Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has delivered an impassioned speech (watch it in full above) arguing much of the reality around the nature of broadband has been lost in the national NBN debate, and that Australia’s blockbuster fibre to the home rollout is unusual even by the standards of international broadband centres like Korea.
“To say that the debate has become confused is an understatement,” said Turnbull, speaking to the Communications Day Summit in Sydney this morning.
Many commentators on the broadband issue – including members of the Federal Government like Communications Minister Stephen Conroy — have highlighted fibre rollouts in technologically progressive countries like South Korea and Japan as being examples of what the future of telecommunications will look like.
However, this morning Turnbull said he had recently visited Korea, and the reality was that the sort of fibre to the home connection that the NBN will deploy was very rare even in that country.
“The overwhelming majority of residences are not wired with fibre,” he said, noting he had visited a new city in the country, which he described as “an extraordinary new development, like the set of a science fiction movie”. “In the residential apartments there, the premises are wired with Ethernet,” said Turnbull, “with fibre in the basement – in effect fibre to the node”.
It’s this style of deployment which Turnbull said was the norm in Korea – planners there had decided not to run fibre into every residence, “for reasons of cost”.
The Liberal MP also highlighted the fact that the NBN rollout will see Telstra stop providing broadband over its HFC cable network, as part of its deal with the Federal Government to migrate customers onto the NBN. Optus has given hints that it is working on a similar deal, and the fibre rollout will see Telstra’s copper network removed.
And yet, in Korea, Turnbull said, the country’s communications regulator had made it “abundantly clear” to him that a key objective there was the promotion of facilities-based competition, with a number of networks running into residences and businesses – including HFC cable networks.
We have with the design of the NBN, a clear policy objective, which is entirely at odds with that, which is focused on creating a fixed-line monopoly,” Turnbull said.
The Shadow Communications Minister also received a demonstration in Korea of what he described as “really remarkable high definition videoconferencing” from US networking giant Cisco – the quality of which, he said, took his breath away.
However, he said, the videoconferencing link only required a 1.5Mbps symmetric data stream. Cisco had told him, he said, that its rivals would require as much as 6-8Mbps.
Based on this fairly high-end example of network use, Turnbull questioned what applications would run on the NBN fibre which would require anything like the 1Gbps or even 100Mbps speeds it is promising to deliver. “Nobody has an answer to that,” he said.
Overall, Turnbull made it plain that the Opposition supported a vision where all Australians got access to high-speed broadband. However, he said the key question in the matter was the cost-effectiveness of delivering that access – a test, he said, that the Federal Government’s policy didn’t pass. It was a mix of technologies with a guaranteed base speed of 12Mbps that would better and more cost-effectively deliver such a broadband vision, Turnbull argued.
“The fundamental question … is do you need to entirely overbuild your existing telecommunications network, your existing customer access network, with a new fibre to the home system or network, in order to deliver fast broadband?” he said. The answer is absolutely not.”
“This is one of the great untruths that is being promoted as part of the defence of the NBN.”
The news comes as several key players in Australia’s telecommunications market landed heavy blows on the NBN project at the same conference. Internode
AAPT chief executive Paul Broad this morning called on fellow telcos to stand up and “make noises” to protect competition in the new world order of the NBN, slamming the network as a return to a telecommunications monopoly, while Internode MD Simon Hackett yesterday described the National Broadband Network’s pricing model as “insane” for small internet service providers, warning that none will survive their walk through the “valley of death” transition from the current copper network to the fibre NBN.
Video credit: Marina Freri (Delimiter)
Wow… so a video conf only requires a 1.5Mbps symmetric data stream, well, that rules out ADSL then and most wireless tech floating around around in the public at the moment.
5 years ago, there was no Youtube, NBN is about today’s data requirements, it is about the futures.
I meant to say “isn’t about today’s” :-)
Still listening, but having ethernet from the basement in an apartment complex up to each apartment, is cost saving because these apartments most likely have a shit load more in them than ones here. Also ethernet can give a gigabit connection. It also sounds like the Internet connection would be managed differently in this kind of setup.
I agree completely, to make a 1:1 comparision of apartment buildings to “australia” is fundamentally flawed, not to mention all the usual politcal FUD they have been using. even with the NBN the plan is to have FTTH for appartments but feeding that FTTH into VDSL for distribution into the building. To compare somewhere like korea’s high density housing with australia’s relatively low density housing is stupid and like saying an orange is like car. It is fundamentally flawed.
For other non-technical spectators, what is being compared here is a high density housing that only has FTTH (called node as it is a distribution point) and then feeding off 100/1000mbit ethernet, which IS much cheaper but has a limit of 100 meters before needing a powered repeater. to wire all of australia to this would limit us to 100mbit, the maximum of RJ45 cable but also the cost and logistics of the repeaters would be rediculous! (how many km between brisbane/melbourne, about 1700, that would require 17,000 repeaters before you even look at hooking up houses. this is why fiber is a smart choice. this is why fiber is the ONLY choice.
RJ45 is a connector, not a cable. CAT5/6 is standard ethernet cabling. CAT6 can be used for 1000mb/s networks.
Cat5e can also be used for 1000Mb/s connections.
Take a look at page 5 of this document. The diagram clearly shows that for apartment buildings, NBNCo is considering two options, one where Fibre goes to every apartment separately (similar to how FTTH is being rolled out in Japan) and another where it goes into the basement and a VDSL modem is used in each apartment (similar to Korea’s current network).
So you can’t really say that we’re doing things so differently to Korea anyway, since FTTB is clearly on the table here. The big difference, and I’ve pointed this out many times before, is that in Korea, everybody lives in apartments. Since free-standing homes are so rare there, it’s no wonder they’ve come up with a different network design to us.
I also find it funny that Turnbull was watching a demonstration by Cisco that showed amazing quality teleconferencing that “only” needed a 1.5Mbps upstream connection, but then goes on to tell us that the coalition is only interested in a 1Mbps upstream connection… and too bad if your business wants to tele-conference with more than one person at a time (or you want to organize two meetings at once).
Still, I think there is much to like about Turnbull’s argument.
1. He argues that the ‘fibre to the home Korea’ is a myth, and is actually far more complex than that. Correct.
2. He argues shutting down Australia’s HFC networks will harm competition for consumers. Also correct.
3. He argues that there are few applications which require 100Mbps, let alone 1Gbps. Also correct.
It’s pretty hard to argue against this … when you do, you start to get into semantics.
2. He argues shutting down Australia’s HFC networks will harm competition for consumers. Also correct.
But its only rolled out in a small portion of the country. I know I can’t get it where I am.
“1. He argues that the ‘fibre to the home Korea’ is a myth, and is actually far more complex than that. Correct.”
Yes correct, but surely he’s just splitting hairs. They have 100mbps to the home, and surely the point is that they’re not doing it via wireless or the rotting remains of a decades-old PSTN network. It’s fibre up until the last 50 metres or so, and that model makes sense for them because so much of the population lives in large apartment buildings.
“2. He argues shutting down Australia’s HFC networks will harm competition for consumers. Also correct.”
Correct, but only in limited geographical areas. For the vast bulk of the country there is no competition to be harmed.
“3. He argues that there are few applications which require 100Mbps, let alone 1Gbps. Also correct.”
Can’t argue with this one if you only focus on the needs of today, but when we’re talking about a decade-long build it is decidedly short-sighted to do so. Is Turnbull willing to state that there will be no high-bandwidth applications in broad use by 2020?
I agree Turnbull has some good points but he’s left out some important parts of the picture. Intentionally, no doubt.
Few applications that require 100Mbps today. From an enterprise IT Standpoint — I’ve played with numerous servers that 1GigE isn’t fast enough – and that have required 10G. Unless something amazing happens — this will trickle down into household use.
My laptop would have been the fastest computer in the world 15 years ago. If you start making predictions on that kind of timescale — you need to factor the exponential growth that has been endemic in this industry.
Yeah well, ironicly long term thinking isn’t something politicians are good at.
1. South Korea’s fibre to the building has so far cost US $70 billion of taxpayer money. Our fibre to 93% of premises, plus two satellites plus a million wireless services will cost AUD $27 billion. Mr Turnbull praised in Hansard the Economist Intelligence (sic) Unit’s report claiming Korea was spending $1 billion on delivering fibre, when this was only an upgrade from the 100 Mbps thathas been found to be inadequate to a 1 Gbps fibre rollout.
2. Shutting down Telstra and Optus HFC networks will not harm competition for consumers. Most will remain with their providers and simply migrate to NBN fibre for a service with more bandwidth headroom than shared HFC. Telstra is already upselling high-bandwidth T-Box and Foxtel to those with fast enough broadband, and 100% will be able to become customers of such services on the NBN.
3. Few applications need 100 Mbps, let alone 1 Gbps. Offsite backup does. A couple of simultaneous TV viewers in the premises do. An office with a dozen employees probably does, let alone an office with a hundred staff. How would it be if your office network was still using TBase-10, Renai? Opening a very large Word document from the file share can take ten seconds now, so basic work from home involving work with documents on the office network already needs gigabit speeds to deliver comparable performance.
Sounds like the head of IBM estimating a worldwide need for 4 computers, or BillGates saying no-one would need more than 640 KB of RAM.
But Australia is very much like like South Korea in being extremely urbanised. The NBN fibre footprint only covers large towns and cities, with population density in the hundreds of persons per sq km, the same as South Korea and Japan’s FTTH footprint, plus some long backhaul in the case of Australia.
Mister Turnbull is merely continuing to be a wrecker. Having lost the respect of most in parliament during this costly, time wasting and mostly ineffectual debate, he apparently has nothing more to offer. I hope he can prove me wrong, as I had credited him with more intelligence than he is bringing to this matter.
“Sounds like the head of IBM estimating a worldwide need for 4 computers, or BillGates saying no-one would need more than 640 KB of RAM.”
Bill Gates didn’t actually say that, but your point is well taken. It’s dangerous to make any IT predictions even 10 years out (the timespan of the NBN build) because things move so rapidly and in unexpected directions.
I wouldn’t have believed you in 2001 if you’d told me that by 2011 we’d have cheap pocket computers with broadband internet access, multimedia playback, high-definition video recording, GPS and many gigabytes of storage; and if you’d told me that a large proportion of ordinary people (ie non tech geeks) would own these things and use them every day I would have laughed in your face. But that’s exactly what happened.
So who would be foolish enough to predict just what broadband speeds will be considered “good enough” in 10 years time? Certainly not me, but I will predict with a high degree of confidence that what we have available today will be far from adequate.
He talks about allowing fibre/HFC to be rolled out to heavy populated areas.
What’s a heavy populated area?
They’ve been ‘allowed’ to do this for ages. But they haven’t.
He talks about fast broadband but doesn’t state what speed fast broadband is.
Compared to 10 years ago what we have now is a ‘fast’ internet connection. But also in that time as more people have gotten faster internet connections services that take advantage of this have come about as well.
“He talks about allowing fibre/HFC to be rolled out to heavy populated areas.
They’ve been ‘allowed’ to do this for ages. But they haven’t.”
Exactly.
It never ceases to amaze me that people continue to hold up the HFC networks as a model of competition which ought to be preserved. In fact they are a model of failure – both Telstra and Optus lost buckets of money rolling out HFC and gave up long before they’d even covered the major cities. That was way back in the mid 90’s, with not even a single new street wired up since then and no hint that the rollout will ever resume.
If the HFC saga doesn’t prove that fixed-line telecommunication infrastructure is a natural monopoly in this country, I don’t know what will.
“In fact they are a model of failure – both Telstra and Optus lost buckets of money rolling out HFC and gave up long before they’d even covered the major cities”
Indeed, AND they were rolled out into the most high density high income areas of our biggest capital cities, so please why do you think the NBN FTTH will make money in these areas after the HFC is pulled down?
” That was way back in the mid 90′s, with not even a single new street wired up since then and no hint that the rollout will ever resume.”
You omit to say that both Telstra and Optus are upgrading the HFC networks to provide even higher speeds, I guess they take the attitude that until its pulled down and we get a few lazy billion from Conroy for doing so we might as well wring it for all we can get.
You also omit to mention the point of the discussion in the first place, that is Korea has not pulled down its HFC to make way for FTTH.
Here the attitude is different because the NBN has to justify its existence by eliminating competitors, if it cannot justify its existence without having the HFC network pulled down there is something wrong with the technical merits of FTTH.
Indeed, AND they were rolled out into the most high density high income areas of our biggest capital cities, so please why do you think the NBN FTTH will make money in these areas after the HFC is pulled down?
Well, obviously because the copper is also being pulled out…
“Well, obviously because the copper is also being pulled out…”
Well ‘obviously’ it is not, some customers take a HFC service for PayTV and/or broadband, most don’t though, it has nothing to do with the copper being pulled out these customers don’t use it anyway, if HFC cannot pay its way cherry picking the most lucrative areas of Australia what makes you think NBN FTTH will offering the same services?
Because the areas where the people with big money are might just not be the areas of heavy internet users? Although this is changing fast as more people get on facebook (aka the internet)
Well I don’t mean lucrative necessarily as in high income residents on its own, I mean lucrative as in the HFC runs around high density population areas of our biggest capital cities where there is the potential for high takeup because the cable passes more residences per square kilometre.
“please why do you think the NBN FTTH will make money in these areas after the HFC is pulled down?”
For the same reason the copper network has been profitable, ie for most of its history there has been no pointless duplication at the infrastructure level.
“You omit to say that both Telstra and Optus are upgrading the HFC networks”
I was specifically talking about the HFC rollout, not the technology stack behind it. These upgrades you speak of do not involve a single metre of new coax being installed anywhere in the country.
“You also omit to mention the point of the discussion in the first place, that is Korea has not pulled down its HFC to make way for FTTH.”
Perhaps Korea doesn’t need to, but the market conditions here are different. Once again I direct your attention to exhibit A, our one and only attempt at infrastructure duplication (the HFC wars), which has a complete and utter disaster. And that’s not just my opinion, both Telstra and Optus are on record saying as much.
“if it cannot justify its existence without having the HFC network pulled down there is something wrong with the technical merits of FTTH.”
So now you’re conflating market conditions with the merits of the technology? I know you’re attempting to confuse the issue but you’re making yourself look ignorant. FTTH is not the point of the NBN, it’s only a means to an end.
@Jeremy
“For the same reason the copper network has been profitable, ie for most of its history there has been no pointless duplication at the infrastructure level.”
That’s making the grand assumption that a Telstra ONLY HFC or a Optus ONLY HFC would have been profitable, which really doesn’t explain that when a residence has a choice of BOTH which they do why the majority don’t take either does it?
“These upgrades you speak of do not involve a single metre of new coax being installed anywhere in the country.”
Yes I know that, but it does seem ludicrous that a already functioning cable infrastructure undergoing speed upgrades needs to be pulled down to make the NBN look good does it not?
“Perhaps Korea doesn’t need to, but the market conditions here are different.”
The ‘different market conditions’ you allude to here is that the NBN FTTH needs to be made to look good, the best way to do that is to buy out the HFC customer base that is a threat to that in HFC areas with billions of taxpayers funds, (of course that is not a NBN cost!) – yeah right.
“So now you’re conflating market conditions with the merits of the technology?”
Everyone hypes up the marvellous technical advantages of NBN FTTH, most punters are happy with HFC, ADSL1 and 2, of course it too a high risk for the NBN FTTH to have to compete with other fixed line infrastructure, so the best way to make the NBN uptake look good is get rid that infrastructure, where there are adequate infrastructure alternatives in the pilot areas NBN uptake is lukewarm!
That’s how ‘competition’, the technical ‘merits’ of FTTH and a taxpayer fed wholesale monopoly works!
Yes indeed Jeremy…
Even one of the NBN’s harshest critics right here (and one of my old sparring partners) alain, has told us he has HFC available and (I believe) he said he isn’t signed up to it.
What he did definitely claim was, the “HFC cable which is hanging from poles across the road, is good for nothing but the pigeons to perch upon”.
That’s right isn’t it alain?
Pretty conclusive thumbs down from someone who has HFC as an option, isn’t signed up (I believe), says it’s a waste/failure and most importantly is as anti-NBN as anyone…!
“Australia’s NBN is nothing like Korea”, says Turnbull.
Excellent – Korea is nothing like Australia. Just because a solution works for Korea doesn’t mean it will work for Australia.
I get really frustrated with the “Australia should do wireless because America is”, and the “we shouldn’t do FttH because Korea isn’t doing it” arguments. It’s a load of ball-sack.
What do Korea and the United States have to do with how Australia does it? Or anything? What’s wrong with doing it “our way”?
@MichealWyres
“What do Korea and the United States have to do with how Australia does it? Or anything? What’s wrong with doing it “our way”?”
Nothing at all, we did it ‘our way’ with the insulation rollout and the school buildings program – err perhaps that’s not the Australian way you meant.
TurnBULL is the NBN nay-sayer! He absolutely has no credibility left on this topic. He continues to harp on about wireless despite a majority of the industry saying that wireless is complementary. Then there is the fact that if everyone was on wireless, to get the promised speeds then 1000’s of kms of fibre to wireless towers would be needed and the fact that ugly radiation emitting towers would be on almost every street corner.
I’ve got no time for TurnBULL and his antics!
@singo79
“TurnBULL is the NBN nay-sayer! He absolutely has no credibility left on this topic.”
Well he does, even Renai the author of this article takes the objective view and acknowledges he does make some valid points, as a one eyed pro-NBN proponent you might not like to read the message but that doesn’t count.
@alain – I may be “pro-NBN”, but I am because of what it represents and because I can see the demand for such a service as we move forward into the future.
Whereas Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition are only thinking about the cost of the network. They really don’t care about delivering any services to the Australian public, they simply want the Australian coffers in the black no matter the cost to the Australian economy and our way of life.
All we saw from four terms of Coalition rule was the introduction of the GST, cuts to public infrastructure investment and a couple of extra bucks a week back in our pay packets. The $2.00 a week that the Government refunded me under my income tax would have been far better spent in public infrastructure investment, such as the NBN or even into public hospitals, something the current Labor Government is trying to do after a decade of neglect!
That is what Labor Governments do, they build the infrastructure that the Coalition later sell to make huge surpluses, all at the expense of the average Australian trying to make a living.
It’s always nice to see high income earners getting a tax break by the Coalition Governments!
I don’t think Turnbull knows what “ethernet” is. It’s not a cable, it’s a standard. Also – I don’t think he knows how NBN Co intends to address MDUs – in much the same way as in Korea.
At the last industry forum, NBN Co said their current plans for MDUs would be fibre all the way to each unit. Much simpler management in the long run if every end user connection is the same.
True, but I would think it would be a nightmare to actually implement… living in an apartment myself, I can’t imagine how you’d get permission from the body corporate and then organize access to each individual unit in a manner that is cost-effective (i.e. so that you could do the whole building in one go).
But I guess that’s for NBNCo to figure out…
And that’s exactly what Quigley said… :)
I wonder. If he wishes to compare us to Korea and say “This is what they did!”, does he take into consideration that they just did it. No Telstra to deal with, no stupidly obstructive opposition saying “Cost, cost, cost, stonage works well!” to deal with. They just did it.
Turnbull should stop stalling and start making REAL policies. Make the NBN the coalitions somehow. WIN voters!
Would fibre to the basement still be classed as its going into the Premises??? FTTH Would still apply i would think ???? its not like its stoping 3 k’s away and then copper is going to the appartments is it? like FTTN??
Malcolm is a master of misleading. Everyone knew his trip to Korea was to not look at the full range of broadband solutions with an open mind, but rather to find specific examples that he could use to argue against the NBN. The fact that he has now assembled a clever speech based around these irrelevant examples is no surprise.
As for Cisco’s 1.5mbps HD video conferencing, there’s no way this was anything higher than 720p, or if it was it must have been next to static, as any movement of a 1080p signal at such a tiny bit-rate would turn into a chunky mess of blocks and freeze continuously. Even with the mos advanced latest codecs.
As others have pointed out what about uplink? I only get 700kbps-1mbps upload on my ADSL2 connection and my next G wireless is often even worse. There’s no way it’s suitable for HD video conferencing, no matter what Cisco has come up with.
This is a network for the future. High Definition video solutions for government services, education, doctors, gamers and entertainment content providers all require very high data rates if you want to maintain high quality consistent picture. Consider the fact that a Blu-Ray has a typical bit-rate of 25mbps to maintain the highest quality 1080p picture and it’s pretty obvious that even with H.264 or WebM we need at least 15mbps up and 15mbps down for a true high definition video link. I’m not talking about the over-compressed crap that YouTube claims is 1080p or 720p, but ultra-sharp REAL HD with fine detail and no artefacts.
The Coalition’s entire strategy is based around band-aid solutions, which don’t in any way equip people for the high bandwidth needs of the next decade. It was only a decade ago that many of us were on 56kbps dial-up and and if anyone had suggested that in 2011 8-20mbps would be the average consumer connection speed it would have been hard to believe.
Why are the coalition so blind that they don’t understand that the internet is growing more complex and bandwidth hungry every day? 12mbps is barely enough for to get by on today, let alone to equip you for high bandwidth cloud based computing of 2020.
Malcolm talks in a clever passionate way, but ultimately he’s just a crafty, word twisting, cherry picking politician, looking to destroy the most ambitious and and exciting Government infrastructure project in history.
This is all going to seem very funny in 2020 when when the NBN is raking in the dollars and we’re all connected to a range of different services, using the one lightening fast internet connection. As long as Labor wins the next election anyway…
I’m not talking about the over-compressed crap that YouTube claims is 1080p or 720p, but ultra-sharp REAL HD with fine detail and no artefacts.
The other thing is, YouTube encodes it’s content off-line. For video conferencing, you need to encode in real-time and encoding video is actually the expensive part. You need something like a quad-core CPU to encode HD H.264 in real-time which just isn’t workable in practice: in reality, you need dedicated hardware…
Though to be honest, you can actually get away with fairly high compression with a fairly cheap encoder for video conferencing (because video conferencing is usually just someone’s mostly static head, rarely do you get full-frame movement).
The problem is not so much what do you do with a single video stream, it’s what do you do when you want to conference with half a dozen people: if they’re all taking 500Kbps each, then you’re screwed on a 1Mbps uplink. Unless everybody connects to a central server which has plenty of uplink speed, but a) that increases the cost (because you need an expensive server) and b) it increases the latency in the video stream(s).
@Simon Reidy
“This is all going to seem very funny in 2020 when when the NBN is raking in the dollars and we’re all connected to a range of different services, using the one lightening fast internet connection.”
… or it is bleeding millions everyday, is grossly over budget, and the rollout completion date has two years added to it every six months, the government of the day is desperately trying to flog it off at garage sale pricing as Telstra and SingTel circle, and the 70% uptake stated in the business case to justify its existence sits static at 51%.
You really have a warped view of reality don’t you alain? Were you born with your extreme pessimism? Or is it something that developed later in life?
Well we could both have warped views of reality, see you in 2020 to see who is right.
:)
I think my prediction just took a step forward.
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/04/01/nbn-co-halts-network-construction-tender/#more-14146
alain said (from above) –
“or it (the NBN) is bleeding millions everyday, is grossly over budget, and the rollout completion date has two years added to it every six months, the government of the day is desperately trying to flog it off at garage sale pricing as Telstra and SingTel circle, and the 70% uptake stated in the business case to justify its existence sits static at 51%”. {END}
Once again Mr. Contradiction please explain how the above comment of yours fits in with this comment you previously made, copy/pasted IN FULL (so no BS claiming out of context please) –
advocate/alain – “You betcha, the NBN will be a ‘success’ because all the fixed line competitors are eliminated by its owner the Australian Government – simple process of how a monopoly works”.{END}
Ooh that’s right you aren’t (because you are unable) to successfully reply to my embarrassing (for you) truths anymore are you…!
LOL…….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Turnbull is a moron, fiber to the basement and then ethernet to rooms is FTTP, P = Premise – it can be any kind of building.
This is exactly what NBNco propose to do with apartment complexes.
Malcolm’s examples of why we don’t need 100Mbit or Gbit connections always use a single current day example. If we get the NBN in most houses it will be common place for Dad to be working from home and maybe remotely connected to his office maybe participating in video conferencing, meanwhile, mum is may ordering shopping from an online supermarket, possibly using a bar code scanner installed into the fridge door, the kids are watching their favorite on-demand HD television show. While all this is happening the power, gas and water companies are smart monitoring the house’s resource uses. If all of this is to happen without pauses, stutters, buffering and interuptions, of course you’re going to be using a fair chunk of that bandwidth. Give people 10 years to think about it all and you’ll be amazed what other uses the communication utility will have.
A perfect example of why 12Mbps isn’t enough is Foxtel.
Their current IQ2 boxes can record two programs, while you’re watching a third. Three streams. A 1080p HD video stream with 5.1 sound is about 4Mbps…even Malcolm agreed with that number in a discussion some time ago – (might even have been in parliament)…
Now, if Foxtel – (or any other provider of video) – decided to deliver via the NBN, they have to provide 12Mbps AT LEAST, for every IQ2 box they install in the house. Install two, there’s 24Mbps they have to provision.
Suddenly the 100Mbps barrier doesn’t seem quite so far away, does it?
So what percentage of the population in Australia has Foxtel and two IQ boxes then? I don’t quite appreciate the need to spend $43 billion of taxpayer funds to help Foxtel out.
“So what percentage of the population in Australia has Foxtel and two IQ boxes then? I don’t quite appreciate the need to spend $43 billion of taxpayer funds to help Foxtel out.”
So Michael provides a single example of real-world high bandwidth consumption and you pretend this is the entire justification for the NBN? Nice.
In any case, what’s the problem if it helps Foxtel out? They will pay to use the NBN infrastructure which strengthens the NBN’s business case. And even better, other pay TV providers will be able to compete on a level playing field for the first time in Australia’s history. Competition is good remember?
So Michael provides a single example of real-world high bandwidth consumption and you pretend this is the entire justification for the NBN? Nice.
No, I stated no such thing, I was responding to his justification example as stated for the NBN.
“In any case, what’s the problem if it helps Foxtel out? They will pay to use the NBN infrastructure which strengthens the NBN’s business case.”
I have a better idea where the taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill, Foxtel or any other business that wants to sell me PayTV or HD IPTV or HD video conferencing or a HD Movie downloads, rolls out the infrastructure to support it.
I can then optionally decide or not if I want the service, they are on a winner because everyone desperately wants these facilities as the pro NBN lobby keep telling us, err maybe not because the reality is there is a high risk the majority will take the ‘ I don’t want it option’ as per the HFC rollout.
If the justification of the NBN is based on the above services as I outlined and you find at the end of the rollout just like HFC that the majority DO NOT take those services where does that leave the original NBN justification?
“No, I stated no such thing”
Um, we can still see the words you originally wrote. “I don’t quite appreciate the need to spend $43 billion of taxpayer funds to help Foxtel out.” That is not why the money is being spent.
“I have a better idea where the taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill”
The taxpayer doesn’t have to foot the bill with the current business plan. It just needs people (eg Foxtel subscribers) to use and pay for the network. So, the more pay TV the better!
“If the justification of the NBN is based on the above services as I outlined and you find at the end of the rollout just like HFC that the majority DO NOT take those services where does that leave the original NBN justification?”
Your scenario is unrealistic. Look at recent history and tell me if there will be more or less demand for high bandwidth applications in 2020. A brief look at the historical demand curve is instructive. Trying to frame this as some sort of gamble is just silly.
You’re still a bozo.
How many have two? I don’t know – ask Foxtel. But plenty of people have one in the living room, and one in the bedroom. I’ve certainly lived in a house with two active Foxtel boxes in exactly that configuration.
The Coalition argues that 12Mbps over a single ADSL2+ service is enough. Well, one Foxtel IQ2 blows that away, before anyone else wants to do anything online with other devices in the home.
I merely chose the Foxtel example as a way you could very quickly and easily fill the “12Mbps is all you’ll ever need” pipe.
Stop and think for a moment. Turnbull wants to spend $6b to give everyone 12Mbps. Cool – nothing wrong with that, at all.
Tell me what happens in a few years when 12Mbps is not enough?
Well, someone has to spend another chunk-load of money to bring us up to the next “fastest speed you’ll ever need” – maybe that’s 50Mbps? How much is that gonna cost?
Down the track when 100Mbps is the “fastest speed you’ll ever need” – who’s gonna pay for that upgrade?
What happens when 1Gbps becomes that speed? Who’s stumping up the funds for that upgrade?
Given the fibre being laid, in combination with EXISTING technology – (GPON in this case) – is capable of 40Gbps, how many expensive upgrade cycles does going down the Coalition path lock us into for the next 20 years?
It won’t be any cheaper than the NBN, and we’ll have none of the economic benefits of having it.
So here’s the question for you – who is going to pay for all these upgrades over time, and how much is it going to cost?
You hit the nail on the head in a big way,
I live in a share house with 5 other people. We all have smartphones, there’s two Tivo boxes, a Beyonwiz media box, 4 laptops, an X-Box 360, two ethernet connected Blu-Ray players and an iPad.
We all share a 25mbps (peak) ADSL2 connection which is usually around the 8-12mbps mark in real world scenarios. It only takes one person to start downloading a movie from Casper and the connection slows to a crawl. My sister is also frequently uploading photos to the net which kills our paltry 1mbps uplink.
The point being that we struggle to manage bandwidth on a connection twice as fast as what the coalition is proposing. And this is today! In 5 years time with even more bandwidth hungry devices and a richer content-heavy internet, ADSL2 is going to to feel like dial-up. I want at least 100mbps down and preferably 25mbps+ up. The only way to achieve this is with fibre.
The moment the NBN is available in my area I will be jumping onboard. I can’t wait.
@Michael Wyres
If 12Mbps plainly isn’t good enough, how do you explain that to the 7% of the population who will be on wireless/satellite, and that’s all they can get for the same price as their cousins in the city?
Michael, it really does seem as though you pick and choose scenarios to suit. Yesterday you did a bunch of figures to show how inexpensive CVC would be, but you based all the numbers on 12Meg, now you’re saying 12 Meg isn’t good enough?
12Mbps won’t be enough over time, so yes, it isn’t good enough.
Are you saying that they will never seek to upgrade the satellite capacity, or the wireless capacity? I’m not suggesting that.
My figures yesterday were a demonstration that the difference in price a big ISP is charged by NBN compared to a small ISP is negligible.
I used 12Mbps in that example as it was the most appropriate point of comparison, because that’s the only speed (currently) where there is price parity across the technologies, not as a statement at what speed is “right” or “enough”.
While there are obviously people for whom 12Mbps is not enough today, for the majority of people it is enough. But what about 10 years from now? 20 years?
@MichealWyres
“You’re still a bozo”
Wow what a come back – deep.
“How many have two? I don’t know”
Yes I know.
“I merely chose the Foxtel example as a way you could very quickly and easily fill the “12Mbps is all you’ll ever need” pipe.”
Of course the current HFC pipe is running well under capacity, but never mind we will pull it down and replace it with even a more expensive bigger pipe, but the taxpayer is paying for that one so who cares if it also runs no where near its load limits.
It’s just as well the NBN box has a phone connection so that current handsets can be used, because it won’t be accepted by the population at large if it doesn’t work like exactly like PSTN.
It would be sad if the use of all that shiny new expensive fibre to the door is 90% email/ web browsing and voice calls.
You and the other tech tech geek tyre kickers think the way you want to use it is how the majority want to use it.
Multiple IPTV facilities, multiple Foxtel outlets each with their own IQ box is a cost on top of the BB fee, NBN FTTH does not come preloaded with these services.
Nice misquoting my post to suit yourself. Nice comeback though? Thanks…*smile*…still nicely above your usual standard however.
So, the Telstra HFC is “running well under capacity”? What a laugh! Ever watched Foxtel over cable? It’s pixelated to the shit house because they have to compress the buggery out of it to get all the channels onto it. The more internet users they try and SQUEEZE onto it, the thinner slice of the pie Foxtel get allocated, and the worse it gets. I’ve seen people with Foxtel in cabled areas BEG to be converted to satellite, just to get a decent picture.
I’m sorry, but you’re just plain wrong on this.
As for “NBN FTTH does not come preloaded with these services” – guess what? Wrong again. The NBN will provide native multicast IPTV services to anyone – (not just Foxtel) – who wants to deliver IPTV. It’s the next feature set to be added, and currently being tested in their labs.
But you already know that.
I’m all for you delivering your opinion and will never call for you (or anyone) to shutup – but stand ready to be called out on the FUD.
@MichealWyres
“I’m sorry, but you’re just plain wrong on this.”
Oh really, so that is why Telstra and Optus is constantly increasing the speed offerings for their cable BB to more areas to attract more customers, I guess their HFC tech departments have not done their homework because that it now going to make Pay TV even worse – I guess they should have consulted with you first eh? – they are also truly thankful that most residences don’t take HFC services, otherwise they would really be in deep s***t!
“But you already know that.”
You also now that a end user wanting IPTV services pays a retail fee depending on which IPTV service the ISP offers from which media company on top of the base BB fee they have chosen, which is the point I was making.
But you already know that.
“– but stand ready to be called out on the FUD.:
Indeed, you are ready too I take it, you are getting called out on a regular basis ,and not just by me.
By the FUDsters mainly, oddly enough.
What happened to good old *facepalm* – the standard exit strategy?
Alain, there is a marketing term for the “slur” you use of “Tech geek tyre kicker”, and that is Early Adopter. The ones who take up services and products before the rest of the population. The main factor for the DEGREE of success for the NBN will be WHEN IPTV, video calls, video on demand, working from home and other future products move from the realm of early adopters into the mainstream.
Yet again you miss one of the main points of the debate about the NBN. Now and into the future there will be an ever increasing need for faster broadband. It is true that Different people will get different amounts of personal use out of the NBN, and the majority of users on sites such as this will probably be on the higher end of the spectrum. This being said, the speeds and quotas defining the higher end will also increase over time.
The personal use of the NBN is only part of picture, as business and enterprise will also have new opportunities and benefits available to them.
I agree 100% with MW that anything less than the current NBN will only mean a more expensive less developed market in the long run.
@Jasmcd
“Alain, there is a marketing term for the “slur” you use of “Tech geek tyre kicker”, and that is Early Adopter. The ones who take up services and products before the rest of the population.”
So if HFC customers are early adopters by your definition the ‘rest of the population’ that can get it is taking a hell of a long time to appreciate the technology.
But of course we will never get a chance to really see the ‘early adopter’ principle at work with the NBN because when the copper and HFC infrastructure is switched off area by area we get to see the NBN ‘like or lump it adopter’ principle at work.
“I agree 100% with MW that anything less than the current NBN will only mean a more expensive less developed market in the long run.”
Well I and others don’t, the problem with that grand statement assuming NBN does run to completion in 2020 and to budget is that you can never run a control test to prove the alternatives would have been more cost effective, so you can say anything you like in 2011.
Update:
“I agree 100% with MW that anything less than the current NBN will only mean a more expensive less developed market in the long run.”
http://delimiter.com.au/2011/04/01/nbn-co-halts-network-construction-tender/#more-14146
Both of you absolutely sure about that?
:)
As someone who constantly complains about the price of the NBN, I would have thought you’d be pleased that NBN Co are seeking realistic and well-priced responses to their RFQs?
Alain,
Firstly “the rest of the population who can get it” is definatley not close to the 93% of users, hence NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORK.
Secondly, ADSL2 has been able to keep up with the growth of data to date and on top of this, I have used HFC before and I could tell little difference in speed between it and ADSL2. They example you should have used is that many early adopters have chosen ADSL2 over ADSL1 however not everyone as access to ADSL2 or HFC. Furthermore the ADSL2 is reaching the end of its technical capabilities. Even if they are able to squeeze a bit more speed out of the exisiting network, what expenditure will be required for this and how long will it be before further spending is required?
Thirdly, the early adopters on the NBN will be those who sign up for more than the basic service.
Finally many NBN naysayers have stated that the project is a prime example of:
“Financial Mismanagement, negligence, progress at any cost etc etc etc.
When the NBNCo show sound financial management by choosing to re-run a tender for a project we get: “proof of failure, ineptitude, NBN can’t succeed”
Simply another case of picking whichever argument supports your cause at the time.
@Jasmcd
“Firstly “the rest of the population who can get it” is definatley not close to the 93% of users, hence NATIONAL BROADBAND NETWORK.”
Yes I know that, what’s that got to do with HFC customers being classified as ‘early adopters’ in relation to those that can get it and don’t want it , HFC rollouts started in 1994, perhaps the ‘early adopters’ are not getting the message across to the rest, never mind it has only been 17 years, early days eh? :)
“They example you should have used is that many early adopters have chosen ADSL2 over ADSL1 however not everyone as access to ADSL2 or HFC.”
Well many choose ADSL2+ over ADSL1 because it is the better value plan from ISP’s with their own gear, for many ADSL2+ speed is a bonus in that equation.
It doesn’t really explain why customers that can access ADSL2+ or even HFC are happy with ADSL1, they are just not getting into the swing of the digital age are they? – their lifestyle must be abysmal.
“furthermore the ADSL2 is reaching the end of its technical capabilities.”
Well that’s assuming there is a majority crying need out there that ADSL2+ has reached it’s speed limits, I am sure many would be happy if they could just get ANY ADSL period.
The copper in the ducts maybe reaching the end of its life as the physical medium to carry data traffic, but then you could say many would be content with ADSL2+ speeds over fibre.
“Thirdly, the early adopters on the NBN will be those who sign up for more than the basic service.”
What’s more than a basic service that qualifies you as a ‘early adopter’ as distinct from the ‘there is sucker born every minute’ adopter, who buys everything that is going so they can brag that they have HD IPTV to 5 bedrooms? and itonly costs $150/mth! with a free BigPond T-Shirt with ‘early adopter’ printed on it..
“When the NBNCo show sound financial management by choosing to re-run a tender for a project we get: “proof of failure, ineptitude, NBN can’t succeed””
I have not said that, all I have stated it could cause the completion date to be extended (again), sounds like a rational conclusion to me, if there is delay in starting the main build there is a delay in ending that build, it’s not rocket science accounting, it also delays the potential revenue you get from ISP’s and their customers.
“Simply another case of picking whichever argument supports your cause at the time.”
It would if I used it, I have not, I know you and others with those special rose tinted NBN glasses hate with a passion any potential bad news stories about the NBN and would prefer if they would all just evaporate, but I think you had better get used to it.
@elaine… Tech geek tyre kickers (and me) vs. mindless political FUD muppets..(guess who)?
Oh elaine…
You say in relation to private enterprise rolling out – PayTV, HD IPTV, HD video conferencing and HD Movie downloads (and not forgetting basic comms and internet access) –
“I can then optionally decide or not if I want the service”.
Bingo… once again I refer you to the very first letter in NBN. I won’t cruelly leave you stumped – National. The NATIONAL broadband network, NBN, is not the AABN (advocate/alain broadband network) although you seem to think it all revolves (or should revolve) around you…don’t you?
If left to private enterprise a lot of Australian will never have such a choice, you meaninglessly, take for granted..
But ***k them eh?
“To say that the debate has become confused is an understatement,”
Yes, Malcolm, and you are a prime offender in adding to the confusion. I would include the pasting on the Korean experience to the Australian market as some of that confusion. Of COURSE NBNco is unusual – it has design considerations that dont necessarily apply to many of the other fibre rollouts around the globe, and i would suggest Korea is only remotely comparable to the design and policies undertaken by NBNco. Yes they are both rolling fibre. Still doesnt necessarily follow that they are the same.
“do you need to entirely overbuild your existing telecommunications network”? I am once again reminded in 2005 Telstra submitted to the then government the copper network was at ‘5 minutes to midnight’. we’ve done very well stringing out copper tech as long as possible but the simple fact it is a dying network with many issues. it is therefore not an overbuild but a replacement with fresh kit that obviates the need for many of the costs in maintenance the old network demands now. in that light i see it as a fair spend, cutting back on USO funds spent and delivering a fresh network ready for the next several decades.
an Australian ‘facilities based’ market, waiting on free market impetus will not work as it has in Korea, most likely spending many years faffing about and getting nowhere with cobbled together solutions – and where funds do get spent they will not be enough, and wind up perpetuating the digital divide by only serving moneyspinner regions and little else. a structured build such as the NBN – for all its faults – will deliver much better telecoms ‘security’ (as it were) than the piecemeal efforts promised by the Coalition.
Turnbull, says the debate is feeling a little side tracked? a little confused? a little off-base? people not adding real information to the debate? people taking things out of context? comparing apples with oranges? sidestepping the real issues? looking to yesterday to answer tomorrows problems?
Pot, let me introduce you to kettle.
Gotta love how Turnbull makes a very clear statement with well thought out opinions which are all true and NBN loves pick apart every words and try to turn the whole thing into some sort of debate about things they have no understand and have no ability to prove. The driving force behind the massive acceleration into the digital age is now slowing. Previously there was MORE to put on the digital networks not there isn’t! It’s that simply! Video conferencing is as Turnbull points out NOT a high bandwidth endeavour! EVEN in HD! If people would do some study before speaking on the topic they would actually see Turnbull’s point!
But I’ll get flamed out again so I’ll only make one comment on this site. As the “I WANT” babies can cry for there ability to download the Internet when ever they want and point to servers dealing data to thousands of people as a reason why that connection should be available to everyone at home! It pointless to argue with these children so I hope more intellectual IT people can get a voice. Now that the ISPs are turning on the NBN I wonder how long it can be!
The driving force behind the massive acceleration into the digital age is now slowing. Previously there was MORE to put on the digital networks not there isn’t!
Wow, just pull some statistics out of thin air and QED!
Actually, not even statistics, just blatantly incorrect statements…
“The driving force behind the massive acceleration into the digital age is now slowing.”
OMG the digital age is over! Why didn’t anyone tell me??
Oh well I guess all this internet stuff was just a fad.
Yep. It’s dying off quickly now mate. Same goes with that iPaddy thing from Apple. No one’s interested in it and apparently it’s the worst selling device in consumer history. Apple have actually gone broke and filed for bankruptcy. All the tech experts are saying there will be no explosive growth whatsoever with new devices like smartphones in the future either. Also not a single manufacturer this year has released a TV with internet connectivity so that area is dead too.
Oh and the whole thing about running out of IP addresses? Its just a conspiracy designed to make people upgrade their routers. The few million IP4 addresses we have left will last at least 500 years given how slowly the net grows now days..
I say cancel the NBN and go back to our 486’s and 28.8kbps modems and hang out at GeoCities. As was the the norm in 1996. After all nothing much has changed in the last 15 years of tech, so why would us stupid tyre kicker geeks think the next 15 years will be any different?
Same goes with that iPaddy thing from Apple.
What’s the link between the Ipad and the need for FTTH? – I can see the link between the IPad 3G and the explosive growth in the need for wireless data , but that’s not NBN.
” All the tech experts are saying there will be no explosive growth whatsoever with new devices like smartphones in the future either.”
Once again smartphone growth is more related to wireless data growth, which is not the NBN.
“Also not a single manufacturer this year has released a TV with internet connectivity so that area is dead too.”
Well yeah there are heaps of standalone media boxes that do the same thing as well, there are also TV’s without internet connectivity you pay extra for that feature, how that facility used by some end users equates to a need for FTTH beats me.
Oh and the whole thing about running out of IP addresses?
The relationship of that to the need for a NBN FTTH is what?
Alain, Alain, Alain..
Go back to the beginning of my post and apply the /sarcasm command. Hit Enter. Now read again. I can’t believe you went to trouble of de-constructing a post that was clearly just taking the piss out of Chris’s notion that “the digital age is is slowing”. The examples I gave were clearly sarcastic indicators of the opposite. That’s all mate!
The point being it’s not only growing, but growing at an exponential rate. Anyone that suggests otherwise is firmly in the looney camp. Not even the Coalition are stupid enough to suggest this. And they’re pretty stupid.
Any sufficiently fervently held belief is indistinguishable from satire.
@SimonReidy
Yes I know the sarcasm command was on, but sarcasm or not your response is in relation to your ongoing historical agenda of post content of the need for the NBN FTTH.
I don’t see any evidence of a slowing of the digital age either but irrespective of that perhaps you should have chosen better ‘sarcastic’ examples that were more in tune to the need for FTTH rather than making case for wireless.
Deeply sorry Alain. I’ll try to make my sarcasm more serious and accurate from now on.
How about this: I really like you.
lol
That’s a bit better, but still a off topic wasted opportunity.
Gotta love it when all the closet libs (as opposed to pro-NBNers of all political persuasions) come out to subserviently back their masters…LOL!
I agree that the reality of the nature of the NBN has been lost, but not that we shouldn’t do it. The reality is that the NBN is about ubiquity of access, not speed. Speed comes as a side-effect of modern technology. If we want to provide broadband access to a large percentage of the population (and as others have pointed out, Australia is not Korea with Korean population density) it is going to cost a lot of money whatever technology is chosen. Fibre is portrayed as the “Rolls-Royce” solution, when in reality is is just the modern solution. A 2011 Hyundai has safety features that a 1980 Rolls Royce didn’t. Technology moves on, things get faster. Fibre happens to deliver higher speeds than many people need. It also delivers synchronous speed over greater geographic distances than copper, which is the real point.
The reality is that without some form of government intervention we will not get ubiquitous broadband access across the country. Left to private enterprise alone we will get the current highly overbuilt solutions where people in the city have a choice of multiple HFC and ADSL providers while those in regional areas (and some metropolitan blackspots) have little or no choice.
so is this 12mbit wireless service libs are proposing, dedicated 12mbit to each premise, or a 12mbit shared connection, where congestion makes things slow to f*cking crawl?
and all this HFC uproar is citycentric idiocracy at its finest. What about the 1000s of towns/even cities that AREN’T capital cities and don’t have HFC available. Toowoomba is the largest inland city in Australia (or 2nd largest not 100% on that), yet here i am, stuck with a paltry 3.5mbit connection because i’m about 4.5km away from the exchange, even though im still in town. don’t even talk about wireless.
bring on the nbn..
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