conditions, then the NBN isn’t either. It has an economic multiplier, like roads and rail. Again, the quantification of that is difficult. But it’s certainly not going to make the economy shrink.

            – Finally, questions such as these, based SOLELY on economics are academic for the NBN as a whole. The NBN is about connectivity. About SOCIAL connectivity and interaction and entertainment, as much as efficiency and productivity. Assuming that can all be measured by a number at the end of a page is naive at best.

          • I won’t go into it in depth, but the reason why I talk about Keynesian theory is that is the only one which advocates stimulating the economy through fiscal policy.

            Politicians like it because it is simple and they can appease special interest groups.

            Trying to advocate stimulus or increased spending to buoy economic activity without understanding the underlying principles would be like trying to advocate FTTP without understanding that it involves fibre optic cable to transfer the data.

            Just as an aside; an economic multiplier of 0<x<1 does not mean it decreased economic activity, just that it was wasteful, and doesn't really fit into the economic model. In general terms it means that for each dollar spent by the government the total economic activity observed equates is worth on 50c, when you would generally expect a number greater than 1.

            The concept comes from Keynes AD equation but that is probably going too far off topic.

            I challenge it as I do not agree with the principles behind it for governance, but it is the popular theory largely due to its simplicity.

          • Ask the US and a tad over half the EU how not following Keynes worked out Michael ;o)

          • “PS: You know what my actual benchmark is right now for either policy? Not the theory. But actual rollout. I want to see cable in the ground, whether it’s to the node or premise. I haven’t seen jack for the last decade. First side that actually gets this shit happening with good project management gets my ultimate seal of approval. I want better broadband. To my house. ASAP. Of either variety.”

            When dealing with politicians, the best and only reliable measure of progress is physical results, not promises.

          • @Michael

            While I appreciate where you are going with that….you could say, in that case, Labor have done better than the Coalition ever have. They have provided, so far, 150 000 (yes, over half are on satellite) with broadband that will last them decades and will likely provide more than 300 000 by September as a minimum.

            Howard managed to provide a few hundred thousand ADSL.

            I wouldn’t say that mind you. Because Labor have clearly underestimated the time it would take to get this far. But of the 2, Labor has had 6 years. The Coalition had 12.

            I’ll leave that there.

          • I’d like to point out that the ALP have achieved a whooooole lot more in 4 years than JH did in all his terms :)

          • But that’s the bottom line though isn’t it Renai.

            They want to promote themselves as fiscally conservative. But what they propose to do is anything but fiscally conservative. Its a proposal to spend additional money on a temporary network.

            And even ignoring for a moment that it is temporary – with potential obsolescence before its even completed – what of all the financial risks? The risks to revenue due to lowered volumes of data. The risks related to the state of the copper – potentially billions. All this adds up to a network that potentially could achieve what the Liberals accused the Labor NBN of and that’s failing to the point of the bonds having to be paid out from the budget.

          • “However, I am able to intellectually understand, which many people here are not, that it makes sense for a fiscally conservative Coalition Opposition to pitch it as an alternate option to a big-spending FTTP policy, which is taking too long to deliver.”

            Surely, saving less than a billion dollars could hardly be said to a fiscally conservative response to big spending. It is even less so, if yet unknown costs are factored in (maintenance and remediation of copper, value of copper network, future upgrade). And all this to end up with a lesser product which may not be completed sooner.

            On the last point, it must be remembered that fast deployment is only one part of delivering the network. Delays in negotiating, planning, designing, workforce recruitment and training can all influence on the final outcome and may negate the time saving benefit of deployment.

          • “Telstra has this information — it’s not an unknown. They have very detailed information about how the copper network functions and what it is capable of. They’ve done countless trials internally, and have giant databases full of information and maps of the copper. We’re not dealing with an unknown here. Just because the public doesn’t have that information, doesn’t mean Telstrea doesn’t have it.”

            @Renai, Telstra has plans of the CAN that show details about the physical network construction such routes, Pit & Pipe types and sizes, Cable types and sizes, cable size tappering and conductor size. It doesn’t have detailed information about the “real world” electrical properties of each pair that would be used in the last 750-800 metres of a FTTN design, only the theoretical electrical properities, so there is no way to give a garrantee about “real world” sync rates using this copper only theoretical sync rates. It is an unknown. Yes you can test the electrical properties of an existing telephone circuit, but that tests the whole circuit path and not the last 750-800 metres. You would have to physically test each circuit at the point where the nodes is to be built.

            Whoever or where ever you got that information from is wrong. That is just pure BS.

            I worked for Telecom & Telstra for a very long time so I know what you have stated is incorrect! If you make comments like this you are going to find yourself in the position of having a number of current and former Telstra employees call you on statements like this.

          • I know y’all don’t want to hear this. You want me to rant and scream and find 1,000 ways why the Mal plan is not possible and should be abolished and it’s not fair and where is my NBN fibre and I want it now. And you can scream at me all you want for doing that.

            I’d be happy with one way it was possible.

      • I upload high quality photos to my Flickr account, most are between 2MB and 10MB. But that’s because i use Flickr as a secondary backup to my computer, and can share them with friends (Flickr reduces the size for showing to others, but gives me access to the original large images.)

      • The only 50/50 plan I can find on Bell is FTTH?

        http://www.bell.ca/Bell_Internet/Products/Fibe_Internet_50_50

        And they only pay $49.95 a month for it without having to pay thousands up front :(

20. With Labor’s NBN, for 93% of premises, if you choose to pay for a 25/5 plan, you will be getting 25Mbps down and 5Mbps up; if you choose to pay for a 1000/400 plan, you will be getting 1Gbps down and 400Mbps up. And if higher speeds get introduced later, you will again be able to pay for a plan and get what you pay for.

    With Liberal’s NBN, even after Turnbull’s detailed policy announcement, we still don’t know what exactly we’ll be able to pay for, and what we will be able to realistically get. It will be a messy lottery for the kind of download and, especially so, upload speeds; some will get the fibre to the premise and be able to get the 1000/400 or even better in the near future; many more will be stuck on speeds many times lower, the exact quality of the service not being proportional to the cost of the plan they are paying for, but dependant on the quality of copper and/or distance to the node. Some may be able to upgrade to the full fibre to the premise by paying an undisclosed amount (but definitely in the range of $2000-$5000), and others may not be able to even if they could afford it. It will all be one huge mess. But we will have “infrastructure competition”, yay!

    Rather than “false dichotomy” of comparing the two policies, some people are stuck in a logical fallacy of false equivalence, defending the indefensible, for political reasons.

21. What I can’t understand is why people aren’t picking up on the ‘Earl of Wentworth’ a bit more for really having a go at a member of the public? (“Conroys new online BFF”, “Labor and their apologists are attempting to twist”)

    Agree or disagree on the website’s content, sure it wasn’t completely apples to apples, but it wasn’t hugely inaccurate; especially compared to some of the usual things politicians are caught out with.

    Is it any wonder people in Australia have a generally low opinion of politicians and don’t actively participate in the debate or political process when the above is the response they get?

    I don’t think you’d have seen the level of response from MT as high as it was without it having hit a nerve – maybe that’s telling.

    • Edit: Forgot why the above riled me up so much; came after I red about the red undies comment by Conroy yesterday;

      ” “If I say to everyone in this room: ‘If you want to bid next week in our spectrum auction, you’d better wear red underpants on your head’, I’ve got some news for you. You’ll be wearing them on your head. I have unfettered legal power,” he said.”

      http://www.news.com.au/business/companies/conroy-forced-to-wear-red-undies-of-arrogance/story-fnda1bsz-1226559612184

      It’s kind of unbelievable that these are people that we have voted into public office, or in some cases haven’t even voted into office (parachuting/branch stacking).

      • The federal gov has complete power over telecoms (its in the constitution). What you see as a meglomaniac statement is just an exagerated example of unlimited power.

22. The creator of the “How Fast…” site explains his reasoning and responds to criticisms in a new article on Crikey:

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/05/10/conroys-new-bff-spills-on-how-fast-is-the-nbn-site/

    • Crikey have pay walled it tho but you can read it here:

      http://blog.themonsta.id.au/statement-by-james-brotchie-creator-of-howfastisthenbn-com-au/

      Personally I agree with Renai on this one – I do however like the concept however I would have let users pick the NBN and LBN speeds themselves. To be fair to the LBN policy I would have given them the benefit of the doubt and supplied 12/1, 25/5 & 50/10 as best case options vs the entire suite of nbn plan speeds.

      • Heck, he could have shown the full 100Mbps (though that wouldn’t be FTTN then, would it?), and FTTP would still be T.E.N. times faster…

        Maybe adding as many clauses as the telcos have to would have avoided this? (you know the ones, “These speeds may not be achieved in all cases…yada yada).

23. I chose the 25 Mbps download on the Coalition’s side because:

    – By 2016 that’s their guaranteed minimum down speed as found in their policy document; and
    – Tony Abbott expressed that 25 megs would be “more than enough for the average household”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL7bHtr3-eU&t=3m40s)

    Riiight. So he picked it based on completely illogical grounds. Labor’s NBN will be finished in 2012, at 1Gbps. The Coalition’s NBN will be finished in 2019, with 50Mbps speeds. Yet, just as I pointed out, Brotchie arbitrarily picked the 25Mbps mark, which will be delivered at a time when Labor’s NBN is only halfway complete. Completely not apples for apples — a comparison arbitrarily weighted against the FTTN NBN.

    You can see why Turnbull was so outraged.

    • @Renai

      In 2021, the NBN being “half-finished” is your opinion (unless you literally meant 2012??). Not fact. In 2019, FTTN being finished and providing “minimum 50Mbps” is also your opinion, not fact.

      Fact is, neither or both might be true (we’ll never know, thanks to no one yet inventing parallel universe windows). But comparing the guaranteed minimum of 25Mbps in 2016 to 1Gbps to all those who DO have access to the NBN (many millions by then) isn’t unreasonable. Yes, it might be misleading to say that’s ALL they can expect. And he should have made that clearer. But I really don’t see what Turnbull is so outraged over.

      It’s not worse than Turnbull saying the NBN WILL cost $94 billion. And take another 5-8 years. It’s opinion.

    • You should compare minimum speed across main body of the network at the same point in time.

      It would be ADSL1 (or dialup) for the ALP NBN until 2020+
      Wheras for the LNP one it would be a step function with increments in 2016 and 2019.

      Would that not be a fair comparison of the minimum speeds in the country at any point in time?

      • @Michael

        In that case, it would be ADSL/dial-up until 2017 on the NBN, then 1Gbps FTTH from then.

        And increments as you say on the Coalition. But not 25Mbps 2016. Because the FTTN portion would only make up 40% of the footprint at that stage. And would the 25Mbps be guaranteed on HFC? And when will the FTTH portion be finished?

24. All well and good arguing technicalities

    It is a matter of who will do what?, it has been made clear that M.T intends to decimate the NBNCo executives and mangement team. Obviously the Coalition will win the election. As an executive , manager or engineer in the NBN what would you do?

    http://www.afr.com/p/technology/nbn_co_wireless_project_manager_S3T3sja4cmkAlbwJxIzuaM

    “It is understood at least five ­members of NBN Co’s 52-person ­communications team have left in recent weeks and as many as five ­senior executives have left in the past year. including head of industry engagement Jim Hassell and head of construction Dan Flemming.

    NBN Co sources say the looming federal election is affecting staff morale. Coalition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has pledged to slash operating costs and conduct a detailed review of management if his party wins power following the election in September.”

    Those that are still on board will have have been canvassing their options post September and may well depart in a steady stream, M.T’s new team will have a steep learning curve, then have to work out how to implement the Coalitions plans

    Maybe Telstra’s remediation will suddenly and inexplicably accelerate, Councils and residents will suddenly fall over themselves to grant approvals post haste.

    • The decimation of NBNco senior management and the disruption this will cause to the organsiation at every level is one of the reasons why it will take 3 years for FTTN to commence construction.

25. “Essentially what Brotchie is doing is comparing the theoretical maximum speed of Labor’s NBN policy with the Coalition’s theoretical minimum speed.”

    Nope. He’s comparing the fasted guaranteed available to the majority with the fastest guaranteed available speed to the majority.

    Sure, it’d probably better to use the later target of 50Mbps, but that’s a small error in selection rather than a deliberate attempt to use the minimum speed.

    Of course, you’re spending a significant amount of your time trying to dismiss speed as an important point and that FTTH supporters are fanbois, so I expect the distinction to lost on you.

    • “Sure, it’d probably better to use the later target of 50Mbps, but that’s a small error in selection rather than a deliberate attempt to use the minimum speed.”

      Riiiight.

      • To be fair only one of the examples on the site was a download comparison and if he’d picked 50Mbps it wouldn’t have made much of a difference as it would have shown 15 seconds vs 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes. The upload examples used 5Mbps which, considering that ADSL2 is a 20:1 ratio, is actually quite generous. Giving the guy such a hard time over just one of the tests being inaccurate seems a bit harsh to me.

26. So talking about roll out speed
    we know they want to deploy about 60,000 Nodes

    how many nodes per day need to go on line for them to meet the roll out target?

    Thinking for each node, the fiber need to be run to the node Pluss Power and the node needs to be built.
    Then in the middle of the night all the copper lines need to be cut and then re-patched back into the node

27. It compares the current minimum speed of Labours NBN to an expected minimum speed of the Liberals FTTN (A minimum speed that no one else in the world has been able achieved for all).

    Fiber has no minimum speed that we know of, only the current minimum.

28. Perhaps, apart from feelpinions and expressions of faith, an injection of some facts can help…:
    ( http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5160-origin-shows-what-speeds-vdsl2-can-achieve.html )

    The product page includes a dozen example speeds along with distance to the cabinet measured for lines which have had the service activated, and these help to show what VDSL2 is capable of in the UK.

    Distance to Cabinet Downstream Upstream
    147 m 106 Mbps 22 Mbps
    171 m 121 Mbps 27 Mbps
    183 m 98 Mbps 9 Mbps
    245 m 104 Mbps 21.6 Mbps
    248 m 107 Mbps 27 Mbps
    269 m 98 Mbps 27 Mbps
    392 m 81.5 Mbps 19.8 Mbps
    416 m 96 Mbps 30 Mbps
    490 m 76 Mbps 24.2 Mbps
    612 m 56 Mbps 22 Mbps
    857 m 32 Mbps 8.5 Mbps
    1372 m 22 Mbps 1.7 Mbps

    • Again, those figures are only representative of speeds attainable over a copper network that is dissimilar to Telstra’s – BTs copper is of heavier gauge and has been maintained far better. It helps that their population density is so much greater than Australia’s, with greater funding and regulation to ensure the network didn’t fall into disrepair. The only legal requirement Telstra have ever had with regards to network quality (and thus incentive for repairs) is a reliable voice service. There’s no regulatory requirement that the line is capable of any data transmission minimum. The state of pits and ducts requiring substantial remediation work before new cables can be installed is an excellent example of how neglected the network is.

29. And (note that Turnbull is talking about 800m)…:

    ( http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5161-how-fast-will-fttc-run-at.html )

    For those in areas where FTTC is available, the telephone number look ups can give an estimate, but the table below allows people to assess how reasonable that estimate is, assuming you know where your street cabinet is located (out of the 85,000 or so Openreach has).

    Distance to cabinet (metres) Estimated connection speed Cumulative%’age premises at this distance

    100m 100 Mbps 5%
    200m 65 Mbps 20%
    300m 45 Mbps 30%
    400m 42 Mbps 45%
    500m 38 Mbps 60%
    600m 35 Mbps 70%
    700m 32 Mbps 75%
    800m 28 Mbps 80%
    900m 25 Mbps 85%
    1000m 24 Mbps 90%
    1250m 17 Mbps 95%
    1500m 15 Mbps 98%

    VDSL2 Profile 17a, cabinet to premises speed estimate

    • Wait, what?!!

      They needed 85,000 cabinets just to do the UK????

30. Now (and especially, given Renai’s glowing approval of Dr Geoff Huston expertise on the subject matter)
    ( http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/09/huston-calls-for-active-fttp-nbn/#commenting ), it’s also worth having a look at the issue of inevitable upgrading of FTTN to FTTP at some point:

    “Coalition’s NBN will need ongoing, costly upgrading, experts warn”
    ( http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/coalitions-nbn-will-need-ongoing-costly-upgrading-experts-warn-20130410-2hkah.html )

    ““I would side with the view that this one is indeed a lemon,…And we’ve already learned from the [Remote Integrated Multiplexers] (mini telephone exchanges Telstra deployed that became bottlenecks) years ago that this kind of hybrid solution is extremely difficult to actually upgrade and replace.””

    More on the subject from Dr Huston (thanks Renai) can be found here:

    ‘What the Ftt?, Geoff Huston, April 2013’
    ( http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2013-04/wtf.html )

31. “Will the library ever let you play a full game of internet chess with the bandaid solution that is FTTN?”, is what i demand to know? I live in Dianella, W.A., and I tell you we get treated like absolute poo. Sure I can sign up to a better deal but that is not the point: a library is a library and this state supposedly had a once in a hundred year boom. IS THE MESSAGE WHEN I VISIT A LIBRARY- “GET BACK TO WORK YOU’VE GOT LANDLORDS KIDS TO PUT THRU UPPITY-TRYHARD-SNOOTY SCHOOL?”

32. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/02/11/qld-coalition-mp-issues-loaded-nbn-survey/

33. Well, to this pleb, it’s a pretty good demo of how things might be if Murdoch keeps his grubbies to himself.

    See for yourself…

    http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/

34. Wow, so many feel-pinions. And anger.

    We have no real indication as to what the average performance will be of FTTN, utilising VDSL, with vectoring, within Australia. Sorry, we can take a best-guess based on other markets, but you that can only ever be an estimate.

    Until there is live testing over variable line-length within Australia, it’s only ever going to be “example”. That testing will also qualify final deliverable speeds.

    There is a reason FTTH was pre-selected. It can offer reasonable guarantees of deliverable speeds. That means if your policy actually states minimum deliverables, you can deliver to that. Because it’s using a system where the limiting factor is tied to the transceivers and fibre pairs.

    Sure, you will test, but you can have good expectation because the (fibre-based) technology takes the guess work out. The same is untrue for ADSL. And VDSL. And the Vectoring of. It is dependant on copper quality and line-length.

    Turnbull has also stated that ISPs will be responsible for setting speed options, not any wholesaler. This single cop-out basically renders any speed claims in his policy as moot. They no longer have relevance.

    This means a service that offers “up to 100 mbit” and delivers 20 mbit, will be a valid outcome.

    So, to get back to the topic at hand, the website is taking estimates and comparing them against fact. That’s all it can do.

    The Coalition can do better. They’ve not even bothered to poll the industry, seek input or even wait to have a Commission review all the options and make recommendations. CBA? No-no.

    They’ve just picked the technology and gone with it. The price difference is now almost equitable. There’s no excuse.

35. Just an interesting article from a NBN user, the comments are worthy of a read. Pointing out the possibilities of the FTTP version, will the FTTN version provide the same opportunities.

    http://www.bit.com.au/News/343140,how-the-nbn-has-actually-changed-my-life.aspx

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