New Greens Leader holds firm on FTTP NBN policy

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news New Greens Leader Richard Di Natale has confirmed he will stand firm behind the original universal Fibre to the Premises version of the National Broadband Network, rejecting what he said was the “half-measures” being implemented by the Coalition Federal Government.

The Greens’ official policy on communications is enshrined in its ‘Media and Communications’ policy document, which was compiled and agreed upon by the various state-based Greens parties and the Federal Greens MPs. The policy does not currently state that the party supports the original FTTP model for the NBN, noting only that the Greens want “Affordable and reliable high speed internet connections available for all Australians.”

However, the party has been supportive of Labor’s FTTP version of the NBN in the past, and publishes a NBN information page stating: “The Australian Greens support the building of a Fibre to the Home National Broadband Network because we know the NBN will create enormous opportunities for Australia’s future.”

Asked about the issue in a Reddit AMA last week, Senator Di Natale — who took over from his predecessor Senator Christine Milne in early May this year — said on his farm in the Otways region of Victoria, he had to make do with “slow 3G wireless Internet”, so he felt the “pain of the everyone in this country who struggles to stream Netflix comfortably.”

“The Greens have always been big supporters of the NBN, and that means Fibre to the Home, no half-measures,” he added. “We should be talking about the industries of the 21st century and what jobs in Australia will be like in 10 or 20 years. I can tell you they will all need world-class communications infrastructure.”

In response to a separate question, Senator Di Natale noted: “We’re strong supporters of a real NBN – not the half-backed approach of Tony Abbott.”

It’s not the first time the new Greens Leader has commented on the NBN since taking the party’s leadership. In a Facebook Q+A several months ago, the Senator was also asked about the NBN. In response, he joked “we——su——pp *buffering* ———ort an NBN for Australia,” appearing to refer to the common complaints about the poor broadband speeds suffered by many Australians.

Australia’s technology community will also be heartened by one of Senator Di Natale’s first senior staff appointments, Colin Jacobs.

Jacobs was appointed shortly after Senator Di Natale’s leadership ascension to take the position of Director of Policy and Strategy — a role in which he will be the lead staff member on policy and strategy matters for the Federal Greens MPs. Jacobs formerly worked for Senator Di Natale from July 2011 through July 2014, but is better known to the technology community for his role for five years from November 2007 on the board of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

In this position, Jacobs was one of the lead voices on national technology policy on controversial issues such as Labor’s former mandatory Internet filtering policy. He has also worked extensively in the local technology sector.

However, in last week’s Reddit AMA, Senator Di Natale was less strong on wider issues relating to the technology sector. One poster, noting they were a school student, wrote:

“For years Australia has relied on the mining sector to prop up economic growth, but as commodity prices fall and growth in that sector weakens, we should be looking to non mining sector to maintain sustainable growth. Considering the direction in which the world is heading, a strong technology industry seems a fairly appropriate way to balance this, but after the removal of the FTTP NBN and the impending TPP negotiations close to being signed, it seems that there is a basic disconnect between politicians and technology.”

“Whilst the media continue to underreport such issues, I fear that in order to pursue a career I truly enjoy, I would have to look to a job where the technology sector was healthy, and ideally where the TPP was not choking entrepreneurship. What would the Greens party under your leadership do to improve the technology industry, particularly in regards to the NBN, TPP and general economic assistance?”

Senator Di Natale did directly answer the poster’s questions about the NBN and TPP, but not with relation to the wider question of bolstering Australia’s technology sector. In a separate question, the Senator — a medical doctor before entering politics — did note that it was important Australians left school with “scientific literacy”.

opinion/analysis
When it comes to Australia’s technology sector, the Greens are emerging as a slightly mixed bag at the moment.

Senator Di Natale’s comments confirm — as expected — that there is still high-level support within the Greens for a FTTP NBN rollout. With Labor wavering a little in this area and considering a “two-step” process to deploying the NBN that may see it support the Coalition’s Multi-Technology Mix to some extent, at least in the short- to medium-term, this may give the Greens a political edge over Labor when it comes to the NBN.

In addition, obviously the Greens’ leading position on electronic surveillance and data retention has allowed them to garner significant support from many in the technology sector. Senator Scott Ludlam has serious credentials in this area.

However, Labor is starting to raise its voice with respect about the Government’s latest telco national security reforms, an issue on which the Greens have recently been relatively quiet.

Then too, at the moment Labor is also opening a significant gap between it and the other major parties at the moment when it comes to engaging with Australia’s early stage technology sector. The Greens have always had a slightly uneasy relationship with the private sector (especially the entrepreneurial and venture capital areas), and are being left behind in this area a little at the moment as Labor MPs such as Ed Husic and Jason Clare attend event after event hosted by hot tech startups, incubators and accelerators. The Coalition is also wooing this area of the economy at the moment — and Prime Minister Tony Abbott has even been personally involved.

The Coalition Government also recently passed the Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (Employee Share Schemes) Bill 2015. This is legislation the tech startup sector has been demanding for years, and which did much to shore up the startup sector’s view of the Government.

If they want to cement their tech credentials, the Greens could do more right now to match the ‘Labor for Innovation’ group set up by Husic, Clare and others. Senator Ludlam’s video game development industry inquiry should help here. Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson — an economist and former investment banker — might also make a good emissary to the tech sector in this regard, as might Senator Di Natale’s policy director Colin Jacobs.

Image credit: Victorian Greens, Creative Commons

62 COMMENTS

  1. They don’t even acknowledge the failures.

    “The Greens have always been big supporters of the NBN, and that means Fibre to the Home, no half-measures,”

    Presumably FTTH all the way to his little farmhouse.

    Maybe he’s not advocating retirement of the yet to be launched satellites or the LTE component (or understand them). Guess that’s no to FTTB for MDUs (back to service class 0), no to HFC (even though it’s now acknowledged to 1Gbps).

    Last week Delim’s were down to arguing the 30% FTTN, today The Green put $30b borrowing back on the table.

    • So full of positive opinions as usual eh Richard? Shame you aren’t living in the same reality as the rest of us, must be a nice view tho in your ivory tower?

      You do realise that borrowing for infrastructure that’s worth something is considered “good economic policy” right? It’s also not counted towards a countries Net Debt, because there is a genuine asset attached!

      • No I don’t, because it isn’t true. An asset can be worth less than the cost to develop / acquire it. Happens all the time (eg mark to market).

        Asset (eg fibre infrastructure) and liabilities (eg debt) are treated differently. Although money treated as equity for NBNCo it is borrowing by Govt (even if off-budget for GBEs) and therefore adds to net debt.

        • Right so somehow a national fibre network that not even Telstra can afford to build is suddenly going to be worth less than the build cost? Even Telstra’s aging PSTN is still worth Billions today!

          Richard you need to stop drinking from the neo-liberal fountain of demonstrably false economics! Next you’ll be trying to convince us that “trickle down theory” actually works (it doesn’t) and for an encore go on to prove the black is white, and white black … I suggest you stay away from zebra crossings once you have completed this piece of illogical gymnastics!

          • Not economics, accounting.

            PSTN is worth billions (too much to retire) however it is worth today far less than it cost to deploy.

            I’d recommend you learn about the topic you claim to understand. But history has soon, like most commenters, I’d be wasting my time. Take it to your accountant.

          • But the Accountant’s, even those who claim to have multiple qualifications and are self proclaimed “experts (of everything)” can’t quite grasp that the current copper (the avenue of choice for the Minister for Fraudband) is worn, unkempt, dated, retrograde technology (obsolete) and a liability in relation to ongoing maintenance, power requirements and the need to upgrade to better sooner rather than later, anyway…

            Seems the (ill)logic is, Australia simply should just no longer build anything new?

            Which brings us back to the iron wires again, why didn’t we just save ourselves time and money on that silly copper and just keep using the iron?

          • Richard, it’s only worth less than build cost now because after 2 decades or poor to no maintenance it’s barely able to deliver phone services!

            You also ignore that the PSTN has been paid for many times over, it’s like a 100 year old worn out former toll bridge, it’s not meeting today’s or tomorrow’s requirements and in dire need of complete replacement.

            end of story.

          • @Rizz redefines words because s/he doesn’t know their meaning (like “obsolete”, “universal”), clearly holding no qualification or experience in accounting nor finance. The rest of your post actually agrees with my point, just you don’t understand the professional terms used to correctly describe it. The PSTN network today has both an economic and accounting value greater than zero (negative values also possible), however both far less than the cost to develop it. Further investment to FTTN can extend the life of this asset with low risk, significantly less cost whilst substantially retaining most (all?) the promised benefits (actually extending it deeper into Sat / LTE footprint).

            @Derek I’d wager some upgrades (eg ISDN) have failed to generate a positive return. Such is the inherent risk of any investment. Poor or negative investments are not considered “good economic policy” (well outside The Greens).

            From the quotes provided Di Natale knows little of technology nor financials, it’s all about the ‘vibe’. Renai could ask what specific productivity goal will be achieved with 93% of premises FTTH over MTM? I’ve argued there isn’t any, coalition’s CBA couldn’t find them, no posts here identifies any, Labor/Greens never attempted to (refusing any CBA).

            Labor (and Renai I believe) acknowledges some of the more obvious NBNCo failures and have adopted FTTB (MDUs) and HFC. As of Friday we were down to arguing the 30% FTTN premises.

            “end of story” really? Just a continuation, some taking longer to get there.

          • Richard
            “Further investment to FTTN can extend the life of this asset with low risk, significantly less cost whilst substantially retaining most (all?) the promised benefits”
            Considering we where promised a MIN 25Mbps by 2016 but now getting a once a day 25mbps service by 2012 I wouldn’t even call that most promised benefits.
            Extending the life for another 5 years before more substantial upgrades according to the SR while FTTP would have been completed before then.
            Or that the SR states by adding CAPEX + OPEX together by 2027 MTM and FTTP would cost the same. So only after 7 years it would equal the cost of building a new one after that it cost more. Sound more like a high risk for little benefit than a low risk.
            Its not costing less according to Hockey now the value at $70B for the MTM. Or that Turnbull is only true saving $50M a year in interest.
            Now with the new Telstra agreement the NBN has now added cost of remediation and well a maintaining HFC for pay TV and can only charge a set amount even if the cost of keeping it running increases or that they are getting a free upgrade to access more customers.
            The accounting shows a very poor investment

            The CBA Ergas uses his own review in 2009 for the CBA which states “Thus, for the most likely estimate of $170 per month, unit costs in metropolitan areas are of $133 per month, while those in non-metropolitan areas are just under $380. ” Yep all those ISP must be losing money offering $50 plans on the NBN FTTP. But then even from the SR IRR of 2% down from 7.1% still shows FTTP has no cost but a return.

            I also believe that FTTB would be a stop gap for MDU that would be hard to deploy FTTP as the copper is on very short runs and weather proof and would at least get them up to speed until they can work them out for deliver FTTP.

            HFC according to Telstra already meets Turnbull’s SOE of at least 25Mbps so why is it getting upgraded is that because more of the HFC are in coalition seats while people on FTTN have to pay to get he same level of service.

          • @Richard

            I’d wager some upgrades (eg ISDN) have failed to generate a positive return. Such is the inherent risk of any investment. Poor or negative investments are not considered “good economic policy” (well outside The Greens).

            See it’s these kind of ignorant statements that show your arguments to be based on ideological fantasies – Telstra makes loads of money from ISDN. Even today there are data centre’s around australia chock full of ISDN customers paying fairly steep prices for the privilege (it’s a very reliable service and frequently used for monitoring systems and as a backup link).

            From the quotes provided Di Natale knows little of technology nor financials, it’s all about the ‘vibe’. Renai could ask what specific productivity goal will be achieved with 93% of premises FTTH over MTM? I’ve argued there isn’t any, coalition’s CBA couldn’t find them, no posts here identifies any, Labor/Greens never attempted to (refusing any CBA).

            The ICT industry has done numerous studies on the transformational effects of a national fibre network that even examine the economic impacts – perhaps you could try reading some of them:

            eg. http://www-07.ibm.com/ibm/au/digitalfuture/

            Labor (and Renai I believe) acknowledges some of the more obvious NBNCo failures and have adopted FTTB (MDUs) and HFC. As of Friday we were down to arguing the 30% FTTN premises.

            “Adopted” is the wrong word, “grudgingly accepted” would be the most appropriate description. no one around here with any common sense argues the merits of FTTN, it’s a white elephant in the making, there is no business plan, no real justification and no one else in the world that has rolled out (note that is past tense) FTTN has our low grade copper and shoddily maintained PSTN.

            Even in the UK where they have thicker gauge copper and have installed FTTN only 1% of customers have been able to get 75mbps! As a result BT now admits FTTN was a gigantic mistake!

            “end of story” really? Just a continuation, some taking longer to get there.

            Yes end of story, the facts are well known, the Libs CBA, SR and other reviews are blatant, demonstrable, cherry picked frauds – FTTN deserves the name the Nationals gave it, FraudBand!

          • @Derek you believe poor investments are “good economic policy”, few would agree. Guess we agree to disagree.

            The IBM document you quote doesn’t support your position. It’s agreed ubiquitous high speed internet will have productivity benefits, what’s contentious is what speeds generate what value over what period of time. What specifically is the increased gained from FTTH rather than MTM? The only comprehensive document prepared was the CBA and it comes down in my favour (as predicted many years ago). Dismissing without alternative or analysis it is ridiculous.

            ISDN does generate large revenue, utilised PRI myself. Once upon the time it was promoted as the future internet solution, then came along DSL. Question is what was the ROI for ISDN?

            @Jason You’re rightly critical of the delays with the coalition NBN plan. As I posted before the election their timeline was ambitious. However the SR supports my position that most (all?) of the NBN benefits can be realised earlier with faster deployment of a slower technology and upgrades would cost less than full FTTH deployment today.

            For many years OPEX was excluded from discussions, you’ve rightly restored it (as I’ve long argued). However the other side of the ledger is revenue. MTM’s faster deployment and earlier revenue is responsible for the significant reduction in peak funding.

            Whilst my preface has always been govt out, it is what it is. What a world it would be if Conroy had embraced FTTB and HFC. Millions more premises would be using high speed broadband today, overbuild of suburban areas with fibre could have been avoided and expenditure used to generate greater benefit elsewhere.

            People squawk ideology without understanding their own nor that they criticise. Having spent the first 6 months of this year in SE Asia (first visit over 20 years ago) the benefits from capitalism and competitive free markets is undeniable (a few like Abel continue to fly the hammer & sickle). But we digress, back to the 30%. Happy days.

          • What a world it would be if Conroy had embraced FTTB and HFC.

            Actually wouldn’t be much different. You’d still find something to whine about.

          • some taking longer to get there.

            Indeed. We call those the coalition clowns. They had to change a tire on their clown car and they still ended up in the wrong place :-(

          • Richard
            So MTM after acquiring an already built network which will cover about a 1/4 of premises MTM is still only 7 sec faster than FTTP.
            Also can you give one company that delivers a min 25Mbps service.

            “upgrades would cost less than full FTTH deployment today.”
            But Simon Hackett has been quote that FOD (fibre on demand) average price is more that the current average price of FTTP at $4300 so if it would cost less why ATM does it cost more.

            So after brushing off MTM OPEX costing a lot more than FTTP you talk about revenue. How will MTM generate enough revenue when I cant supply faster speed tiers. FTTP original idea was to get 20% on the 100/40 tier as they would generate more revenue than the bottom 50% on the 12/1 or 25/5.

            Agree with FTTB should have been done as a stop gap.

            But you havn’t explained you HFC is getting a free upgrade to 100+ Mbps services when in its current condition it already meets Turnbull’s SOE while people on FTTN have to pay an average cost of more than it would have to deliver FTTP to get the same level of service.

            Yet Australia has never had competitive free markets in Telco infurstruature as the HFC war between Telstra and Optus has shown that. Even up to 2009 Telstra didn’t want to invest in the fix line infurstruature unless it was the only provider on the network as its submission back in 2003 to Howard shows how competitive our market really is.

          • Richard,

            You are pushing shit uphill with every comment that you make.

            Stop. Please stop, FFS.

        • So after all that enlightenment from the accountant’s accountant… Again I reiterate my previous two paragraphs Richard…

          Seems the (ill)logic is, Australia simply should just no longer build anything new?

          Which brings us back to the iron wires again, why didn’t we just save ourselves time and money on that silly copper and just keep using the iron?

          And no BTW I’m not an accountant…and proud of it.

          Because it gives me a sense of reality not everything twisted to suit one’s ideology via dumb bean counting. Bean counting which clearly says (according to you Richard) worst is better, because its cheaper and faster, maybe.

          Keep up the groundbreaking work.

          • @Rizz your most depressing post. Accounting (and economics) is not an ideology, it offers the tools to understand the viability of projects/businesses/investments. Money is scarce, only through evaluation can anyone maximise it’s utility.

            The NBN spending is small in an Australian economy making trillions of dollars of spending and investment decisions, even smaller in the global economy. Australians build stuff all the time, always looking for new ideas to commercialise.

            Not building something because it doesn’t create as much value as something else or spending a smaller amount to capture the majority of benefits is the best way to maximise wealth (not just money).

          • No it’s not an ideology, that’s not what I said at all. Perhaps a simple course in English (and how to see the real world) may be beneficial along with all those wonderfully insular and cosy bean counter qualifications ;)

            What I clearly said was, it gives bean counters an excuse to try to twist reality to their blinkered ideological viewpoint (note I never mentioned left or right as it can go either way). But I see it has been noted by another/others that you only seem to agree with the current very conservative government, err 100% of the time, so….

            Anyway, in other words what you are doing is, your own tainted CBA by omitting the B, also ignoring, whilst the copper may have depreciated financially and ergo by the books, be an easy foundation to build a bean counter financial case for, it has also depreciated physically, is “obsolete” and needs to be replaced.

            I note too, you’ve avoided my actual questions, asking if Australia should build new infrastructure or not and why weren’t the iron wires good enough?

            BTW – obsolete (ob suh leet) – to make obsolete by replacing with something newer or better; antiquate:

            If you think fibre hasn’t made, and therefore copper isn’t, obsolete, tell us how many countries/companies are currently rolling out brand new national copper networks? Or better still ripping out fibre and putting in copper?

            Cheers

    • Wow, you understand so very little, don’t you? Are you capable of putting forth a single sentence that isn’t laden with inaccuracies and/or fabrication?

      • Governments don’t borrow from the taxpayer. They borrow from the private sector through bonds.

    • Ah… Always easy to quote one bit and not the other.
      “We should be talking about the industries of the 21st century and what jobs in Australia will be like in 10 or 20 years. I can tell you they will all need world-class communications infrastructure.”
      There you go. When you take that in context, its pretty clear he is advocating a world class infrastructure, and that he believes the original FTTP NBN plan was superior to the current MTM.

    • @ Richard.

      “They don’t even acknowledge the failures.” (of FTTP) you say?

      Compared to others, who, even after two years of SFA of FttN. As well as the cost of MTM blown out to $70B (according to the Treasurer)… nonetheless, strangely continue to bag FTTP, whilst even more strangely referring to this MTM shambles, as a success?

      • “two years of SFA of FttN”
        Don’t worry, the entirety of Australia will be covered with a minimum guaranteed speed of 25Mbps by the end of next year. Just close your eyes and believe.

  2. Nothing wrong with borrowing $30b for infrastructure, especially one that was going to pay it all back, plus 7%..
    At least it was, until Malcolm all but destroyed it.

  3. In addition, obviously the Greens’ leading position on electronic surveillance and data retention has allowed them to garner significant support from many in the technology sector. Senator Scott Ludlam has serious credentials in this area.

    They’ve certainly bagged a lot of primary votes in the ICT industry thanks to their policies in this area – I just hope that the Greens supporting FTTP will help convince the ALP not to abandon the 93% FTTP roll-out too.

  4. What are you doing Greens? Stop saying logical things everyone agrees with! You might get more votes at the next election with bad attitudes like this. You must abandon the FttP policy and support the sloppy coalition clown solution.

  5. So how do you do “universal Fibre to the Premises” when there are satellites and fixed wireless involved? When did 93% = universal? I thought “universal” meant 100%. At least that is what the dictionary says it means.

    The joke of this website is that it claims that News Corp is biased and stretches or misinterprets the truth, yet it is just as guilty of doing so for the “universal Fibre to the Premises” crowd.

    See here is the thing. I don’t object to people pushing their own line or agenda, like News Corp do. I object to the hypocrisy of criticising others for doing it, while also doing it yourself.

    You can’t claim to be journalist if you’re pushing an agenda, rather than taking a neutral stance, presenting facts, ensuring that basis’s aren’t misrepresented (“universal” = 93%!) and presenting both side’s opinions.

    • @ Mr Shark,

      You do have a point, albeit it a somewhat pedantic (and disrespectful) one, IMO.

      Because lets face it, if you are comparing Delimiter calling 93% – universal (that’s the worst you can, well, nit pick about here?)…to the Australian, who for example pushed a completely unfounded claim pre-election, that FttP “would cost anywhere between $90B-$120B” (as just one quick example) well I’m afraid, again IMO, your measure of comparative misrepresentations, is quite askew.

      The term universal is used largely to reflect the difference between FttP @ 93% as opposed to the smaller percentages of FTTP, satellite, FTTN, etc in relation to MTM. Just like people may call MTM – FTTN, it’s not an intentional misrepresentation, its simply a term used. In other words, universal is not really meant to be taken literally… I would have thought that obvious and/or basic common sense?

      Regardless, looking past the universal moniker…

      Which would you prefer – 93% (universal -7%) FttP or the current MTM with far from universal FttP?

      Or is that answer bleedin’ obvious?

      Cheers.

      • Hey Rizz remember a few years back on Zdnet when those opposed to the 93% FttP “not actually universal fibre” plan would exaggerate the reach of fibre? I believe they went along the lines of “Sure fibre would be great for everyone but you don’t need to run it to every little farmhouse… Labor waste, stop the boats etc”. How times have changed ;-)

        • Ah yes indeed, it’s the old damned if you do/don’t, rolled into an each way bet, I believe HC

    • @ Mr Shark,

      You do have a point, albeit it a somewhat pedantic (and disrespectful) one, IMO.

      Because lets face it, if you are comparing Delimiter calling 93% – universal (that’s the worst you can, well, nit pick about here?)…to the Australian, who for example pushed a completely unfounded claim pre-election, that FttP “would cost anywhere between $90B-$120B” (as just one quick example) well I’m afraid, again IMO, your measure of comparative misrepresentations, is largely askew.

      The term universal is used primarily to reflect the difference between FttP @ 93% as opposed to the smaller percentages of FTTP, satellite, FTTN, etc in relation to MTM. Just like people may call MTM – FTTN, it’s not an intentional misrepresentation, its simply a term used. In other words, universal is not really meant to be taken literally… I would have thought that obvious and/or basic common sense?

      Regardless, looking past the universal moniker…

      Which would you prefer – 93% (universal -7%) FttP or the current MTM with far from universal FttP?

      Or is that answer bleedin’ obvious?

      Cheers.

    • So how do you do “universal Fibre to the Premises”,? By not cutting out the fibre, which you just did with your childish comment Mr Shark..

    • “When did 93% = universal? I thought “universal” meant 100%. At least that is what the dictionary says it means”
      You either need to reread or attain a new dictionary, sir. Universal obviously means the entire universe and you are quite right to complain that Australia is not funding FttP to the entire universe. The elitist bastards.

      • Let’s not confuse poli-speak with English although they use many of the same words they attach a variety of different meanings. The same goes with maths so when a politician says 93% that may actually mean something quite different. How else would one explain the apparent disparity between the perceived demand and actual demand for satellite and wireless broadband. ” A review of the fixed wireless and satellite services found that they had underestimated demand by around 200,000 end-user services”

  6. Only a lobbyist for Murdoch would support FTTN and HFC and sell people short. If the CTO of Brittish Telecom says bluntly FTTN was a massive mistake I would never try to discredit that especially when real world tests proves only 1% could achieve 75mbps !

    I’m in a position where I need to buy a place but can never go back to telephone lines ever, and HFC areas are millions of dollars. Then there is the possibility that the Liberals will be kicked out and we’ll get fibre again. I have to chase an area that would be ideal to build in that will get fibre it’s doing my head in the uncertainty.

    If apartments in Sweden got FTTP in 2006 FTTB is just a joke. LTE is a joke too because reality many people can’t get it because line of sight issues.

    FTTP ONLY and it will decentralise the cities and transform our economy.

    The fraud to buy back the HFC for Murdoch will not save their failing foxtel.

    • I’m in a position where I need to buy a place but can never go back to telephone lines ever, and HFC areas are millions of dollars.

      I was in the same position a few months ago – we simply couldnt afford to buy the kind of house we needed in a HFC area and so I had to settle for using http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/ to ensure as best as possible that the house we did buy had a bare minimum of 10mbps. The house we bought gets 12mbps which is tolerable as long as we only use 1 high bandwidth app at a time. This is pretty frustrating after getting used to 110/2.5mbps Telstra cable for 18 months while renting.

    • To be fair, FTTB is not that bad at least as a way to initially upgrade a large number of premises. I’d be happy with a solution that involved FTTP and FTTB to anywhere without HFC, if the libs can get the HFC upgraded before they are booted out. Then once that is all done upgrade the HFC and FTTB areas to FTTP. One of the criticisms was the slow rollout. So if they can speed it up even if some people get a 2 stage process, that may deflect any criticism.

      • The problem with FTTB is that it’s not even compatible with a good number of Apartment blocks who use cat5e and digital PABX phone systems with video doorbells etc etc.

        It also means that professionals who live in them (which would be most in CBD apartments) such as engineers and architects are stuck at VDSL2+ speeds when they would likely choose plans starting at 250/100mbps to 1000/400mbps so they can work from home and spend more time with their families.

        • I completely agree. The end goal should be FTTP. I’m just saying the reason the public got conned into the coalition solution was they were told it was expensive and slow to rollout. The MTM version has been shown to be not that much quicker or cheaper. However given the contracts etc, rather than waste 2 more years of inaction, I’d rather see, FTTP rolled out where possible. If FTTB can be used to speed up the process, then use it, but it can be done on a site by site basis. Sometimes, rather than stuffing around trying to work out a FTTP solution, put FTTB in (if its going to save time and money). Then revisit those FTTB installations with FTTP at a later date. Its a better compromise than what the coalition have offered.

          I firmly believe the biggest benefit of the 93% FTTP model is the fact that the network will not be the limiting factor. If a company wanted to offer service A to a customer, they can say to the customer. You need to have at least X Mbps up and Y Mbps down to use this service. Now on a FTTN link if the network can’t manage that you are screwed. there is no capability to just upgrade you service when you need to. Also upload speeds are always overlooked. I had Telstra trying to sell me on their internet plans the other day and I said until you can offer uploads that are faster there is no reason to change. Apparently they get a lot of complaints about ho slow it is to upload video etc.

          • In all fairness, I don’t think the NBN was the primary reason most people voted. If it had of been the election may have gone very differently. I recall even around the election there were rather extreme numbers of “We support the Labor NBN”. Heck after they voted this lot in, a bunch of people started a campaign to try and get a closer to the Labor plan. Poor fools. The coalition clearly had an agenda to destroy the NBN. Because it A) goes against the rather extreme elements of liberalism that appear to be currently in the party, B) a Labor idea, and bipartisanship is evil, except where it works in our authoritarian favour, and C) Abbot made rash statements that made keeping it a slap in his face.

        • The apartments with Cat cables already run aren’t the issue (those would likely be able to handle FttP as the cat cables have been run already). They’re also in the vast minority its those that don’t even have proper ducting for their current phone lines that are the issue etc.

          Its ‘maybe’ easy to get to the MDU in that case but getting anywhere else is impossible and magic is involved with how phone cables get to places. Think Telstra pit nightmare pictures and multiply it.

          I’ve seen wires manually twisted together with not even duct tape over it (works for the phone scarily but funnily enough ADSL wasn’t happy).

  7. Well it won’t make any difference what the Greens say if there isn’t a change of Government. And regardless of what the Greens or Labor propose won’t make any difference until we know what binding construction contracts have been signed between now and the election.

  8. NBN should be focussed on levelling the playing field for all Australians and not focussed on providing infrastructure in commercially viable high density population areas. In my region of Far North QLD all NBN connections will terminate at the closest POI which is Cairns but there is no POP in North QLD therefore ISP’s will be responsible for IP transit to closest POP in Brisbane so regardless of what SLA NBN provide contention rates to closest POP could be heavily oversubscribed due to cost associated with IP transit. Additionally many in our region have suffered months of drastically slow internet due to oversubscription of NBN satellite services but NBN still think it is OK for consumers to pay the same monthly fees for what is now a substandard service and as one NBN rep told me that if I want decent internet then I should pay thousands per month for a non subsidised satellite service. The current service has got so bad that a youtube video at lowest 144p resolution will buffer for 2-3 minutes for every 30 secs video and forget about Netflix, iview etc which used to play OK. Meanwhile at my other address in Cairns where I have more than adequate ADSL2+ we are now getting upgraded to FTTP it makes no sense to me why the NBN is upgrading areas that are well serviced but pushing the areas of need further behind without reimbursement for their blatant disregard of simple maths that led them to oversubscribe the limitations of the infrastructure.

  9. To explain my previous comments further as to why the NBN does not provide a level playing field to all Australians I think it is important to look beyond the ‘smoke and mirrors’ of any political discussions regarding what services are delivered to the home as it makes little difference if we do not examine what is happening on the backend of the network.
    The figures I present here are from my own cost analysis for providing NBN services in my region (Far North Queensland) if anyone can show me different then I am open to debate but I present what I have researched.
    If I was an ISP providing a 100mbps connection to a customer in Cairns that had FTTP installed and I was to guarantee this throughput to the POP(Brisbane) then the wholesale charges would be just shy of $1000 per month EX GST. 40% of these costs are NBN wholesale charges while the other 60% are backhaul and transit costs. I have not added any other costs associated with running this service just purely wholesale and backend charges. ISP’s can only offer reasonably priced plans and be profitable by using contention. Although my 100mbps backhaul is a fixed cost each new customer I connect adds more NBN wholesale costs therefore I need to contend this service by at least 100:1 to be viable.
    As we know ISP’s want to be more than viable and I believe some will on certain plans contend services up to 3600:1. While still ensuring that you are able to download your quota within the month. Although I have not costed this in other regions I would presume that anywhere between Melbourne and Brisbane where much more competition is in the market place that these backhaul and transit costs would be much less making provision of higher level service more costs effective.
    If NBN really wants to level the playing field for all Australians it should be providing a service that takes the customer all the way to the closest POP(point of presence) not just the closest POI(point of intersect)
    NBN strives to set standard plans and pricing throughout the nation but are they really comparing apples with apples? Why does NBN not make ISP’s advertise their current contention ratios or impose limits? I think it wants to avoid discussing the elephant in the room.
    Some may argue that they now have NBN and are super impressed but we may not see the impact of contention for some years to come as more subscribers are using the same infrastructure similar to the current satellite service which was pretty good for a period of time until the contention and oversubscription took its toll on the finite infrastructure.

    • If I was an ISP providing a 100mbps connection to a customer in Cairns that had FTTP installed and I was to guarantee this throughput to the POP(Brisbane) then the wholesale charges would be just shy of $1000 per month EX GST. 40% of these costs are NBN wholesale charges while the other 60% are backhaul and transit costs. I have not added any other costs associated with running this service just purely wholesale and backend charges. ISP’s can only offer reasonably priced plans and be profitable by using contention. Although my 100mbps backhaul is a fixed cost each new customer I connect adds more NBN wholesale costs therefore I need to contend this service by at least 100:1 to be viable.

      Having worked for one of the decent ISP’s that has now been iiBorgified I can shed some light on what sort of contention ratio’s were typical. For Consumer services the aim was to maintain 25:1, for Business connections the aim was to maintain 4:1 contention ratios.

      Unfortunately imo one of the few things NBN Co got badly wrong was the CVC charges etc – while the CVC pricing per mbps (dont forget this is a bandwidth charge, not a data charge) was about 1/3rd of what Telstra charge in their South Brisbane FTTP area, the real problem was the entire pricing structure was created with an ADSL mindset and should have been as forward looking as the rest of the network design. It should have been created with high bandwidth connections and large data quotas (or no quotas) in mind to encourage uptake of the fast plans for consumers and business alike.

      /my 2c

      • I realised I grossly underestimated backend charges for 100mbps from Cairns to Brisbane it is actually more like $3600 per month for a 1:1 100mbps service. The costing I wrongly gave was for a guaranteed 25mbps service. When I model 25 users at 25:1 contention on a plan of $99 per month I am still loosing just over $2K per month.

        • 25 users is thinking too small, even the smallest ADSL DSLAM install is around 1,000 ports and Exchange service areas are much smaller than the NBN POI service areas.

          • I know what you mean but due to the pricing structure to provide 100mbps connections for Cairns it does not matter how much you scale it up 25:1 contention is a loss if I model 1000 customers at the same contention I just scale up my loses to 90K per month. Break even is about 70:1 contention.

        • The other item you are overlooking is that most isp’s don’t lease a managed service for their backhaul, they lease the “glass” and then run whatever backhaul speeds they want to over them. 5 years ago it would have been gigabit, today it’d be 10 or 40 gigabit.

          • Thanks Derek I do realise these thing but the essence of the point I am trying to make and hopefully someone perhaps like yourself could help to me confirm or deny my suspicion that it is more expensive to provide equivalent NBN services in areas such as Cairns compared the major population centres which could as a consequence mean that regional centres get a lower level of service for the same price.
            As per one of your previous comments the reason they have quota’s on data even though the data is not metered on the network is to manage contentions. If they had no quota we might all wonder why we can’t download our 3tb or whatever in the month.

          • No worries Paul, well yes and no.

            There are 2 things to remember, with ADSL there is a large fixed unavoidable cost in Line rental (Naked doesnt make that much difference, $10 tops iirc). There is no NBN line rental as such, just port price based on speed.

            Secondly Cairns has ~15,000 citizens, that’s a pretty viable small city for any ISP and the ISP I worked for back 3-4 years ago happily installed DSLAM’s in the exchanges of towns like cairns (eg Mount Barker & some riverland towns). A DSLAM started @ $90k for ~1,000 ports – setting up in a POI to service the NBN costs less than $10k and even as little as $5k depending on the type of managed switch the ISP decides to provision.

            So factor initial startup costs into the equation and NBN isnt so bad … in the long run that’s a different story.

            All that said, I still think the CVC model was not the correct model to use, NBN Should imo only charge for the port speed even if that means making the ports more expensive (and drop those silly 12/1 and 25/1 plans, 12/1 should only be allowed to be sold as a VoIP service!).

            Btw, there’s some good info here that does confirm CVC costs are a real issue:

            http://blog.jxeeno.com/cvc-remains-the-single-biggest-threat-to-nbn/

  10. Renai, there needs to be far more coverage of the benefit side of the cost/benefit analysis, if we want to credibly counter the arguments of demonised government borrowing and white elephants. The article on Telstra’s Smart ICT study re driverless cars and Uber is a start. We are in need of solid justifications for a FTTP policy. Filling this gap of applications, scenarios and case studies will go a long way.

    Most Delimiter readers are aware of the benefits, but the benefits are still “blowing in the wind” and need to be brought down to street level so that the debate can move forwards.

    • Your point is valid. I am actually going to set up a “policy resources” page on Delimiter (when I get around to it) which will feature quite a few resources precisely along these lines.

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