Labor’s wrong, says NBN Co: We’re not replacing “substantial” copper

24

news The NBN company has categorically rejected comments by Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare that it is replacing “kilometers” of dilapidated copper cable with brand new copper to ensure the Fibre to the Node technology work, stating that it has not had to replace “substantial” copper yet.

This week, Clare stated that the NBN company was deploying more brand new copper to support the Fibre to the Node technology instituted by the Coalition Government than had previously been expected.

“I have been talking to some contractors in the field recently to get a feel for how good the copper network is – and how much of it needs work or needs to be replaced. They have told me that NBN’s working assumption is that 10 percent of copper pairs in Fibre to the Node areas will need remediation,” Clare said in a speech to the Communications Day Melbourne Congress.

“But in places like Newcastle and the Central Coast, closer to 90 percent of the copper pairs have needed work. In some places the copper is so bad it has to be replaced. Replacing old copper … with new copper. One contractor told me in Newcastle and the Central Coast 10 to 15 percent of the copper lines are having lengths replaced.”

“And this is not just happening in Newcastle or the Central Coast. Another contractor told me in Campbelltown in Sydney that NBN has had to recently replace almost 3 kilometres of old copper with new copper.”

The NBN company has not responded to a request from Delimiter to address Clare’s comments.

However, in a post on the company’s blog today, NBN public affairs manager Tony Brown rejected the claims.

“So far, in our FTTN deployment we have not had to replace any copper – or perform any substantial remediation work – to the copper running from our street cabinets to end-user premises. All we have had to do so far is very basic work in removing bridge-taps – basically redundant copper lines – in order to optimise network performance.”

“Although our FTTN network is in its early days our experience so far tallies very much with what other global operators such as Britain’s BT, Ireland’s Eircom and Swisscom have found in their FTTN deployments. They too have had to carry out very little remediation work on their remaining copper lines – and this is the beauty of the technology.”

“To date we have not had to replace substantial lengths of existing copper with new copper, what we have been doing is necessary work compressing copper at the street pillars (located next to our street cabinets) in order to enhance network performance.”

“Conducting this type of work does not constitute ‘replacing the copper’ – the lines themselves are being left in place – all we are doing is, for example, is replacing two lots of 100 pair cables with a 200 pair cable in order to free up ports.”

Brown said that the company’s initial FTTN commercial services were progressing “extremely well” in the Hunter region of NSW, and the company was “very excited” about its plan to connect about 500,000 premises to the FTTN network by June 2016.

“ … the subscribers that are getting FTTN services from our [Retail Service Provider] partners absolutely love the service,” Brown said.
“Indeed, some end-users who had previously expressed scepticism about the ability of FTTN to meet their requirements are now expressing very strong satisfaction with the performance of the service – and we are very proud of that.”

“With the amount of taxpayer money being invested in the NBN network it is very important to dispel any misunderstandings that may be out there about the deployment of the network or the services that it provides and right now the FTTN deployment is proceeding very well and end-users are loving the speed and convenience of the service.”

opinion/analysis
Who’s right here — Brown or Clare?

To be honest, I think it’s a mix. I think Clare is extrapolating a few examples to the wider Telstra copper network. Extrapolation is always a bit difficult and not always accurate when it comes to technology.

However, I don’t think Brown is telling the whole truth here. I do believe, as Clare does, that the NBN company will indeed be rolling brand new copper out in quite a few areas. It’s not simply a matter of remediating copper. There will indeed be new copper deployed out there — and quite a lot of it — as the NBN company does its best to make FTTN work to spec.

24 COMMENTS

  1. Tony Brown:

    “Although our FTTN network is in its early days our experience so far tallies very much with what other global operators such as Britain’s BT, Ireland’s Eircom and Swisscom have found in their FTTN deployments. They too have had to carry out very little remediation work on their remaining copper lines – and this is the beauty of the technology.”

    Bullshit. BT in the UK has copper of a much thicker gauge for a start. That makes FTTN in the UK a different animal that cannot be compared to the Australian situation.

    The photo of a hissy fit is very apt for Tony Brown. He can take his hissy fit and shove it.

    • Yeah and 1% of the UK actually get 76mbps while 15 million users don’t get what they pay for.
      Derp-a-Tony-Brown

    • And let’s not forget that BT isn’t replacing copper with copper most probably because they are now replacing copper with FTTP.

      • When councils in the UK offer the FTTC to FTTP credit to businesses they literally disappear in a few days and then they have to wait another few years until they come around again.

    • Tony Brown has a long history of being FOS so anything he says is likely to be propaganda and spin with Zero substance!

  2. There was once a time when NBNtm would have let this go to the keeper but this is a very impassioned defence for T.Brown.

    I’m wondering with Mal’s move to PM and the next election not that far away, whether a few bodies in Team Copper are feeling a little bit exposed.

    Next to off-shore detention centres, the motivations of Turnball and NBNtm individual directors is where I would like to see Royal Commissions go.

      • First the NBN and now the AFR wades in about how ridiculous the original Labor FTTN NBN was.

        I’m calling this early: This looks like a Abbott PMO led campaign against a significant political threat – this time using the AFR instead of Abbott’s pet paper; the Australian.

        May be this is the same old tiger with the same old stripes.

  3. Politician vs Public Affairs manager.

    Both tend to lie to suit their purpose. I agree it will be somewhere down the middle.

    But Based on the Line “ … the subscribers that are getting FTTN services from our [Retail Service Provider] partners absolutely love the service,” Brown said.

    Which is just incredible wankspeak.

    I am going to lean to Clare as the lesser liar.

  4. “Conducting this type of work does not constitute ‘replacing the copper’ – the lines themselves are being left in place – all we are doing is, for example, is replacing two lots of 100 pair cables with a 200 pair cable in order to free up ports.”

    Yeah, sure.

    If they said something like ‘we need to replace two 100 pair cables with 1 x 200 pair in order to fit the FTTN’s fibre connection to the node”, that would be more believable. I still wouldn’t believe that.

    They’re just replacing the old 100 pair lines with new lines. It makes sense to replace it with one single cable of total equivalent size rather than having to pull through two cables, which would be more expensive in both labour costs and capital outlay.

    There’s no reason why 2 x 100 pair cables wouldn’t be able to connect to the node if 1 x 200 pair cable could. You can’t tell me that there’s only one cable entry on the VDSL access module.

    • ” the lines themselves are being left in place” seems to be the core of the comment. It’s not replacement, simply because they didn’t pull out the old ones. Semantically correct, but they had to put 200 pair in the ground to take over the functionality of the faulty 2×100 pair cables.
      Of course in anyone else’s opinion, that constitutes replacement. If the original two weren’t faulty, why did it need a new cable…?
      It’s either a functional replacement, or waste of resources. Unless they are trying to say their technicians are incapable of dealing with two cables.

      • I took the comment of “The lines themselves are being left in place” as meaning the leadin services to individual households, you may be correct as well however.

        I’m thinking about it from a person commenting who knows nothing about telco technicalities, rather than as a tech like myself.

  5. I’ll just post what I said in the other article, it is more relevant here:

    nbn is also working to deliver high speed broadband to Australia up to eight years sooner and for $20 billion less of taxpayers’ money than if we had continued down the path of a predominantly all-fibre network.

    Technology agnostic. Unbelievable.

    It’s another politically motivated piece with no pertinent information like distance and speeds. Just “we’re rolling out FTTN and getting results, trust us they those results are good because we say so”. Supposed end user accounts unverifiable, we have to trust this too but doesn’t even ask them the question “what would you prefer?” because obvious GimpCo wouldn’t like the answer.

    • Transparency and accountability are things of the past since the Libs got in….bad governing just getting worse…

  6. I suppose when they haven’t done very much with copper to begin with there’s really not much remediation to get to 10%!

  7. Wow they roll out new copper in 2015 and when the question is asked WTF, they rally the troops to defend and then (like the Fin) even attack the past government, to try to justify their moronic MTM?

    Desperation has set in…

    Got any more popcorn HC ;)

    • Plenty Rizz, plenty. Seriously, I actually have five bags of popcorn my pantry for some odd reason :-)

  8. Is Tony Brown trying to tell us that they are putting in new copper and leaving the old copper in the ground, which in his mind is not a replacement, as his definition of a replacement implies that they are pulling the old copper out of the ground as they put in new copper to replace it.

    Someone should ask Tony Brown if any new copper is being laid adjacent to the old copper for FTTN and in these cases, is the old copper being used to deliver FTTN or just left in the ground. In asking him, some diagrams in both the questions and answers would be useful.

  9. The key words are;
    “substantial” which is intentionally left undefined, but could arguably mean anything up to 50%
    “necessary” which translates to “it was required to be upgraded cause FTTN couldn’t have worked on the old stuff”.
    and the big kicker
    “replace” whose meaning is defined in the dictionary as “to take the place of” (as others have pointed out), in this case, because they’re not removing the old copper, they are not physically replacing, “merely” adding additional copper to the duct. However, they are functionally replacing the copper in that the old copper is being disconnected from the network and the new copper is replacing it. So in one sense they are not replacing but in the other they definitively ARE replacing copper.

  10. We need some clarification here. I would suggest clarification needs to be done in the Senate inquiry, as anything else can and will be skirted around by the spindoctors.

    Firstly, what does ‘compressing copper at the street pillars’ mean, and actually entail? From a purely English semantics point of view, copper as a metal is incompressible, so they can’t me a that literally. I assume it relates to the following paragraph, going from two cable lead ins to a single, more dense cable. But that needs clarification.

    “Conducting this type of work does not constitute ‘replacing the copper’ – the lines themselves are being left in place – all we are doing is, for example, is replacing two lots of 100 pair cables with a 200 pair cable in order to free up ports.”

    Secondly, this needs clarification, because as it stands it appears to completely contradict itself. ‘It doesn’t constitute *replacing* the copper… … all we’re doing is… *replacing* two… cables with a [single] cable.’ Err…

    Now, not being a telco tech, I need help here – is he saying there is a short bit of cable from the street pillars to the FTTN cabinets, and they’re just replacing that length? But that doesn’t make sense – he’s talking about replacing old cable (100 pair cable) that already exists, with new stuff. There’s no way that old cable is running a short length to the new cabinets.

    So what cable actually runs into the street pillars? I assume there is some trunking cable back to the exchange, and from there smaller bundles running to junction boxes, which then split out to individual premises. Now the trunk back to the exchange is being completely replaced with fibre, which is being run from the exchange to the FTTN cabinets. So that’s not even part of the discussion. Unless what he’s talking about is those trunks being cut short and repatched into the node cabinets? That does indeed make sense, as the street pillars need to connect to the node cabinets somehow.

    I guess the big question is, how close are street pillars to node cabinets? And how many street pillars can connect to a cabinet? If it is 1 to 1, why not *replace* the street pillars with cabinets that can integrate that function? If it isn’t 1 to 1, just how much copper is being used between cabinets and pillars? I can’t imagine any significant length is going to be good for performance, particularly when you introduce joins at the pillar – you want copper to be as short and clean as possible. So in that case, there must be some compelling reason(s) for that choice, and I’d love to know what they are.

    • Hmm, editing not working…

      ‘So they can’t me a that literally’ should have been ‘So they can’t mean that literally’.

  11. Tunbull promised that all faulty copper would be replaced with fibre.
    Therefore we’ll just leave it in place & co-locate new copper alongside the old in order to still meet those guidelines?

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