FTTN cabinets “hideous”, say designers

By
Renai LeMay
-
34

fttn-cabinet

blog Not everyone is particularly enthused by the idea of placing tens of thousands of broadband cabinets around Australia to realise the Coalition’s fibre to the node National Broadband Network vision. And one of those not happy with the idea is UNSW building academic Alec Tzannes, who told the Sydney Morning Herald this week after the launch of the Coalition’s new NBN policy (we recommend you click here for the full article):

“Let me choose my words fairly carefully; I think it’s hideous … It’s like somebody put a backyard storage unit out of Bunnings on the street.”

The image above comes from BT’s rollout of FTTN technology in the UK, and doesn’t precisely inspire confidence that Turnbull’s FTTN vision will maintain Australia’s existing usually quite appealing suburban landscape. Of course, FTTN technology has dramatically improved over the past few years and it’s far from clear that the Coalition’s FTTN vision would look precisely like this. However, in the context of Australia’s long-term future, it is one issue worth considering.

Image credit: Mike Cattell, Creative Commons

Related posts:

  1. NBN policy should integrate FTTN, HFC: Budde
  2. Turnbull responds to FTTN concerns
  3. NBN: Turnbull strengthens FTTN focus
  4. Turnbull needs evidence for FTTN claims
  5. The shape of things to come: FTTN criticism will not die

34 COMMENTS

  1. We already have similar cabinets in new estates they are 2m high by 2 m wide and come in industrial estate grey. in SA they come in rubbish bin green as well.

    • We have cabinets on every road everywhere to operate traffic lights. Around Sydney people have been painting them… some of them look like oversized breakfast cereal packets now, or washing powder, or mushrooms from Alice in Wonderland.

      We also have NBN cabinets for fiber interconnections, and there are photos on Delimiter if you look around.

  5. Does anyone have any reference photos of what the passive fibre interconnect box will look like, or what the sizes will be. Are they going to be sub-surface (considering there’s less problem with water ingress issues with fibre) or also sitting around the suburbs on concrete pads albeit smaller in stature.

  6. $30+ billion of taxpayers money spent just so vandals can have something new to work with? Besides they look awful even without graffiti and the slow speeds wont make up for the inevitable blight in our streets. If this goes ahead I will be organising a petition to make sure these ugly monstrosities dont pop up in my town.

      • The difference is that letter boxes and FDHs serve a purpose and are of some value to communities. Nodes are just eyesores providing speeds not much better than ADSL2+. No need to clutter up streets and waste taxpayer money on this if that is your goal.

        • The Coalition think their plan is better value than Labor’s by using some of the existing infrastructure, criticising the Coalition plan because Node cabinets are ugly when any type of communications cabinet are obviously susceptible to graffiti is really desperate point scoring.

          • “The Coalition think their plan is better value than Labor’s by using some of the existing infrastructure”

            The coalition can think whatever they like, fortunately you and I know better.

            “criticising the Coalition plan because Node cabinets are ugly when any type of communications cabinet are obviously susceptible to graffiti is really desperate point scoring”

            Not really. For one the nodes will obviously be bigger and much more intrusive, second you have to consider what both are capable of. You have to weigh up the pros and cons, I’m quite willing to put up with some minor visual pollution if it means faster speeds that make a difference and a network that is able to effortlessly cater to future demands. Since the coalition plan doesn’t achieve speeds much better than what we have now and is basically a dead end solution incapable of catering to future needs out of the box I’d question the value of uglifying everyone’s streets just for this.

  7. Chorus in NZ puts murals on their cabinets. Looks alright. I’ll stop on the way home and grab a photo of one (despite it adding 10-15 minutes to my commute). No reason why NBNCo can’t do the same.

  8. The last video I watched on the release of the policy of the LNP, Tony Abbott clearly stated 20,000 cabinets.
    Not 60,000.

    And if I understand correctly, local councils have the last say on what gets put onto nature strips.
    It may go the way of some towns denying towers.
    Urban planners in many cases have gone whole hog in putting power, communications and other amenities underground. This sort of eye-sore would not be appreciated, and would be denied.

    • 60 000 is in their documentation and what they said in the press release

      20 000 was Abbott having NFI

      • “Obviously lying then, because Turnbull quite clearly has stated it’ll be closer to 60 000”

        Or he is just an idiot. Or both.

    • Yes I noticeded to 20k reference too. I still think 60k will prove to be overly conservative, but given the coalition’s fondness for number fabrication there won’t be any real surprise if that turns out to be the case.

    • And if I understand correctly, local councils have the last say on what gets put onto nature strips.
      It may go the way of some towns denying towers.

      Local councils are really nothing more than delegates of the state government. Thus, if the state government Premiers happen to decide they want to go with in then that’s the end of story, the councils knuckle under.

      More interesting if the state governments happen to decide to stand up and fight it, and that’s what has happened in NSW with the power pole issue. NBN is effectively using Federal authority to commandeer state property, and I’m not sure which part of the Australian Constitution actually shows that the states offered up their land to the Federal government under what amounts to somewhat arbitrary terms.

      You must admit that having fat crappy cables hung halfway up the power poles is ugly, but then again we already have that with HFC, so just more of the same… only the NBN want to get their’s on the cheap. I guess we will see who settles this. My guess is that it will settle behind the scenes somewhere.

  9. Designers, stop complaining and start thinking. There is an oppportunity for a clever designer to actually design something useful incorporating these cabinets.

    The technology will be next to useless, but at least we may get something positive out of it. Perhaps a design incorporating seating…..not toilet seats please (but probably appropriate in the circumstances).

    Any other practical, creative or subversive ideas welcome.

  10. Hey everyone, it’s gotten a little feral on here over the weekend, so I’m closing the NBN threads for now. I’ll re-open new NBN threads on Monday after everyone’s had a bit of a chance to calm down. If you want to continue to debate this stuff right now, there’s always the forums.

    Cheers,

    Renai
    Editor + Publisher, Delimiter

Comments are closed.