Wishful thinking? NBN CEO says HFC will do 30Gbps, FTTN 5Gbps

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news The chief executive of the NBN company this morning claimed the top-end speeds for the company’s HFC cable network could be as high as 30Gbps and that its Fibre to the Node network could do 5Gbps, but without providing any evidence as to why this would be the case.

Under Labor’s previous Fibre to the Premises model for the National Broadband Network, which is the majority of the infrastructure that the NBN company has deployed so far, the top-end speeds available have been 1Gbps.

This represents speeds at least ten times faster than those available under most of today’s broadband networks in Australia, with the HFC cable networks operated by Telstra and Optus, and the Fibre to the Node network operated by TransACT in Canberra, generally topping out at about 100Mbps.

The NBN company is also currently deploying Fibre to the Node infrastructure around Australia, as well as extending and upgrading the HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus. Currently, those networks only allow speeds of up to 100Mbps.

Previously, the NBN company has stated its belief that the HFC cable networks could be upgraded to allow speeds of up to 5Gbps, with the latest modems supporting the DOCSIS 3.1 standard coming out of vendors in the United States.

However, speaking to a Communications Day conference this morning, NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said eventually speeds could be much greater.

Morrow told the conference that the G.Fast standard would allow FTTN infrastructure to reach speeds of up to 1Gbps, and that the XG-Fast standard had the “potential” for 5Gbps “and beyond” speeds.

These speeds could be eclipsed by HFC, however, according to Morrow.

The NBN chief executive told the conference that the DOCSIS 3.1 standard could allow speeds of 10Gbps over HFC cable networks, with 1Gbps upload speeds, and that “Full Duplex DOCSIS” had the potential to offer 30Gbps symmetric speeds up and down.

These speeds could be even faster than the NBN company’s existing FTTP networks, Morrow said.

The executive said the GPON standard for FTTP would allow 1Gbps speeds, while 10-GPON would allow speeds of 10Gbps and beyond.

When it came to the NBN company’s Fixed Wireless and Satellite technologies, Morrow said future upgrades were also possible on those different forms of infrastructure, with “Advanced Antennae” and 5G allowing speeds beyond 100Mbps for the Fixed Wireless networks (currently limited to 50Mbps).

And “Terabit” satellite was on its way, slated to allow 100Mbps speeds for the NBN company’s satellite infrastructure, Morrow said.

However, Morrow did not provide any evidence or references for his claims, so it is not clear what reference material the NBN chief executive has based his claims on. Some of the claims do not appear to match consensus views in the telecommunications industry.

For example, it is generally understood that FTTP infrastructure, contrary to Morrow’s apparent view, has the potential to offer significantly higher speeds than HFC cable infrastructure. In addition, the G.Fast standard is not purely applied to FTTN infrastructure; FTTN rollouts generally need to have their fibre component extended to achieve the full speeds which Morrow mentioned with respect to G.Fast and XG.fast.

opinion/analysis
I’m not going to say that Morrow is wrong in his claims with respect to the potential future speeds to be offered over the NBN network. I’m not a technical expert — just a journalist.

But what I will say is that they don’t match with what I understand of current telecommunications industry consensus.

For example, it was only in November last year that NBN executive Dennis Steiger was in the United States examining HFC cable modems capable of a theoretical maximum of 5Gbps. I do not believe that this technology has advanced so fast that people are seriously talking about 30Gbps symmetric speeds over HFC cable infrastructure.

It’s a similar case with the NBN company’s own FTTN infrastructure. Sure, the NBN company has already tested G.Fast speeds of close to 1Gbps … but that was over a tiny copper loop within an existing building, not over the company’s much more far-flung FTTN network. Can we really say that FTTN is going to go to 5Gbps any time soon, without extending the fibre very far into the NBN last mile copper network? I don’t think so.

In my view, it is irresponsible of Morrow to put these figures out into the wild … when there really is no potential to achieve them anytime soon.

What do people think? Is Morrow on the money, or blowing smoke with his speed predictions?

Image credit: NBN company

188 COMMENTS

  1. NBN Co seems to have a policy of muddying the waters when it comes to any of the technologies that use existing copper lines to deliver services, it’s very common for them to refer to FTTB as FTTN “because it uses the same technologies.”

    I guess FTTdp is covered by that umbrella now to, which helps them make performance claims that are unobtainable without replacing the vast majority of the existing FTTN equipment.

    • In a technical sense they are correct: FTTB is FTTN, end of story. Where the node is located doesn’t change the fact that it’s FTTN, and it’s fair to say the term “FTTB” has mostly caught on for the sake of marketing it as a better product (which it is).

      …now, I am playing devil’s advocate a little here. All of the above would be relevant if NBN considered them one product internally, but they don’t. Or at least, don’t appear to from the documentation available. They’re grouping them together in stats and statements for one reason only: because FTTN is rubbish and they’re relying on the easier rollout and short copper of FTTB to make it look passable. But we all knew that :)

      Putting FTTdp in the same category would be *really* disingenuous though. The end result is still “UNI-DSL” I suppose but the actual infrastructure will be completely different from what FTTN has.

      • In a technical sense they are correct: FTTB is FTTN, end of story.

        Right. So if we make nodes smaller and put them in homes we can still call it FttN rather than FttP. Sign me up.

      • Morrow is already implicitly including FTTdp in their “FTTN” umbrella by saying that “the G.Fast standard would allow FTTN infrastructure to reach speeds of up to 1Gbps, and that the XG-Fast standard had the potential for 5Gbps and beyond speeds.”

        There is no way that G.Fast or XG-Fast can supply those speeds using true FTTN, the average copper length is just too long, to go this route the shorter lengths of FTTdp or FTTB are needed.

          • Just remember though, that those speeds are aggregate speeds. Thus you get 1Gbps total speed, which you then split between Down and Up.

          • It’s not just distance, it’s also cross-talk.

            FTTdp is fundamentally different as the ‘node’ is located at the point where the trunk like splits into the lead-ins, rather than the aggregation point as they are with FTTN. None of the pairs are bundled in the same cable for any distance, so no spectrum management is used to prevent cross-talk. That means that simply switching FTTN to FTTdp wouldn’t provide any benefit, since it would just cause more cross-talk.

            So yes, they would need to push the fibre a lot further into the network, and build a whole lot more nodes. But you have to question whether it’s worth it. Like Fifield said, every time you change the plan, you have to dump everything and redesign it again from scratch, so why bother spending all that time and expense on an incremental upgrade. More likely they’ll just do what they always do, and make it someone else’s problem by selling it off at the earliest possible point.

            Morrow is just blowing as much hot air as he can, in the hope that it justifies his exorbitant salary in the eyes of his government overlords.

        • There is no way that G.Fast or XG-Fast can supply those speeds using true FTTN, the average copper length is just too long, to go this route the shorter lengths of FTTdp or FTTB are needed.

          Indeed, Mr Morrow is hyping it too much.

          From http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2431234/bt-achieves-5gbps-broadband-speeds-over-copper-in-xgfast-trials

          While still in the early stages, BT has been quick to boast that the technology has already exceeded expectations, delivering average speeds of 5.6Gbps over 35 metres of cable and speeds of 1.8Gbps over 100 metres.

          it seems like a lot of money to be spending for people within 100 meters of a node, especially when the node will be 750-1km away for most folks.

          • A minimum average of at least 350m in Australia per node, given each node requires 350m of copper to connect from the node to the pillar. Then each house is connected to the pillar.

            That alone puts XGFast out of the equation for FTTN in Australia.

    • But, but, but there’s an election in the wind so once again we have to gold plate the turd that we’re offering same as last time when they told the masses Faster, Cheaper, for all by 2016 etc etc.

  2. They are over building FTTN in HFC areas. HFC goes down for days and Telstra do not bother to notify people. Any copper line, the downtime is excruciating and you waste time and money. It’s always when it rains too. You have to waste the whole time monitoring the network.

    Business know copper is a joke because they have suffered months without connections because Telstra treat them with contempt. A business SLA and no internet.

    HFC can’t do such things unless all channels are allocated to it so clawing back from Foxtel. Only one person could do it at one time and will get congested very quickly.

    FTTN is a toy joke and does not compare to HFC really. Both are a joke compared to fibre.

    They treat the whole thing including the economy as some kind of joke to mess with. A fascist experiment by people who have no idea. They can’t just trial and error things to avoid fibre .

    Their ideologies know no expense and no end.

    • “or blowing smoke with his speed predictions?”

      100% smoke and he should know better like Daniel said:

      “HFC can’t do such things unless all channels are allocated to it so clawing back from Foxtel.”

      That’s a very good point I forgot about Foxtel. Seems those upgrades definitely won’t happen before 2026, unless foxtel decide they don’t like cables earlier.

  3. I guess they can’t explain the evidence that only 1-3% of users in the UK can get 75mbps. And BT CTO said it was a mistake.

    Also is this up and down ? Uploads is more important than downloads. And one person only able to get it is a bit of a swindle.

  4. Lab tests best tests!

    Don’t worry with 25Mbps the min I’m sure we’ll see and ‘Up to’ 30/30Gbps sometime soon™!

    A start for MTM would be to be able to guarantee 100Mbps to users consistently. Inconsistent performance for same price isn’t a great selling point atm.

    “The executive said the GPON standard for FTTP would allow 1Gbps speeds, while 10-GPON would allow speeds of 10Gbps and beyond.”

    Also both of those are fairly dated 2015 standard: NG PON2 (40Gbps) is probably what he should be comparing too if you want current standards against pie in the sky future ones. Just becase MTM say on its hands for 3 years and counting doesn’t mean the world stopped turning.

  5. They are all the same, it’s not just those ideologically blinded posters here who contradict themselves…

    We only need 12mbps

    We can get 30Gbps

    FFS.

    • Meanwhile in the real world 79% of customers on fibre are choosing 25Mbps or slower, the number on 100Mbps is down from 19% to 16% in the last 12 months and zero people have connected to a plan faster than 100Mbps.

      • So Mathew with the MTM expecting 65% on 25Mbosor less has failed too and we should have just rolled out adsl2 since we only need 15Mbps

      • And in Mathew’s little world of one 2010 estimation being his life for 5 years, where 50% were going to be on 12mbps…

        How’s that going for you Mathew?

        Well?

        Also since you are the estimation king (lol) did you ever answer what percentage was estimated for 100mbps in 2016?

        Well again?

        Anyway keep arguing over speed estimations, whilst advocating the “clever Liberals” manipulate AVC/CVC to discourage people from choosing faster speeds to justify yout backward argument and their retrograde MTM debacle.

        You’re welcome.

      • @Matt

        And if they all want a faster speed next week, how will anyone but FTTP users get that?
        As the rest of the world moves to FTTP, server speed will necessarily increase. This is especially true as they expand server centres and cloud infrastructure around the world to meet that need. The difference between us and the rest of the civilized world is that they will be in a position to take advantage of it, and we will have to wait an extra 5-6 years at a minimum.

        We need to look at countries that are successful with their communications structure…
        Since the mid-1990s, the South Korean Ministry of Information and Communications has pursued a policy of high-speed telecommunication infrastructure as a foundation to build a “knowledge-based society.”
        Commensurate with its investment funding, the government implemented various policies designed to increase internet use among the general population. The government provided “internet literacy” lessons to homemakers, the elderly, military personnel, and farmers. In June 2000, the government implemented what was known as the “Ten Million People Internet Education” project, the purpose of which was to provide internet education to ten million people.

        This is one of our competitors in the Global Economy, and as the market for selling our rocks to the world wanes, they will eat our lunch without breaking a sweat…because they have a Government that is preparing them to do so.
        And we should add to that list most of the rest of our Asian neighbors (and NZ as well…)

      • I suspect you are correct and I would not be surprised if people are downgrading from 100Mbps plans and of course nobody is connected to plans over that because they don’t exist in the real world or at least at any ISP I have been looking at.
        I will start on a 100Mbps connection when FTTN comes to my town but if my connection can only get up to 25Mbps I will be moving to that speed as I should only pay for what I get.
        As soon as people find out what the maximum speed is in town I will expect that anyone connecting will only connect at a speed tier no more than one step higher than the max speed here and then downgrade their plans when they are disappointed by the speed.
        FTTN and replacing copper for copper is actually a good idea for this government as they were saying nobody wanted 100Mbps connections and they will be able to show that nobody on FTTN is on 100Mbps connections. Unfortunately the reason they won’t be on it is because it won’t exist for most people.

      • @Mathew:
        I’ve subscribed to the fastest connection I can over FTTN (FTTB really) which is 100/40. There is no faster connection option available (for non-FTTP links), which is probably why there are zero people connected at anything faster. I believe even those on 100/100 – which is a 250/100 throttled connection – will still count as only a 100.

      • This is only because the wholesale pricing has made higher speeds unaffordable for most Australians, so no RSPs offer them. It would be a lie to give any other reason for choosing lower speeds.

      • So why does Morrow say that HFC can do 30Gbps and FTTN 5 Gbps if such speeds aren’t rewuired?

      • Meanwhile in the real world 79% of customers on fibre are choosing 25Mbps or slower, the number on 100Mbps is down from 19% to 16% in the last 12 months and zero people have connected to a plan faster than 100Mbps.

        And you think it’ll always stay that way Mathew? I guess you must, otherwise you wouldn’t be pasting it to every post you make?

      • Can’t expect much else Mathew when the tech illiterate masses are constantly bombarded with TV advertising “Get an Unlimited NBN Plan” (@12mbps in the fine print) its hardly surprising that most are on the lower speeds the big players are pushing. I suspect there’s less investment & more profit in offering unlimited 12mb/s than 200GB 50mb/s plans.
        Many such as myself presently on higher speeds are considering it a waste of money when widespread network congestion frequently slows those “Superfast MTM Services” down to a buffering crawl during peak periods.
        My present 50/20 FW service consistently performs well on speed tests but struggles to show any improvement to my previous 25/5 for the extra $26/mth investment.

  6. Potential = weasel word vs FttP is capable of those speeds without question.

    5gbps on FttN would assume FttDp so that would mean GimpCo are intending to lump FttDp in with FttN just as they have FttB. How every convenient.

    oh wait, is this GimpCo admitting faster speeds are needed yet again. I wonder at what point will they also admit the FttP rollout was correct and wasting time trying to exhaust current infrastructure just political.

    • HC… even the mindless minions are steering clear of this one…

      Well until they receive the “official memo” on how to approach such stupidity..LOL

    • Its as if they think they are trying to get a 100mph from a moped or die in the attempt.
      Stupid people.

    • No admission, they’re just using it as a reason to dismiss FTTP as a necessary upgrade, even in a relatively long term outlook.

  7. G-Fast and XG-Fast would be great…. with FTTdp. With FTTN and copper loops of 800-1000M? Hah….. Right..

    • The 57 Gbps is talking about the data rate possible using a single wavelength and a low cost laser.
      Standard (very cheap, commodity) transceivers do 10 Gbps for a single wavelength.
      High end commercial systems with many wavelengths such as those used in long haul subsea cables manage about 10 Tbps (i.e. 10000 Gbps) on a single fiber (256 wavelengths x 40 Gbit/sec on each wavelength).

      I doubt there will ever be a use for home broadband connections faster than 40 Gbps.

      • “I doubt there will ever be a use for home broadband connections faster than 40 Gbps.”

        You know you’ve just joined an esteemed pile of people who have forever underestimated human innovation! ;)

        quoted for posterity too ;)

        • “it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future…”
          40 Gbps is a lot. It’s enough to move all the computing to the cloud, with just the display – even a big 3d display – and input in the home.
          Exactly where innovation will occur is hard to pick. There are plenty of cases where predicted improvements failed to occur. For instance, in the 1960s it was widely believed that supersonic passenger jets were the future, and the Boeing 747 was developed as an backup plan.

      • Just to fill you in, nobody ever saw the need for 128 Kbps either. Nor paved roads. Sydney would only ever need 1 airport as well.

        And lets not forget those round earth crazies…

        As Simon says (no pun intended), there is a constant underestimation of what we will need, particularly when it comes to moving stuff around, whether its ourselves, or data.

        Old data set. From roughly 1999 onwards, the speeds we’ve needed (or even just desired) has doubled every year, and whenever extra capacity has come along, something has filled it fairly quickly.

        Why do people think that will just stop overnight?

        • I don’t think it will stop overnight. I think it will slow down once home broadband speeds get to about 10 gbps.

          • Again, no disrespect, but thats the same thing we’ve been told over and over. It was the 8 Mbps speeds of ADSL, then ADSL2’s 24 Mbps, T1 cable, and so on. There was nothing capable of using all that speed.

            In the meantime, iTunes came along with its streaming music, then social media filled the gap, then it was general connectivness (think IoT stuff), and now we’re looking at Netflix.

            If we had stopped when the last generation was saying “I think 8 Mbps is enough for any household” (circa 2000), where would we be? That was maximum speed, not typical speed.

            The biggest issue with that sort of thinking is that you start running out of ideas. Its been shown repeatedly that just because people cant think of a use doesnt mean others wont.

            To put it a different way, the same mentality drives the Liberal belief that 15 Mbps will be plenty in 2025…

          • When it comes to exponential growth, the one thing you can be certain about is that at some point, it will stop.
            If you don’t like the supersonic passenger jet example, consider computers. They are still improving, but much slower than they were 15 years ago.
            Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe demand will continue to terabits/sec. Fortunately there is nothing riding on my predictions.

            And by the way, I think it is perfectly clear that 15Mbps will not be anything like sufficient in 2025.

          • David I do believe at some point we will start to see the curve but so far it hasn’t even surfaced

          • Fair point with computers, but Id argue that its still going, only in different areas. With multicores and GPU’s theres as much increase in speed as ever, its only spread across numerous processors.

            I know I’ve gone from 1 device on my router to around 15 since I bought my place. Same speed, its shared across so many things its ridiculous.

            I’ve been using computers since well before the internet was A Thing, and the one constant has been people underestimating the human desire for consumption.

            If anything, we’re only STARTING on a big speed drive as we start realising what streaming and VR can do. Those are data hogs in waiting.

          • “I know I’ve gone from 1 device on my router to around 15 since I bought my place. Same speed, its shared across so many things its ridiculous.”

            This. Back when I was a loner living with a flatmate, we had 2 devices using our internet connection.

            Now I am married with 2 kids. I have. 2 Desktops, 1 Laptop, 3 Phones, 3 Ipads, a VOIP device, and a Android set top box.

            Not only that, but back in the day the connection was used for surfing the web, gaming and a little bit of video at the time.

            Today, we regularly have me gaming on my PC, my wife watching netflix, my son gaming on his ipad, my daughter watching youtube on her ipad.

            The usage is changing, and as more and more entertainment services move to internet as the source, and the internet of things start dialing back all over the place, this is only going to be more prevalent.
            In addition, I expect that these services will increase in need, higher bandwidth to get higher quality, (as well as good old bloat)etc. I imagine at some point actual video phones will become commonly usable, rather than the cool sometimes used thing that they are now.

            And then on top of that, we have the new things coming. Look at VR. Facebook bought occulus for a reason. They wanted in on the ground floor of the VR stuff coming out. As that tech becomes more mature, you are going to get people experimenting and bringing out new techs relating to it. Imagine multiplayer gaming using VR.

          • Too rightv Wolfe, our family is the same only I checked our router the other day and discovered we have cracked 30 devices on or network with a paltry 12/1 mbps Intenet pipe!

            We have a bunch of IoT devices included in that too including a pair of nest thermostats, wemo light switches etc.

          • Yup, and thats part of what I meant about consumption filling capability. We’re behind on this, and until we reduce copper to 10m or less will remain behind.

            Something Labor said in 2009 when their reports recommended bypassing the bottlenecks and going straight to FtTP. Instead, the bottlenecks are more powerful than ever.

        • 28.8kbps was fine for me a while ago.
          100Mbps should be fine for me now.
          I don’t know what speeds I will need tomorrow.
          The average family will need at least a video feed for 4.3 family members at whatever the highest video bitrate needed is for the technology of the day at least. Today it is 4K and tomorrow is 4K3D and the next after that will be a data connection faster than a PCIE16x bus.

          • There are plenty of applications that need bandwidths in the 100s of Gbps – I’ve created some myself. However, they all require sub microsecond latency. Your hard disk (Gbps required, ms latencies) can be moved from your house to a datacenter, but the RAM (up to Tbps data rates, 100ns latency) cannot be moved without also moving the microprocessor/GPU.
            10 Gbps is enough to stream a minimally compressed view of a 3D world with 360 degree viewing. Much higher bandwidths will be needed to process that data, but only between processors and memory with low latency (i.e. physically close together). Once the guts of your computer is entirely in the cloud, the need for increased broadband bandwidth will taper off.
            At least that’s my prediction. Only 10 years to wait to see if it’s right !

    • “I’ll see your 57 thingsmies per time period for fiber and raise u eleventy billion whatsits per nano dum for taught string …….. Bwahahaha!!!” (Dr Morrow – Brownmember)

  8. Morrow quotes the top end speeds of full duplex docsis at 30 Gbps for HFC, then plays down NG-PON2 that can achieve 80 Gbps with fibre. Typical bullshit and spin as usual.

    • +1

      played up gfast abilities too… S.O.P. for this mob, over promise, under deliver!

  9. Morrow throwing out big numbers defending the MTM and an election is coming. Nah, just a co-incidence! ;)

  10. Wow I am speechless with these clowns distorting the true nbn and putting in fraud mtm.

    The more crap they sprew out now. The more ammo in the future for a royal commission. There really needs to be a full investigation on this fraud they are rolling out.

    The citizens of Australia should start a class action against the LNP and MTM. They are literally rolling out fraud networks that completely goes against technology experts and laws of physics. Why even assess technologies if they just want to roll out whatever their mates demand.

    I am speechless, this clown is comparing HFC a shared medium against a solo fibre that is dedicated and capable of 80gbps. Whatever Mitch is smoking he should be drug tested and revoked of his CEO position. Looks like he is very deillusional and just does whatever he pleases.

  11. NBN CEO says HFC will do 30Gbps, FTTN 5Gbps

    Spoken by B. Morrow. Authorised by M. Fifield, Liberal Party of Australia, Canberra.

  12. Election mode in full swing. Morrie billing for an lnp win.
    In big trouble if they don’t..

  13. Morrow is clearly smoking the same illegal substance as the rest of the Coalition clowns!!!

  14. It’s possible to do those kinds of speeds over HFC or twisted pair, but only by running fiber very close to the premises and replacing every bit of active equipment in the network. There’s no way it would save money compared with running fiber.

    • But the aim is not to save money. We all know the best and most cost-effective way to do it, but the aim is a quick and dirty Sam’s Warehouse network because we’re splitting it up and selling it off as soon as is practical.

    • Considering cat 6 can barely manage 10GBE over 50 metres with 4 high quality, shielded copper pairs Morrow is clearly smoking crack if he thinks 5 gbps is possible over a single low quality UTP line!

  15. Of course this would have nothing to do with an election in just under 3 months…

    We saw exactly this type of obfuscation before the last election.

  16. 5GB/s over 500cm of copper. I’d believe that.

    Seems MTMco have used magic to side step the shannon limit.

    • I’d expect 500cm of copper could handle 5Gb/s. 5 meters isnt the longest distance in the world.

      500 meters on the other hand…

      • If the Clownolition stay in for long enough I am sure we will see 100Gb/ speeds over 100mm of copper. Gotta keep that copper goodness in the loop at any price.

  17. Tell him he’s dreaming. Or perhaps tripping!
    Or maybe just demonstrating what he will do or say at the request of his two shareholders. Including trying to make a sows ear look like a silk purse.

    Imo Morrow has no credibility whatsoever.

  18. Since Morrow has made us climb the Stairway to Fraudband Hell, such joke technology should go down like a burst Zeppelin balloon:

    “In my thoughts I have seen
    Rings of smoke through
    the trees
    And the voices of those
    Who stand looking for internet”.

    Apologies to such a fine rock band for using them to show the bastardised Fraudband of Morrow, Turnbull and clown friends. But your song above was the only way to explore the 19th century hazy, smoky mindscape of these Luddite lunatics.

  19. Renai, this wasn’t written on April 1 and because of the blistering speed of FRAUDBAND/NODAFAIL™ just managed to finally get to us all today, was it?

    ;)

  20. I have a friend visiting from Afghanistan, and he can’t wait to get back because the INTERNET IS BETTER!!!

    Which fiber number do you want;
    57Gbps ERROR FREE over 1Km, Single core single signal.
    255 TBps over single core (multi wavelengths, retransmit)
    or 1.8PB over 200km and 12core.(multi wavelengths, retransmit) (BTW that is 1,800,000GBps)

    Cant wait for that 5Gb HTC

    Once you have the glass you just upgrade the modems.

  21. Obviously an election has been ‘almost’ announced.Morrow is just making sure he will still be employed after 2nd July. I expect to see in the news headlines next ‘Morrow out kissing babies’ and ‘Copper cable cures lame man’…. sorry I think the politics at the moment are encouraging an over developed cynicism tendency.

  22. It’s also quite possible that ONE DAY we will be able to fly to the moon in less than 24 hours!
    It’s highly probable that One Day Snail Mail will be faster than the MTM!
    and if we upgrade pigeons to have bigger wings they will be faster than drones.

  23. Morrow is full of shit and it is time for him to go. He is a snake oil salesman.

    5Gbps from FTTN? Get real, every significant increase in bandwidth from copper has involved shortening the copper loop. Very basic physics explains why.

    NBN Co is rolling out FTTN today with loop lengths in the 800m to 1200m range, there is no bloody way we will see 5Gbps (presumably aggregate bandwidth) at those loop lengths.

    For a guy that is CEO of a company that is meant to be technology agnostic he spends a lot of time talking about future technologies that are not commercially available or simply don’t exist yet.

    It seems Morrow is not technology agnostic at all, he is focussed on one technology in particular, that is ABF… Anything But Fibre

    • This article from Mark Gregory has a nice graph that shows bandwidth vs loop length.
      http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/9/25/technology/technology-could-turbocharge-nbn

      I think this helps illustrate why Morrow is pushing shit uphill if he thinks 5Gbps is achievable on FTTN loop lengths.

      Whenever anyone mentions FTTdp, G.fast or XG.fast as future high bandwidth access technologies I implore them to ask how? How will the copper loop be shortened to reach those speeds?

      It pretty much means more civil works, which is the main cost of FTTP. Doing it in 2 or 3 goes is a guaranteed way to make sure it costs more than going straight to FTTP and also means it will be slower.

      • The article you linked to, did I see Richard the flat earther from here making ridiculous statements there?

        • Yes… that’s him… the self proclaimed legend, who could have been commissioned to write MTM, as it ticked all of the boxes.

          Now there’s an embarrassing admission, seeing how fucked MTM is and we told him it would be at ZD years ago, when he first beat his chest about “his” plan.

          PRICELESS

          • What’s priceless is Rizz, Hubert and Jason K having a conversation as the same person.

            lol

          • Reality, provide your evidence of sockpuppetry.

            Oh right, you have none, shut up.

          • Reality, provide your evidence of sockpuppetry

            Don’t mind him R0ninX3ph. Must be suffering from separation anxiety since RR left (Possible suicide??? We still don’t know). Now he can only look to the MM for comfort :-(

          • Wow suicide!

            Funny I was right with all my points, “expert” wrong. As posted, no nothing’s here. Little to learn.

          • “Funny I was right with all my points, “expert” wrong. As posted, no nothing’s here. Little to learn.”

            Care to show any evidence that anything Morrow has claimed is anything but fanciful brain farts with no basis in reality?

            No? Okay.

          • @ HR, damn…

            And I actually argued with you, my faux pas.

            Because unlike you (you, now proven correct)… I was willing to give Richard more credit, as I believed Richard was way more intelligent than the other mindless MTM yes men here and couldn’t possibly be stupid enough/would have more class, than the other imbeciles, to bite, when so obviously prodded…

            Seems however, I overlooked the dented narcissistic ego syndrome…or I was just wrong he isn’t any more intelligent and has no class?

            Yes $1 is owed to you Mortimer :(

            So welcome back Richard. How’s MTM travelling…?

            Daily fuck ups, cost more than doubling (over the promised fully costed plan, now to $70B according to the former Treasurer), 4 years behind the promised “for all Aussies by the 2016” and now hints that they will admit FttN is the shit pile we told you and them it was and they may abandon FttN for FttDp…

            GOLD

            Please add your pearls of wisdom (i.e your rewrite of history, matched with complete ignorance of the MTM shemozzle) and tell us all (including those rolling out the shit pile who want to alter it) how wrong you were…

            GO…

          • dropped in, read the usual bile (suicide?) in comments from the usual posters. Not surprising, probably many more.

            NBNCo continuing as expected, policy a folly. Yet MTM, despite delays, still an order of magnitude faster to deploy than FTTP. Interestingly, reading the later soon to be dropped by Labor.

            Link above demonstrating their ignorance, university professor with limited tech understanding and no commercial
            Experience.

            3rd fin update will be interesting, don’t worry it won’t be understood here.

            More expense to come for the few of us net taxpayers. Several years ago posted the future of technology is unknown, progress isn’t. Right again, but the iPod sales men and non-IT posters don’t even know enough to acknowledge it.

            Back to the bile…

          • LOL…

            Thanks Richard… even’s HC… I just got my dollar back…LOL

            Oh the bile, the bile, woe is me.. the bile… *sigh*. Nothing ever changes it’s all about Dick… Anyhoo…

            Err Richie, FRAUDBAND is SUPPOSED to be quicker and cheaper, that’s the trade off/dumb excuse, for letting us poor Aussies eat cake… I.e giving Aussies cheap, nasty, retrograde and fucking ridiculous BS MTM…

            But you beat your chest because it’s faster, says you? Der…

            In actuality it ISN’T faster (remember – for all Aussies by 2016) aand some 4 years behind that promise. Cheaper – it ISN’T either – $70B (according to their previous money guy).

            FFS there are 1000’s of Aussie who would have had FttP by now, so how TF can you look them in the eye and legitimately claim this pile of shit MTM you wrote, is quicker?

            In fact YOUR plan is such a debacle (gee like we told you years ago, it would be) that even the Gov are considering canning your shemozzle and introducing FttDp…

            Where was that in your plan Dick? Which totally acceptable NOW, revision was that in?

            You’re welcome, too

          • Seems however, I overlooked the dented narcissistic ego syndrome

            Indeed Rizz, this was your mistake. Take into consideration why he “left” to begin with and just assume he’s still reading and the rest will fall into place. I’ve seen this behavior on many forums before, the bigger the ego the quicker they return, you just have to hit the right notes ;-)

            In fact YOUR plan is such a debacle (gee like we told you years ago, it would be)

            Indeed. Plan he endorsed an unmitigated disaster couldn’t figure it out back then even when tried to educate him (with the obvious) yet calls everyone else ignorant. Unbelievable (well not really, just that aforementioned big fat ego again)

          • Lol Richard

            30K in 7 months is faster than FTTP priceless

            so since as you state not such thing as a ramp up for FTTP we can expect this 2k a week rollout us as fast as FTTN going to get.

          • I got a chuckle yet sense of progression, from this comment H (umm whatever)… err, Hubert :)

            “NBNCo continuing as expected, policy a folly…”

            So the plan our dear friend said he could have written, he now describes as a folly…

            Seems it’s unanimous…just as we told him years ago… FFS!!!!!

            So why TF didn’t he just agree with us 5 years ago, when we told him MTM was a folly, as he did just now and save himself all of this humiliation.

            Oh of course, this again proves that the L(l)ibertariian, far right, do hindsight ok, but foresight = no!

            At least we can be glad he has realised in hindsight, with our invaluable assistance and our “foresight” Hubert :)

          • Poor old ‘Back to 2013’ fan boys still hanging onto the past while the NBN debate has well and truly moved on.

            Clare’s NBN criticisms fall flat as industry tires of technology debate

            “This is a multi-technology mix. I don’t care what technology they deploy. I think it’s a secondary debate, and one that’s not important,” said Vocus COO Scott Carter.

            “It’s not a debate that I need to be having. Technology will change. Technology does evolve.”

            http://www.zdnet.com/article/clares-nbn-criticisms-fall-flat-as-industry-tires-of-technology-debate/

            The MtM mix will continue beyond election 2016, the MtM mix is the correct solution to give residences across Australia faster BB in the shortest time utilizing existing infrastructure to do this.

          • Ah good old Baldrick, still trying and failing to think, being rational just isn’t something you’ll ever master, points for trying tho.

          • Lol devoid when a technology rollout blowout by $27B nothing is wrong with the technology

          • And just when we thought the debate couldn’t dumb down any further following Dick, the 2003 (CCCC) copper cretin contradictory child alain, who when his contradictions are confronted always disappears tail between legs, … again decides to open his mouth before engaging the mouse/wheel… FFS.

            Hellooo McFly… MTM never included FttDp. Show me a link to the Libs Broadband plan pre (or even post 2013) where it does…GO.

            And YOU never supported FttDp… you supported and still support FttN… DON’T YOU? Go on spit it out…

            Stop trying to infer that by NBN™ and this Abbott left over motley crew of far right, centre and in-betweeners, (probably in toto the most inept gov ever) dumping the shitty FttN/FRAUDBAND (we told you was shitty FRAUDBAND) that they are just doing business as usual…

            NEWSFLASH: if they introduce FttDp instead of FttN they are admitting FttN is not good enough, not fast enough – ouch – and just plain dumb (oh exactly as we told them and you) so thanks for now admitting we were right…

            You’re welcome – thank you, come again.

          • Keep playing the FTTP pantomime complete with puppets all you want, swear a lot, dish out abuse and deliberately misquote figures and cook up fantasy scenarios.

            Meantime in the real world the NBN MtM keeps rolling on, it will keep rolling on if Labor win Government, and the band of brothers MtM haters will keep on swearing and abusing for another three years through to 2019.

          • Lol devoid with its super fast 30k in 7 months it’s going to take another 75 years to complete the FTTN part.

          • Hi Dickpuppet alain,

            Who has again entered the fray to help out his alter ego Dick (WINK) …

            We can all play games eh alain…but I do so in jest, to humiliate your stupidity, whereas you do so in fear and desperation, eh dickpuppet…

            Anyhoo..

            “Meantime in the real world the NBN MtM keeps rolling on”

            Yes it does, dickpuppet…

            It rolls on fucking slower than anynone envisaged slow could ever be (particularly for the supposed FASTER network… FFS).

            Being some 4 years behind the promised for all Aussies by 2016 (so snail MTM) and some $40B (according to eleventy) over budget, so here’s the golden, Ferrari network you were all sobbing about in 2010- but now instead of a golden Ferrari, we are receiving a fucking ’74 Datsun 180B for the same or more and it’ll take longer to get it.

            You’re welcome dickpuppet.

  24. It is common consensus amongst telco engineers in the HFC world, that a QAM256 carrier, 8mhz wide, EURODOCIS3.0 can deliver approx 50mbps.

    Assume a 20% increase in spectrum efficiency by moving to D3.1 with OFDM (being generous here…), and you are looking at 60mbps per ‘8mhz block’ (as OFDM D3.1 doesnt really deal with carriers in the traditional QAM sense anymore..)

    Ok, so 60mbps/8mhz….lets do some stupid-simple arithmetic.

    30,000mbps / 60mbps = 500 carriers.
    500 carriers @ 8mhz wide each = 4ghz.

    Last time I checked, the forward path in D3.1 is restricted to a range between 200mhz to 1.2ghz…..and thats not to say anything about how many carriers a cable modem could even lock onto.

    His claims are incredibly damaging to his credibility.

    Steigers claims of 5gbps are FAR more reasonable, at only approx. 666mhz of spectral space required to hit that speed.

    • “His claims are incredibly damaging to his credibility.”

      He is a snake oil salesman, he has compromised the role of NBN Co CEO by his overt politicisation of the role.

      The only motivation for such ridiculous claims could be political in nature IMHO.

      “Steigers claims of 5gbps are FAR more reasonable, at only approx. 666mhz of spectral space required to hit that speed.”

      That is the difference between a politics and engineering.

      • The only motivation for such ridiculous claims could be political in nature IMHO.

        Cant help but agree with this, coalition clowns picked someone they knew would be an obedient little puppy dog.

        btw loved your your tweets destroying GimpCo & Karina Keisler today Cameron.

    • Nice figures Charlie but don’t forget about Foxtel. NBN cannot transmit or use anything that will interfere with them and this highly restricts what HFC can do!

        • So…… Cable television on the HFC doesn’t use spectrum on the cable? Good to know!

        • like charlie stated bandwith is based on spectrum that can be transmitted along the HFC coax cabling.

          Foxtel have reserved a portion of this to transmit cable TV. In addition the high power data signals also need not crossover and cause any interference with those signals (similar to ADSL/VDSL issues).

      • I didnt bother with foxtel, as there simply isnt 4ghz available in forward path docsis spectrum to begin with…

        Foxtel does consume around 16x8mhz worth of space currently, not a huge ammount, and still far far FAR less than other HFC networks around the world. NBN have a relatively lucky situation in that the plant is for the most part well designed and maintained, and sparsely populated.

        But not 30gbps worth of sparesly-populated…

  25. Don’t take any notice of Morrow he’s just fucking with your head, just ignore him and hopefully in a couple of months time he will disappear ‘poof’. 51/49

  26. If he’s talking about what is possible in lab studies then FTTP’s potential is measured in Terabits/s.

    It’s the usual partisan propaganda. Which is bloody disgraceful when they are toying with infrastructure critical to the nation’s future, and tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.

  27. Hey HANG ON,,what’s going on with Skymuster for the rest of us???
    When are us rural people going to start getting connected?
    All gone quiet on that one.

    • It’s all good ….. Your “Terabit” satellite is ‘on its way’…… From planet Upto.

    • Your friendly nationals have to connect all the edge cases MTM cannot cope with first. Then the bush will get whatever is left over which won’t be pretty.

      Just ask Tassie’s west coast how they feel they’re now ‘rural’. I guess at least in their case they’ll be getting something rather than being completely ignored.

    • Give a RSP dealing with satellite a call (Skymesh will certainly be able to give at least a vague answer going by nbns databases) and ask what the status for your area is.

      People have been able to sign up for the service for many months now, which officially gets switched on before the end of May. There is a waiting list to be connected however. If your area has been confirmed for satellite then you’d best get on to it asap.

  28. NG-PON2 can provide 160Gb downstream and 80Gb upstream, which effectively provides for a dedicated 5Gb downstream and 2.5Gb upstream per user on a 32 split.

    HFC – 30Gb and FTTN 5Gb, tell him he is dreaming.

    If he can achieve those speeds, I will eat my hat.

    • I have no doubt that XG-Fast will be able to deliver 5Gbps over a suitably short line. Problem is, that line will need to be so short that the fibre will have to be delivered to inside almost every property .. Let’s call it Fibre to the Letterbox.

      At that point you might as well just put a GPON Fibre ONT in the “letterbox” and use Gigabit Ethernet from there (seeing as it’s good for 100m.) You could even power the ONT from the house using PoE …. or just run the fibre the extra 20 damn metres inside the house!

      VDSL2 profile 30a offers faster speeds than 17a under about 500m
      G.Fast offers fastes speeds than 30a under about 250m
      XG.Fast will offer faster speeds than G.Fast under maybe 100m
      ….
      I am sure that one day, someone will create a DSL variant that uses a few GHz of bandwidth to offer 40Gigabit speeds over ~10m of plain copper pair. It, too, will be most unsuited to use in the NBN.

  29. As an engineer, HFC networks have a lot of potential. They are essentially a co-ax waveguide, which means a shirt load of bandwidth and you need to start applying nyquist and other formulas to find the theoretical maximum – future standards would be able to take you to very large numbers. The rub or the unknown is whether it can be applied to the NBN. It will depend on a bunch of things like the quality (noise loss) in connections, the length of cable segments, etc. but they are things that can be remedied “relatively” cheaply in the future. The expensive part is getting cable from the street into some point inside the house. FTTdp is fascinating because it exploits the existing copper pair into the house. i.e. remember when DSL was invented it moved the modem from far away to the exchange so the signal didn’t have as far to travel, hence enabling greater bandwidth. FTTdp takes it one step further where the modem moves from the exchange to the pit/pole outside the house. A similar thing would be possible for HFC.

    As for the potential in FTTN potential – that’s a bit harder to say. It all depends on the length of the run, the number characteristics of the original copper (joints, rate of twist, number of adjacent pairs that introduce noise, etc). It’s essentially DSL but moving the exchange a lot closer to the premises. Twisted pair was never designed for such high frequency and high sampling rate stuff.

    The two things I can’t figure out are:

    1. Why they would persist with FTTN when FTTdp is essentially available. Their FTTN deployment introduces a problem (see point 2) and still doesn’t solve the problem of the water logged cables in the pits out the front of peoples houses. (FTTdp solves these issues) Many of my parents and our phone line faults are due to the segment between the pit out the front and the pillar that picks up the large cable to the exchange. It also solves the problem of getting power to the FTTN node. Others were from the paper clad (water logged) cable from in the streets between the pillar and exchange.

    2. Why the FTTN deployment has the new cabinet co-located to the pillar which connects to the houses. i.e. They are introducing a new run of cable, which means more joints, etc. I would have thought they would be replacing the pillar itself with the FTTN node they terminating the pairs to the houses in the node. There will be some situations where they are constrained by space, but that wasn’t the case in the video delimiter host a few days ago.

    • “Many of my parents and our phone line faults are due to the segment between the pit out the front and the pillar that picks up the large cable to the exchange. It also solves the problem of getting power to the FTTN node.”

      While you’re entirely right, being right doesn’t mean you’re right… in the minds of the resident LibTrolls or LNP Party Members. Being right is entirely subjective for them.

    • MTM has to accommodate Foxtel’s signals and not interfere as well, most of these lab assumptions use 100% of the coax because there’s no cable TV to worry about.

      As for your #2 the node cabinets are crammed pack full (they only aren’t if they are on the edge supplying to a limited number of homes). They had to shrink these things down from double fridge size to get them close to FttP ones and I’m guessing had to make some bad compromises in the process.

      • Nah, the cabinets are the size they are because if they were bigger and served more users the users furthest away would not even get 12/1 let alone 25/5

        The cheap and nasty management would love to have fewer cabinets and more users per cabinet tobsave $$$, but not even they are prepared to do that.

        This highlights a basic truth of Broadband over phone lines, there is no speed upgrade unless there is a shortening of the copper line length.

  30. “So international capacity for the next five years or 10 years is going to be cheaper than the CVC charges … there is no way it should be cheaper to get connected from next door – premises/ pillar/ node/ … – to the POI next door than it should be to go trans-continental. That’s just crazy.”
    Amongst talk of nbn’s charges, especially CVC, nbn DG musings of all sorta speeds, new use cases, oh dear. Look over here?
    PMG mk2/ PMG lite/ nbn means too many broadband access eggs in the one basket.
    No mention of a third satellite.
    Fixed terrestrial wireless dollars would be better used for mobile blackspots.
    Let’s see if the next fed gov can get Comms/ IA/ ACCC together with industry (like across the ditch seems to have done) and sort this mess. Let’s see if lessons from offloading Aussat (with something like more than three times debt over equity) or privatising Telstra (vertically integrated Telecom/ OTC) in the nineties have sunk in.
    In 2016, despite NBN first featuring at the 2007 federal election, there is no more clarity how and what nbn will deliver over wired FTTP (2.5GPON not 10G NG PON2), FTTx (which TPG seems to be able to do $20 to $30 a month cheaper), FTTDp (be it VDSL2/ G.Fast, surely trial data can be provided to policy makers, given there is an election on), HFC or wirelessly (fixed only 50/ 5 to 20 Mbps, satelllite only 25/ 5 Mbps with 150 GB quota?) by when.
    My old home in Holland, 30 kilometers from Amsterdam has a choice of wired fibre (500/ 500 Mbps) or HFC (250 Mbps), my home in New Holland, 30 kilometers from Sydney at best can get HFC (100/2 Mbps, which now is often congested with trace routes early morning showing a few hops at sub 30 ms, post 15:00 this often heads for those same hops at 500 ms or more each).
    It’d be best if nbn were refocused on the extended metro and regional copper/ fibre transition, and HFC (FoxTel, NC, ?), fixed terrestrial wireless (BigAir, SingTel Optus, Telstra, TPG, Vodafail), and long term satellite wireless (Inmarsat does 50 Mbps, Winds of Japan has shown 155/ 6 Mbps, others are positioning) split off.

  31. Their twisted logic isn’t even logical. We don’t need these speeds but there is a theoretical upgrade which will provide these speeds that we don’t need and can be provided by existing technology now. Okay.

    • = they’re mad as hell. They make statements that don’t fit together and then hope no one joins the dots!

  32. hellooooooo! There is an election coming later this year so Morrow will clearly do and say anything to make Turnbull’s mess look better than it is to all the numpty voters out there who will actually believe this dribble.

  33. So there is a election later this year and what makes you think a Labor NBN Co will pull down the HFC and overbuild it with FTTP or FTTdp?

    • They probably won’t, but that doesn’t make fanciful statements about fanciful future technologies any less fanciful.

      • If nothing else there are contracts in place that will have to be honoured so HFC has to stay on for at least next 10 years (for Foxtel) even if its overbuilt by something else for the NBN’s purposes.

    • But I’m not surprised by your usual “LOOK OVER THERE” response to anything negative regarding your LNP Overlords.

    • The main clue is that no work begins on the HFC until after the election. Morrow, for all his fanciful jazzdance, knows it’s a poison pill.

  34. Just before the 2013 election the NBN rolled out 1Gb plans that actually existed, now just before the 2016 election Morrow is rolling out HFC 30Gb and FTTN 5Gb plans that don’t exist.

  35. Haven’t had time to read all the comments, so apologies if I’m repeating anyone.

    Morrow is very disingenuously comparing a theoretical future copper technology from maybe ten to twenty years in the future, against the FTTP that’s being installed right now. He ignores the fact that many of the same techniques used in compression and high frequency signalling that allow advances in copper communications are also applied to optical signalling, where the benefits are an order of magnitude greater (because the usable frequencies are so much greater). By the time they’re pushing 30gbps over HFC domestic fibre will be carrying 1tbps.

    The entire point of this unhinged brainfart from Morrow is to attempt to give them (and the LNP during an election campaign) a veil of legitimacy when claiming the abilities of FTTN and dismissing FTTP as a necessary upgrade. They’ve (the LNP) been doing this since the NBN kicked off – remember all the ‘wireless’ nonsense, claiming 4g was faster than the NBN and made the entire project unnecessary? Yeah, we haven’t moved on from that, not by a long shot.

  36. Vodafone seem to be doing a lot better these days and are no longer Vodafail… I wonder why?

    Enter Nodafail™

  37. It’s probably already been said, but I’ll say it: it will be a major achievement to give everyone 50Mbps on the current rollout that’s supposed to tide people over until next decade, at least, for that price tag. Right now it’s pretty touch and go, with some speed tests on Whirlpool below 40Mbps.

    We’re relying on imagined future technologies to make infrastructure costing $50 billion + ongoings for phase one look OK? No one knows if there will be a phase two at all.

  38. Hahahaha! Those speeds on copper? Keep dreaming Morrow. I want what this guy is smoking. There is no point talking of potential speeds to make the MTM look impressive. It isn’t and never will be. Say it were possible, I would really like to know how they plan to reach those speeds using MTM and the cost since Liberals always focus heavily on that. Without showing us how they can deliver this, it means SFA.

  39. Sure, a handful of houses with short cables right next to a node can get gigabit with a g.fast card and modem, perhaps multi-gigabit in the future.
    And maybe the future does hold multi-gigabit total bandwith on coax. But remember coax is a shared medium, it’s unlikely one customer will have access to all that bandwidth!
    Fibre to the DP depends how long the cable into the house is. Yes, it can be upgraded to g.fast and possibly v.next, giving a reasonable trade off between speed and not tearing up gardens.
    But if you’re after bandwidth, the reality is the fibre can achieve 10gigabit now, for everyone, regardless how long the cable is. Which is a much more Australian way of doing things.

    • But you forget one thing….. FTTP disrupts Telstra/Foxtel/Big businesses heavily invested in keeping the status quo… Thus the LNP were never going to do it for everyone.

      • Interesting theory, please expand on why not rolling out FTTP helps Telstra/FOXTEL/Big business, and how they have ‘heavily invested’ in keeping the status quo (whatever that is).

        • Because if they roll out FTTN to areas…. Telstra can overbuild lucrative areas with their own FTTP infrastructure?

  40. Morrow says alot of things not many if any of them are the truth, remember he also said that those gas pipes wouldn’t burst… HAHAHAHAHA

  41. The thing that most people are forgetting here is that you desktop machine at the moment is only capable of really running at 1Gb, and that is 1Gb flat chat to max the connection out. Data centres will run at 10Gg backbone. 100Mb is the happy central. While it would be nice to have these faster speeds, the hardware at the moment is kind of stuck.

    Am looking forward to the HFC roll out. ADSL is pretty bad at the moment at only 10Mb.

    It is weird to think though, that I came up with the idea what is now essentially ADSL in 1991 when I was at university. Got told I it wouldn’t work because the theoretical maximum in books was stated. Gave up in the end, and then ADSL appeared.

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