Litany of problems: Internal NBN doc warns of FTTN failures

148


news The NBN company is reportedly suffering a litany of issues with respect to Malcolm Turnbull’s preferred Fibre to the Node technology, with an internal document warning the company’s management that its FTTN rollout has gone badly off track due to a “plethora of faults”.

The original version of the NBN as envisioned by the previous Labor Government called for most Australian premises to be covered by a full Fibre to the Premises rollout, with the remainder to be covered by satellite and fixed wireless technology.

However, the Coalition’s controversial Multi-Technology Mix instituted by Malcolm Turnbull as Communications Minister has seen the company switch to a model re-using and upgrading the legacy copper (Fibre to the Node and Fibre to the Basement) and HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus.

The NBN company has repeatedly issued positive statements regarding its ongoing rollout of Fibre to the Node technology under the Coalition, viewing the technology as a faster and cheaper way to deliver high-speed broadband to more Australians, without the need to extend fibre-optic cables all the way to their properties.

However, if a report published by the Sydney Morning Herald today is any indication, the company’s FTTN rollout is badly faltering.

According to the newspaper (we recommend you click here for the full article), NBN company staff have produced an internal document named: “Commercial in Confidence: Scale the Deployment Program”, which outlines a range of problems with the FTTN rollout. Delimiter has today filed a Freedom of Information request for the document.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the document notes that the NBN company had at 19 February this year only successfully completed rolling out FTTN to some 29,005 premises — far short of its target of 94,273 for that date. The report pins much of the delays on issues with electricity companies, which appear to be having problems getting power to the neighbourhood ‘nodes’ used in a FTTN rollout. Other issues relate to cost.

The news comes as the NBN company has repeatedly refused to break out how many FTTN connections it actually has finished.

At the company’s annual results session in early February, the NBN company bundled FTTN and FTTB connections together (saying at the time that it had some 120,000 premises ready for service using these connections).

However, the NBN company has been deploying FTTB for a substantially longer period than FTTN. The report outlined by the SMH today would appear to indicate that most of those 120,000 were actually FTTB connections and not FTTN.

The electricity issues and cost blowouts were previously predicted by a number of analysts with respect to the Coalition’s Multi-Technology Mix version of the NBN.

It was pointed out to Malcolm Turnbull repeatedly when the Member for Wentworth was Shadow Communications Minister prior to the 2013 Federal Election that access to and the cost of electricity required for the FTTN NBN technology would cause issues for a FTTN rollout down the track.

In addition, in early December last year, a separate set of leaked documents revealed that the NBN company had severely underestimated the cost of remediating Telstra’s copper network by a factor of ten in its November 2013 Strategic Review, with the actual cost ballooning out to about $641 million.

Delimiter will publish in full any statement which either the NBN company or the Government makes in relation to the document referred to by the Sydney Morning Herald.

opinion/analysis
At the moment we are seeing a major leak about once a month regarding the Coalition’s controversial Multi-Technology Mix version of the NBN. So far the Government and the management of the NBN company have pursued a strategy of trying to cast doubt on the veracity of the documents, while slamming Labor’s previous performance in rollout out the NBN.

However, this approach is starting to wear a little thin. These leaks would not be occurring were senior executives within the NBN company itself not very worried about the state of the rollout, and clearly there is enough hard documentation to back the concerns.

From here I expect to see two things: More leaks, on an escalating frequency as we head towards this year’s Federal Election, and Labor and the Greens increasingly ramping up their rhetoric on the NBN topic.

This issue is not going away any time soon. Unfortunately for our Prime Minister, you simply cannot ‘demolish’ the technically and commercially sound model for Australia’s largest ever infrastructure project and walk away unscathed. Sooner or later, these chickens are going to come home to roost.

148 COMMENTS

    • Nah, Turnbull could hang it around Abbott’s neck. This would be bad ground to wage a battle on.

    • Sounds like a case of the FTTN cabinet installations are going faster than the power company crews can keep up with the power connections to the grid.

      The NBN Co has contractors dedicated to the task of rolling FTTN cabinets and connecting up the fibre, copper and pillar links, it is unlikely the power companies have dedicated crews around Australia just doing FTTN cabinet connections.

      • Yes, just like rolling cars off production line without petrol tanks. We have thousands of cars in our yard and we cann not drive/sell them.
        Cabinet without power is not cabinet completeli installed.

        • Yeah I know, there could be a lag between cabinet finished and power company crew going to site and connecting.

          • Oh look yet more alain contradictions…GOLD

            Yes lag, just like the “actual” lag between the initial Quigley/Telstra talks and the signing. Or the asbestos issue/remediation.

            Again all “actual” lag issues that you bluntly would never accept and claimed to be complete mismanagement…?

            But of course now comes the flip-flop and even though this is unfounded conjecture, you are openly willing to not only accept/suggest it, but desperately attempt to use it, to excuse the MTM hold-ups…

            *sigh*

            You’re welcome

          • But of course now comes the flip-flop

            At times, he has more positions on things than the Kama Sutra.

      • I would suggest that any engineer with a knowledge of the wiring rules, EPR zones and engineering assessments required to run mains anywhere near copper telecommunications infrastructure (and vise-a-versa) would have been able to point out from the start that providing power to nodes is not a trivial nor cheap task. The resources required should have been planned from the start, as soon as they took the FTTN route.

        Alas, I don’t think the people who decided FTTN was the best option to deploy listened to telecommunication engineers.

        • Alas, I don’t think the people who decided FTTN was the best option to deploy listened to telecommunication engineers.

          Unlike Labor, they didn’t listen to any experts, telecommunication or otherwise…

          • Actually, it was expert advice that led Labor to move from their initially proposed FTTN model to their final FTTP model proposal.

          • Yeah, sorry, I should have worded it thusly:

            Unlike Labor who took advice from experts from several fields including “big business”, the LPA didn’t listen to any experts, telecommunication or otherwise…

  1. Ummm. Maybe slightly off-topic. Perhaps. I’ve just had my FTTP PCD moved to a much better location, one which NBN were happy to accomodate once they had received the report from their techs. The work was and had been performed by a Tier 1 contractor–this is important.

    Chatting after the job was finished, learning some need-to-know facts about fiber technology, they showed me one of the major problems affecting any accelerated rollout: the original fiber to my premise. (I had happily assumed each premise would have enough fiber to connect directly to the main fiber passing that premise. Not so. Up to a dozen premises will be connected to a multi-port near the group.) As things happen, my fiber had been badly crushed under a piece of concrete from an intermediate pit. They showed me. The actual fiber was visible, and I was assured this would have prevented any meaningful signal due to the electric current in the fiber which would not now be confined to the cable. Anyway, the fault has been (unwittingly) rectified and all is good for connection.

    This reminds me very much of the Home Insulation Disaster, where Tier 1 contracted Tier 2 who contracted Tier 3 who did the actual work for not very much money. But at all stages, the rush was on to finish as many premises as possible in order to make the numbers for a {very badly planned|totally unplanned} rollout designed to impress voters (and Parliament). My ADA was contracted and signed off under the original Labor NBN plan…

    If we’ve got failures in the Labor FTTP program (which does not surprise me at all given that Labor was involved), then failures in the Liberal FTTN were practically guaranteed to happen. I am reminded of the absolute folly of letting a 12-yo take a rust-bucket on the freeway at 9pm, and telling him he must maintain 100Km/H.

    How long have we been debating hi-speed internet? 7 years? 10 years? And how long have we been PLANNING the rollout? 7 months? 10 months? And how long do we allow to roll it out? 7 weeks? 10 weeks?

    • “due to the electric current in the fiber which would not now be confined to the cable”
      What the hell are you talking about!?

      • I giggled at that as well….kind of spoils the whole “Labor is at fault” routine!

        Oh and the dribble around letting a 12-yo and a rust bucket….WTF?

      • I have to assume he meant light signals. Certainly, once the integrity of a piece of optical fibre is compromised, signal tends to exit rather than continue along the fibre to the destination.

        Yes, it was technically incorrect (there’s no electricity involved in a fibre connection) – but the gist of the message remains – damaged fibre = no signal.

        • The gist of the complaint also remains – Gordon clearly has no idea what he is talking about.

        • And what is the point? If fiber was crushed how would copper fare? Was a pretty pointless story from someone with a pretty obvious bias.

          • For what it is worth, copper tends to cope better with physical damage from events such as crush and bend. Fibre needs to be treated more gently, and has stricter handling requirements.

            Once laid, fibre copes better with things like water, electromagnetic fields, etc.

    • OK. I made a mistake. I assumed a level of knowledge appropriate to a position, based on experience in other fields that I work with regularly and frequently. And we all know what ASSuME does, yes?

      BUT.

      @Robert – thank you.

      @@BruceH – I will excuse you because you got carried away on the mistake instead of reading the post properly. If you can’t figure a 12-yo and a rust-bucket on a freeway, you need help. Seek for it.

      @david – The person who I was speaking with should have had a level of knowledge appropriate to his position as a field supervisor. I don’t expect him to have an in-depth uni doctorate technical appreciation of fiber-optic design principles, but I do expect those people to understand the difference between “opto-amplifiers” and “opto-electronic repeaters”. In particular, when a person at this level says “You will get zapped” and then warbles on about electricity, then at my level of tech knowledge I have to believe him, even if I can’t see where NBN has an AON system. I have since understood this supervisor may not have succeeded in understanding Optical Amplifiers as he should have, specifically the use of erbium or ytterbium as amplifiers. BTW, a incautiously handling a live fiber of this nature WILL give you a zap. Just not electricity.

      Having said all that, I stand by my original post, that:

      “This reminds me very much of the Home Insulation Disaster, where Tier 1 contracted Tier 2 who contracted Tier 3 who did the actual work for not very much money. But at all stages, the rush was on to finish as many premises as possible in order to make the numbers for a {very badly planned|totally unplanned} rollout designed to impress voters (and Parliament). My ADA was contracted and signed off under the original Labor NBN plan…

      “If we’ve got failures in the Labor FTTP program (which does not surprise me at all given that Labor was involved), then failures in the Liberal FTTN were practically guaranteed to happen. I am reminded of the absolute folly of letting a 12-yo take a rust-bucket on the freeway at 9pm, and telling him he must maintain 100Km/H.

      “How long have we been debating hi-speed internet? 7 years? 10 years? And how long have we been PLANNING the rollout? 7 months? 10 months? And how long do we allow to roll it out? 7 weeks? 10 weeks?”

      The NBN is a Labor failure EVEN NOW, and without major brain surgery at the government end, we’re stuck with 2nd-rate at best.

      • We are stuck with second rate because foolishly FttP was stopped… regardless of who started FttP and who halted it, politically.

        It was dumb to stop it.

        But then you being a self confessed “anti-Labor voter”, could never admit that.

        Keep up the good work, we are all most amused at the pointless ramblings.

          • A $29B to an up to $56B cost and 5 years late would say other wise.

            Or the cost of $44B to now up to $84B and 6 – 8 years late to go back to FTTP.

          • I don’t agree that it was dumb to start it.

            I think the vision was appropriate – a national broadband network which provided future-proof Internet access capability to the vast majority of locations in Australia.

            I don’t even think that FTTP was a bad decision (remembering that Labor’s initial vision was for FTTN, but a review pushed them towards the FTTP model).

            What was terrible (and has been under both Labor and Liberal governments) has been the execution. A well planned and built FTTP network would have delivered a long-term legacy of suitable broadband infrastructure for generations to come. A well planned and built FTTN network could well have been a decent stop-gap measure.

            Unfortunately, what’s happened has been neither well planned nor well built. Worse, people keep forgetting the long-term value of such a project – it doesn’t need to deliver a direct ROI (costs $Xb to build, returns $Yb in direct revenues over Z years) because there are indirect benefits it delivers to the population and thus economy – imagine a network that helped rather than hindered the “Innovation Boom” for example…

            For those who say private enterprise would have built it better – history disagrees (though perhaps not entirely fairly, due to some regulatory restrictions – but the fact is, private enterprise didn’t build it), and thus it became government’s job to do so – much the same way as they built the national telecommunications network, the national postal service, the way state governments built electricity grids, water distribution networks, sewerage removal networks, etc).

            The NBN should have been about improving the nation. It failed when it became a political football, and other interests (political, commercial, etc) became more important to those involved than the national interest.

          • Ah Alian, conflating something we all knew and weren’t happy with anyway, us pro-FTTP folks have many times contested that NBN Co should not have used the Prime Contractor model because it rarely works.

            NBN Co should have done all the PM and contractor management in-house just like Telstra & Optus did in the 90’s cable wars – using this model they passed 6,000 premises per day EACH at the peak of their roll-outs.

            and to show that 2 can play this quoting Renai Game:

            Truth: NBN results show Labor’s plan is still working

            https://delimiter.com.au/2015/11/10/truth-to-power-nbn-results-show-labors-plan-is-still-working/

  2. The fascist criminals gutted and devalued it intentionally to sell back to Telstra for a quarter of the price after tax payers forked out for their faulty crap. They devalued the economy in the process to defend Murdoch.

    • Not sure who GimpCo think they are fooling with that hissy fit response.

      This is an incredibly complex project unlike any infrastructure build anywhere in the world.

      That’s right GimpCo. You chimps finally got something right. It is unlike anything. Because no other communications infrastructure build anywhere in the world did the supremely idiotic and imbecilic thing going backwards by changing a FttP build to a FttN patchwork mess for politically motivated reasons.

      • To be fair to nbn (formerly NBNCo), that isn’t their fault – they are doing what their political masters told them to do.

        • That is one way of looking at it. The end result is the same but I think most of them are willingly compliant. They wouldn’t have their jobs otherwise.

        • @Robert

          So nbn™ missing it’s target by 225% isn’t their fault? I’m sure they’ll be very happy to hear it!

          • Well, if Labor was in power, it would be their fault according to a conversation recently with Richard.

            Now it isn’t their fault, because they’re just fixing labors mess, apparently.

  3. Worth noting that is not just delays in getting power to the nodes, but delays in even getting approvals and negotiating contracts with power utilities, before they even start building.

    As was predicted way back.

    • C’mon, be reasonable! How were they to know they’d need electricity to all those boxes? It’s not like there’s a power line running within meters of them all. ;)

    • Simon hacker? The name fits, and he did say he was going to make things “less worse”

      • By which I assume you mean Simon Hackett?

        Knowing a little of Simon, I believe he’d be trying to help things from within the confines of ethical behaviour.

  4. Nbn is leaking like a siv and it’s great to see. And “We will not be drawn on alleged internal documents”, is the typical response. We may have written it, but you have to prove it.

  5. If it is discovered the new management has been denying poor performance like the old something must be done. Millions in salary and bonuses are paid to these people. However the weekly progress number show a substantial improvement, post Sept. Renai’s forward monthly timetable (if achieved) indicates they’ll make FY16 rollout target. Fairfax has a lot of their credibility riding on this leaked document.

    The complex project argument is tosh. The scale of the project is large, but it isn’t complex; buy node, put down a small concrete footing, run uplink fibre, connect power & patch to distribution pillar. Repeat. Some copper remediation required. Hundreds of thousands of such nodes have been deployed elsewhere.

    NBNco today has over 4.5k employees and had 2 yrs to order components and power before FTTN product launch now 6 months ago.

    Another delay or cost blowout; how much can taxpayers be expected to carry? What’s folly.

    • “connect power”. Haha. Just that simple hey. Power is like the ole FTTP asbestos remediation issue but for FTTN. I was told by someone in a position to know over a year ago (and gave RL a heads up to research it, did you ever look into it Renai?) that each and every Nodes power requirement would require individualised (and significant) review, and potentially expensive network upgrades/modifications, and that the power alone was going to be a huge handbrake on the deployment speed.

      Are we finally seeing your true view? That you really only care about Government waste, and not the actual technology or project being implemented? Because you sure nailed your views to the mast until today.

      • He’s made his views pretty clear, he is a free market loony-toon. He thinks the NBN in any form is bad, and thinks the private sector is the answer to broadband in Australia, despite evidence to the contrary that the private sector doesn’t WANT to do anything with fixed line broadband, unless it has a stranglehold on the market.

        • @r0 right perfectly consistent. You’re evidence to the country is? Mine BT,DT, chorus, Swedish telecom, … Vs NBNCo

          • Your evidence to prove that fixed-line networks in Australia havent been stagnating…. is by referencing other countries? What?

            Are you actually suggesting that because other countries have different situations, that all the evidence in Australia showing our largest telco’s aren’t interested in investing in fixed-line infrastructure means nothing, and that we should still be leaving it to the telco’s who aren’t interested?

          • Mine BT,DT, chorus, Swedish telecom,

            Your “evidence” is governments giving vast amounts of taxpayer money to private companies?

          • @tm much smaller amounts to deliver far more.

            Private upgrades here rejected by Conroy, govt entity to overbuild any that try (and other threats eg cellular spectrum).

            NBNCo r0’s solution to high-speed internet upgrade. Fails on every indicator against private delivery. But I’m a loony-toon;-)

          • “Private upgrades here rejected by Conroy” They tried, and the only company that came back with an offer, was a non-compliant bid by Telstra, your hailed and favourite private enterprise.

            But we’ll ignore that. It doesn’t fit your free-market utopia bullshit.

          • @Richard

            Much smaller amounts, because they are much smaller counties, but I’m sure you know that already.

    • Richard I need your help with some numbers is the 30k connected to FTTN rolling out faster or slower than FTTP was

      • Richard how much of that 25k a week is FTTN with those figures. With only 30k connected.

        • This is the problem, Richard put all his faith into the cooked books nbn™ have been making up since Mike left…

          • Lazy argument, when you don’t like the figures just say ‘the books are cooked’, don’t have to explain it, just saying it is sufficient, then you run the negative if questioned with a ‘you prove the books are not cooked then’, the endless loop.

            FTTP cheerleader strategy 101.

            lol

          • @tm the problem (again) is others misunderstanding. The report (as titled) is into the scaling program (1.9m).

            RFS & Activations in doc are zero, this is not the case.

            From the numbers presented in the report expect a massive jump in weekly progress as their problems identified and targeted solutions implemented.

            But continue…

          • You guys can’t prove the numbers are correct, because the nbn™/LNP wont allow you to see the data they are built on.

            You’re going on blind faith.

            It’s that simple, no cheerleading required.

          • From the numbers presented in the report expect a massive jump in weekly progress as their problems identified and targeted solutions implemented.

            Oh, I see, you’re saying it’s the same thing as when Labor had the issues with the negotiations with Telstra and the asbestos and such?

            I still remember how you forgave Labor for that like you’ve done with the LNP….oh, wait, no I don’t….

          • @tm who’s forgiving the delay? The apologists rejected the FTTH delay when pointed out, then management claiming on time and budget as they were dragged from the building. They never scaled (do we need those numbers yet again?)

            Here a problem with a very aggressive ramp up (unimaginable numbers under Quigley) was identified early, fix identified and put in place. Impact felt in a couple of months. No correction for the same posters (yet again).

          • fix identified and put in place. Impact felt in a couple of months

            Yeah, great “fix”, reduce the target by two-thirds…

          • @tm unable to comprehend basic company reports, never project managed. That’d be no to any correction (amazing how many outlets took up Fairfax doc miscomprehension).

          • Can you repeat that in english please Richard, I find it difficult to parse your machine speak for nuance…

          • More lies from Richard, wow…

            “The apologists rejected the FTTH delay when pointed out, then management claiming on time and budget as they were dragged from the building.”

            No the FttP people (yes those with foresight – tell us again why in hindsight the iron wires needed replacing, then tell us in the same breath, with no foresight, why the copper doesn’t need replacing *sigh*) but I digress…

            I’d estimate almost every, if not every, FttP supporter acknowledged the hold-up’s. Why? Because there were hold-ups. wow what a fucking revelation Richard. But the budget was not blown.

            Regardless, for those who dwell in the past, again I will remind you that the Coalition were voted in, in Sept 2013 and they introduced MTM, so dwelling on the past is futile (unless you are a grovelling yes man, desperately trying to deflect from the complete fuck up that is MTM).

            Are you? Rhetorical, we know the answer… ;)

            Regardless, the illogically ideological MTM backwards thinkers, never acknowledge the 4 year hold ups (promised 2016, now 2020) and as much as $27B blow out over and above the promised “fully costed ready to go”… MTM plan.

            So tell us now Richard, is MTM some 4 years behind and as much as $27B over budget, as promised pre- election

            Yes or no?

        • After two years of the “faster cheaper” rollout, the “faster cheaper” component of new premises is still what, 20 % ? – a factor 3 behind recent targets, a factor of about 20 behind Turnbulls initial 2016 target.

          Either the “faster cheaper” rollout is not as fast or cheap as the government claims, or the previous management successfully fixed many of the issues with the previous rollout, just as the current management is working to fix the issues with the FTTN rollout (as illustrated in the leaked doc). Or maybe a bit of both.

  6. See, this shows the Malcolm Turnbull lies for all to see. He has constantly claimed that he is technology agnostic and paints the opposing side as fibre zealots, when the reality is that his network is everyday being revealed for the dog’s breakfast we all claimed it would be. The more he tries to sweep this under the rug, the more he reveals his own position as politically-motivated spurious dogma.

  7. “Annual results”, that was a FY2016 mid year update to CY2015 end, Dec 2015?
    Pity transparency has declined to the point that not even mynbn.info can do stats on the nbn rollout anymore!
    From memory, then they said 736K activations, the nbn response to the SMH article in your post now says 800K activations (week 8)?
    And we’re now in week 9 of 2016.
    :)

    (Update: Perhaps they are planning on FTTDp/ G.Fast instead of FTTx/ VDSL2?
    PollyTICs have a lot to answer for under Ausminster-repressive democracy.
    Netflix Tax, OzLog/ Mandatory Metadata Retention if no GAFW, nbn.
    Money for wars on drugs or terror, or +$30B for the DoD, but not it seems education, healthcare or infrastructure?
    Oh dear!)

  8. The Herald article quotes current design and construction costs running at $1366 per premise for FTTN (presumably this does not include a bunch of other costs such as lease payments). Compare that with the costs being claimed for fibre connections in e.g. NZ or Canada and it looks increasingly unlikely that they are going to save money even on the direct capital costs compared with an optimized fibre rollout (e.g. using aerial fibre, FTTB etc). Then factor in lower potential revenue, higher operating costs, higher upgrade costs…

    • That was always predictable. We were doing the sums on this back in 2013 demonstrating FTTN would cost more than FTTP in Australia. This is just the result of simple calculations bringing everyone else up to speed.

      • Missed the simple calculations also missed the explanation why Australia is unique in the world, that is FTTP is less expensive and faster to rollout than FTTN.

        How a connection to existing infrastructure which runs all the way to the inside of the residence is slower and more costly than running new fibre from the FTTP street cabinet to inside the residence to a new NTU box is never explained beyond a because it just is, but only in Australia.

        • Yes we know, you tend to miss a lot, well almost everything… and who’ll ever forget those delicious contradictions.

          But thanks for the (Delimiter’s worst kept secret) frank admission, nonetheless.

          You’re welcome

        • Well Reality we had an FTTN that was fully costed for $29B complete 2016 vs a FTTP build of $44B complete be 2021.

          Now we have an MTM model costing up to $56B complete by 2020 vs FTTP if $44B complete by 2021.

          • Well reality can you supply the numbers of if they had continue FTTP not the restart figures you like to claim.

            And no not Rizz

          • Claiming people are sock puppets… Jesus Black Kettle, it’s hilarious.

            The data currently available is about restarting the FTTP build, not if they had continued it in the first place, exposed in the senate hearings.

            You know this though, try again, LibTroll.

          • But it is not possible to continue it in the first place, the only way it was going to continue in the first place was if Labor had not got rolled in the 2013 election.

            At the point of the 2013 election the Labor NBN Co target figures had been cut back so much they were at 50% of original estimates which means all your FTTP ROI estimates and finish dates go out the window.

            The Coalition won with a alternative NBN policy, you and the rest of the Labor FTTP cheer squad need to take your long service leave and then move into the present, and stop dreaming about the ‘good old days’, which was a complete fantasy.

          • Sorry Reality 50% to estimates comment is invalid as revisions have been made move along

          • You’re an idiot Reality.

            Of course its now impossible to “continue” the rollout, that isn’t what we’re saying you twit.

            The costs given in the CP16 about a “full FTTP NBN” are costs absorbing all related costs to the MTM AND then rolling out of FTTP again, and overbuilding the already build FTTN areas, and overbuilding the HFC trials, and overbuilding FTTB with FTTP.

            It ISN’T the cost of what the Labor plan was going to be, it is the cost of taking the money spent on the LNP NBN plan, and then building the Labor plan on top of it.

            It is comparing Apples with Oranges. The fact you don’t see this, means you are either blind, ignorant or just plain stupid.

            Given interactions with you, I’m choosing stupid.

            The only costing we have that is even close to what the Labor plan was going to be, is Scenario 2 in the SR at $64Bn, only $8Bn more than the current “UP TO” $56Bn.

            Rolling in the MTM costs to date then saying “THATS HOW MUCH LABOR WAS GOING TO SPEND” is blatantly lying. But then again, you don’t care much for the truth.

          • @ Jason,

            So it is apparent that the MTM ideologically illogical are clearly suggesting that with a two year FttP hiatus, FttN is quicker than FttP…

            Wow.

          • “The Coalition won with a alternative NBN policy, you and the rest of the Labor FTTP cheer squad need to take your long service leave and then move into the present”
            Yes, let us embrace cost blowouts of almost 200% and time blowouts of almost 300%!

            PS, have you once again – for the fourteenth time to go unanswered – stated that by elections 2013 Labor was only promising FTTP to 46.5% of Australian premises?

          • The Coalition won with a alternative NBN policy

            Yeah, right, there could be no other reason people voted Labor out, could there…

            /facepalm

          • “The Coalition won with a alternative NBN policy”

            That’s right. Note that it’s not “The Coalition won because of their alternative NBN policy”. If anything, the most accurate statement around the Coalition win in 2013 and their NBN policy would be “The Coalition won despite their alternative NBN policy”

  9. Is it too early to say “we told you so” ?

    So many people said this would happen, failure after failure, what is it going to take for people “see politicians” to wake up that FTTN “technoloy” is obsolete and not the right way forward for our communications infrastructure… If it wasn’t so comical you would just put your head in your hands and cry…

    Kunty.

    • It is interesting that even Liberal politicians trot out the $74-84Bn bollocks despite it being openly admitted that the figure is if they returned to a full FTTP rollout from today, absorbing all the costs of the MTM to date, overbuilding all the FTTN/HFC they are now using and have incurred costs for…. No wonder the resident LibTrolls here keep bringing it up, even the LNP Members don’t even know what it means.

      • And no one even takes into consideration the added hypocrisy of Coalition claims pre-2013 election of FTTP NBN being $100b – so the LNP admit they were way off AND they (don’t admit they) were way off based on figures incorporating TWO overbuilds.

    • Did he mention the hypocrisy of the media going batshit insane over NBNCo buying $100m worth of coffee machines and a two year delay vs todays 4 year delay and a cost blowout of almost 200% achieved in a third of the time?

      No? Fifield, you magnificent corrupt honourable bastard.

      • Actually, it was $164,000 on the coffee machines…which works out to about 16 cents a cup per day for all the employees (probably less now their PR department has expanded so much).

  10. It would be interesting if there had to be upgrade/changes to the electricity grid to accommodate the nodes. In Bundaberg in 2015 there were some major upgrade/work done on the electricity wires in Avenell heights suburb a few months before Fttn went live, more lines and heavier duty lines seem to have been added to the poles along the larger roads which also is where the nodes are located. This could just be a coincidence or maybe the problems with the electricity companies isn’t just administration problems.

    • There may be some cases where the electricity grid has to be upgraded to accommodate nodes, but the power requirements for a node are about equal to the requirements for a couple of houses, so it seems unlikely that this would be a major problem.
      Note that a large part of the “administration” costs are real costs associated with getting electrical work done safely – it’s not just power companies being difficult.

      • Once again it is a Australia only problem, FTTN cabinets have been and still are being installed all over the world, Australia has a unique power grid apparently, where connecting FTTN cabinets to power is so difficult that FTTP is the only rational option.

        • Once again it is a Australia only problem, FTTN cabinets have been and still are being installed all over the world

          You ever actually been to any of those countries Reality?

          If you’d ever visited the UK, you can easily see why it’s not an issue over there.

          • @Tinman_au is correct. Australia *is* unique in the world in the way telecommunications infrastructure is deployed, and many of the challenges that exist in deploying telecommunications infrastructure to this market are absolutely unique.

            A prime consideration – we rate 236/244 countries in overall population density, and stone motherless last in terms of the top 100 countries by overall population. The UK, as an example, has a population density 83 times that of Australia, with a population (and thus a potential market) nearly three times as large. That brings massive advantages. Germany – 73 times our population density, over 3 times our population.

            We *are* unique. To deny it is plain stupidity.

          • “A prime consideration – we rate 236/244 countries in overall population density, and stone motherless last in terms of the top 100 countries by overall population. ”

            Yes. But we are also incredibly urbanised in the cities, our cities are actually reasonably dense, it just happens to be we have a vast, vast wasteland where nobody lives to skew the numbers. But, we aren’t building a infrastructure network throughout the desert.

            Example: South Korea has a population density of 491 per square kilometer.

            Melbourne has a population density of 430 per square kilometer.

          • The old urbanisation canard once again rears its ugly head.

            Actually I believe Australia is more urbanised than the US.

            https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2212.html

            Australia 89%
            UK 80%
            US 82%
            NZ 86%
            Canada 81%
            Germany 74%
            Japan 91%
            South Korea 83%

            Interesting stats.

            Just goes to show that our urbanisation and population density is perfectly high enough to affordably roll out fibre to 90+% of the nation (like the experts said), and anyone saying otherwise is just making poor excuses.

          • Ah, so we’re to roll out to only the urban areas, and screw the regional/rurals?

            Yes, our cities are dense, because they’re small, and we don’t have many of them – but as soon as you move into the suburban fringe areas, we’re not dense at all – I’m sure if you checked average residential block size, you’d find we have some of the largest, even if you exclude rural areas entirely.

            That’s still before you get into secondary cities (Wollongong and Newcastle on the NSW coast for example) as well.

            You also can’t consider population densities on their own either – because the overall number of people/customers/subscribers also comes into it.

            Looking at city population densities also completely ignores the fact that the cities are not islands – they don’t exist in isolation, and do actually need to be interconnected – Australia is 78% of the size of the USA, but we have only 7% of the population. Compare us to the UK and Germany, and it actually gets worse – we’re 31x and 3x respectively the sizes of those two countries, with around a third the population of either of them). The cost of building the interconnects between cities and towns comes into the overall cost of the NBN project.

            As an aside, it would be interesting to see the cost of the NBN splits between “last mile” costs and “backhaul/backbone” costs, and whether this futher shrinks or increases the difference between FTTP and MTM build models.

          • “As an aside, it would be interesting to see the cost of the NBN splits between “last mile” costs and “backhaul/backbone” costs, and whether this futher shrinks or increases the difference between FTTP and MTM build models.”

            I’m not really sure I follow the point in this? Are you suggesting the transit network for FTTP using 121 POIs is somehow fundamentally more expensive than the transit network for MTM using 121 POIs?

          • Quite to the contrary – we know the POIs, backhaul, etc is largely identical – so what percentage of the cost in the FTTP vs MTM models is attributable solely to “last mile” under those those models.

          • @Tim

            It’s actually more interesting when you look at the other figures (you referenced density, but didn’t include the figures for them):

            Country/Urbanisation/density/population
            Australia 89% 3.12 22,751,014
            UK 80% 262 64,088,222
            US 82% 32.87 321,368,864
            NZ 86% 17.26 4,438,393
            Canada 81% 3.64 35,099,836
            Germany 74% 228 80,854,408
            Japan 91% 335.58 126,919,659
            South Korea 83% 503 49,115,196

            We actually have more in common with Canada (who according to the OECD also has sucky broadband) than any of the other countries (even when it comes to weather, though their extremes are the opposite of ours, they are still something that would need to be factored in).

            And as I pointed out in the initial post, if you’ve ever actually visited the UK and seen the rows of terrace after terrace (we’d probably call them a townhouse here), as opposed to bungalows (a free standing house like we have), you’d realise your urbanisation numbers don’t tell the full story.

            Our “urban” is a lot more spread out than theirs.

  11. From here I expect to see two things: More leaks, on an escalating frequency as we head towards this year’s Federal Election, and Labor and the Greens increasingly ramping up their rhetoric on the NBN topic.

    Isnt it ironic, under the ALP NBN vision document leaks were incredibly rare because of two things:

    1/ Quigley usually provided what he was asked for in Senate hearings
    &
    2/ (imo most important) the people at NBN Co actually believed in what they were doing ie. building a world class communications network to benefit the Nation for the next 60+ years!

    Clearly there are enough folks left at NBN who actually care about the country, unlike those leaches at the senior management and board levels who are just their to suck at the Liberal party’s corrupt gravy train for mates while actively destroying the real NBN!

    • That, and there’s no point leaking something that is already common knowledge, that simply reinforces what has been officially released *shrugs*

  12. as we head towards this year’s Federal Election, and Labor and the Greens increasingly ramping up their rhetoric on the NBN topic.

    Indeed, we may never see a Labor /Greens NBN policy in detail, the rhetoric smokescreen sometimes works , other times you can see straight through it and there is nothing on the other side.

    • What.. Like the LNP before the 2013 election?

      It is hilarious that from the entire article, you pick the one statement which has no bearing on the implications of what the article is about, and spin it to bring up shit that is completely unrelated to the article and the state of the MTM.

      Classic Black Kettle.

      Besides, the Greens policy is clearly written on their website.

      • I believe Labor has also committed to going back to FTTP should they win. Their policy is pretty clear too.

        • Are they keeping HFC?

          Are they retrofitting all existing FTTN residences with FTTP?

          Is the FTTP rollout speed going to much better than their previous failed effort, a rollout admitted to by Clare as being too slow and by Conroy as a overly ambitious construction model, because umm err it just will be this time when we have a second go, trust us.

          This and other crucial answers coming to a Labor NBN Policy Mk2 document real soon now.

          • “trust us.”

            I trust neither party to rollout the NBN any faster than its current snails pace, but I will take the party that actually has the foresight to build a network that will last 80-100 years, and not the one who wants to strand us on copper technology on its last legs.

          • This and other crucial answers coming to a Labor NBN Policy Mk2 document real soon now.

            Or they could just lie their arse off like the LPA…

          • Tinman_au it’s not lying because it can be revised lol

            Which has been pretty well everything the LPA went to the last election on :o)

          • Indeed, the Labor 2007 pre election policy had no resemblance to what they implemented, Labor could have a pre election policy 2016 with a stop the FTTN restart FTTP model, do a 12 month review and say we are implementing a MtM model, the costs are too high and a FTTP rollout will push out targets unacceptable to punters waiting on their ADSL replacement from 2017 onwards.

          • No reality unlike the coalition. Labor had an FTTN policy in 2007 and after an expert review went to the 2010 election with FTTP

          • Labor nearly lost the 2010 election but avoided a hung Parliament and limped in thanks to the Greens and independents, they took NBN FTTP into the 2013 election also, the electorate had the history of six years of NBN rollout to look at and it was rejected, and the Coalition won with a clear majority and a alternative NBN policy was implemented.

          • Reality the 2013 policy is the same we have now is it wonder what they would have done going in to the election saying there policy would cost $56B not the $29B they claimed.

          • @ alain.

            Labor nearly lost, but didn’t and according to Peter Reith FTTP was a large part of why they didn’t lose…

            Fact hook baited. I now await the typical nonsensical response…

            BTW – well done, unlike last time, at least you remembered the greatest day of your life in Sept 2013. lol.

            You’re welcome

          • Reith said the NBN might have had a effect on the result in one seat in Tasmania, Bass in 2010.

            Never mind Bass was won by the Liberals in 2013 with a swing of 10.8%.
            But of course the NBN had nothing to with it in that election.

            Thanks for giving me the opportunity to outline the facts.

          • As I said –

            “Fact hook baited. I now await the typical nonsensical response…”

            And there it was… PRICELESS.

            Hung parliament – result in one seat makes no difference says you… if you can’t work even that out, no wonder the big issues are way beyond you.

            You’re welcome

          • Your forgot what happened in Bass in the 2013 election, oops, never mind I fixed it for you.

          • Just can’t let it go can you… it’s delicious.

            Now back to 2010 again, as I and oh look, Peter Reith were referring to.

            But if you feel the need to ridiculously mention 2013 again, that would be just as delicious.

            You’re welcome

    • How much more “bad news” will it take for you to finally
      admit that this was a bad idea based on deception……
      …….reminds me of that chap…”Don Quixote of La Mancha’ –

  13. Cameron Park.. New suburb house from 1.5yrs ago.

    Connected to nbn December

    60 days.. 20 days up time.

    Told i have to wait another 3 weeks for a visit to my house. Get a tone on my phone. Last month problem solved at node or exchange… O

    Modem twice has had another users credentials uploaded to it. Same login but a month apart. Not even listening to symptoms.. Put a call in have to wait a month!

    Made me try other modems which I have to pay for. )..

    Rang telstra complaints and they had hide to say id downloaded data in those 10 days so I should be happy. No home phone or internet for 60 days.. Yeah real happy.

    • Just how toothless is the TIO in situations like this? Is there a point to this office even continuing to exist in LNP land?

  14. NBN is now leaking like a sieve. Not really surprising, there is a limit to how much bullshit the employees can tolerate from Morrow – I’m surprised it’s taken this long….. Hopefully they will stop construction completely and someone can actually do it right after the next election.

    • Which is a interesting view because Labor stuffed up, the Coalition have apparently stuffed up, so I guess the someone is someone else, perhaps we need a NBN Party. ?

      • An NBN Party? As long as they follow your ridiculous logic about what the NBN should be right?

        If anyone formed an NBN Party with the sole goal of rolling out XX infrastructure and you wanted YY infrastructure, you’d be right back here complaining and bitching about them, defending the Coalition and ragging on everyone else once again.

      • No. They should stop dropping in nodes, stop HFC remediation, and stop buying copper. They should concentrate solely on Satellite and Fixed Wireless, which even they probably can’t screw up.

      • By “someone” I was actually referring to a Board of Directors with a modicum competency.

        • Slightly off-topic. I am in an electorate where the LNP supporters hate the Greens and ALP so much they will always preference them last. Unfortunately for the LNP their primary vote is too low to ever get a candidate elected. What this means is that I can tactically vote to use the LNP preference flows to get the candidate I want elected. It has worked the last 2 elections, and will work again later this year. Given the right circumstances it is possible to game preferential voting in one’s favour.

          • “wow your one vote must have some clout.”

            Right wing loons love to trot around the idea that one vote means nothing, because they hope to get those on the left of the political spectrum disillusioned that they just don’t vote, leaving only those on the right voting.

            Sure, 1 vote out in millions is proportionally a small amount, but if 50% of the population all think their “vote” doesn’t matter, you’ve lost 50% of the votes. All because of the lie trotted out by those on the right trying to convince people their “one vote” means nothing.

          • @Reality
            You fail to understand what I am saying. Because it is easy to work out how the LNP voters are preferencing almost everyone in my electorate knows how to use the preference flows against the LNP.

  15. Hi,
    Agree, major problems with the roll out, I live in Lake Macquarie and while Telstra has sold me an NBN plan, but when it comes to deliver they advise technicians will call at an agreed time, but they do not turn up, ring the nominated case manager, not available, talk to a call center and they may get back to you, but not able to assist. So while I have signed up for the NBN, I am uncertain when I will actually be connected??

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