Rod Tucker’s right: Turnbull’s MTM model will leave Australia behind

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opinion/analysis University of Melbourne academic Rod Tucker attracted strident criticism this week for his claim that Malcolm Turnbull’s Multi-Technology Mix approach to the National Broadband Network will result in Australia remaining an “Internet backwater”. However, the unfortunate reality is that Tucker’s comments are all too accurate.

If Tucker — also one of the NBN expert panellists who recommended Labor proceed with the FTTP model in the first place — was seeking to stimulate a reaction with his opinion piece on The Conversation this week arguing that the Coalition’s approach to the NBN was “slow, expensive and obsolete”, then he certainly achieved his aim — in spades.

The howls of protest about the widely published article have been deafening all week.

Perhaps the most vibrant criticism of Tucker’s article came from Herald Sun columnist Terry McCrann, a long-time critic of Labor’s near-universal fibre model, who accused those backing the “fantasy” Fibre to the Premises model of “complete financial indifference verging on total financial illiteracy” for supporting it.

McCrann even went so far as raising that old hoary chestnut that it was foolhardy of the previous Labor Government to commit billions to upgrading Australia’s fixed-line broadband infrastructure at the same time as “mobile broadband” was becoming increasingly popular. Wow. I thought we had put that one to bed a while ago — with even the likes of Telstra agreeing Australia cannot run on mobile infrastructure alone — but obviously not.

However, the NBN company itself has been hardly less strident, with its chief executive Bill Morrow feverishly talking up the potential for Telstra’s copper network to deliver gigabit speeds to Australians using the G.Fast standard and the company’s public affairs manager Tony Brown spruiking the MTM model as a “game-changer for the Australian economy”.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been relatively quiet on the topic this week, but it’s not like the Member for Wentworth needs to fire up the rhetoric when his loyal lieutenants in the Murdoch press and the NBN company itself are doing such a good job on his behalf. He can leave the MTM cheer squad to its own devices at this point.

However, as with a number of similar cases recently — one might recall a similar reaction when Singaporean telco MyRepublic touched base in Australia last month — methinks this might be yet another case of the lady protesting a little too much.

Why, after all, one much ask, does the NBN company feel it necessary to bring out its biggest guns to utterly refute the comments of a single academic such as Tucker? Why does it feel it necessary to schedule interview after interview on radio and in the press to counter his criticism?

Why does a Herald Sun columnist like Terry McCrann feel the need to whale on Labor’s previous FTTP model with all the vitriol at his command? And why do the NBN company’s representatives themselves feel it necessary to highlight McCrann’s so obviously one-sided comments through social media, for those readers who may not have caught them at first flight?

The answer is that Tucker hit a nerve.

A close reading of the points which the telecommunications academic makes in his article reveals them to be relatively uncontroversial — even, it must be said, difficult to debate at all.

Tucker merely points out that by the NBN company’s own published data and modelling, Tony Abbott’s Coalition Government will not be successful in meeting its oft-repeated promise to deploy a version of the NBN that would be sufficiently fast, more affordable and quicker to roll out than Labor’s previous FTTP model.

These facts are quite well-established at this point, using the NBN company’s own material.

Only several weeks ago the NBN company revealed that the Coalition’s version of the project had blown out in costs by up to $15 billion. Its network rollout of Fibre to the Node and HFC cable technologies is proceeding at a snail’s pace, with most of the NBN company’s actual progress directly attributable to the FTTP model put in place originally by Labor.

And Tucker’s point that the Fibre to the Node technology preferred by the Coalition for a large part of the NBN build will leave Australia behind much of the rest of the world is similarly incontrovertible.

Countries like New Zealand and Singapore — as MyRepublic CEO Malcolm Rodriguez blithely pointed out last month — have already deployed vast chunks of the FTTP infrastructure that leaves the FTTN and HFC cable model in the dust. It is true that countries such as the UK are deploying FTTN — but they started half a decade before us. The UK already has some 22 million end users covered with the FTTN solution — whereas Australia’s own rollout so far officially barely covers a few dozen.

The NBN company’s chief executive Bill Morrow can refer to gigabit speeds on Telstra’s copper network using the G.Fast standard all he likes — and it is true that the technology does have potential. But the UK is able to pursue that model because its FTTN model is already extremely widespread. Australia’s own deployment has barely begun.

These countries have been able to achieve a massive head start in their broadband deployments over Australia, because their politicians did not spend the past ten years bickering over which model to deploy. Because of this, the unfortunate reality is that the NBN rollout is starting from a point very far behind our rivals. Fibre to the Premises is the only technology which will allow Australia to even keep pace with competing countries in the medium to long-term — and at this point we can completely forget about getting ahead.

If you work in Australia’s technology sector or have a personal interest in technology, you probably read Tucker’s article as a relatively innocuous statement based largely in fact, perhaps with a few ‘rhetorical flourishes’ that you could expect from an expert who has long favoured Labor’s Fibre to the Premises model, as do pretty much all credible telecommunications experts in Australia.

In short, the Coalition’s model is not delivering on its delivery promises, it’s already blown out in cost, and, by the way, the rest of the world doesn’t have their head stuck in the sand on the broadband issue like Australia does.

Tucker’s views on Fibre to the Node in particular are even relatively prevalent on the NBN company’s own board. Board director Simon Hackett openly slammed the FTTN model in March this year, saying he wished he could “erase” it, while NBN chair Ziggy Switkowski has acknowledged under Senate questioning that the FTTN model will likely need upgrading as soon as it is finished.

These are hardly controversial views.

Of course, the truth is that the truth has very little to do with politics, and the outraged reaction to Tucker’s post was very much a political one. It should be obvious that neither the NBN company — whose senior executives were largely hand-picked by Turnbull and have almost perjured themselves supporting the MTM model — nor News Corp — whose journalists have spent years finding the tiniest excuses to damn Labor’s version of the NBN, in what many suspect has been a misguided attempt to prop up Murdoch’s investment in Foxtel — are interested in hearing the technical truth about the NBN project at this point.

The reality is that there is only one question worth asking about Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure, a question which has become taboo to ask in public, a question which saw Tucker slammed in public this week up and down the country.

That question is: What is the best technology to serve Australia’s telecommunications needs for the next century and beyond? All the other details boil down to smaller debates about how we can rapidly implement that technology to achieve the best competitive, economic and financial outcomes.

And there’s only one answer. But it’s one that few people in politics seem willing to hear.

62 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve said repeatedly in the past that our net use is very predictable, and has been for 15 plus years. Every two years our speed needs double. From 56k dialup in 1999 through to now, the number has broadly doubled, with very little variation on that so why do people think thats just going to stop overnight?

    Every time we have a fundamental change in our capabilities, you also have something that comes along and fills the gap, and thats both private and public in nature. We saw music do it when we switched from dialup to ADSL, then social media when it went from ADSL to ADSL2, and we’re seeing the same now with Netflix.

    Why are the opponents so determined to stick their heads in the sand over this, it just astounds me. We need faster speeds, not maintained speeds, and there is only one technology thats going to deliver that past 2020.

    Add it that other countries are already routinely talking about 1 Gbps speeds, while we’re still debating when 25 Mbps is enough or not, and we’ve become a bigger laughing stock than we were when this all started.

    Get rid of the politics, find a solution that keeps everyone happy, and just get the damn thing done in a way that doesnt need to get rebuilt right away. Otherwise, we may as well have stuck with dialup.

  2. Perhaps the most vibrant criticism of Tucker’s article came from Herald Sun columnist Terry McCrann, a long-time critic of Labor’s near-universal fibre model, who accused those backing the “fantasy” Fibre to the Premises model of “complete financial indifference verging on total financial illiteracy” for supporting it.

    Unfortunately based the long history of poorly researched “tech” articles from Terry, I have reached the conclusion he is so technologically illiterate that he wouldn’t know an RJ45 port from and RJ11 port.

    ——

    The answer is that Tucker hit a nerve.

    Nailed it, the MtM boosters know full well they are defending the indefensible – only the folk benefiting directly and indirectly from MtM financially are defending it. Everyone else is critical of it.

    • To be fair, there are parts of it that serve a beneficial purpose. Folding HFC in as a short to mid term solution would have gotten early traction (and income), and FttB should have been a part of the FttP plan early on.

      Its the rest that blows chunks, and unfortunately, thats the biggest portion.

      • I don’t think even then it would have been warranted. I mean why hasn’t Optus or Telstra done just that …. they owned the damn things to begin with as well (and its not like they had to wholesale those either). If it would have been such a no brainer I can’t imagine why the incumbents left those networks to basically rot.

        • Mostly timing for HFC. As I understand it, hubs for cable had a capacity issue thanks to contention, and it really wasnt viable for the incumbents to spend the money dealing with it. You really only saw a dozen on a hub before speeds dragged to a crawl, and to fix it mean tens of thousands of hubs to shorten the last mile. Could be wrong, thats just how I understand part of the problem in the past.

          Speed is the other side of it. It was only delivering 40 Mbps in the past and DOCSIS 3.1 has only recently become a viable option. DOCSIS 3.1 can potentially deliver into the 10 Gbps range and beyond. Thats something that is relevant for long enough to make funding it worthwhile, but its only been around since 2013.

          So where available, it could have been a relatively cheap rollout today to keep that tech relevant for another decade, and then worry about putting FttP in those locations at the end of the process.

      • @GongGav

        Again once we accept MTM fixed wireless, satellite, HFC and FTTB (all sensible) we’re down to arguing the 30% FTTN.

        I was hoping Renai would put a figure on his prefered FTTH model in his analysis, guess we’ll have to wait. Tucker’s article criticised for the same weakness.

        No one denies fibre is a better technology, just that its expense isnt justified when alternatives can capture most of the benefits for less. This is the reason putting a figure on FTTH by it’s supporters is so elusive.

        NBNCo by their own figures has been a disaster. Tucker and the so called “panel of experts” should be asked to explain.

        • And yet the CBA said all we need by 2023 is just 15Mbps why all this talk about 3.1 or g.fast

        • richard how about the cost figure for FOD as from one NBN board member said the average cost is higher than FTTP or the figure that it would be $2B cheaper to upgrade later looking pretty false too as there is no cost for when to upgrade to FTTP later.

        • Again once we accept MTM fixed wireless, satellite, HFC and FTTB (all sensible) we’re down to arguing the 30% FTTN.

          Fixed wireless and satellite part of the proper NBN plan already (footprints the same) so not really relevant when talking about MTM for fixed line footprint. Not many here are endorsing HFC as a long term solution, I wouldn’t even call it a practical short term solution since any money spent here is just wasted, it’s short comings obvious and apparent, will only get worse as speed requirements grow. So that’s actually 64% of those in the fixed line footprint getting screwed because of fragile juvenile political egos in the Liberal party.

          • @HC so you’d take HFC off the table (cheapest per premises passed) and return to full FTTH (minus MDUs). What cost are you putting on such a plan?

            Sat and LTE only relevant given multimix from start.

          • No, I never would have put HFC on the table to begin with. A GBE should not be buying and operating second hand redundant networks that need costly upgrades before a known inevitable replacement. It defies logic. It’s not efficient. It’s a waste of time and money.

            Coalition clowns have set a new benchmark for idiocy so the cost would be whatever money they waste on their mess minus $1 billion. Hope that helps.

          • @Richard. I’d take them off the table and return to the FttP plan. Not necessarily FttP itself, but the plans Labor made up can be used for other things. Look up Fiber to the Drop Point (see what I say below about other technologies), and consider using the Labor plans to put it in.for the last ~20m. I’d leave THAT part of the cost to the home owner. It

            FttP effectively does close enough, only going the further step of putting fibre in comes down to a couple of hundred, rather than a couple of thousand.

            Cost for the plan? Zero. Wholesale monopoly generates enough income to cover OPEX, and pay off investment. Why cant you understand that?

          • There is a good reason the HFC was used despite its age and overall value as a data delivery medium, and that is because of our legal status with NBN (Co). If the GBE were to overbuild the HFC networks then they have to compensate the owner for the loss, so if they are going to compensate the owner for the loss, then they may as well get some sort of return – no matter how small – on that payment.

          • But Dan how would the owners of the HFC be at a loss?

            Since we were told about the merits of using existing infrastructure and no one needs the speeds NBN is offering wouldn’t they just price their services competitively and get all of the customers anyway and generate more profit in the process while NBNco languishes offering faster speeds no one is taking up? Also Infrastructure competition, we’ve been told this is important too.

        • “I was hoping Renai would put a figure on his prefered FTTH model in his analysis, guess we’ll have to wait. Tucker’s article criticised for the same weakness.”

          Scenario 4 from the SR. IIRC, Renai has already said/typed that this would be a reasonable compromise.

          • You see, Scenario 4 apparently somehow produces less revenue than MTM (how that is entirely possible I have no idea, considering the majority of the network outside of HFC is FTTP, being able to provide up to 1Gbps (and eventually more)).

            SR13 is from a magical land where rigging of reports isn’t considered a bad thing. You silly leftists keep forgetting this.

        • @Richard – I’m not a fan of FttN. Never will be. But I’m not going to bother going over all the flaws of the MTM model with you, because you refuse to see reason.

          One thing. What will it cost to get HFC up to FttP standards, and whos paying for it? DOCSIS 3.1 isnt free, and you can be sure Optus and Telstra arent going to pay for it. Guess thats another cost the MTM model never figured on.

          Oh, dont assume I’m talking solely about FttP either. If you bothered to take your blinkers off, you might realise that I’ve spruiked other technologies along the way. Just not FttN, which is a massive waste of money. A single dollar spent on it is too much.

          • Indeed GongGav and the humorous part in all of this… what’s the bet when the “leftoids” were suggesting FttN back in 2007 (when it was still actually somewhat useful) the same trusty current FttN crusaders, would have been the first to call it fraudband and argue against it?

            Gotta love irony and undying loyalty, eh?

      • To be fair, there are parts of it that serve a beneficial purpose. Folding HFC in as a short to mid term solution would have gotten early traction (and income), and FttB should have been a part of the FttP plan early on.

        Its the rest that blows chunks, and unfortunately, thats the biggest portion.

        ^this +100

        I’ve argued all along that HFC still has enough legs in it to be a medium term stop-gap (and is half way fibre already). All Malcolm needed to do was keep the FTTP roll out going, and do a deal on the HFC networks and he’d be a long way towards being “done”, and he’d have actually been able to keep the promises he’d made at the election instead of breaking them.

  3. I have to wonder, why the talking up of G.fast? If we don’t need the speeds provided by FTTP, why do we need the speed provided by untested, expensive technology like G.fast?

    So is the MTM plan that we upgrade from ADSL2+ to VDSL2, then to vectored VDSL2, then to G.fast, then finally, inevitably to fibre?

    In which case wouldn’t it be cheaper just to make a huge pile of all the hundred dollar bills in Australia and hold a bonfire? It would certainly be more productive.

    As for HFC, I noted the other day a comment that HFC will need new above ground cabling and poles to support DOCSIS 3.1. Is that what Turnbull thinks is meant by disruptive technology?

    • They can talk up G.Fast, if they want, but they better give us a cost. It’s completely disingenuous to keep blasting the FTTP model for being too expensive, whilst trumpeting upgrades that aren’t accounted for.

      • We already know that it doesn’t matter about MTM costs or the associated taxpayer burden, it’s only FttP costs which are a no, no…Because the upgrade of HFC is a very worthy cause indeed.

        I.e. ensuring certain Pay TV owners/suppliers have an optimum network, upgraded and paid for by us mere taxpayers, in return for continual “impartial reporting” (add Abbott wink….. now) via their empire.

      • Cost is extremely important, if for no other reason than the range of gfast.

        It is only useful at distances 500meters or less.
        I think targeting a speed of 25 megabits for vdsl2 (fttn) puts the max line length for fttn at approx 1km (please correct me if I’m wrong people!).

        Given geometry of circles and all that, that means node lotto just screwed out 75% of the fttn footprint out of getting a g.fast speed network.

        Indeed, gfast only does gigabit speeds at distances less than 100meters. If you’ve laid fibre less than 100meters from a home, I’d buy a fibre pull instead of spending billions upgrading the nodes to gfast.

        There is only a single situation in which gfast makes sense, and that is in fttb deployments. No reasonable fttn network will have nodes close enough to premises. End of story.
        (This is before you even get to RF interference! And looking at the wiki for gfast, it uses significantly more frequency on the wire).

    • As an EMC Engineer, it seems that the issue with G.fast will be Radio Interference. Just as ADSL (and its variations) both suffer from, and cause Radio Interference, the laws of physics say that G.fast will be umpteen times worse (higher levels and much higher frequencies).

      I’ve searched, but cannot find any regulatory approval in Australia for G.fast. Will it be like Broadband over Power Line farce, where BPL was given a trial permit but then banned outright when the Interference implications became evident?

    • As for HFC, I noted the other day a comment that HFC will need new above ground cabling and poles to support DOCSIS 3.1.

      Do you have a source for that Graham? I’d be interested to read it if you can track it down, as I haven’t seen that mentioned anywhere when I’ve been following DOCSIS 3.1

          • And as I said, who pays for it? Is it going to need new legislation to force the pole operators to upgrade them, or at the very least, pay some of the cost? Or will NBN need to pay that $10k a pop?

            Someone needs to cover that cost, and you can be pretty confident that it wasnt part of the original $29b CAPEX.

          • @GongGav I’m not really up on the actual “nut’s&bolts” of the NBN build. As they are just talking about the fibre portion of the HFC, wouldn’t FTTP use the same gauge (or larger as it can service a wider area)?

          • Yeah, more being cynical that the anti FttP crusaders have always been vocal on the cost. The hypocrisy and irony are pretty strong here.

            As for the nuts and bolts, who knows. Thats the detail thats getting brushed over, but given the HFC has that copper core as well, a fiber line may well be a smaller gauge. Not really sure myself, and CBF hunting out the detail to find out.

            I’m pretty much over arguing about the NBN these days. I’m just going to sit back and enjoy being part of the 20%

          • Tinman
            Most of the other head cables in the HFC are coaxial. Think of it much like the FTTN where fibre goes to a node then it covers between 25-2000 premises with the coaxial cables. The only difference people share the coaxial cables.

          • Yeah, I get that Jas, I was just wondering if the fibre to an FttP FDH is the same size as that which goes to a FttN node…I’d have though the one to the FDH would actually be larger as it’d service a lot more people.

            But then, that would make it more economical to actually bury the thing too I suppose.

  4. “Tucker merely points out that by the NBN company’s own published data and modelling, Tony Abbott’s Coalition Government will not be successful in meeting its oft-repeated promise to deploy a version of the NBN that would be sufficiently fast, more affordable and quicker to roll out than Labor’s previous FTTP model.”

    Chuckles. And in doing so (and rightly) calls into question the validity, the very justification, for Turnbull’s MTM. That is the reason for the response. From the likes of Terry McCrann (he the propagator of the ‘back of the envelop’ myth which was taken up so ardently by his employer, the LNP, and associated astroturfers) and from the media dept of NBNCo itself.
    For McCrann, he’s defending his credibility (What, he has some? you might ask) and the NBNCo staff, who are doing/defending their jobs. Even if it means treading a very fine line between factual validity and political PR and spin.

  5. That article by Terry McCrann is a complete slop fest. Then we have the politically motivated GimpCo management team who use it as a talking point which in the end really only highlights their own incompetence. I cant recall the previous management behaving so abhorrently either, if they did I’m sure we would have heard about it.

    • Pretty much the only time those upstanding gentlemen wavered in that regards was when Quigley had his sound bite about being in favour of fibre to 97% etc just prior to the election. Even then in comparison that was a pretty innocuous with all its employees and board members staying well clear of anything that might be political under the former boards tenure.

  6. I am at wit ends who to believe is correct here , Professor Mr.Rod Tucker , with 50 + years experience in Electrical & Electronic Engineering or a lying Politician – Malcolm TurnBullShit that has been caught out lying & speaking dribble on more than a handfull of occasions . I will have to have a think about this one ….

  7. I’d like to take aim at the political nature of the people currently in charge of the NBN.

    There is no way Malcolm’s Ex-Captain’s picks can’t be considered political appointments and their testimony at the Senate hearings shows the same. A different Twitter quote from Karina (NBN PR) you could have used was this one where the word “LOVE” was used to describe McCrann’s article: https://twitter.com/karinakeisler/status/641745075484033024

    My current favourite Karina tweet is this one: https://twitter.com/karinakeisler/status/642095503837040640 On the basis that the NBN attack what is true – I’m calling it.

    • There is no way Malcolm’s Ex-Captain’s picks can’t be considered political appointments and their testimony at the Senate hearings shows the same.

      Well….the whole MTM thing was a Captains Pick from Tony anyway and we all know how those usually turn out….

  8. “But the UK is able to pursue that model because its FTTN model is already extremely widespread. Australia’s own deployment has barely begun.”

    I always enjoy people talking about ‘next gen’ copper improvements. Generally because they are so heavily invested in it, they have no choice but to be happy about it.

    The entire thing becomes a bit of a joke here, simply because it illustrates how far we’ve fallen behind in the process of trying to do something cheaper and faster – when it’s clearly been neither.

    Everywhere else is either looking to push their copper network into the next ‘big thing’ or are at the point where it’s become patently obvious the next step is fibre.

    The MTM is still just a stepping stone. Turnbull can be just as jazzed as he likes; it’s still just a hodge-podge of network assets that, eventually, will face massive expenditure to rebuild into fibre.

  9. Remind me wasn’t AT&T one of the golden haired examples
    http://www.itwire.com/it-industry-news/telecoms-and-nbn/67807-att%E2%80%99s-switch-to-%E2%80%98extraordinarily-costly%E2%80%99-fttp-oz-nbn-implications

    http://www.computerworld.com/article/2514227/networking/verizon-speeds-up-fios-to-150mbit-sec.html
    “he U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan, released earlier this year, calls for “affordable” 100Mbit/sec broadband for 100 million U.S. households by 2020.”

    Meanwhile back in La La land
    To add to the circus
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/11/george-brandis-appoints-former-news-corp-editor-to-board-of-australia-council

    But then the need to have that cloak of respectability to hide behind and use to deceive
    http://mashable.com/2015/09/09/national-geographic-fox/#IKlTLAdmSGkb

    So of course the stuck pig screams reverberate

  10. Turnbull Conspiracy theory in 5 easy steps…

    *Turnbull isn’t clueless.

    *He is simply doing his job, as he was asked by the current PM relating to the NBN, which in turn (along with a number of other WTF moments) from the PM, is helping MT become PM.

    *The perceived dithering, reviews and hold-ups (no FttN as yet) are intentional to A. make Abbott’s MTM look bad (yes it is bad, umm, so worse) and B. allow Turnbull a possible future return to FttP

    *Instead of being looked upon as Abbott appears to be, a throwback from a long lost era, as PM Turnbull dumps most of the extreme right, 50’s scare and warmongering and sets about getting Australia out of the doldrums Abbott and Hockey have haplessly overseen… he also announces that FttP will again be rolled out.

    *He goes down in history as a true visionary PM.

    • It actually does sound kind of plausible. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens after Canning to know the truth of the matter.

    • I’d agree with point one, but I’m not sure he’s doing what he is doing to trash Abbott. He’s just following orders to roll out and anything but FTTP network, cause that is so like Labor/Green…
      What direction is really left open to him to follow?

    • @rizz How fortuitous or was it prophetic your comment this morning, as we now sit awaiting the results of the libs leadership spill.

      • I’ll accept either stevec but would prefer prophetic…lol

        I guess we’ll see now, as Turnbull has already said in his acceptance speech that we as Australian’s need to innovate and grasp such innovation.

        So let’s see if he’s fair dinkum regarding grasping actual innovation or if it’s all political speak while still continuing the ostrich with head in sand approach and overlooking real innovation and settling for copper based obsolescence.

        • I suspect he wont be able to make major changes, or change things too fast, otherwise he’ll just spook the people that backed him (like what happened with his climate change support…it was too far, too fast for the Libs at the time).

          Keep an eye out for “tweaks, reviews and realignments” though, I expect there may be a few of those in the coming months.

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