50Mbps good enough for ‘ten years’, says NBN’s Morrow

148

news The chief executive of the NBN company, Bill Morrow, has stated in several comments over the past month that the 50Mbps base speeds which the company is aiming for across much of its network will be good enough “for the forseeable future” — ten years after the NBN is initially built.

The previous Labor Government’s version of the NBN would have seen speeds of up to 1Gbps made available on a near-universal basis throughout Australia, with a small percentage of the country in rural and remote areas to receive much slower speeds via satellite and wireless. The Fibre to the Premises infrastructure that Labor’s NBN model used could also easily be upgraded to higher speeds.

In Canada, Bell Canada last week announced it was planning to deploy 10Gbps broadband services on its FTTP network — reaching some 2.2 million homes by the end of this year — in 2017.

The Coalition Government’s Multi-Technology Mix model for the NBN will lock much of the country into slower speeds, although it can be deployed on a more rapid basis than FTTP as it uses existing infrastructure, and future upgrades are also possible.

The Fibre to the Node model for the NBN infrastructure commonly supports variable speeds of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps — depending on how far from their local neighbourhood ‘node’ a customers’ premises are. Currently, the HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus offer speeds up to 100Mbps.

Both FTTN and HFC cable can be upgraded, with the G.Fast and DOCSIS 3.1 technologies promising speeds much higher — theoretically up to 1Gbps in both cases.

However, it is not clear how such technologies will perform in the real world, with FTTN being influenced by factors such as copper loop length, crosstalk interference and weather, while HFC cable has historically suffered extreme network congestion issues in Australia. In addition, upload speeds will not reach FTTP levels.

In a little-reported interview with TelecomTV published a month ago (we recommend you click here for the full article), NBN company chief Bill Morrow said it was more important to get entry-level high-speed broadband speeds to as many Australians as possible, rather than proceeding with a long-term FTTP build.

“So you want that as quick as you can get it, right? If you can say fibre-to-the-node can deliver up to 50Mbit/s for most everybody, isn’t that enough for the next 10 years to get this thing going and then, if there is more demand, then you just push fibre further down the street using the company’s profits rather than adding in more taxpayer money?” he said.

“I think you can argue both cases but one of them is more prudent than the other and also, most important – and this is me talking for the people of Australia – if you ask them what they want they say they just want broadband now!”

And in a separate article published in the Herald Sun newspaper earlier this week (we recommend you click here for the full article), Morrow again argued that it would be better to get better broadband to more people faster, rather than deploying FTTP.

“NBN’s current model provides the capacity we need into the foreseeable future,” he wrote.

“So what speed do people actually want? An all-fibre NBN is capable of speeds of up to a Gbps. Yet the vast majority of people on this network — about 80 per cent — are choosing plans of 25Mbps or less. As you would expect, people are not willing to pay for something they don’t need.”

Despite his comments regarding 50Mbps being sufficient, Morrow acknowledged that much of the NBN network would be capable of much higher speeds. Most of the NBN infrastructure that has been constructed so far is based on Labor’s FTTP model. “In 2020, we will see 54 per cent of our country able to access speeds up to a gigabit per second (Gbps), another 39 per cent up to 50 megabits per second (Mbps), and the remaining 7 per cent with at least 25Mbps,” he said.

“Most importantly, there are upgrade paths to provide even greater speeds when we need it.”

Opinion/analysis to follow.

Image credit: NBN company

148 COMMENTS

  1. As far as I can tell, Morrow is a Liberal plant. While the NBN was a bit of a mess in terms of contract management and timing under previous leadership, at least it understood the importance of getting a service out there at a high speed with an open-ended movable top end.

    The leadership there now seem determined to screw the entire organisation over.

    • It really wasn’t that big a mess – it has been blown right out of proportion, because the dialogue has been driven by the LNP. If you look at the graphical representation of original NBN Co rollout targets, then factor in the delays caused by LNP holding up the legislation, Telstra holding up negotiations over duct access and Telstra holding *everything* up by failing to either remediate their asbestos laden pits or even adequately disclose the extent of the asbestos problem, you’ll notice that the gradual ramp up from early phase to full deployment was still occurring at a very similar rate to that projected, the timescale was simply shifted to the right. That allowed the LNP to claim every target was being missed, but that was utterly disingenuous – yes, they were being missed, but most of the delay could be easily explained. The contractor model also had an effect, and NBN Co had far more control over that than they did with the other delay factors, but NBN Co was in the process of reviewing the subcontractor model because financial penalties hadn’t proven an effective enough mechanism to keep them in line.

      Don’t believe the LNP hype – NBN Co wasn’t a mess, most of the delays were completely out of their control. If you want to point the finger at anyone for NBN Co’s missed targets, the LNP themselves and Telstra had a far greater effect than any errors made within the walls of NBN Co.

      • Thankyou, you’ve echoed my thoughts on this. Almost to the letter. In decades to come we will look back critically of botched opportunity.

      • You also forgot the “Opt in” and “opt out” shenanigans which the Coalition did a merry dance and delay in parliament which also held back any start to the roll outs as well.

        Because “people’s rights to not have NBN shouldn’t be taken away from them!”

  2. I generally like Morrow and believe he could be a fine CEO under the right conditions. However, I’d argue he needs to be sacked purely on the basis of repeatedly talking down the top tier revenue generating plans and instead talking up the low tier lower revenue plans to suit the narrative. He should be talking up users upgrading to higher tiers to ensure increasing revenue.

    Also to call FTTN as an upgradable product is ludicrous. An upgrade would be replacing equipment inside the Node itself to generate significant improvement, eg. g.Fast that won’t offer significant benefit to more than 10% of premises within the first 100m. Rolling out additional fibre to new Nodes, DP’s or GPON is a new deployment.

    • What do you base your “like” of Morrow on?

      I’m genuinely curious about that as from what I’ve seen of him he is nothing more than a spin merchant who likes big bonuses. He treats the Senate hearings with contempt and looks down at Australian people while mocking them, with a big smile about the millions he’s stashing way for when his time is up.

      • You’re forgetting Morrow is actually a fairly capable CEO which managed to turn around Vodaphone from “Vodafail” back to being a respectable provider.

        Which is why it is a bit of a damn shame on what this has done to him since he is saddled w/ a very controlled political project now which means he will have to stick to a certain narrative given by the Comms Minister/Government. A far cry when Quigley was literally given a free hand on how to handle/manage everything

  3. Well, it looks like Mr Morrow has given up on the whole “cheaper” argument for the MTM, all he’s got left is “faster” and if they don’t get a wriggle on with FTTN that’s going to be pretty shaky to.

  4. So where is the business case that shows NBN Co can pay increasing copper maintenance costs, pay for an unknown amount of remediation and unknown amount of nodes, with a decreased opportunity for high speed plan sales, and generate enough profits to then upgrade to FTTP, as will be necessary?
    The rate of return is way lower than the previous NBN. It simply doesn’t add up. The billions that will be required to upgrade wont be there. Morrow needs to stop misleading the public. The taxpayer are going to have to fork out tens of billions to fix the mess this government and NBN Co are making now.

    • Precisely. The idea that they can generate sufficient profit to upgrade a national footprint while maintaining a degrading infrastructure is hard to swallow. If the NBN makes enough money to simply maintain the infrastructure with some rare, ad-hoc upgrades, that’s probably a best case scenario in reality.

      Here’s what I think is more likely:

      NBN profits will be hoovered up into sustaining widespread active infrastructure as well as the copper in the ground. 10 years validity minus the time to deploy gives us 6-7 years (optimistically) to generate sufficient profit to engage in ripping up what’s been deployed and dropping in services capable of supporting long term bandwidth growth. But that won’t be possible, of course, so what we’re likely to see is the staggering, halting deployment of G.Fast in high revenue areas subsidised by whatever is left over from patching things up. Meanwhile, everyone else stuck on the old FttN model will continue to fall further behind and people on FttP will be laughing.

      Oh well, at least we know where the FttP areas are.

      • ABC’s Background briefing showed how we finished up paying for a gold plated electricity network servicing reduced demand and costing about the same as the projected costs of Fraudband. http://goo.gl/pznAHm And now we are paying more for our communications and getting less.

        So much for the clever country.

  5. 12Mbps is enough: Turnbull:

    http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/366022/12mbps_enough_all_applications_turnbull_-_updated/

    25Mbps is enough: Turnbull:
    http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/04/turnbull-hits-out-over-25mbps-is-enough-statements/

    Now Turnbull must be using Morrow as escape goat for ’50Mbps is enough for 10 years’.

    First of all, claiming that 50Mbps is enough for 10 years, means that the technology is already useless, and waste of tax payers money (of $56 Billion).

    Secondly, If now the 50Mbps is enough is the best they can do, why not go all out on FTTP anyway, because you can get 50Mbps easily on FTTP? Using GPON or NGPON2 technology.

    This is another set of distractions, due to pathetic ideology bullshit we have in this country.

    • I’m perplexed as to why people keep calling copper technology useless.

      If it’s as bad as made out to be, why are companies still investing in it? R&D seems to continue at a reasonable pace (i.e. testing of G.Fast). Why do modem manufacturers offer support for it? If FTTP is no questions asked hands down the best technology, why are places bothering with copper at all?

      • The only companies that are investing in it are mostly monopoly providers, and it’s also called competition.

        Rolling out FTTN would have been good if we actually rolled it out maybe 10 years ago, when John Howard was looking at doing a ‘national broadband plan’, but most of the countries, and major companies are already or have upgraded to FTTP.

      • “why are places bothering with copper at all?”

        Because there are specific conditions where it makes sense (such as in building coverage where copper exists etc..). What we’re getting is not one of them.

      • Michael, it’s called “sweating” your existing assets to squeeze as much life out of them as possible – the assets have already paid for themselves, unlike here where our Gov has bought 3 obsolete networks from Telstra/Optus and now has to A/ pay for them B/ build new IT systems to support them C/ maintain them & D/ upgrade them!

      • Because an incumbent using an incumbent network that the incumbent owns, will upgrade copper to maximise returns; this is a natural progression because the underlying copper network has typically already made it’s entire value back in profit (often more than once).

        Places “bother” with copper and it’s assorted technologies, because they can make more money off an existing network; it’s staving off the inevitable replacement of the thing. Not because it’s the best solution.

        For reasons absolutely no-one comprehends, we’ve had to buy vast swathes of someone else’s network, so we can maximise value in it; this is perplexing as the returns are not likely to cover costs for a decade or more. Likely much more.

        It’s doubly perplexing, since we’d already decided (including via independent means) that FTTH held the best value in the long term. Wasn’t necessarily the cheapest, but at the end of the day – since it was a new network, there was no value in retrofitting the old.

        And then the Coalition had a great idea to spend a large amount of money rebuilding someone else’s network. This is, quite literally, what we are now doing.

      • Oh and Michael the trend is away from upgrading the copper:

        https://delimiter.com.au/2015/11/13/bell-canada-plans-10gbps-speeds-for-easier-to-maintain-fttp/

        Canadian telco Bell Canada has revealed it is planning to extend its Fibre to the Premises network to some 2.2 million premises by the end of 2015, hyping the technology as being far easier to maintain than Fibre to the Node and also being capable of delivering 10Gbps speeds to customers by 2017.

        In the call (read the transcript online on Seeking Alpha), Bell Canada chief executive George Cope acknowledged deploying FTTP infrastructure was capital-intensive.

        However, he said, the company had now had four to five years of experience deploying the infrastructure, and was seeing other advantages to the model. With respect to its operating expenses, Bell Canada was seeing a requirement for about “40 percent less truck rolls in Fibre to the Home areas versus FTTN areas”.

        In addition, the company was seeing a 50 percent reduction in preventative maintenance compared with FTTN.

        • Perhaps we could get Bell Canada to rollout FTTP in Australia to 93% of residences by 2021, just don’t tell them:

          1. They cannot just cherry pick the lucrative areas in capital cities.
          2. They have to share the infrastructure with other competitors, it’s not just to be built for Bell customers.
          3. The ACCC in Australia will set the wholesale rate they will charge competitors.

          Still interested?

          Oh and the ‘trend is not away from upgrading copper’ just because a private company in Canada is rolling out FTTP to cherry picked areas of Canada just for their own customers.

          • Yep, still conflating things Alain Because you have no real answer to the question!

            How about you take your idiotology and bugger off back to the IPA, we aren’t interested in your right wing fairy tales!

          • Yep when the facts get too awkward (which is quite often) to dispute time to play shoot the messenger (again) and make ludicrous no fact claims about IPA and right wing links and it’s pat on the back job well done time.

          • Yep I learnt from you Alain and your right wing mates and their persecution of Mike Quigley! p

          • we aren’t arguing for commercial profits here, just being able to subsidise the less lucrative areas, its the point of the project BTW.

      • Check out Bell Canada Michael R (you can pretty well check out most major Telco’s the story is pretty similar all around the place). They used to be doing the copper thing but the last 4-5years have taught them its a lost cause and just simply too expensive.

        • exactly. MichaelR – Technology providers (eg Alcatel) are pushing their advances on copper because they need something to sell. they develop products in that (copper) realm because it is what they do. but mere development doesnt necessarily mean they are fit for purpose to be used….

          Those actually using the networks are – as BellC proves – not necessarily paying attention to the new products (g.fast etc) and moving on to something that allows them to spend less on maintenance and operation – if you have 80% of every dollar earned tipped into maintenance (just for arguments sake, not necessarily an accurate figure) and you are walking away with 20% profit… then you change your costs so that you only have to sock away 50% to cover maintenance and other costs what does that do for your profits?

          in that light its not hard at all to see why FTTP is a strong growth tech over the planet. just in BC’s experience 40% less truck rolls and 50% less preventative maintenance is a pretty damn good argument to ditch the copper for me!

        • Simon M,

          Except for the major Telco’s that are upgrading FTTN and HFC you mean?

          Obviously Bell Canada has this amazing world wide statistical weighting that completely obliterates any alternative structure good news stories you care to bring up.

          • And the reality is that they are sweating assets that they have already recouped their investment on. Here for reasons of sheer unadulterated stupidity, our government decided to buy the CAN and HFC networks off of private operators…then upgrade them and make them “fit for service” (for yesteryear’s requirements), all in the name of having to upgrade them again in very short order. Pigheaded moronic activity that could only have been the fruit of a political thinktank. This monumental cockup will be the reading material in tertiary institutes the world over in how NOT to institute generational change on a telco sector.

            The laughable part is NBNCo jumping up and down saying, things are on track, look at our rising revenue…all the while failing to acknowledge that every cent of that revenue is derived from pre-MTM rollout…

      • Development of things like G.Fast is continuing because there are places where it makes sense. If there is a good quality copper network in place with short copper runs and a convenient location for a G.Fast modem which is weather proof and has access to power then replacing the copper with fiber is unlikely to make sense. However, this doesn’t describe the Australian suburbs.

        The global telecoms market is worth something in the vicinity of $1 trillion a year. The costs to develop a G.Fast modem would be somewhere in the range $10 to $40 million. Even a 1% market share will justify the development costs.

        • david,

          “If there is a good quality copper network in place with short copper runs and a convenient location for a G.Fast modem which is weather proof and has access to power then replacing the copper with fiber is unlikely to make sense. However, this doesn’t describe the Australian suburbs.”

          Why are Australian suburbs (last time I looked they had power and no weather proofing problems) uniquely in the world a G.Fast no-go zone?

          “Even a 1% market share will justify the development costs.”

          Indeed, there is not a problem in developing G.Fast modems, it’s well in place.

          “New modems to fuel superfast broadband over copper”

          http://www.pcworld.com/article/2937177/new-modems-to-fuel-superfast-broadband-over-copper.html

          • Regardless of weather issues, G.Fast isn’t going to be rolled out to the vast majority on FTTN as it requires copper loops far, far shorter than being planned.

            So stop conflating the issue claiming G.Fast as the answer to using copper, it isn’t the answer being used.

          • Australian suburbs are not unique, they have relatively low density housing similar to suburbs in numerous other cities around the world. G.Fast may make sense in apartment blocks with good copper wiring where a modem can be placed in the basement, where it is dry and adjacent to a power point. It does not make sense in suburbs where it requires running fiber down every street, straight past every house, and installing a modem in a highly non-weatherproof Telstra pit.
            Prior to the last election, many people pointed out that FTTN would not be as cheap and easy as Malcolm claimed because it would require new copper in places, new power connections etc. Now the price has almost doubled compared with Malcolms initial estimate. G.Fast will have all the same problems x10 and we haven’t even seen an estimate of the costs yet.

          • Because they have to build fibre right to people’s doorsteps to use it.
            Distinct from the scenarios in which gfast is perfect for – apartment buildings where you get to have high speed connections without running fibre throughout.

            A suburb is basically worst case scenario, since you build fibre down past every house and into every pit only to reuse the in home wiring. The problem being why dont you just upgrade the whole system, rather than running additional power to every pit outside every house.

            But, you are Alain, you won’t answer this (sanely).

          • @PeterA,

            Being fair G.Fast could be used in a FTTdp rollout in place of FTTN, and I was reading something (somewhere…. cannot for the life of me remember where) that FTTdp can be reverse powered along the copper…. (I might have been dreaming that bit though).

            But yes, FTTdp isnt the technology on the table in the plan, FTTN is, so their deflection of the issue by saying “G.Fast is gewds” is just getting tiresome.

          • Wow costly (still trialled) add ons, maintenance costs, vastly larger power costs etc, bringing MTM up to (or over in total) FttP costs (but no where near FttP speeds) are the answer to those speeds we just don’t need anyway, according to you, alain… ROFL

      • Because it’s not easy to get rid of technology that was developed in the 1820’s. Getting rid of 1820’s technology takes time. Where’s Doc Brown from Back to the Future?

      • “why are companies still investing in it? R&D seems to continue at a reasonable pace” This is a fundamental understanding on how the R&D is actually conducted. ‘G.fast’ and the various other methods used to improve signally on DSL copper lines is used to improve signalling across all mediums and likely originated out of other research. Many of the same techniques used in wireless communication get applied to wired lines and optical systems and vice versa. This is the reason why coppers speeds will always be well behind fibre, every time there is a huge advance to improve DSL speed 5x chances are the same advancement improved fibre speeds and wireless speed 5x as well.

      • G.fast is great for blocks of flats and highrise, but useless for suburbia, especially Australian suburbia. There is absolutely no benefit after a line length of around 200 metres. So the great white hope for upgrades *to FTTN* beyond the current rollout is, well, there is none. Your only recourse is FTTdp (fibre to the pit), in the absence of future technologies as yet non-existent. FTTdp is basically another new NBN. I personally would like large government projects to be based on more than this.

    • Looks like a pattern, Oct 2010, everyone only needs 12 Mbps;
      Apr 2013, 25 Mbps is enough;
      Nov 2015, its become 50 Mbps – following the trend I predict, May 2018, it will be 100 Mbps.

      It really seems to double every 30 months of so.

      • These speed claims were based on next to no information on what could actually be made available to you the customer and are the result of isolated tests that just cannot be applied to the rest of the suburb, let alone the rest of Australia. The 50 Mbps claim is the one most applicable to the current rollout, but only because they decided to spring for vectoring at extra cost. But it still remains to be seen what speeds are achieved. We have literally 1 or 2 real-world, random speed test results as of today, based on confirmed reports on Whirlpool.

        I should add that NBN Co chairman Ziggy Switkowski himself was not able to guarantee 25Mbps on the current rollout.

      • Also, the people making those assertions are obviously aware of the current explosive trend in internet traffic growth and this increase in the quoted speeds in the arguments you refer to is based on that. It’s just trying to appease the general public. But it’s not based on much else.

  6. Are we back to “x speed should be good enough for everyone” and “why build today when you can put-it-off endlessly tomorrow” again?

    That didn’t take long; same old tired excuses. We can’t do better because you don’t need it. Well done.

    • Brenden reminds me of the old Telstra ADSL just started where they would upgrade an exchange to ADSL until they had 50 people asking for it in the area. But the catch 22 if the service is not there why would they request it.

  7. nbn needs to generate a rate of return to the taxpayer. That’s how it has been setup – so ultimately it needs to act like a company rather than a public service. Any delays in turning on revenue or extra cost from the rollout need to be picked up elsewhere.

    It’s a win for the taxpayer (us) if M2M can be done cheaper and faster. In saying that the question of how much cheaper and faster were a little oversold by the current government ;-)

    Also on FTTN – I have it installed at home. The install process was very easy & the service works quite well. I also haven’t found a use for more than the plan I’m on (getting around 44/20) – so think while gigabit is nice I don’t see the value in going there just yet.

    • If you go through the comments, the generate a rate of return was actually higher than the current MTM plan :)

    • “nbn needs to generate a rate of return to the taxpayer.”

      Do you think that will happen given the network they’re building?

      “so think while gigabit is nice I don’t see the value in going there just yet.”

      I hope you like what you’ve got enough to be happy with it for a long time. Not going with FttP first off has almost guaranteed what we’re getting now is what we’ll be stuck with.

    • Also, I have 100Mbps cable, with FTTN being built in an area, why would many people go to a technology that would give them sub 50Mbps speeds?

      In the UK, they average out to 30Mbps, after upgrading to FTTC.

    • The idea that we can maximise a RoR on someone else’s network is laughable.

      We will spend a considerable sum to lock ourselves into a deployment model that incumbents use. Half of whom are already realising the horse has been beaten enough, and it’s time from an OPEX (and CAPEX when the node has to move) point of view to move on.

      Less van rollouts. Less maintenance. You don’t have to keep moving nodes closer; just chuck in fibre and change the ends out as need arises.

      I have no idea how NBN intends to make money?

      FTTH had a high up-front cost and would take a while. Upside is like the original copper rollout, it has decades to live, with endless upgrades by swapping hardware at each end.

      New copper technologies keep moving where each end needs to be. This is not financially sustainable, so we’re already seeing pro-fttn operators just saying “screw it” and deploying fibre to reduce overall costs and to extend the life of the asset.

      Fibre is basically the new copper. We need to stop thinking of it in 5-10 year cycles, and instead the 25-50 of cu. Fibre is the end game. It’s where we should be heading.

      g.fast and the like are exceptional choices for MDMs and other complicated locations; ie they are very situational.

    • @Michael R

      So you’re on a 50/20 plan currently right? what if you sync’d at say 24/4? would you still pay for the higher plan? there will be a significant % of homes only physically capable of syncing up to 25/5. I doubt anyone will buy a higher tiered priced plan in that group. Not everyone under 100m from a cabinet will likely want to buy 100Mbps either so that critical 18% is going to drop and kill the ARPU for MTM.

      Under the fibre NBN Co plans ARPU is $4 above the aggressive estimates they set and the % figures for uptake are well under 5% error margins (in fact far less people are selecting 12/1 plans).

      NBN Co ~7% ROI
      MTM ~3% ROI (and there isn’t any FttN usage stats around to model the effects properly yet).

    • First, it doesn’t need to generate a rate of return to the taxpayer. It needs to generate a rate of return to its investors. (Government Investment is not taxpayer funded).

      Current ARPU(Average Revenue Per User) is $40.
      Note this is on the network that is currently almost totally still the previous FTTP/Sat/Wireless mix that was created under Labor. There is virtually no revenue being gathered from FTTN or HFC yet.

      That means not only is the FTTP earning more Revenue per user than was originally estimated by NBN prior to the election(ARPU$36), but substantially more than the coalition lead us to believe(ARPU$26).

      So the fttp network that is in play, is earning more than was originally expected. This means that the original estimates for the NBN being able to pay for itself, and for future upgrades were correct. In fact it is likely that based on the ARPU at the moment, they were very conservative.

      So investment dollars, and then profit used to pay for the network. Does that make sense. No Taxpayer money, at all.

      But now we get new issues with the FTTN/HFC. Primarily being that we have to maintain them. That cost will eat into the revenue. How do we expect to get the same ROI as we would have in the FTTP scenario, when you have additional costs such as network maintenance of 2 additional aging networks. If we have these costs, how do we get ROI for the Investors. And if we can pay ROI for investors, what will be left for upgrading the network?

      Do you see what the issue is? This idea that reusing old infrastructure is based off the mistaken idea that we owned the infrastructure. But we didn’t. It was owned by Telstra, which we privatised, as well as foxtel and Optus.

      • Not only do we have to maintain them we need to power them as well (not as expensive as maintenance bills but $100’s of millions of $ isn’t exactly cheap every year).

    • “while gigabit is nice I don’t see the value in going there just yet.”
      That’s just as well, because when you do need it it won’t be available to you.

      I have NBN FTTP and it is available to me. Today.

  8. I guess Morrow is now saying 50Mbps is enough for 10 years because they don’t think MTM will be able to give the majority of users more than 50Mbps by 2025 so there goes that 2020 deadline. The funny thing is that just gives more power to the argument that NBN should be rolling out FTTP since the completion of that would have only been another 3 years in 2028. When other parts of the world have had access to 100Mbps or more for a number of years, Morrow telling us that 50Mbps is enough for another 10 years is just downright pathetic. This just shows that these guys know very little about the industry and how much they want to keep us in the digital dark ages. Sigh.

  9. Y’know …. I’d agree with Morrow, but he’s simply doing the whole bait and switch that Turnbull is/was so fond of.

    It’s not about speed, it’s about scalability.

    Would you like something that scales to above 50 Mbps in 10 years? With FTTP, you replace the equipment at either end if necessary, and you’re done. With MTM … you’ve got the possibility of digging the turd up again simply to lay something you should have laid the first time.

    Do it once? Gee, where have I heard that before?

    These guys would rather do it twice (well, at least twice, maybe more). Because doing it once worked really well the first time, the copper deployment lasted 100 years with correct maintenance. Let’s do it again, with fibre, for the next 50. Not the next frickin’ 10.

    • “These guys would rather do it twice (well, at least twice, maybe more).”

      Replace DSL with FttN. Augment FttN with G.Fast. Replace G.Fast with FttP. So not only will we end up with FttP FAR later (if ever) than we would have had we simply just soldiered on and done it in the first palce, but we’re going to have to do three separate rollouts with their associated costs to get there.

      Unbelievable.

  10. “So you want that as quick as you can get it, right? If you can say fibre-to-the-node can deliver up to 50Mbit/s for most everybody, isn’t that enough for the next 10 years to get this thing going and then, if there is more demand, then you just push fibre further down the street using the company’s profits rather than adding in more taxpayer money?”

    *Sighs* Yep, more short term corporate thinking being applied to what was a nation building project that was building the infrastructure Australia needed to compete globally for the next 60+ years.

  11. Sigh … I guess Morrow just wants to be added to the long list of muppets that have said current technology X is fine and more than adequate, no-one could possibly want more. Worse he has gone and said that this will hold true until sometime after 203x. (There’s no way they’re getting MTM finished in 4 years etc)

    Maybe he should check his own companies reports as 17% of his customers are slamming their heads on their desks right about now in complete disagreement with him.

    “Most importantly, there are upgrade paths to provide even greater speeds when we need it.”

    There is? he can get someone 800m from a node/pillar a speed upgrade over copper without moving significant parts of the network? I think he’s mistaking ‘Upgrade’ for ‘do-over’.

    FYI FttdP isn’t an ‘upgrade’, G.Fast isn’t an ‘upgrade’, its basically a whole new rollout scheme (same with FttN=>FttP) because you’ve got to move the expensive bits (cabinets) closer to the premise.

  12. Let us remind everyone of the speeds you will get:

    http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7225-broadband-speed-test-results-for-october-2015.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

    BT 29.1 Mbps 29.9 Mbps 8.5 Mbps 8.9 Mbps

    Also let us remind people, faster speeds than BT:

    Gigaclear 51.9 Mbps 98.6 Mbps 38.8 Mbps 94.6 Mbps 251 Mbps
    Hyperoptic 51.6 Mbps 101.6 Mbps 41.9 Mbps 99 Mbps 343 Mbps
    Virgin Media 41.7 Mbps 50.3 Mbps 5.7 Mbps 6.7 Mbps 106.7 Mbps
    Vodafone Broadband 19.7 Mbps 23.8 Mbps 8.4 Mbps 8.7 Mbps 52.5 Mbps
    AAISP 16.7 Mbps 28.8 Mbps 2 Mbps 6.8 Mbps 72.7 Mbps
    IDNet 14.9 Mbps 23.1 Mbps 1.2 Mbps 5.5 Mbps 62 Mbps
    BT 14.5 Mbps 19.9 Mbps 3.7 Mbps 5.7 Mbps 41.8 Mbps

    BT is not even the top #5.

  13. 50Mbit down might be fine for 10 years…. but downstream isn’t the real issue is it?

    Why can we not manage to shift the frigging discourse from downstream to upstream?

    • He’s not saying the next 10 years he stated after they finished building (which is ever worse).

      As for UL you’d need a major shift in MSM reporting to effect that discourse.

      • Right, that is what I meant… but still, I’m just incredibly frustrated by the absolute lack of discussion about uploads.

        From the get go, the NBN discussion should never have been about 100Mbit down on FTTP, it should have been about what stable, high speed uploads can provide us…

        • To be honest, that’s a hard one to win. Requires imagination because right now there is little use for high upstream. Could I use it? Definitely. 99% of the rest of the population? Nope.

          Downstream is easier to sell because you can use simple examples like “Four person household, two using HD video calls, the other two watching HD Netflix, system updates downloading in the background and so on…” You can scale existing uses as a case. Everyone hates their calls lagging out or their videos buffering.

          Upstream though? No one uses it now for anything they’d realise and unless you can make it an emotional sell, not much chance you’ll convince them.

          • Well what about uploading photos and youtube videos and stuff to dropbox??

            Thta’s the average Joe stuff for why upload matters. Of course the power user has things like cloud backups.

          • Until you tell them that their HD video calls also require good upload speeds and that the reason their video calls are often shoddy is because both people have terrible uploads.

          • Problem is that there are many who don’t even understand “upload” is a thing even though they utilise it daily. Try having a conversation with someone on Skype when they ask you “How do I share video with you?” first you have to explain how to connect or turn on their webcam, then you have to explain to them why it’s not a good idea anyway when their upload speed is so slow and the audio is already lagging occasionally. “but my internet is fast!” they inform you, facepalm x1000

            GimpCo/Coalition clowns obsession and focus on download speeds just exacerbates these problems and overall keeps people from being informed properly about how the Internet actually functions.

          • “Well what about uploading photos and youtube videos and stuff to dropbox?? ”

            Most people do this infrequently (if it’s frequently, it’s usually small files for a home user), unfortunately and it’s rarely time sensitive. They’re not waiting for something to come down, they can (and I do too, due to my rubbish upload speed) set it and wander off. I don’t care if my dropbox uploads take 2 minutes or 2 hours. It’s rarely urgent.

            Don’t get me wrong, I agree with you, I’m just saying that most people don’t know and don’t care when they do know.

            What R0ninX3ph said about video is the best bet in my experience when trying to talk to people about it. 9/10 they say “I don’t video conference enough to worry too much” anyway…

          • JCL
            Yet as you stated it has to be not time sensitive as people do know how long it does take to upload anything most people would set it up for when they go to bed as that’s when no one would be using it.

    • Mate. I tried. In the broadband enquiry in 2013 [?] I made a formal submission to Parliament where I emphasized upload speeds as being the key issue.

  14. More idiocy from incompetents. Morrow poses these questions and then tells us which is more “prudent” however it’s apparent he fails to understand speed requirements and demands don’t ever remain static or decrease. What the taxpayers are are paying for is a waste because we already know that the end goal will satisfy the needs of tomorrow AND today.

    He then goes on to give us a mental midget class statement framed in a way that makes it seem no one wants faster speeds. 80% are on 25mbps or less is just as true as 65% are on 25mbps or more but a half glass empty statement works better when you have an agenda. Very convenient that you cant include higher speeds into the figures when you don’t offer them. On FttN it’s self fulfilling prophecy that also totally disregards where most of the profit would have come from on FttP.

    That profit should be used for something of course, with FttP you can off the debt because no upgrades are needed, with FttN morrow is suggesting they use that profit to “push fibre further down the street”, then go full FttP, yes taxpayers will be so impressed…

    • @renai love the balance in the article.

      @hc whilst I wouldn’t say 10 years, certainly the next 7 (wait I already had;-)
      Seems to be a convergence at the senior management levels (lower capex, faster to deploy, copper speeds continue to improve, speeds matching demand,…)

      Of course this has all been said for years, even Quigley’s joined the party. Without Conroy’s fibre “vision” (or is that ignorance) the fixed line network upgrade would have been complete by now for a fraction of the debt. Good work guys.

      • Lower capex not anymore.
        Faster to deploy not really either we have had already had over 2 years of delays NBN doesn’t really even start till after next year when it should have been completed by then. What was it 10m – 12m by 2016 then down to 4.5m now it’s just 2.6m by 2016.
        Copper speeds continue to improve with shorter copper length see how I finished that for you in the next couple of years we might see FTTF fibre to the fence.
        Speed matching demands expect for FTTN where users have to pay for that demand.

        $8b less than senario 2 isn’t a fraction of the dept. but then are you still claiming it can be done for just $29B and completed by next year.

      • Richard, MtM is a dead end, just ask bell Canada! Oh look that’s exactly what us “fibre zealots” have been saying for years!

        https://delimiter.com.au/2015/11/13/bell-canada-plans-10gbps-speeds-for-easier-to-maintain-fttp/

        call (read the transcript online on Seeking Alpha), Bell Canada chief executive George Cope acknowledged deploying FTTP infrastructure was capital-intensive.

        However, he said, the company had now had four to five years of experience deploying the infrastructure, and was seeing other advantages to the model. With respect to its operating expenses, Bell Canada was seeing a requirement for about “40 percent less truck rolls in Fibre to the Home areas versus FTTN areas”.

        In addition, the company was seeing a 50 percent reduction in preventative maintenance compared with FTTN.

        • Shh Derek O
          Richard doesn’t like it when you talk about OPEX apparently it’s an insignificant cost.

          • Yet Richard the SR does and your choosing the cheaper short term and cost more long term option vs the cost more short term and cheaper cost long term.

            Got this nice cheap car for you Richard and after the amount of money you put into to keep it going which will be more than buying the new one and will make you wish you got a new one. But it’s good it’s cheap and has cough insignificant cough on going cost.

        • Oh here’s another inconvenient study for our LibTroll visitors (and the Gimp Co Cronies):

          http://nlkabel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/onderzoek-Dialogic-Fast-Forward-2014.pdf

          A recent study (2013) has found that by 2020, consumers and businesses will be demanding even faster download and upload speeds. The research, carried out by the Technical University of Eindhoven and Dialogic, predicts a need for 165 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload speeds in less than six years time. This is modelled on three main factors:

          * The growth in take up of existing services (such as music downloads and conversational applications, such as Skype)

          * Greater bandwidth needs for higher quality downloads (such as the advent of Ultra HD video, streamed across the Internet)

          * Future uses that have yet to be introduced; six years is a long time in the life of the Internet – bear in mind that YouTube only began in 2005, for example.

          • Did you predict Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn & YouTube Richard? nope I thought not, so dont laugh at what you dont know that will come along in the next 10 years!

          • And yet GimpCo use Ultra HD video as an example to hype HFC. Amazing. Money spent upgrading redundant networks is acceptable for things like UHD video but only when it’s not FttP. Nobody needs more than 25mbps and now nobody will need more 50mbps, when will the speed madness end??? Ignoring the upload speeds (as usual) next thing they’ll be telling us is nobody will need more 100mbps! Yes, yes, G.fast and other copper obsessed nerdlinger technologies will save us from the evil progress of fibre so we can spend more money on incremental upgrades and can put off doing an effective and efficient job the first time like we should have. $56 billion for 50mbps. $56 billion. Amazing. Good job GimpCo.

          • This just in : All future products yet to be invented to be known and well established 10 years prior to being able to do anything to support them, cites Richard (no citations)

          • +1 Hotcakes

            And even more laughable…

            The contradictory stupidity of the FttP hating illogically ideological… whist they mock speeds for possible future needs, they will (even with a straight face) nonetheless suggest that wasting money on fibre is ludicrous because (wait for it) something better and ‘faster’ may be just around the corner…

            Yet we nonetheless don’t need anywhere near fibre speeds anyway, err, according to them…

            It’s simply more dumb contradictions on top of dumb contradictions…from the dumb contradictory usual suspects, IMO.

        • Are we allowed to talk about Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan, BT in the UK, Telekom Austria and Swisscom all actively involved in G.fast trials, all with commercial launches planned for 2016, or is this a FTTP ONLY Good News stories zone?

          • Yeah, G.Fast trials, not builds because it’s not a full comercial product yet as the RF inference etc has not yet allowed the products to be certified for widespread use.

            Oh and one more inconvenient fact for you Alain, it’s an MDU ONLY Technology as it is designed for 250m copper lengths max, otherwise it’s no better than VDSL2.

          • G.Fast is actually a great solution, when you’re not using copper loops upwards of 800-1000m.

            If NBN Co come out tomorrow and say they will use G.Fast with average copper lengths of 200m? Fine, you can talk about it, but they won’t be because it will mean quadrupling the number of nodes required, increasing the FTTN build even further.

          • So says Mr Contradiction, who only a few days ago told Derek he shouldn’t make comparisons to Verizon :/

            Proving one again, that the illogical ideological, have no ethics or morals. They actually believe in two sets of rules. One completely factless, contradictory set for themselves (and FRAUDBAND) from within the 1950’s safety bubble they all live so blindly in and another set of rules for the rest of us, residing here in good old reality (no pun intended).

            Thanks for more GOLD alain… no wonder you are the undisputed king of Delimiter bannings.

      • Thanks for your input Richard… keep that motto alive… faster, cheaper (with never a mention of B) .

        As I sad before I’m sure a pointless bean counter (not referring to anyone in particular) could have in the past thrown a few figures together (for a lazy $1.5m from his mates – nod/wink) to suggest upgrading the old arterial dirt roads with dirt, would be “cheaper and faster (shh forget B)” than building brand new multi-laned highways..

        But eventually I’m sure even the wing-nuts couldn’t have kept arguing as the need for bitumen highways actually finally hit home… showing that dirt roads generally, were no longer appropriate and had become “obsolete”… for a progressive nation.

        Thing is here in reality (actual reality – not illogical ideological cyclopsville, where rad cons appear to live within a bubble from actual reality) even patching the obsolete copper isn’t proving quicker (2016 promise for all now out to 2020) and blow out in cost now out to as much as $56B, isn’t proving cheaper, especially with the needed copper/HFC add ons (to take copper and HFC speeds to beyond what these people themselves already told us we DO NOT/WILL NOT NEED…ROFL), plus extra power requirements, maintenance of old networks , etc.

        But give it time, it must be hard for those in a time warp, to accept being dragged out of the 1950’s kicking and screaming, to join the rest of us here in 2015. And, even though Mal totally fucked up with this MTM, err, fuck up… unlike that buffoon Abbott (even agreed by his own party now, so it seems ;) and the greed driven far right undertakers, at least Mal’s only stuck in the FttN 90’s.

        BTW Richard, have you seen, you can now send instantaneous electronic mails (knows as emails) to multiple recipients around the world… gee I bet you guys in the perpetual 50’s never could have envisaged that? But yet here it is now a daily occurrence for (I’d guess) the vast majority of Australians…

        How about those new fandoogled contraptions, eh… wow? We’ve come a long way since the 50’s eh Richard, well some of us have… and again the invite is extended for if/when you and your’s would like to join us.

        You’re welcome.

  15. Per single user? Many may be happy with that, but the average household and businesses have multiple users.. That’s barely adequate now, let alone in 10 years. Especially since data usage is increasing exponentially.

    • More than that it isn’t just about the number of users in a household – it is the number of devices.

      • IoT (internet of things) means my toaster one day might want to communicate to the virtual house-maid that I need more toast because it’s recognised the bread isn’t as fresh.

        Said maid will already have had a conversation with the fridge, regarding the appalling state of the milk; also the grinder will be whining that it’s low on beans and the espresso machine has already demanded replacements for the group-head seal because it’s a bit tired.

        Also, IoT means one morning the toaster may also become sentient and a raging homicidal maniac; regardless of which – they all will consume some capacity and all want to share the same connection as I use.

        Even a home with n occupants, with streaming services, online ordering, gaming, etc all causes parallel bandwidth increases.

        Morrow is simply trying to use the same tired old excuse used by communications companies for decades; you don’t need the thing you keep demanding.

        It’s like shouting at the wall; you can absolutely do that, but the wall isn’t going anywhere. It’s not suddenly stop being a wall because you don’t believe there’s a demand for it to be a wall.

      • Indeed, I have over 30 internet connected devices in a household of 4!

        This includes IoT devices such as 2x Nest Thermostats, 4x Nest Co2/Smoke detectors, Lighting, security cams, energy monitoring and yes even my Garage door opener is on the net (it’s great sending me alerts when we forget to close it and if it’s still open at 11:30 at night it closes itself).

        Btw, It’s great fun integrating IoT gadgets together too. eg when our Nest Thermostats go into “auto-away” mode any lights left on are turned off. when we come home and Nest Thermostats go back to “home” mode, the Lamps in the house turn on. :-)

  16. “Good enough for the next 10 years.”

    I’m not sure what bothers me most.

    1) The man in charge of our biggest ever national infrastructure project says that the very best performance that it can supply, and which he must know that many customers won’t actually receive, will be good enough for only 10 years.

    or

    2) Said individual thinks that 10 years, for a project of this scope, is “the forseeable future”. Now, perhaps what he MEANT was “our immediate needs”, but it’s not what he SAID. I, and many people far better informed that me, have no trouble envisioning what our needs could be 25, or even 50 years down the track. I find the lack of vision here … disturbing.

  17. Why does NBN have to make a profit? Its a government owned entity that is building infrastructure for the benefit of Australia. It is an enabler, not a shareholder money making opportunity. It potentially provides increases to; productivity, opportunity (startups etc), entertainment, creativity, research and communication – not name a few off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more, but i think everyone needs to stop treating NBN as an entity that must be profitable, at least while it is building the NBN.

    So, i have issue with Morrows reasoning of paying for future upgrades with NBN profits. The money to build the NBN mostly came from taxpayers. A large majority of NBN profits will come from taxpayers paying to use their service. However, with the MTM we get a lesser service. So we might as well pay the extra upfront to get the best network and service (FTTP) now. With FTTP the NBN does not -have- to make a huge profit for major upgrades later, but simply cover expenses while building, the prices could therefore be lowered. Furthermore with the significantly lower maintenance costs of FTTP, it will be easier to gain a profit.

    • It has to make a profit because that is how it was setup. The management team didn’t make that decision, they are simply playing the hand dealt. Arguably decisions made so far are based around that.

      Given that as a constraint I do see the arguments around adopting M2M as being valid. The faster the company can generate revenue & become cash flow positive the better. The better the balance sheet is, the better chances are of accessing additional funding to finish the build. In the short to medium term I see this as delivering the best outcome.

      My concern is around the long term. If you set something up to act as a business then that is what it will do. You can’t expect it to deliver the best public outcomes when it’s focus is elsewhere.

      • “In the short to medium term I see this as delivering the best outcome. My concern is around the long term.”

        Why am I reminded of the experiment where kids could have 1 marshmallow now, or two marshmallows if they waited 5 minutes. We’re going to get our one marshmallow and then that’ll be it.

        • A more accurate analogy would be where a known liar promises you 1 marshmallow now, everyone tells you he’s lying and cannot possibly do it, and then you’re surprised he doesn’t deliver.

          • Now now, I’m sure we’ll get a marshmallow. It’ll be old and half chewed on by rats but they’ll dust it up a bit and tell us it’s more than what we need.

          • Marshmallow analogy a good example why being a conservative should be considered a disability.

        • That was an experiment by Dr Phillip Zimbardo. Yes. He found that the kids who took the one marshmellow got lower SAT scores and were much more likely to go to jail.

      • All the revenue and cash flow they’ve achieved so far has come from the Labor plan.

        They will be removing higher margin products from their portfolio with FTTN as well, given that consistent delivery of > 50 Mbps appears to be a pipe dream for the current management.

        • @r NBNCo is currently losing $2b a year! Great plan;-)

          Few are choosin the higher speed plans. Numbers are in, 38 1gbps connections (yes thirty eight).

          • Yes that’s what happens when you dumb down a good plan that was ramping up plus providing an actual network for now and the future to this ridiculous disaster (that you could have been commissioned to write ;).

            So thanks for demonstrating the obvious Richard and finally starting to see the light… there may be hope for you yet. Well at least until your next comment.

            BTW – 38 might not sound like much, but considering the illogically ideological keep telling us (either) 12mbps or 25mbps or 50mbps is enough for anybody for the next ten years as we don’t have the need… 38 already disagree by paying for 1gbps and considering MTM only managed 67 MTM connections in two years, those in glass houses Richard.

          • Also Richard, 1gbps plans aren’t available to all…

            Perhaps had this retrograde MTM not been introduced, who knows.

          • Rizz don’t forget sky mesh offering a 100/100mbps. Would love for Richard to explain how copper can achieve that. But then he can’t even give an ISP that delivers a min 25Mbps on FTTN and still waiting on Reality to get back to me about a ISP selling FTTN plans that are cheaper than FTTP.

          • Indeed Jason…

            Our dear friend seems to read from the everything needs to be cheapest now book and ignores the benefits vs.comparative costs vs. time frames book and especially always avoids the common sense book…

            Gotta love the illogically ideological and their simplistic view of their plastic bubble 1950’s world, especially those who are also bean counters…double whammy but they do supply lots of laughs and endless WTF entertainment, for us humans ;)

          • You’re so very correct Richard…& NBN Co will continue suffering losses when most will never pay for a 1Gb/s plan or even for 100Mb/s when stuck on a FTTN network designed to deliver only UP TO 50Mb/s.
            Even that 50Mb/s target will be well out of reach at many premises that will then settle for the cheaper 25Mb/s plans.
            Likely result being much higher consumer prices required across the board to cover the MTM’s extra OPEX resulting in reduced demand. Hardly “Cheaper & Faster.”

      • If you’re going to argue for the LNP version of the NBN, if you’re not going to actually understand the issue completely, you could at least use the right acronym for their version… MTM not M2M.

      • It is not how it is setup, it’s a Goverment Business, meaning it only has to make a return.

        This is not a private enterprise, where the major concern are the shareholders profits.

        However, that is what the Coalition Party and people like yourselves are treating it.

      • See this is the problem. The NBN gets its profit from taxpayers anyway. Any profit is just the government getting money back from taxpayers for its investment in the NBN. Taxpayers are the ones ultimately funding the NBN (though not through tax). The NBN was not setup for profit, but rather it was setup to make a small return on investment (5%?). Ever since the new management have come in, its being run more and more like a business that must turn a profit.

        So the difference is that with the MTM, we get a lesser network and still have to pay to upgrade to a better one later (some time 2030?). This means that NBN needs to keep its prices sufficiently high to get enough capital to pay upfront for the upgrades – or it will need to borrow money. I really want to see a cost benefit analysis of this method, but i think it would be far more expensive in the long run (when considering what a user gets and what they pay).

        With FTTP, its a once off moderately larger expense. Sure the government has to borrow more money, which means more interest to pay, but with a AAA credit rating, that interest isn’t a huge amount. It would simply mean that FTTP takes a little longer to make a return on investment. In the mean time, everyone can enjoy a state of the art communications network. Upgrading from 100Mbps to 1Gbps will be a relatively cheap process.

    • “Why does NBN have to make a profit? Its a government owned entity that is building infrastructure for the benefit of Australia.”

      I needs to make a return. The government is investing ~30Billion into this and raising debt to cover the rest.

      If it makes a loss then Taxpayers will have to bear that debt and you can kiss goodbye to budgets ever being in surplus for many years to come.

      The original NBN Co was scheduled to make a 7-8% ROI which was pretty well par for wholesale telco network investment.

      • Wrong, NBN does not effect budget, the only time when it does effect the budget, is when it is put on the books.

        • Daniel, Unfortunately it is backed by Government investment. So If they don’t make enough ROI to cover the investors, then they have to pay it back, which means Taxpayer funds.

        • I’m talking about the long term not if its got a revenue issue for a single year etc and not currently.

          If this is a loss leading white elephant taxpayers will get stuck with the bill because there is no-one else to pay the difference.

  18. Wow he (for a day or two) came up in my rankings, for admitting it was MTM not FttP which was the primary blame for the MTM cost blow out..

    Now with these dumb conservative comments, he’s descended to below what is was…

    Oh well, I gave him the benefit and that’s what happens.

    Never again.

    • Indeed Rizz, always keep in mind GimpCo employees are executing a politically motivated broadband plan and you wont make that mistake again :-)

  19. I wish that I could find that series of Aussie TV ads in the early 80’s. They had the slogan “near enough isn’t good enough”. One had Michelangelo and said that if he cut corners painting the Sistine Chapel then it would never have happened.

    Bill Morrow can take his “good enough” cop out and shove it up his lower bowel.

  20. On the plus side, at current rates, Australia will not be below the international average. Currently (according to Akamai) the average Internet speed is 5.1Mbps. The average speed increases 10% annually, so by 2026, Australia would be above the international average of 15Mbps.

    However, this math is not what Morrow or Turnbull are looking at. They are talking about peak speeds. When we order an Internet package the speed is not the average speed at all, it’s ‘up to’ the advertised speed, in other words it’s the peak speed. The 100Mbps NBN plan supports 100Mbps peak speed.

    Currently, the average peak international speed is 32.5Mbps. At 10% annual increase, the average peak speed will be around 97Mbps. The direct implication is that Australia will continue its path of descent from 44th today towards the average around 80th in the world within the 10 years in scope.

  21. These cunts in politics have no idea what the population wants. Instead they are fluffing their own nest with shares and cushy board of direct jobs to retire on.
    Where is the vision in this country?

    • Hi Jason.
      Where is the vision in this country? Well it seems to have almost disappeared , it appears to be a how can I screw fists full of money before the next election and get big bonuses for bad decisions .
      If things had been left as the labour plan [fttp] things would have now been going like a train ,as every month the work force was getting the hang of things and able to get things moving faster and smoother ,as they were . But not to, be there is always some puffed up rectum that knows just enough to be dangerous like MT the smiling assassin.
      I FEAR FOR MY COUNTRY .

  22. Given what i know about IT, I am prepared to bet a lunch, at any restaurant in Melbourne, that the NBN CEO is wrong about 50 mbps is good till 2025.

    Let’s see who had eggs on their face making predictions about IT in the past:

    – “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

    – “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

    – “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977,

    and the latest that ’50 mbps is sufficient for the next ten years’ — Bill Morrow, NBN CEO, 2015.

    I wait for a bet confirmation.

  23. “The Fibre to the Node model for the NBN infrastructure commonly supports variable speeds of between 25Mbps and 100Mbps ”

    Its not all about speed. A feature of the FTTP & FW infrastructure is the ability of NBN to wholesale separated Layer 2 services to different service providers into the same premises.

    With FTTN you get ( or the ISP supplies ) a VDSL modem. Its just like ADSL on steroids. If you want a separated service from another provider you need a separate physical line.

    To succeed in the future the flexibility to procure disparate services easily and reliably is just as important as the availability of speed.

    • All true, but the discourse has always only ever focused on speed, and likely only ever will.

      The mainstream media doesn’t care about credible journalism, they just want headlines, and the Liberal supporters eat up Uncle Ruperts bullcrap with both hands and ask for more shitcovered “choc tops”.

  24. “In 2020, we will see 54 per cent of our country able to access speeds up to a gigabit per second (Gbps), another 39 per cent up to 50 megabits per second (Mbps)”

    What you have right there is a digital divide. The difference between up to 50Mbps and up to 1Gbps is huge now, but it will be gigantic by next decade.

    Morrow is right that people just want relatively modest broadband now, but next decade onwards is what we should be providing for, looking at the enormous expense of the MTM’s modest upgrades. This is the central issue: still massive expenditure for an increase and what is not much more than filling in blackspots. Significant increases beyond will require further massive expenditure, on the scale of the current rollout. Should we accept this?

  25. See “Neilsen’s Law of Internet Bandwidth”

    http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/

    “Users’ bandwidth grows by 50% per year. The new law fits data from 1983 to 2014.”

    “Law” is not quite the right term–“observation” might be more accurate — in the same way that “Moore’s Law” is not a law either. “Neilsen’s Law” has been a generally reliable predictor of US Internet speeds accessible to end users since 1983, analogous to how “Moore’s Law” has been a generally reliable predictor of transistors on a chip as a function of time for several decades.

    If 50Mb/s is “good enough for the next 10 years”, then we’ll be falling behind the world trend pretty rapidly over the next decade…

    • Insert typical Liberal supporter response: G.Fast.. Er…… Vplus… Er…. Magical new technology in future…. Er… What can you use 50Mbit for now? Nobody in the future will find anything to use it… Uhm… Other nonsensical things to ignore various counterpoints.

  26. What a joke. so 50Mbps is good until 2030 10 years after most people can get an NBN service if they are lucky.

Comments are closed.