news The NBN company has furiously rejected the claim by telco academic Rod Tucker that Malcolm Turnbull’s Multi-Technology Mix approach will turn Australia into an “internet backwater”, arguing instead that the controversial network model will be a “game-changer for the Australian economy”.
The previous Labor model for the National Broadband Network featured a near-universal fibre model, using the best possible technology to upgrade Australia’s ageing copper telephone networks with fibre cables that will serve Australia for the next 50 to 100 years. However, the Coalition has radically reshaped the project, re-using the copper and HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus in a so-called “Multi-Technology Mix”.
Elements of the Coalition’s MTM model are being used overseas — for example, its Fibre to the Node technology is being deployed throughout Europe, while the United States is upgrading HFC cable networks. However, such technologies are technically inferior to the Fibre to the Premises model preferred by Labor and the Greens, and NBN executives have admitted in the past that the FTTN moel n particular may need upgrading shortly after the rollout is completed.
The competing cost models for the NBN are highly contested, but both models would ultimately pay for themselves under the NBN company’s calculations, generating a return on the Government’s investment in the program over different time scales and with different financial conditions.
In a widely distributed comment piece first published this week on The Conversation, University of Melbourne academic Rod Tucker — who sat on the first expert panel who recommended Labor’s FTTP model — slammed the Coalition’s MTM approach.
“FTTN technology will cement Australia’s place as an internet backwater,” wrote Tucker. “The Coalition sold the Australian public a product that was supposed to be fast, one-third the cost and arrive sooner than what Labor was offering us. Instead the Coalition’s NBN will be so slow that it is obsolete by the time it’s in place, it will cost about the same as Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN, and it won’t arrive on our doorsteps much sooner.”
However, in a statement published this afternoon, NBN public affairs manager Tony Brown rejected Tucker’s comments.
“Far from turning Australia into internet backwaters, our multi-technology mix represents a real game-changer for the Australian economy and for every individual,” he wrote.
“One of the more common misconceptions about the NBN network is that incorporating existing technology into it could somehow be a bad deal for Australia. As NBN CEO Bill Morrow has said, that criticism would be justified if all we did was purchase the copper and cables from Telstra and Optus and then spent not a cent upgrading them. But upgrading these assets is precisely what we have begun to do.”
Brown said that like other operators around the world, the NBN company wasin the process of upgrading copper lines to deliver Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN).
“This will help us meet our target of delivering at least 50Mbps to 90 per cent of homes and businesses in fixed line areas,” he wrote. “And further upgrades are possible if and when there is the consumer demand for them. Just look at the UK where [British telco] BT believes it will be able to provide 500Mbps over copper to most homes over the next 10 years by deploying the new G.Fast technology.“
Brown noted that BT had said that even higher speeds — up to 1Gbps could be possible over short copper cable lengths.
In addition, he noted, the NBN company was also upgrading the HFC cable networks it was buying from Telstra and Optus to support gigabit broadband speeds.
“The DOCSIS 3.1 standard we are introducing is capable of supporting download speeds of up to 10Gbps and up to 1Gbps upstream,” he wrote. “By delivering data more efficiently, these hybrid fibre coaxial cables can deliver up to 50 per cent more data than is possible over current cable networks.”
Brown noted that the NBN company’s most recent corporate plan estimated an all-fibre rollout would take six to eight years longer to build and would cost $30 billion more than the MTM approach.
“Our job is to enable everyone in Australia to receive access to high speed broadband as quickly and as affordably as possible. The entire network is scheduled to be completed by 2020,” he wrote. “Plainly, leveraging existing assets – such as copper lines and hybrid fibre coaxial cables– keeps costs down and enables more people to benefit from the NBN network more quickly.”
“Far from turning Australia into internet backwaters, the multi-technology nbn™ network represents a real game changer for the Australian economy and for every individual.”
Opinion/analysis to follow tomorrow.
Be interested to see the analysis, since this is from someone who you believe knows his stuff.
The failure of Tucker’s piece (repeated across the Leftoid medias) was he still maintains (as many of the commenters here) that the FTTH costs in pre-SR still stand despite being demolished in both SR and again CP16.
Perhaps Renai will finally reveal his costings for a FTTH network in his analysis. Others are welcome to in comments, I’m going with CP16 figures as the best available.
Who knows – maybe we’ll also eventually also get a final figure of how much the MTM would cost. But hey – its not like the cost would likely double within the next couple of years would it? Oh wait…
The main issue I have with current NBN management is that they won’t provide the breakdown on the costs. The unreleased 2013-2016 v13 corporate plan at the time indicated that NBNCo had contracted $6.4b or 30% of forecast FTTP, which would be approx. $2666 per premise. By all accounts I’ve heard since the election, the delivery partner rates and overheads have all substantially increased, dragging the CPP up. The DP’s themselves have also indicated in financial reports that they have increased their profit margins for NBN in the releases since the election.
Unfortunately we’re unlikely to ever know what is the actual reality may have been. The current NBNCo will not release the cost of any contracts, nor the detail in coming to their current CPP.
@dave I’m with you re detail, we should have much more info for the about of taxpayer money spent. However there’s far more detail published today than under previous management.
Even when it was clear old mgmt forecasts were failing by massive margins they continued the mantra of “on time and budget”. This delussion continues today in many forums.
I find it amusing that anyone compares forecasts from the 2 NBN structures.
Both have been equally abysmal…though I will say that at least the Labor forecast included a far more robust and future-proof product.
That’s simply false. The original NBN was not ‘failing by massive margins’. They were delayed mostly by entirely predictable amounts. The LNP delayed the project by stalling the necessary legislation for (from memory) nine months. The asbestos in the Telstra pits took up to a year for Telstra to remediate at their leisure, whereby those localities could not proceed. Then there were delivery contractors failing to meet their obligations, which triggered financial penalties, but of course not enough to pay for a whole new contractor to take over the job overnight.
There are plenty of projects failing out there due to incompetence and mismanagement, I encourage you to go and investigate those. Because the original NBN Co didn’t suffer the same sorts of internal issues and they were far more transparent and collaborative than any other major government project I have seen. No, they weren’t perfect and improvements could certainly have been made, but if perfection is your bar to which you hold everything, you must be a terribly disappointed person.
If you want to talk about a project ‘failing by massive amounts’ why aren’t we talking about the current NBN that was meant to deliver a minimum of 25mbps to every Australian by next year, and 50mbps by 2018, based on a ‘fully costed plan’ and ‘extensive industry discussions’?
I think it varies. The new mgmt are far better on the reporting for regular serviceable/active, where as I believe the old mgmt was far more transparent on the financial/corporate plan/open data details. At least we had the option to challenge them, and plenty did.
Cost of the system to the country should be weighed against the benefits to the country as a whole. Using cherry-picked figures that only deal with the nbn itself is disingenuous at best.
What is the GDP or net gain to the country estimate on the 2 plans over a 20 year period?
Using either the CP16 or the SR “figures” alone, or looking at such a very short period is like reading only one side of a balance sheet when deciding on an investment.
If only someone completed an CBA, oh wait…
And it was so important, that even Turnbull ignored it completely after paying for it.
Your much vaunted CBA Richard is a great example of a fiction being written for a predetermined outcome – it was neither independent, realistic or comprehensive. For example it completely ignored the Business benefits that a real NBN would deliver to the economy.
But if you weren’t just another blind Liberal party follower you’d be able to see this for yourself. You should be asking yourself why Malcolm didnt keep his promise to have the productivity commission do the CBA. (and PCA time constraints is not the right answer, he didnt even wait for his own cronies to finish their “CBA” before swinging the wrecking ball @ NBN Co!)
If they had “completed” it they would have put in all these upgrades they keep talking about. Pretty hard to claim an $18B saving by 2040 without them. And oh dear, it seems the $15B blow out has eaten up most of that, down to $3B saving. If the MTM was the cheaper, better way to go, they wouldn’t have to rig data so much to try and prove it.
Saying things like leftoid media, really doesn’t augur well for one’s partiality there, Richard.
It is obvious that in the blinkered world of the bean counters and/or L/libertarians, only Fox and the Australian report facts! Not seen those takes on the Hannity lies, his intentional re-splicing of video, fictional no go zones, etc… These are your poster boys of facts?
Also, is that the same leftoid media you were criticizing previously (SMH) who I’ll remind you yet again, supported and openly suggested their readers vote the Abbott government into power?
Apparently one is only biased when disagreeing with (even using those dreaded facts to clearly disprove) living in the past, bean counter, L/libertarians?
And the SR and CP16 being demolished by the real costs in the project Fox report they tried to hide. Keep slurping that koolaid Dick.
“Leftoid”… the cool thing about being on the left of the political spectrum is that we don’t have to come up with petty minded insults for conservatives. Ever seen conservatoid or conservatard written somewhere? Nope? That’s because the -oid/-tard is built right into conservatism.
Richard, you pointed out where you believed that I spoke inappropriately of you in a previous comment. When I stated that you were unable to keep your politics out of your analysis.
Your “Leftoid medias” comment is a prime example of why I believe this to be so.
And before you ask, yes it flows the other way as well. I try to ignore those who rant rhetoric whether it is left or right.
This is not a ideology battle, that battle was fought at the point that the NBN was decided on being created. It is now a battle of getting the best for the country in the most economical manner.
The current MTM plan has failed at that. It has not been sooner. It has not been cheaper, and it was never faster.
I have not seen any rigorous independent analysis that doesn’t treat the strategic review with scepticism.
There are definitely huge issues with it (for example, look at the FTTP per premise cost, where the actual cost was gradually declining. This is in line with what we’ve seen with large rollouts overseas, but then the SR forecast that at some point it would almost double, with the reasons for the extra cost being redacted. Another thing is the way that they massively underestimated a whole range of costs associated with the changes in the MTM, which we have seen blow out by billions of dollars).
So as far as I am concerned, the SR is mostly worthless. The cost benefit analysis also was a non-starter, given the ridiculously biased group of people that they chose to author it.
I wouldn’t trust any report or CBA that wasn’t done by the PC at this stage.
So the cost of the MTM is marginally cheaper to install, still with much slower speeds, but I have yet to see any figures for the ongoing running costs. You know power and maintenance for the nodes etc. None of these costs have ever been factored in. If Turnbull is going to say the MTM will cost x dollars to build and bring in x dollars in revenue (forecast period was blatantly shortened to give the appearance of MBM earning more revenue than FTTP) then he should also be including ongoing costs for that period too.
Subsequent to Turnbull’s new deal with Telstra lumping the poor old taxpayer for the costs of remediation of all the pits (sight unseen) and copper replacement and asbestos removal from pits this must be included in budget costings too. And all Australians have a right to have all these costs available in the public arena.
Definitely agree. And where costs are offset against income, the consumer price plan that supports the income would be informative.
Little different if you believe peak funding range of $74-84b (FTTH) is not much different from $46-56b (MTM). Few would agree.
Ongoing running costs you’ll find as operational expenditure.
Pits dont have the same level of distruption with FTTN.
But do continue…
“Little different if you believe…”
That appears to be the main difference. The Coalition appears to be more of a “faith-based” Governmental body instead of one based on science…
If only they had the ability to post a TCO number…say over the life of the products?
@Chas you misunderstand what was written re belief. Clearly the numbers are different, I was being facetious.
The TCO numbers are there you have to know how to read them (you’re not alone in NBN forums). Add capex and opex. Again it would be nice for much more detail. Offsetting cost is revenue; forecast breakeven date and peak funding the numbers you’re interested in.
I’d reiterate as with most projects cost forecast are likely understated, revenue overstated. NBNCo (either model) will never come close to recovering the money spent.
Actually, I think that the word “belief” was well chosen as it describes well what the LNP appear to be selling.
What the LNP have done in their “calculations” is reduce the estimated demand rate to the barest of trickles (as opposed to the huge flood we have always had) and calculated all of their numbers based on that strange assumption. They have done this despite all evidence (across the world) to the contrary. They even paid millions of our dollars to one of their pet consultants (one that they have used similarly in the past) in order to try and justify their political actions.
The TCO should include the cost of attaining a realistic demand, which means that they need to include gigabit communications (like they are building in so many places already) for 90%+ of the population by 2020 (when internet connections are expected to be increased by 2500% over 2014). We should target for a minimum average bandwidth of 150/150 by 2020 and determine TCO based on that.
Anything less than this will most likely reduce us even further in our ability to compete in a global economy that is increasingly based on communications, and is increasingly passing us by.
@chas
75% of NBN customers are chosing plans that offer 50mbps download or less (with contention considerably less). Where’s the demand you’re claiming?
Study after study has shown the greatest value is in broadband penetration and increasing speed shiws diminishing returns. We covered this a few weeks ago.
In your opinion 150/150 is required by 2020. On what is this based? Data demand is becoming more asymetric yet you demand upload speeds few use. What applications benefits are lost at 150 vs 50mbs? Access to video on demand services does not a more competitive nation make.
So Richard people are moving from an average 12Mbps ADSL (but really much lower as or national average is only 6Mbps) to 50Mbps that is a huge increase just there who knows what people will need at 2020. oh wait wasn’t it just 15mbps according to the CBA.
projects cost forecast are likely understated,
considering that the SR had the cost of FTTN at $555 — $833 per premises but now the CP has it at $1600
Makes you wonder why anyone would cite g.fast examples of 1.1gbps and 800mbps. Are you anticipating future demands?
@richard
The demand for folks to go from dialup to avaialble broadband took about 3-4 years, I expect the same here.
In addition, that 75% includes the phone-only folks who have never wanted the internet (for whatever reason), so it is a bit misleading. A 12/1 connection is required for a phone line…
Thirdly, Intel and the rest of the IoT consortium estimate that the number of internet connections in 2020 will be 25 times as many as we had in 2014. Remember that broadband is not just speed, it is also number of connections.
Fourthly, every major software vendor is beginning to rely FAR more heavily on cloud based software (which will VASTLY increase bandwidth requirements). Note that the new head of Microsoft was promoted from the Azure Division…there’s a reason for that.
Fifthly, with the price of storage online dropping every day, the cost effectiveness of real time online backups is greatly surpassing local storage in both safety and price.
Sixthly, the issues brought about by the meteoric rise of Netflix (while the initial issues were of backhaul) is an obvious indicator of bandwidth problems to come.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
@Richard
“75% of NBN customers are chosing plans that offer 50mbps download or less (with contention considerably less). Where’s the demand you’re claiming?”
With contention you say? That would only be RSP based contention, not a limitation of the network itself. Each fibre “node” for lack of a better term in the GPON roll out has 2.5Gbit to it, split between 32 connections. If 75% of those connections are on 50Mbit or less, they will receive their full speed at all times. It would need all 32 connections to be connected to 100Mbit connections, and all utilising 100% of their bandwidth at the same time for the infrastructure itself to become contended.
Now, if RSP contend their backhaul? Thats a different story but completely unrelated to the FTTH build itself.
It’s easy when one simply handpicks the Turnbull figures which suits one crusade (remembering that Turnbull’s figures have fluctuated incredibly) as well as always ignoring the “B” in CBA of course… to argue a hollow ideological bean counter case for Turnbull’s own third rate MTM.
Talk about stacking the deck…
@Richard, Okay, I’ll bite…. $74-84bn to build FTTH now compared to $46-56bn to build MTM now. Okay. Yes, the MTM is cheaper, now.
How much to upgrade the rest of the network to FTTH when the MTM build is complete? Overbuilding all of the HFC with FTTH and probably then running Fibre from FTTN Cabinets to homes, with significantly increased labour costs in the future. Do you seriously believe that the future FTTH build (which has been admitted time and time again, is the goal) is going to come in cheaper than just building it now?
@ R0in yes I do. An overbuild, if required, will be cheaper. I’m not alone SR13.
Lower costs to recover, faster deployment means earlier revenues, speed able to capture majority of customer spend.
Remai has claimed this project is a once in a lifetime upgrade. I don’t agree, nor does NBNCo management or any major political party.
Most of Australians would already have access to high speed broadband if not for Comroy’s NBN policy folly. HFC upgrade obvious (could’ve pitted Optus v Telstra), FTTB for MDUs (reject by Conroy despite no alternative).
Serious political parties have accept MTM for 70% of the population, left arguing over the 30% FTTN.
Will someone put a price on FTTH vs FTTN for the 30%? NBNCo has already, it isn’t kind to FTTH.
“An overbuild, if required, will be cheaper. I’m not alone SR13”
I find it telling that you use a document as a source which has already been discredited and is now the basis of a blowout to double the original estimates. The SR appeared to be a step backwards in actually understanding the costs and capabilities of a national broadband network here in Australia.
“Most of Australians would already have access to high speed broadband if not for Comroy’s NBN policy folly”
This is just one of those sales lines that is easy for the uneducated masses to believe….
Turnbull has been at it for 2 years now, and he has very little to show for his efforts except a doubling of the cost, a slowdown of the projected rollout, and a true mish-mash of already outdated technologies that are STILL in the planning stages. It is easy for the uninitiated to believe that because something is less powerful, it is also less expensive. In this case, that is not true at all…the TCO of MTM is far higher than that of FTTP over the next 20 years.
“Most of Australians [sic] would already have access to high speed broadband if not for Comroy’s [sic] NBN policy folly.”
LOL… yes all those wonderful giving private enterprise companies were all queuing up to build FttN (remember fraudband) especially in unprofitable areas, weren’t they… *sigh*.
Like Telstra pulling out of negotiations with the ACCC in 2006 (iirc) then submitting a non-compliant bid in 2008 (iirc) yeah they were really “gunna”.
And don’t forget G9 they were “gunna” too, but then decided “notta” because they didn’t even bid, to build it, after all of their rhetoric.
And WiMax (remember that too) I bet you also love that, well after all it’s also cheap and nasty… from OPEL who did absolutely SFA (much like NBN FttN now)?
And also the HFC war, where Telstra tried to wipe out the competition. Let’s just pretend that never happened and that they would have all played nicely in the sand pit… OMG
You can keep living in L/libertarian denial and in that safe bubble all you wish and keep repeating complete BS Richard. But unlike you I have proof on my side, because if they were “gunna” they “woulda” and they didn’t “pre- NBN”…
BTW – for someone who claims to have all the answers, you conveniently go MIA when a few questions are thrown your way, eh?
Rather telling really.
“BTW – for someone who claims to have all the answers, you conveniently go MIA when a few questions are thrown your way, eh?”
Just like Raoul, mathew, man with the copper organ, etc. on Whirlpool.
I think it’s commonly accepted now that the bible is more accurate than SR13…
@ boyo..
Indeed and without getting personal…
I note with interest, Mathew came here a week or two ago to tell us all that 35% of people are currently using NBN 12Mbps, so as to try to justify the third rate MTM network and it’s lesser speeds..
Remembering of course, that for the last five years he has repeated ad nauseum, daily, one sentence from a multi paged document which related to a (conservative) estimation that 50% would be 12Mbps in whatever year and he claimed that as being gospel.
So there’s been an actual (inadvertent) admission that his last five years of daily spruiking were absolutely wrong, yet still the 50/12 comments appear here and there…WTF ?
And of course, no (or little) mention of the other 65%.
Note that the Nodes are being grievously underprovisioned with fibre, not enough to drive even 25mbps FTTN. This fibre will need to be ripped out and new fibre rolled out. The treason runs deep.
Spending more to get less, how could that possibly be good for Australia?
Frankly I don’t know how someone like morrow can blatantly lie like this. The world wide experience is that FTTP gets cheaper and cheaper to rollout. For example Verizon got the cost to pass a premises down to $600 USD per premises (not including connection).
Quigley also popularly quoted the NZ figure of $1300 but never got near it (averaged closer to $5-7000). It has no relevance, NBNCo has 1m fibre premises for accurate FTTH costs (other tech still estimates).
Verizon indeed got costs down and $600 is impressive, but as we’ve previously discussed they found the returns unattractive even at such low costs and abandoned their FiOS rollout. What’s that say for the substantially higher NBNCo’s costs and likely return?
“they found the returns unattractive even at such low costs and abandoned their FiOS rollout”
This is not true at all…and as a Verizon shareholder I am probably a bit more aware of the situation than you seem to be.
Verizon was under HUGE pressure to consolidate money and discontinue all rollouts…they had already cherry-picked the best spots, and are now gathering revenue for the next series of rollouts.
One of the big issues is that they were forced to overbuild the networks rather than replace the copper. This means that they still needed the heavy maintenance costs for copper, despite the fiber network being in place across the same area.
Once the majority of it’s copper customers are converted to fiber, they will renew their fiber rollout. In the meantime, they are sucking up cash to pay for the next rollout.
Currently they have 4.9 million copper and 5.5 million fiber customers for their voice services.
Richard, Verizon didnt magically get their costs down to $600USD passing premises number 2, they did it over 10 years while passing 18 million homes. NBN Co were already in the process of dramatically bringing down their FTTP roll-out costs and improving the roll-out speeds with design improvements and technological improvements such as smaller Multi-Port adapters that would fit inside existing Telstra pits.
NBN Co’s ramp up had only just properly started when the Libs gained power and promptly slammed on the brakes!
@Derek NBNCo talked about future reductions of cost, yes they got it down in Tas from over $7000 per premises but it never approached their forecasted $2200-2400. Quiley was found of talking, the published company performance never matching his expectations.
The new FTTH deployment design instituted by new management has resulted in more fibre connections and activations in the last 12 months than the total of NBNCo’s previous disastrous history.
Owning share doesn’t make one more knowledgible. I’ve previous linked comments by Verizon’s CEO about abadoning FiOS rollouts, redirecting future investment to wireless. Perhaps you have a link? (And to your claim corp plans are audited).
@Richard $7k is pure B.S. Come back when you can stop regurgitating falsehoods!
Btw Richard, if you bothered to stop trolling and do some real research you find the following. In a report provided to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the NBN in April 2013, NBN Co provided a detailed breakdown of the fibre capex costs on a per-premise basis.
http://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnco/media-releases/2013/report-to-parliamentary-joint-committee.pdf
It shows that NBN Co had come down to very close to the $2,400 per premise, the $7k figure you mentioned was from the very first trial build in Tasmania.
As a result of “Project Fox”, the costs had dropped by around $350 getting them down even closer to $2k.
But that is all just a bit inconvenient for you isnt it? because it means that even if the costs didnt drop further, the REAL NBN would have been delivered on time and on budget!
“Owning share doesn’t make one more knowledgible”
No, but it does make me far more attentive.
“I’ve previous linked comments by Verizon’s CEO about abadoning FiOS rollouts”
Now go back to the CNBC reports during that period and note Verizon’s frantic efforts to shore up their balance sheet. Maybe you can link the CEO saying that Fios wasn’t worth the money? Or that it was too expensive for the rollout cost? That would be very interesting indeed…
The FTTH rollout under Labor was the very beginning. To try and compare those rollouts to today is ridiculous and of no purpose.
My first HDD was a 25MB Seagate that cost $500USD…should I compare that to a modern HDD? It’s the same thing…
“The new FTTH deployment design instituted by new management has resulted in more fibre connections and activations in the last 12 months than the total of NBNCo’s previous disastrous history.”
Oh, you mean those Labor-contracted areas that would have been indicative of the overall speed ramp up that was due before the Liberals started cancelling contracts?
Richard you need to back up this statement.
“but it never approached their forecasted $2200-2400.”
@Woolfe Kudos for trying mate, I gave up with him a long time ago, your points will be either misconstrued, ignored or cherry picked. The only real reason to respond to him any more is so visitors to the site don’t see a lack of response and think “That guy must be right, no one responded”, so just state your case and move on :)
You conveniently leave out the cost-savings of Project Fox, the very project that Turnbull tried to deny its existence.
> , such technologies are technically inferior to the Fibre to the Premises model preferred by Labor and the Greens, and NBN executives have admitted in the past that the FTTN moel
Clippy: I think your trying to spell model
Adam, I KNOW you failed to spell “you’re”. :)
one feels they are quite stung by the criticism – the squeal of outrage i can almost hear myself.
however some of the criticism i dont regard as valid. its not that they are upgrading assets i am concerned about – rather that said upgrade is a piss poor use of funds. the purchase of copper from Telstra and Optus is a done deal – mandated by the politicisation of the NBN by MT. that horse has bolted.
but i would rather that those ‘existing technologies’ indeed stay stagnant, that copper be locked away from anyone seeking to ‘upgrade the asset’ – a fools errand given the outcome for the nation when (if?) it will ever be completed.
the rattle on about Gfast is a bit of a nonsense. while BT may still be ‘using copper’ (haven’t they quit on that and conceded fibre is the way to go now?) what TB is really saying is “they brought the fibre to <100m from the premises.
why crow about chopping copper down, from exchange to home down to pillar to home, then pillar to home down to micronode to home, to – one presumes – fibre to the door, to inside? with accompanying expenditures at each juncture? Why not skip all these intermediate steps – and expense for each rejig! bite the bullet and do as many many other nations are and go FTTP NOW?
HFC is also a nonsense; if what i am hearing about the need/request for 4.8cm cable(currently 3cm) to be hung for DOCSIS 3.1 is correct. the weight and physical strain issues with that 'upgrade' make for a higher likelihood of pole failure, and with pole replacements at $10K a pop i can see costs for retaining and upgrading HFC rocketing up to a disturbing degree if there is any significant pole replacement needed to make DOCSIS 3.1 feasible.
Frankly, i dont see that 'leveraging existing assets' is the cost retainer or benefit enabler TB imagines it to be.
It would be nice to see it called out on NBN claiming 1gbps over g.Fast. BT to date has only released information where 1gbps achieved was combined downstream and upstream (786/231), and was over a 18m copper connection. From a FTTN perspective, that would represent around 0.4% of premises if they were lucky. Even on FTTB, you would be lucky to cover the 1st floor.
Whilst g.Fast will offer some benefit, it still remains significantly outweighed by FTTP across the entire premises if deployed via the node.
Also ignores the fact that NBNCo will already be $26b in debt, $29b in equity, a reduced revenue flow, and somehow will miraculously come up with all this fresh capital to deploy FTTdP to get consistent g.Fast.
as an aside re: GFast:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7150-g-fast-broadband-spotted-in-huntingdon.html
no indication of what length that line was; i would have been interested to know that.
also interesting: “It should be noted that we are not expecting every G.fast connection to hit these sort of speeds”. not a good indicator for TB spruiking said tech…. it DOESNT hit TBs claimed ‘500mbit’ mark; even adding the peak up and down speeds together (which i have seen used as a cheat to claim that figure).
@dave Telcom Austria have achieve the following in labs; 1.1 Gb/s over a single pair of 70 m lines, 800 Mb/s over a single pair of 100 m lines
https://techzine.alcatel-lucent.com/numbers-are-vectoring-20-makes-gfast-faster
And exciting area of active research funded by the EU.
That’s lovely Richard but it’s all irrelevant here in Australia because we dont use 0.5 mm gauge cable, we use .42 mm and worse which massively impacts the available bandwidth – but if you bothered doing some research you’d know this!
Indeed Derek, also worth noting:
So I guess that rules out G.fast for Australia then but still curious why they are suddenly hyping this when 25mbps is “more than enough”. Seems odd that GimpCo would actually go to the trouble and with another expense to implement G.fast when they consider those speeds unnecessary. It’s a distraction. They need to fool people long enough with the promise of faster speeds (faster speeds FttP could handle and deliver to 100% of those connected) because they’ve come to the realisation that what they were planning wont actually be enough or adequate.
Indeed, it’s classic intentional cognitive dissonance, the only problem for them is that anyone with real ICT knowledge is calling them out on it.
@derek Your ICT knowledge and experience doesn’t come close. The results aren’t irrelevant because of different copper sizes, just not directly applicable.
@HC g.fast is proposed as an upgrade fttdp solution in the future ie short copper runs. Avoids the expensive of entering the home.
Rubbish Richard, going from .50 to .42 mm copper knocks out a big percentage of the gains you like to bang on about due to reduced power transmission levels, lower available frequency spectrum and higher attenuation.
How about you do some more research and stop peddling rubbish.
http://www.ericsson.com/ericsson/corpinfo/publications/review/technology_update/archive/2009/issue_2/articles/vsdl2.shtml
That’s right. See unlike you I actually read what you linked to. GimpCo planning a massive Fttdp rollout now?
Adds yet another expense in addition to the inevitable expense of entering the home that could have been avoided by doing that in the first place.
HC has a good point Richard.
NBN, Mal and your good self can’t have it both ways.
Arguing on the one hand when the correspondence needs it, about these wonderful speeds now available via copper (ahem) as you did here earlier, which comes at a cost of course. But when the correspondence needs it, argue the opposite… (as Mal did) that 12 Mbps is enough for everyone and the added cost of going (even to 100Mbps) is not justifiable.
So which is it?
@rizz
The point is technology changes rapidly and unpredictibly. Highers speeds over a variety of technology are possble, you can upgrade if demanded.
There’s a high cost with over investing. Incremental upgrades reduces the risk, and due to the time value of money and earlier revenues can be cheaper. You’d need “bean counting” to understand.
Wow yet another each way bet…
“Technology changes rapidly.”
So rapidly, your chosen network uses decades old copper technologies?
As such, you never did answer using your logic, why wasn’t the iron wires good enough.
Try again…
That’s all good if you realise that the devices and cabling currently being installed throughout FTTH greenfields and brownfields can’t handle data transmission speeds of more than 1Gbps! Thing is, the costs of upgrading a full fibre network are much lower than what is needed to upgrade what’s being installed today throughout territories that either have now or are marked to receive FTTN. You know why us tech-heads and power users are jumping up and down about the MTM junk Malcolm wants us to have? Because the devices being installed throughout FTTN territories today – and the limitations of VDSL – create a ‘ceiling’ which limits throughput (in the most perfect of scenarios) to no more than approximately 200mbps! Want to upgrade that to gigabit? It’ll cost you as much as it did to put it in the ground first time around! Oh, and I haven’t mentioned how much it costs in electricity to run each ‘node’ yet – all while a Fibre Distribution Hub doesn’t need power!
What ever happened to FoD?
Usually when the topic of faster speeds comes up critics of FttP will say that anyone that wants faster speeds can pay for FoD, so why would GimpCo spend even more money on the the wasteful FttN roll-out regardless of how much or little it is just to enable such a small percentage to get “800mbps” on G.fast when those people could just apply for FoD without burdening the taxpayers.
Yes Richard for copper to match fiber its got to be less than 100m while fibre can do that over several KM’s
Yep, 15km’s to be precises and that’s barely trying, NG-PON2 is already delivering 10/10 Gbps symmetrical services per Premises! This is just the tip of the Fibre iceberg vs the copper which is is requiring huge expense to squeeze the last few mbps out of it!
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/verizon-test-10gbps-fios-says-new-fiber-tech-can-go-up-to-80gbps/
Wow how exciting… Now can you quote what fibre will do as a comparison for some real excitement?
Seriously, I’ll say it again – apart from dumb political obedience/ideology, I really find it hard to understand why any Australian could possibly want, promote and even be disingenuous with facts and figures, in relation to a costly, outmoded, third rate telecommunications network, for themselves, their families, future families and all Australians?
This is a sneaky make work project by Turnbull. Playing the long game.
Or else an ultra long game by a clever Labor party.
Install cr#ppy network whose costs escalating badly.
By the time it is “finished” (whatever definition you care to use to define success) it will be out-dated and require an upgrade to, wait for it, a largely FTTH network. Maybe someone will even consider splicing DSLAMS into existing fibre runs in regional and semi rural areas (where fibre is already run to towers) and start giving residents xDSL (as I realise running fibre is not economical for everyone. Although why has there not been consideration of providing a framework for residents in a rural area to form buying groups committing some capital, or borrowing from the tax payer at gov’t bond rate with subsidy from govt to defray costs somewhat in order to run fibre down some areas that meet criteria.)
So someone, possibly Labor, will come in and a) rectify this horrific Liberal blunder thereby providing proper future proofed infrastructure whilst b) giving lots of jobs to Australian workers (in my regional scenario above, that is a wholllllle lot of work required)
Lab results are always going to be very different to outcomes in the field. The initial data from BT has indicated that 500mbps is down to 50m, and seems to be positioning their 300mbps at the 200m mark. Until there is another breakthrough it’s a real stretch to call it 1gbps tech.
It’s certainly a great improvement, but unless NBNCo commit to FTTdP and the necessary capital, it will only cover around 20-30% of the FTTN coverage if they upgrade the nodes. It won’t surprise me if we see FTTdP as a FoD alternative.
Hey, there’s always XG-Fast, the next “breakthrough” in copper technology!!
Oh, wait….30m…I guess were gonna need a loooot more nodes!!
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/10/technology/innovationnation/internet-speed-record/
But Tinman GimpCo will have another thought bubble solution to solve that problem. Fttch (Car Hole), Fttgt (Garden Tap) and Fttdg (Dog House) these options will ALL be on the table, anything to put off going FttH.
Indeed Hubert…I’m still waiting for Malcolm (or maybe Richard) to announce fibre is a waste of money now because soon we’ll have quantum networking anyway…
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/135561-new-quantum-teleportation-record-paves-the-way-towards-a-worldwide-quantum-network
What a joke, anything other than the full FTTP rollout is a waste of money. FTTN is pretty much just a duplication of the ADSL2 network. Buying both Telstra and Optus’s duplicated HFC footprint is a waste of money. Buying Telstra’s rotting copper network is exposing the NBN to huge maintenance costs for ever.
Its clear Turnbull has been trying to derail the NBN from day 1, and is just wasting taxpayers money, no doubt he will blame labor for the future failure of his MTM NBN.
Nice earner for Telstra’s bottom line tho!
So the BT CTO is wrong also I believe
http://delimiter.com.au/2012/04/30/fttn-a-huge-mistake-says-ex-bt-cto/
How is the UK upgrade going (without their old oracle CIO)? Started as NBNCo was formed, now connecting 30m customers. BT’s wholesale access network the largest component of the UK Govts 24mbps to 90% of UK households by 2017 (on targets) for a couple of billion pounds.
Care to compare with NBNCo’s performance;-)
Not well Richard, the results are frankly poor!
http://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2015/06/only-1-percent-of-up-to-76mbps-customers-actually-get-76mbps-from-uk-isps/
Unfortunate to see a reputation of a prolific cherry picking commenter so quickly brought down. It’s like Richard never heard the story of the boy who cried wolf.
Renai – do you have any rules for disclosure for posters who may be astroturfers?
Certain posters seem to have almost unlimited time to follow issues across the internet repeating what look suspiciously like ‘talking points’ and twisting honest debate. We know that these people exist and are paid by organisations and political parties so it possibly deserves a policy.
@stephen First posts here for weeks, a couple of weeks ago one post on business spectator first in months.
My hotel in Kazakhstan has only Russian and Kazakh channels. A bit of time to kill.
Ironically, probably enjoying better than your chosen MTM speeds…
@derek
Realworld internet performance depends on many factors, many beyond layer 1.
What’s the sync speeds from the premises to aggregator? And from transist network from aggregator to RSP point of interconnect?
End user throughput is instructive to consumers but means little to the capacity or performance of the network.
Noooo, say it aint so Richard!
*facepalm*
Utterly irrelevant if the customers layer 2 speed is the bottle neck!
I’ve recently moved from Bigpond Ultimate Cable 110/2.5mbps to Bigpond 12/1 ADSL (moved house) and I can assure you the productivity losses for me a significant … and im one of the “luckier” ADSL users!
How’s the UK vectoring going Richard? Still trying to get it working after 3 and a half years last I checked. They are hoping GFast can save them, because with uptake now going over 20% speeds are dropping fast. How will we do on 60-70% forced take up if they can’t get vectoring working in the real world?
Seems the Right wingers in politics always set their country back at least 25 years.
http://www.techradar.com/au/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
They set the entire world back.
Here’s an interesting read. Pretty scary results.
https://newmatilda.com/2015/09/02/hard-right-wingers-led-simulated-global-politics-game-can-you-guess-how-many-virtual-0
@tinman Are we talking social/politically right or economically?
Economically the right have won, evidence for the success of capital and free markets is everywhere. Alternatively evidence for the failures of the alternatives is also as clear.
Socially I’m govt out, puts me in the centre. The left’s record here is amazing, requiring an extraordinary ignore of history to believe it. Kazakhstan got to experience the benfits first hand, 38% of the population starved to death in the 1932-33 collectivisation famines. Hundred’s of millions killed under communist rule.
Realisation the old soviet state was dead took just one visit by Yeltsin to a suburban supermarket in Texas. Today its fashionable to be dismissive of the trendous success of the free market in developed nations, most knocking have little knowledge or experience of its implementation or the alternatives.
@Richard, now we know you are trolling, Left-leaning does not equal Communism!!!
The 1st world in the 20th century was built on Keynesian economics, now it’s being torn down and redistributed upwards by so called neo-liberal economics on behalf of the 1%. You only need to look at how well “trickle down theory” is working in the USA, the money is flowing up to the 1%, the middle class is shrinking and the poor are getting poorer and rapidly expanding as a group.
@derek communism, state owned enterprises, state control of capital, etc are not of the left?
Your comment re Keynes demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of economic theory and practice.
Keynes remains the dominant economic thinking today (I prefer classical theories myself) and why the failure of economies like the EU and US. The very idea of aggregate demand is the driver ecomonically is against economic utility maximisation.
Our remarkable post WWII economic growth is acceptance of capital controlled by individuals, unleashing entrepreneurial creativity and opening up of markets for their output.
But for whom have they won, Richard?
You talk of capitol and free markets, but that is not the world we live in.
True capital gets a return on investment. The higher the risk, generally, the higher the return. If the risk actually occurs, they take the loss.
That is not how things work now. The Right have privatised profit, but socialised loss (see “Too big to fail”), at the expense of taxpayers/labour. The “Free market” is also heavily subsidised by society, either through tax breaks, or even directly.
Chomsky put’s it much better than I can, with a lot more examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE12mx2GLtk
@Richard I think modern economic thinking (especially since Reagan and Thatcher) is more along the lines of F.A. Hayek.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek
http://doughenton.tumblr.com/post/47468967690/austerity-vs-stimulus-the-debate-between-keynes
@tinman
The left govt socialised loses. They should have been left to fail.
Even the poorest are better off under capitalist systems. The envy of the left can’t handle the inequality. The real world doesn’t reward their “knowledge” as much as they think it should.
On that, we can both agree at least.
But considering the increase in poverty in the US (arguably the centre piece of the capitalist system) since the 80’s, I think we’ll just both have to agree to disagree on your call that “even the poorest are better off under capitalist systems” (under the current “modern” version of capitalism at least).
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Number_in_Poverty_and_Poverty_Rate_1959_to_2011._United_States..PNG
Well, I can already see one problem with this:
“One of the more common misconceptions about the NBN network is that incorporating existing technology into it could somehow be a bad deal for Australia. As NBN CEO Bill Morrow has said, that criticism would be justified if all we did was purchase the copper and cables from Telstra and Optus and then spent not a cent upgrading them. But upgrading these assets is precisely what we have begun to do.”
Professor Tucker’s argument was that buying assets that need extensive upgrades to get up to code was the bad deal:
“Also, the cost of repairing and maintaining Telstra’s ageing copper network was likely underestimated, as was the cost of retraining and maintaining a workforce with the wider range of skills needed to install and maintain the multi-technology-mix network – costs that are unique to the MTM.”
It would have been a good deal if Telstra had a high-quality network with all the places that needed repair known and documented, but if that existed, the NBN wouldn’t be needed.
Oh dear, another GimpCo hissy fit :-(
The only thing that Tony Clown got right is that the patchwork plan is a “game-changer” because afaik no other country in the world has gone backwards and switched from a FttP roll-out to a FttN patchwork for political reasons. Game changer right there because everyone collectively face palmed at the sheer idiocy of it all.
Also worth noting is that he is still hyping speeds we were previously told we didn’t need and hyping the magic of G.fast without even realising it’s just another unnecessary stepping stone expense to add to the patchwork plan bill that could have been avoided by rolling out the proper FttP plan.
478 days to go and I’m still waiting to see just how “quickly” “more” “people” will “benefit” from the politically motivated patchwork plan approach. So far those that are benefiting are actually on FttP.
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Game-changer? Sure, If by Game-changer you mean Pong on an early 80’s Colecovision console.. sure.. It’s a Game-Changer…
Its a game changer in the same way Monopoly changes if you remove the hotels. Theres still a final outcome, but it takes longer to get there with no real benefit to the people involved.
Lets see:
Cost more than FTTP rollout Nationally.
Sub-100Mbps speeds.
Rely on same copper that xDSL has to deal with (faulty cable anyone?, 20+ year old copper? etc).
XDSL is already sub 24Mbps speed, expect Fraudband to be the same.
Upload is crap.
“Far from turning Australia into internet backwaters, our multi-technology mix represents a real game-changer for the Australian economy and for every individual”
Yes, it WILL be a game-changer, but sadly, a change for the worse! Someone please tell me which multinational company would want to set up their headquarters here once they realise that – compared to the rest of the Western world – Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure is in a state of ruin. Also, as much as our dollar represents great value for tourists, those who have a grasp on all things technology will certainly think twice about visiting here once they learn that our internet access speeds are abysmal.
We soon will have an opportunity to make things right, but if the Australian voting public are stupid enough to give Abbott, Turnbull and the other LNP muppets another chance to screw this country even deeper into the ground than what it is now, I’ll have no choice but to call them a pack of morons!
So his justification for why the MTM approach is good is because they’re spending billions upgrading copper and HFC? Didn’t Turnbull promise that where the copper needed upgrading fibre would be used instead? Not that I expect anything Turnbull says to be reliable, but it doesn’t hurt to remind people of his claims, when NBN are now directly contradicting what he claimed.
So where are the figures on the expenses NBN have incurred with all these upgrades?
This isn’t an ideological question of whether or not it is possible to achieve certain outcomes over copper and HFC, it is a question of what is the most sensible and cost effective option? There’s absolutely no point upgrading copper to be capable of delivering 50mbps if it costs 90% of a full fibre deployment, which will eventually be necessary no matter how much they scream and shout and stick their fingers in their ears. Given the latest (first?) corporate plan from MTM NBN, it now seems that the MTM will actually cost more than FTTP (actually an obvious calculation for those paying attention, that was predicted as far back as April 2013).
NBN’s response is nothing but misdirection that doesn’t even stand up to very casual scrutiny.
Whenever I read them saying this, I always have a thought in the back of my mind…”If it was really that simple, cheap and “A Good Idea”, wouldn’t Telstra have already done it?”…
Actually I kind of want them to name (and shame?) those operators because they make it sound like everyone and his dog is doing what they are when aside from I think really the Germans (which is I think even then 50/50 split between Node and Premise) everyone’s been saying go Fibre.
Their UK and NZ prior examples are now stating Fibre to be the far better options (and those are places with far better gauges and quality of copper than we have).
@tinman
Telstra and other invested heavily in telecom prior to Conroy’s competition destroying NBN announcement. No company is going to complete with a GBE that threatens to overbuild them.
@Richard
“Telstra and others invested heavily in telecom prior to Conroy’s competition destroying NBN announcement.”
Are you for real? The whole idea of the NBN, at least from Stephen Conroy’s perspective at the time he proposed it, was to remove Telstra’s monopoly on the CAN and reduce prices to end-users through the introduction of a Government-controlled competitive market. The only mistake he made was to design the network using Telstra’s existing infrastructure, instead of starting from scratch. He should have said to Telstra, “Here’s $5 billion to cover the first ten years of a 99-year lease on every single Telstra exchange in Australia, then NBNCo will pay Telstra $500 million a year tied to inflation for the next 89 years.” Next, hire subbies to go out and build FTTH right beside Telstra’s copper, with new pits and new FDH’s and new connections pit-to-home. Once each territory’s network was RFS, Telstra would have to stand in line like any other company wanting to be a RSP, and buy their cut of the NBN at exactly the same price as everyone else. Sadly, Senator Conroy didn’t even know how to turn a computer on – nor did he have any clue about economics – so we were on the back foot from Day One simply because he was too stupid to see the right way of doing things.
“No company is going to complete with a GBE that threatens to overbuild them.”
That’s true. However, the whole premise of the NBN was to bring superfast broadband and upgraded telephony services to us all, at a much lower price than your buddies at Telstra were selling it for. What’s happened to this point is clearly a case of, company cries foul over losing its stranglehold on the Australian telco landscape, followed up by bunch of retarded politicians giving a whingeing child a dummy. Weird how the whingeing child has spat that dummy out time and again when things haven’t gone its way…
BS Richard, Telstra invested in mobile technology, as did their competitors…
Why?
Because Telstra wanted to try for another monopoly and the others felt safer to invest due to there not already being the 800lb gorilla monopolist, in mobile.
My proof, err competition in the mobile sector actually exists and the HFC roll out debacle prove the gorilla theory….
Your proof Richard?
BTW – Richard said, because Richard is a bean counter with lotsa bits of paper to say so, so ergo Richard’s opinions are infallible and superior to everyone else’s here… just doesn’t cut the mustard.
Well, because if it did, by using such logic, “Prof. Tucker” would eclipse even Richard, so he’d be right after all, wouldn’t he?
*shrugs*
Even John Howard (rightly) told Telstra to jam it when they fronted him with their over-priced scheme to upgrade their own network and demanded taxpayer funds to do so.
Telstra then decided to invest it’s loose cash in another grab at monopoly (mobile/4G).
All Conroy did was agree with John Howard that any deal with Telstra would not be good value for money.
“Telstra and other invested heavily in telecom prior to Conroy’s competition destroying NBN announcement. No company is going to complete with a GBE that threatens to overbuild them.”
Okay, I’ll bite. NBN was created because the market allowed the incumbent government to do so.
As far as the ACCC was concerned, it wasn’t competition destroying. So much so, it assured that competition was forced to occur in the retail space, due to the ridiculous 120+ POI model, whilst schizophrenically deciding that infrastructure competition was still the way of the future.
Telstra was not forcibly separated prior to sale, thus the regulator ultimately had no choice but to make infrastructure competition the ipso facto competition model. Telstra has proven it can move faster than the regulator, on countless occasions.
Coupled with the fact that ACMA and ACCC are separate entities, when they should really be a single combined, means regulation and communications rulings repeatedly fall out of sync.
The Market itself identified a space it could enter due to Telstra recalcitrance to meet the market. It also holding various backhaul links to ransom, once again triggered a gold rush as backhaul links were ploughed in by all manner of infrastructure parties, looking to meet the market and eat into Telstra’s profits.
Infrastructure competition typically occurs in a space where a single monopoly infrastructure owner holds all the cards. Because it’s the only space that can drive real market penetration and the only area that costs can be controlled by someone other than the incumbent.
Ironically most of the outcomes aren’t so much the fault of NBNco, rather the combination of a regulator that cannot make fathomable rulings (or even consistent with it’s partner ACMA), the lack of forced separation of Telstra, and the determination of successive governments trying to dabble in something neither are equipped to do.
The Market itself would never have created anything close to the NBN. Because it’s simply cost prohibitive to do so. It would have happily continued down the path it had taken. That is the sad reality of the situation.
Right or wrong, Conroy stepped in because he could. Malcolm has made a series of expensive calls, because he can. The entire market is now consuming itself, precisely because of the lobbying that lead to 120+ POI.
The ACCC ensured that no other entity could compete via infrastructure and simultaneously provide NBN retail services. When even Telstra decides it’s more profitable to inject itself into the NBN and run with it, why would you even for a moment assume anyone else would compete?
Apart from a select few taking advantage of legislation loop-holes, or sporadic new housing precincts, infrastructure competition died the same day NBNco was forced by the regulator to deploy 120+ POI.
The nail in the coffin has been the MTM. Which will lead to incredibly painful, costly and difficult challenges in 10-15 years time.
The ACCC looks at competition for all business fields though, not just communications. Are you suggesting the ACMA be given the ACCC’s competition powers just for comms? Or that the ACCC takes on all the ACMA powers (which aren’t really anything to do with competition)?
I’m suggesting that the two bodies should actually communicate with each other so that rulings make sense, at the very least.
Sounds too reasonable for government bodies Brendan :)
Firstly, Last I checked NBNCo was leasing the pits from Telstra. I don’t recall ever seeing anything about NBNco being allowed to replacing existing copper with better copper.
Secondly, Quickly and Affordability is not what the priority should be. People have dealt with shit internet for over 10 years. I don’t think waiting a bit longer for better technology with fewer downsides when compared to Fibre.
I’d rather wait another 10yrs for internet that will work as opposed to waiting 5 years for internet that will be equally as shit as the internet I already have.
Coalition can spin whatever bullshit they want…their way is shit and its only wasting our money.
Well…they do have a remediation budget now to fix copper. It’ll be interesting to see how far that actually goes before they consider fibre as a replacement.
That is a blank cheque their getting from NBN above and beyond the 11 Billion as well to do stuff they should have been doing when they owned the damn thing in the first place.
Its no wonder T$ shareholders are very happy lol.
I have always suspected the Libs soft spot for Telstra is more about covering their arse on the dodgy sale Howard did. If he had done the sale for the good of all Australian’s, he’d have broken the company up before the sale. Even though he didn’t Telstra shares didn’t do as well as people hoped, sinking below the float price (and thus hurting the “mum and dad” investors).
So every now and then they throw them a bone and fork over more taxpayer dollars to bump it back up with sweetheart deals…
If the NBN company is “in the process of upgrading copper lines to deliver Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN)” doesn’t this this mean getting into the pits and pulling new cable or at least ripping out old, shonky joints? If they are going to do this, surely it is quicker and cheaper just to pull a run of fibre through?
Who would believe that these idiots would even contemplate pulling out old copper & putting in new copper …. what a bunch of Spankers . TurnBull you are a LoSeR !
What I just posted on NBN Defender’s Facebook page…
I find Malcolm’s ignorance of fact, and his steadfast insistence on installing the MTM, as quite puzzling. The whole thing reeks of corruption, and a quest for personal (read: financial) gain. How else could anyone as smart as he claims to be justify implementing technologies that have already proven to be rubbish, unless there’s an ulterior motive? Why would he invest his own money in FTTP networks overseas, yet in his own backyard stand up to declare FTTN as the best thing since sliced bread? We’ll never be too sure, simply because enquiries like those needed to uncover such fraud usually miss out on the upper echelon, but someone from somewhere’s gotta have paid somebody a shady something at some point!
Haha really? So the man in charge of the NBN rollout puts his own money into FTTP overseas but pushes for FTTN here in Australia? I would love to find out more about this if you could tell me where you got this info from. If this true then this is really something as he obviously believes FTTP is worth the money. The man is not stupid and it seems he wants to stay that way by telling Australia FTTN is all that it will ever need.
it was all over the new a few years back, he’s one example:
http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/turnbull-likes-fibre-to-the-home–in-france-20120821-24kpe.html
There are heaps more though…
Thanks for that, mate! I knew I’d read it somewhere. If I remember rightly, it wasn’t long after the LNP took over that the story came out…
You’re welcome mate :)
I think the story may have even started before the election, but yeah, it was around that time.
MT has invested in companies which are rolling out FTTP in France, in Spain, and in the USA.
It’s that very fact which gives me cause to cry ‘corruption’. MT has no other way to explain why he’s so insistent on proven-as-junk technologies that are the direct competition to his own fiduciary interests. You don’t go buying shares in Holden then drive out of a Ford dealership behind the wheel of an XD Falcon unless someone’s giving you a free ride…
The conservatoids bizarre obsessional hatreds. Behaviour bordering on mental illness in NSW where they have sawed the Entertainment Centre in half, demolished the Convention Centre, to allow a developer to build a block of units, demolished the Exhibition Centre to build what looks like a giant warehouse that would be better sited at Port Botany, demolition of the Powerhouse Museum for another developer’s block of units to expose their 30 year hatred of the very successful Darling Harbour and not wanting a “Labor” monument visible for all to see and replace it with a conservatoid Darling Harbour.
Labor finally decided to build the NBN when faced with a Three Amigos Telstra opposition to other alternatives. They decided to build a Fibre to home home system because they listened to science and true technical experts in choosing a future proof system of the best technology, it isn’t debatable by any colour of politics it is what it is.
The conservatoid bean counters thought they could totally ignore the experts in this technology and cobble together like Frankenstein, a bunch of dead parts and technologies and breathe life into it.
It had no chance of ever working. With 2 years of feverish efforts and container loads of reports from less than credible accountants or seriously dubious at worst, the eventual cost has doubled and they have yet to connect a single paying customer on the Frankenstein Fraudband. HFC won’t start to connect customer until Q2 1016 and FTTN is still bogged down in trials. It’s bogged down like the Wehrmacht at Kursk they have been running now for nearly 18 months and no indications of when they will start installing, when what is more likely to happen is a total retreat.
At the last election we were told by the big bounder, MT that his plans were fully developed, costed and ready to roll the minute he entered office and that by September 2016 90% of Australians would have a broadband connection 25/5 Mbps.
That’s not his only Boo Boo, he also told us the “satellites” were a Rolls Royce technology and a bunch of older satellites could do the job, well Malcolm Fraudband’s found out the “older” satellites have been totally overwhelmed just in a couple of years.
FTTN and HFC will be overwhelmed long before the completion of the Frankenstein Fraudband.
Malcolm you should have studied maths at University you would have then realised the greatest failing of humanity is it inability to understand the exponential curve.
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