The need for speed: there’s still time to fix Australia’s NBN

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This article is by Mike Quigley, Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing and Communications, University of Technology Sydney and founding chief executive of the NBN company. It originally appeared on The Conversation.

opinion/analysis A National Broadband Network (NBN) based on Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) was, and still is, the right answer for Australia’s broadband needs.

Compared to the original FTTP-based NBN, we are currently on the way to a much poorer performing broadband network with a mix of FTTP, fibre to the node (FTTN) and other technologies. It will entail increased long-term costs and be completed at about the same time as the original project would have been completed.

Around the world, the direction in which new builds of fixed broadband networks are headed has become clear. The world is increasingly moving towards FTTP. As a consequence, advances are being made in FTTP technology that make it cheaper and easier to deploy.

These developments, which have taken place in the last few years, have only reinforced the rationale for basing Australia’s NBN on FTTP.

Not too late to change

It is not too late to change the current direction of the NBN, but that change would need to be made in a controlled and managed way to ensure the project is not subject to another major disruption.

Why has it been so hard to get at the facts regarding the costs and timing of the FTTP-based NBN? The answer, as we all know, is that the NBN project has been from its inception a contentious political issue.

Initiated by the Labor party back in 2009, it was a good example of a government being courageous enough to initiate a large and complex project for the public good.

The original NBN was a visionary project and would have created a valuable asset for the Australian public. It didn’t take long, though, for the attacks on the project to start.

But the fact – confirmed this week – remains that over the past three years, Australia’s world ranking for average peak connection speeds dropped from 30th to 60th. We shouldn’t have been happy with being ranked 30th in the first place.

Yet the drivers of faster speeds and capacities for fixed broadband have not abated. Quite the contrary.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows internet usage has been increasing over the years, from 191,839 terabytes downloaded in the month of December 2010 to 1,714,922 terabytes in December 2015. That’s nearly a ninefold increase in five years.

What’s more, Cisco is forecasting that global broadband speeds will nearly double between 2015 and 2020.

From megabits to gigabits

That’s why the debate in the United States and Asia is about gigabit per second speeds, not about whether 25MBps or 50Mbps is sufficient.

It is a bit surprising that we continue to hear the argument that nobody is buying a 1Gbps service today, so why build a network that can deliver that much speed? 25Mbps to 50Mbps is more than enough.

This has been a mantra for the Coalition, and it was supported in the view by the Vertigan committee, which was set up to review the NBN. In its final report, the committee assumed that the median household would require only 15Mb/s by 2023.

It seems especially curious that a government that styles itself as the innovation and infrastructure government should argue this. Because this argument betrays a complete lack of understanding of what the original FTTP NBN was all about.

It was about providing the vital infrastructure that Australia needs in order to remain competitive internationally in the 21st century.

It is arguable that, today, most homes and businesses can get by with speeds of up to 50Mbps. But already there are many home-based businesses that can’t and are demanding 100Mbps or more.

Gigabit services are just starting to emerge elsewhere in the world, so the applications that can take advantage of this type of speed are in their infancy. But we all know they are coming.

To spend billions of dollars on building a major piece of national infrastructure that just about meets demand today, but doesn’t allow for any significant growth over the next ten or 20 years is incredibly short-sighted.

It is such a pity that so much time and effort has been spent on trying to discredit and destroy the original FTTP-based NBN plan. Equally, it’s a pity the Coalition has put its faith in what has turned out to be a short-sighted, expensive and backward looking multi-technology mix (MTM) plan based on copper.

The nation is going to be bearing the consequences of those decisions for years to come – in higher costs and poorer performance in an area that is critical to its long-term future. Betting tens of billions of taxpayers dollars at this time on copper access technologies, as the Coalition has done, is a huge miscalculation.

The number of telcos still focussed on squeezing out the last bit of value from their old copper networks continues to decrease every year. Even the UK’s BT, which has been the poster child for FTTN, is now planning to increase its FTTP deployment, in part as a response to pressure from the UK regulator, Ofcom.

Come the election

No matter what the outcome of the upcoming election, the original vision of a broadband network built largely on a future-proof FTTP solution is now going to happen over a longer period and at a greater cost to taxpayers.

The Coalition is likely to continue with the FTTN and Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) deployments and the peak funding is likely to be in the range of A$49 billion to A$56 billion. It will take a “heroic” effort, as NBN Co’s chairman Ziggy Switkowski has said, to have the network completed by the end of 2020.

Just when the FTTN equipment will need to be upgraded to provide higher speeds is an unknown but given what is happening overseas, it is unlikely to be very long. No one has yet made public the estimated costs of this upgrade.

Should the Labor party win the election, we can expect a managed transition from FTTN to FTTP, increasing the number of premises served by FTTP by about two million.

Given what we now know about the deployment costs of FTTP versus FTTN, I would not expect this transition to FTTP to make a big difference to deployment costs or timing of completing the NBN. It will result, however, in a network that is a step closer to the desired end state.

While it is impossible to turn back the clock on the MTM, it is still possible to make changes to the current direction, without introducing another major disruption. Changes that will get us closer to building the right network for the long term.

It is becoming increasingly obvious, especially to customers, that an NBN based on FTTP is a much better network than an MTM-based NBN from every angle – speed and capacity delivery, maintenance costs, reliability, longevity and upgrade costs.

An FTTP network would be a much more valuable public asset and could generate greater cash flows for the government due to lower maintenance, higher revenues and almost no upgrade costs. And it would be vastly superior in driving growth through the wider economy.

So it is a great pity that before making the shift to the MTM, the Coalition did not heed the words re-quoted by the then independent MP for New England, Tony Windsor: “Do it right, do it once, do it with fibre.”

By Mike Quigley, Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing and Communications, University of Technology Sydney This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

99 COMMENTS

  1. Really ? What about those slated for FTTN and condemned to ADSL for decades ? The Liberals have been going crazy the past 6 months purely to sabotage any plan to undo it.

    • If the rest can be migrated back to FTTP, those that are stuck on FTTN should be able to kick up a stink to get changed out.

    • On a pure NBN FTTP network, 79% chose 25Mbps or slower and the number on 100Mbps has declined each year.
      https://twitter.com/NBNBenefits/status/745971917966848000
      According to Turnbull on QandA the number on 25Mbps or slower has risen to 84%.

      Despite 1Gbps being announced in August 2010 and availability of wholesale plans since December 2013, not a single RSP is selling plans faster than 100Mbps. Labor’s prediction is that in 2026 less than 1% will have a 1Gbps connection. Compare this with Singapore who are aiming for 7Gbps average speed!

      I suggest focusing on the social before the technology.

      • So, in 2026, what is the percentage on speeds greater than FTTN can provide, 40-50%?

        But your one track mind couldn’t deal with that I guess.

      • Wow.

        By your reasoning, as most people only drive around the city at 60km/hr, we shouldn’t have 100km/hr on the freeway. Building freeways to be safe for traffic travelling at this speed is therefore a waste of resources….

        • You’ve used an incorrect analogy as everyone can travel at the speed limit on the freeway.

          The NBN speed tiers mean you have an 8 lane tollway and to drive at a faster speed you need to pay a premium. In the fast lane for a premium you can travel 83 times faster than the majority in the slow lane.

          • You’ve used an incorrect analogy as everyone can travel at the speed limit on the freeway.

            Well, everyone but those on the end of an FttN tuktuk node…

          • It is a perfect analogy.

            Why bother offering 100/40 when those who are 300+ metres away from the node will only ever get 50 or even less.

            A waste of resources would be investing in a technology that is a lottery, doesn’t guarantee a speed and doesn’t provide a return on investment.

            Lucky Malcolm’s solution provides clear time frames and hasn’t doubled it’s cost /sarcasm

  2. Silly Mike, doesn’t he know that 79% of the current users are choosing 25Mbit or slower? Doesn’t he know that means that looking to the future, if people want faster, they can just pay $10,000+ to get FoD?

    Doesn’t he know that he himself predicted only 1% of people will want 1Gbps in 2026? Silly silly Mike.

    There you go Mathew, I wrote your post for you. You don’t need to repeat your bleating mantra again.

    • You’ve completely misrepresented Mathews position.

      This isn’t anything to do with NBNCo or Mike Quigley, it is Labor that are the ones at fault here r0nin, Labor and *their* plan for only the 1% to have gigabit.

      • Labor and their plan for only 1% of customers to have gigabit, but they didn’t decide ahead of time which 1% it was going to be.

        Sadly, not those in the fixed wireless or satellite footprints, but there was talk, originally, of using revenue from the NBN to expand fibre coverage further out, once the main build was complete.

        You can be sure the Liberal Party would just see that as a waste, because high profits are there to be returned as dividends to investors, not to expand services to ‘uneconomic’ customers.

      • According to the Libtrolls, Mike Quigley is a “labor shill” so, whatever Labor said, Mike said, and vice versa.

        My statement stands.

        • I guess my /s wasn’t implied hard enough. (Thats one of the laws of the internet)

          Was really just trying to point out how we all love Mathew’s tunnel vision and he is only capable of accaking Labor over the plan they have had no control over for the last 3 years.
          Never once that I have seen ever mentioning that perhaps the Liberals should modify their plans in any way ever.

          Thinking about this comment thread, it makes me a little sad that now we troll ourselves with the troll arguments :/

          • I learnt a long time back (BBS days :o)) that “typing” isn’t a good medium to get things across unless you actually do that (the “/s”, though I’d use “/sarc”), unless you leave a verbal cue, most people will take you at your word :o)

            Seems odd for the internet, but /shrug

          • “I learnt a long time back (BBS days :o))”

            Those were the days, my friend. ?

            In 1984 I started accessing BBS with a Commodore64 and a 300 baud Cicada modem. LoL!

            In 1987 I was a sysop and ran a Mustang Wildcat BBS on an IBM PC XT compatible with a FidoNet feed.

            Part of the BBS was for public access. The other part was for client support as my company was implementing LAN/WAN and a Novell NetWare Authorised Reseller

            FidoNet is still alive
            https://www.fidonet.org/

    • My favourite quote from Quigley on 1Gbps implies that Labor wasn’t serious about offering the plans.

      “The reason we announced one gigabit was simply because when the government said you’ve got to provide at least 100Mbps, Google at the time made an announcement that they were providing 1 gigabit in the US. And suddenly we went from a situation facing [those] in the media saying ‘what on earth does anyone need 100 megs for?’ to saying ‘this is already redundant, it is already out of date, you can’t do one gig’,” he told a Parliamentary inquiry into the benefits of the NBN in Sydney this morning.

      My second favourite quote is Quigley confirming that Labor’s financial model means that Low-income users denied NBN benefits
      “With the quality of high definition that you’ve got, being able to come across this sort of a network, you could easily have a quick hook-up and actually work out, ‘OK, do I need to take him to hospital, or could we keep him at home?’,” Mr Smith said.
      But when The Australian approached Senator Conroy and Mr Quigley to describe the level of service users could expect at lesser network speeds, they said high-definition video conferencing was not possible on the NBN’s most basic package.
      “You certainly can’t do high-definition video service on a 1 megabits per second upstream — it’s impossible,” Mr Quigley said.

      • So what does that say about the media who would say those things about the Labor NBN Model that “couldn’t do 1gig” and yet they don’t say it about the Coalition model that can barely do “100meg”.

        Notice anything there Mathew? No? Right, because you’re a hard right LibTroll.

        I guess the Australian is completely balanced reporting to you, right?

        • By accusing the media of bias you are either dodging the issue or accusing the media of falsely quoting Quigley. I doubt that Quigley would have let the quotes stand if they were untrue.

          I deliberately selected two quotes from Quigley so that we can discuss them.

          My point is that there is a wide chasm between what you perceive Labor to be promising on the NBN and the reality of what has been delivered on FTTP. Based on Quigley’s comment most on the NBN are not receiving the benefits Labor promised.

          • “By accusing the media of bias you are either dodging the issue or accusing the media of falsely quoting Quigley.”
            “Based on Quigley’s comment most on the NBN are not receiving the benefits Labor promised.”
            reading comprehension what is it

          • You completely missed my point.

            You’re a hypocrite. Plain and simple.

            It is perfectly acceptable to you that the Media lambaste someone you don’t agree with, but it is fine that they don’t do the same to someone you do agree with. You are a hypocrite, like the rest of your LibTroll friends.

        • Notice anything there Mathew? No? Right, because you’re a hard right LibTroll.

          His actions are speaking louder than his words…

      • “My favourite quote from Quigley on 1Gbps implies that Labor wasn’t serious about offering the plans.”
        My favourite thing about your favourite quote is that you completely misunderstood it.

        My favourite thing about your second favourite quote is that the low income earners that used to be on the cheapest available ADSL2 plans they could get could easily afford higher than the minimum NBN plans (with change to spare each month) on the Labor-era pricing model.

        Strike three anyone?

        • Looking at Internode’s plans it is debatable which is cheaper at lower quotas. At higher quotas the NBN is more expensive.
          * NBN: $49.95 for 50GB @ 12Mbps
          * ADSL2+ $59.90 for 250GB (include phone)
          * NBN: $69.95 for 500GB at 12Mbps
          * ADSL2+ $69.96 for 1TB (naked)
          * ADSL2+ $79.95 for 1TB (includes phone)
          * NBN: $89.95 for 1TB at 12Mbps

      • My favourite quote from Quigley on 1Gbps implies that Labor wasn’t serious about offering the plans.

        Of course not Mat, they wanted everyone of 12Mbps right? Or better yet, 6Mbps, that’s why they spent many billions on building the NBN, right? To give something lower than what they could get from ADSL2+….

        You’re being a dick mate.

        Fess up you hate Labor, start bitching about the LPA sticking to the same plans or get your hand off it…

        • > To give something lower than what they could get from ADSL2+….

          Apparently so considering that when my parents eventually connect unless they pay a premium it will be slower than their current ADSL2+ connection

          As for 1Gbps, another quote from Quigley fresh today in The need for speed
          “When we made the announcements in 2010 that the NBN could provide 1Gb/s speeds it was not because people wanted or needed those sort of speeds at that time.”

          • Yeah, and when my father in law got the NBN, he was more than happy to get a solid 25Mbps after putting up with <5Mbps with his ADSL before he passed away from prostate cancer.

            Would you like to keep trading anecdotal stories?

          • 25/5 Mbps is quite adequate for general residential broadband use for email, web browsing and 4K TV.

            As part of the 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission voted to change the legal definition of “Broadband” by raising the minimum speeds needed from 4/1Mbps to 25/3Mbps for the sake of 20% of the population who don’t have access.

            Speeds less than 25/3Mbps are not legally considered “Broadband” in United States which means it disqualifies ADSL, ADSL2+

            FCC Commissioner Rosenworcel said.
            “”I think our new threshold, frankly, should be 100Mbps.””

            http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-broadband-25mbps

      • You don’t think FttP can do 1Gbps? Hokay

        My second favourite quote is Quigley confirming that Labor’s financial model means that Low-income users denied NBN benefits

        They probably would be, until the NBN could at least pay for itself. I’m not sure you’ve noticed, but the LPA is dragging Australia more to the US stlye of things , taking the hammer to Labor, and not suggesting alternatives like the Greens or several other minor parties, is just handing that to them.

        It’s a real shame that, knowingly or not, you’re actually harming what it is you say you want…

        • > They probably would be, until the NBN could at least pay for itself.

          By which stage the world will have moved on to even faster speeds. One of Labor’s fundamental blunders may have been to place NBNCo off the budget with no government subsidy.

          > It’s a real shame that, knowingly or not, you’re actually harming what it is you say you want…

          For me personally FTTN or FTTP doesn’t make a difference as it is likely the whole street would convert to fibre if given the opportunity. For the 85% on 25Mbps or slower it doesn’t make much difference.

          • One of Labor’s fundamental blunders may have been to place NBNCo off the budget with no government subsidy.

            But that’s not an LPA blunder, right Mathew?

            For me personally FTTN or FTTP doesn’t make a difference as it is likely the whole street would convert to fibre if given the opportunity.

            I personally don’t give a flying fuck, I already have 100Mbps. Unlike you, the only reason I post in support of other people getting it is that I really do thing those that want to work for it deserve the chance to get it.

            You’re the one that always cries that Labor didn’t give it to you and they, but NOT the LPA, are doing it wrong. Newsflash son, the ALP haven’t been running it for three years and given the current polls, won’t for another three years. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you want actual change, but you’re doing a great job if your just shilling for the Libs.

            Are you still going to be crying about the ALP after 6 years and not actually doing anything else about it?

            Have you started that petition yet?

        • “You don’t think FttP can do 1Gbps? Hokay”

          LMAO

          Have the Australian right wing nut jobs redefined Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) standard specification?

          Have they informed the ITU-T?

          WooT! Woot!

  3. It seems especially curious that a government that styles itself as the innovation and infrastructure government should argue this. Because this argument betrays a complete lack of understanding of what the original FTTP NBN was all about.

    Of course it does, the coalition clowns rely on votes from those with a complete lack of understanding. It’s easy to fool the bogans into thinking their broadband plan will be adequate for the future, when they hear the innovation and infrastructure buzzwords they cant help but be impressed.

    • It’s almost like Malcolm wasn’t telling the truth about being an actual “Innovation Prime Minister”, isn’t it Hubert?

    • It appears even easier for Labor to fool fibre fanbois into thinking that the NBN will be cheaper than ADSL plans and that they will have a 1Gbps connection even after Labor published a corporate plan that makes it clear this will not be the case.

      If you think the corporate plan was conservative, please provide examples of this.

  4. I looked up my region for when I’m getting the NBN. Seems FTTN is planned for Q4 2016. Looks like I’ll be stuck on FTTN even if Labor get in, as they would impliment a gradual change, so i suspect its too late to change.

    Perhaps I could send the bill to upgrade to FTTP to Turnbull. He’s rich enough to pay for a bunch of people. Wikipedia says he’s worth $189m, so at $2000 per household, that’s 94,500 premises he could pay to switch to FTTP.

    I would consider this the minimum compensation for how he royally screwed Australia’s network infrastructure over.

    • Don’t forget to drop back in after it’s installed to let us know how “good” it is!

    • Welcome to the club! Also in the group getting FTTN this year (apparently). Looking forward (not) to being stuck in internet backwater for the next 20 years.

    • “I looked up my region for when I’m getting the NBN. Seems FTTN is planned for Q4 2016. Looks like I’ll be stuck on FTTN even if Labor get in”

      If Labor are elected only *current* (work-in-progress) FTTN deployments will be completed. After that there will be no further FTTN deployments.

  5. A quote from Mike’s address:

    “Speaking at Parliament House in Canberra, Robb claimed that by virtue of being a government-owned company, NBN Co would be unable to attract quality staff ….”

    Does he mean like the Australian Submarine Corporation, canoe fabricators?

  6. “Given what we now know about the deployment costs of FTTP versus FTTN, I would not expect this transition to FTTP to make a big difference to deployment costs or timing of completing the NBN.”

    Disgracefully disingenuous. Every published actual shows the comment untrue. Note, like the legion of fanboys, no numbers provided to support his fantasy.

    Worth remembering the general dysfunction of the time, another review of the man and project:
    http://www.afr.com/technology/what-went-wrong-with-the-nbn-20130920-j0dng

    • That article is full of unsubstantiated anecdotal ‘evidence’ and heresay. While some is no doubt based in truth given NBN was formed from the ground up, these kinds of things can be expected. NBN and the Coalition have not provided a shred of evidence to back these claims up, other than just repeating the same claims continuously. As Quigly has shown now, if NBN had the same ramp up for FTTP that they are expecting now with FTTN, the ramp up of the FTTP back in 2013-present would have been an entirely reasonable expectation.

      The article complains about construction delays:
      “Plans to reach 1.2 million homes and businesses by June 2013 – according to its 2010 plan – were downgraded to less than a quarter of that figure when an updated corporate plan was released in August 2012.”
      Funny how the exact same thing happened with the Coalition. Anyone would start to think these kinds of early delays are normal for large scale projects like this. Except the only reason they are meeting current targets is due to the previous FTTP work.

      Then there’s this statement:
      “Telstra is the captain’s pick for any significant changes to the network rollout. With a new, Coalition government promising greater efficiencies to the rollout, the company now can renegotiate its $11 billion deal, and gain construction deals.”
      Look how that turned out.

      • If such things can be expected why weren’t they in their CPs?

        FTTH didn’t ramp-up as forecasted (in fact barely at all). FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTH; one of its primarily advantages. Same speed (or cost) isn’t a reasonable expectation, actually absurd.

        Claim re targets is untrue; MTM significant portion of the ramp-up improvements.

        NBNCo is on target this FY to meet many of their CP16 forecasts. A first for the company. Quigley’s CP failures a matter of historical record.

        Obviously Telstra, being the largest and most competent telco infrastructure provider in Australia, was going to get a large slice of available contracts (pointed it out several months before the 2013 election). Conroy / Quigley rejected their approaches, choosing inexperience contractors. Look how that turned out;-)

        • “If such things can be expected why weren’t they in their CPs”

          Why wasn’t it in Turnbull’s election promises?

          “FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTH”

          And will last for less time than it takes to ramp it…getting it ramped up a few months sooner hardly excuses its extremely short lifespan.

          • Turnbull’s policy a failure (cost & timelines). Called out these risks before the 2013 election (and stated now actuals known).

            Claims re FTTN complete unsubstantiated rubbish & squealing. Actual NBNCo provisioned CVC is 1.05mbps across all technologies. 25x that figure could be delivered across all MTM fixed line technologies (without any upgrade) at a CPP (and time) 1/2 (FTTN) to 1/3 (HFC) of FTTH.

            Again the fixed line network would been complete today if not for Conroy/Quigley. Plenty of international examples (discussion banned), many moving to their next phase of pushing fibre further into the network for targeted (not ubiquitous) customers; Quigley (again) disingenuously claims as switching to FTTH.

          • NBNCo provisioned CVC per customermis 1.05mbps across all technologies.

            ACCC’s NBN Wholesale Indicators Report; a goldmine of actuals, destroying most of the squealers claims (demanded speeds, competitive tech performances, CVC / contention, increasing AVC, etc)

          • “Turnbull’s policy a failure (cost & timelines). Called out these risks before the 2013 election ”
            It’s as if you wrote this failure yourself!

            “squealing”
            “squealers”
            OMG BILE LIFE ENDING BILE

          • Turnbull’s policy a failure (cost & timelines). Called out these risks before the 2013 election (and stated now actuals known).

            It’s a real shame they didn’t actually read the plan you “wrote yourself” for them….they are idiots.

            Claims re FTTN complete unsubstantiated rubbish & squealing. Actual NBNCo provisioned CVC is 1.05mbps across all technologies. 25x that figure could be delivered across all MTM fixed line technologies (without any upgrade) at a CPP (and time) 1/2 (FTTN) to 1/3 (HFC) of FTTH.

            According the the ACCC report (that you posted, thank you), most people/premises (or at least 952,561) are on the upper Class 4 CVC (CVC TC-4, row 54, column d).

            And according to the NEBS Product Report, which says:

            Customer may order a CVC TC-4 or a CVC TC-1 or a CVC TC-2, or any combination of the three, in any of the bandwidth profiles set out in sections 2.2, 2.3 and 2.4. which ranges from 0 to 10,000Mbps.

            IKR, clear as mud, right?

            Perhaps if you link your source for the 1.05Mbps CVC claim, it may seem more clear. Or not.

            Again the fixed line network would been complete today if not for Conroy/Quigley. Plenty of international examples (discussion banned), many moving to their next phase of pushing fibre further into the network for targeted (not ubiquitous) customers; Quigley (again) disingenuously claims as switching to FTTH.

            According to Quigley (whom I believe a lot more than someone from an unrelated industry like you), they’d have been pretty close to finished within the next few years, and “sooner” than the MtM which put the whole thing on hold for 2.5 years (except for the build part that Mike had already planned out).

        • “FTTN is significantly faster to deploy than FTTH; one of its primarily advantages.”
          Then why is the MTM rollout delayed by 4 years whereas the FTTP rollout delayed by only 1, bringing them both to within 2 years of each other?

          There is nothing significant about this at all. You are clutching straws.

          “MTM significant portion of the ramp-up improvements.”
          Please explain how cancelling existing contracts and stalling all progress for 2.5 results in ramp-ups.

          Or are you saying the result after 6 months of work compared to the previous ‘0’ figure is a ramp-up? Because I wouldn’t be arguing in that case.

          • If only there was a graph showing actuals with an undeniable ramp-up that wasn’t “massaged”

            Fixed that for ya Classic ;-)

        • I wish you would piss off Richard. Your monotonous drone is boring garbage and quackery has been debunked a long time ago by authorities & experts worldwide.

          Unlike your make believe figures, Mike Quigley’s figures are spot on and valid. They also add up to figures from other telcos such as AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, Comcast and dozens of others currently rolling out FTTP in United States which Quigley also referred to.

          I also have European figures from Orange (formally Telecom France) and Telefonica as well as figures from The FTTH Council.

          The NBN ramp up worked as predicted, until Telstra disrupted and put the spanner in the works. Then along came Abbott and Turnbull and screwed the hell out of it. They couldn’t build a brick shit house and the project has failed. Suck it up!

          Perhaps will go down as the biggest tech project failure in world history and future generations will be reading about it in history lessons.

          You’ve got more myths rattling around in the vacuum in your skull then an entire Hans Christian Andersen library.

          Your antics remind me of history study I did once about 19th century English textile workers who protested against newly developed labour saving technologies. The protest movement where called L – U – D – D – I – T – E – S

          Smoke it backwater boy.

        • I bet you get your hairpiece from the same raccoon farm as Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

    • Hmm, you seem to assume figures when openly available from the NBN under Quigley are a lie, but figures without any data to back them up due to almost total secrecy from the current NBN management, even when leaks show them to be a lie, are true. Nice rosey pair of glass you have there.

      • Yet I quote from the (few) figures Quigley released as well as the (vastly greater) figures now available under Morrow. You, well, nothing!

        There’s not a single figure anywhere that supports Quigley’s ridiculous claim.

        • Yes, nothing from me. A quick message here and there when I have a free working is all the time I’ll waste on you. My company doesn’t pay me to be a party shill. Does yours realise they have been doing that with you for years now?

          • Yeah, I’ve been thinking that for a while now, when does Richard actually do any work at his “job”?

        • BTW, I’d take being called a shill as a complement, it’s a better option that if you really think as you claim.

          Really couldn’t be bothered arguing costs and times and politics with anyone. You especially with your waffling piles of crap. When it comes down to it the bottom line is what is being built isn’t adequate for the future and is a waste of money. Fibre has to get to the home at some point. No one has yet to give a good analysis of it being cheaper to do it incrementally. And I simply think your very short sighted to believe bandwidth requirements aren’t and won’t grow significantly. All that and I find you obnoxious. So if I can say anything to upset you, like seems to be the intention to others, fine. I suspect you can take it though, people like you develop a think skin over the years, besides you have the protection of your giant ego.

          • “Really couldn’t be bothered arguing costs and times and politics with anyone.”

            Can’t argue what they don’t understand. An figure-less squeal.

          • “And as Chief Pig, Richard knows what he’s talking about ;o)”

            That’s the sound that Richards dead pet pig makes every time he stuffs his dick into its mouth!!! ?

    • “Disgracefully disingenuous. Every published actual shows the comment untrue. Note, like the legion of fanboys, no numbers provided to support his fantasy.”

      Says Richard and his holy bible of “actuals” (which can be massaged, so they’re not that holy either).

      Y’know, you can tell who spreading falsehoods. They use absolute terms like “every” to support their own point of view to attempt to put their opinion beyond any doubt. Richard, for “every” example you provide, there is a counter example out there. So who is really the “fanboy” here?

      • How does one massage “actuals” (eg premises passed v forecast, activations, ARPU, …)?

        One counter example to the figures I’ve provided (rofl).

        • “How does one massage “actuals” (eg premises passed v forecast, activations, ARPU, …)?”

          Quite easily … by changing the terms of reference of what the actuals are. Y’know … like premises passed, which the definition was argued over when both Labor and Coalition governments were in power.

          “One counter example to the figures I’ve provided (rofl).”

          I don’t need to provide one, now that I’ve demonstrated that your “actuals” might not actually be as relevant as you think. This isn’t rocket science by the way Richard, companies and governments do this all the time.

          • I use the RFS definition as defined in Quigley’s own CPs. When comparing CP forecasts I use the actuals closest to them. Basic stuff.

            True they later changed their interpretation for public info release (not CPs) when their rollout failures were exposed. They then dropped using it and invented the Orwellian metric of construction commenced (not used anywhere else; meaningless).

            You don’t provide one, neither does Quigley. Actuals unkind to his (delusional) position. Not a single metric supports his claim, anywhere!

          • “You don’t provide one, neither does Quigley. Actuals unkind to his (delusional) position”

            Told you, I don’t need to. And Quigley is using the Coalition/Morrow’s own “actuals” as well, which bear out his position (particularly with the ramp up, which even your own graph shows).

            Sorry Richard, but Quigley has never denied that NBNCo under his oversight was on time (although on budget). The amount of “premises passed” was debated ad infinitum back then, sometimes on a day to day basis. So you can pluck your “actuals” all day if you like. You aren’t convincing anyone that Quigley has lied. That was your premise right?

            You can provide example after example … I can provide example after example. What’s the point though? At the end of the day, Quigley has more information, and more importantly … more context than you. Grasping at single target figures that change from month to month (or day to day) versus keeping a nationwide rollout on track is like a captain cooking in the galley rather than steering a ship. The idea isn’t to keep the men fed (that’s the cook’s job), it’s to keep the ship going in the same direction.

            P.S. By the way … only a delusional person would call someone with Quigley’s resume “delusional”.

          • only a delusional person would call someone with Quigley’s resume “delusional”

            It’s just the jealously clouding his judgment Murdoch.

          • His equivalent time and cost claim is delusional. Actuals all confirm, fiberartzi provides none or (like Quigley) fabricates them (easily exposed).

            From the above AFR article:
            “On the surface it looked like a fabulous appointment – highly experienced guy, global experience, long-term Alcatel guy who knew about telecommunications,” says an NBN Co insider. “But he didn’t know anything about construction.”

            After almost a decade he, like most here, still doesn’t. Performance forecast v actuals now known, a remarkable achievement in ignorance (Brisy line boy one of its masters).

          • “His equivalent time and cost claim is delusional”

            So you were calling him delusional Richard.

            “Actuals all confirm”

            According to you. Quigley could quite easily turn around and spank you with your data, but why would he? You’re nobody authoritative beyond your own narrative. He’d be better off going toe to toe with Bill Morrow. That’d be something I’d love to be a fly on the wall for.

            “But he didn’t know anything about construction”

            That’s why he had a Head of Construction (now known as Chief Network Engineering) though, right? Strawman argument from the AFR.

            “After almost a decade he, like most here, still doesn’t. ”

            That’s why there’s still an executive position below the CEO that manages that.

            “Performance forecast v actuals now known”

            So … Richard … if you want to talk actuals, why not examine the reasons why the NBN was behind? Like the Telstra delay, which they were making up the time for? Why not acknowledge that with a ramp up, the rollout accelerates? Which is what happened to the FTTP after Quigley was gone. It wasn’t the CEO change that caused that.

            You’re pretty transparent mate … you’ll only focus on individual targets, because … it’s all you’ve got really. An ambitious project that which has delivered because of what Quigley put into place before he departed.

            By the way, how’s those actuals looking for the MTM right? Yep, they’re peachy. Pity that those actuals won’t actually deliver what Malcolm promised … y’know … everyone in Australia connected at a minimum of 25 MBps by the end of 2016. That’s what I’m talking about when I use the word … context.

          • An ambitious project that which has delivered because of what Quigley put into place before he departed.

            Nailed it.

            y’know … everyone in Australia connected at a minimum of 25 MBps by the end of 2016.

            189 days to go ;-)

          • You’re pretty transparent mate … you’ll only focus on individual targets, because … it’s all you’ve got really. An ambitious project that which has delivered because of what Quigley put into place before he departed.

            Spot on Murdoch. Every time I’ve ever looked into one of the points in his wall-o-rant posts, I’ve found it either taken out of context, something that’s been “approximated/massaged” as he admitted to above, or just completely made up by conflating things that shouldn’t be conflated.

          • Every time I’ve ever looked into one of the points in his wall-o-rant posts

            lol

          • His equivalent time and cost claim is delusional.</q?

            Of course it is…

            Actuals all confirm,

            Of course they do….

            fiberartzi provides none</q?

            Of course we don't….

            or (like Quigley) fabricates them

            Yes, yes, fabricated….

            You’re a legend in your own lunchtime Richard, you can accept your award from the LPA now.

    • “Every published actual shows the comment untrue. ”
      Indeed. Every published actual shows switching back to FTTP will save money, not spend more.

      “like the legion of fanboys, ”
      BILE ALERT! NOTHING BUT BILE!! WAAH WAHH BILE!!!

      “no numbers provided to support his fantasy.”
      Try looking up CP16 some time.

      How embarrassing for you, Alain.

      • We all know, except for some around here who suffer from a convenient amnesia, what stalled the network roll out though don’t we?

  7. “That’s why the debate in the United States and Asia is about gigabit per second speeds, not about whether 25MBps or 50Mbps is sufficient.”

    A debate about gigabit speeds in the U.S. barely exists. All the myths proven false long ago.

    The National Broadband Plan was released March 17th 2010 as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009!
    https://transition.fcc.gov/national-broadband-plan/national-broadband-plan.pdf

    In addition, In 2010 the Obama Administration provided stimulus during the GFC. A $111 million grant from the Energy Department, to EPB Chattanooga, a public utility, to deploy a gigabit FTTH network and SmartGrid tecchnology in the city which went live in end of2010.
    http://chattanoogagig.com/pdf/Chattanooga_GPON_EPB.pdf

    The city has has attracted $6 billion in direct foreign investment.

    The network has transformed the city into an innovation hub attracting thousands of entrepreneurs building new business and contributing to economic growth. Where is the debate?
    http://www.thegigtank.com/gig-city

    http://chattanoogagig.com/

    On October 15, 2015, Chattanooga implemented the world’s first community-wide 10-gig Internet service, available to all homes and businesses in EPB’s service area. Where is the debate?
    https://epb.com/

    FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in 2013:
    “We’ve already begun to see the promise of gigabit connectivity to drive innovation and investment in a handful of forward-looking U.S. communities.
    Chattanooga, Tennessee built out a gigabit fiber network that has helped attract businesses like Amazon and Volkswagen, creating more than 3,700 local jobs.”

    Even since 2009 AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink and a few others petitioned the FCC to start the ball rolling to retire the telephone network. The following year the FCC and Chairman Julius Genachowski announced the taskforce to commence the IP Transition.
    https://gigaom.com/2009/12/30/att-to-fcc-let-my-landlines-go/

    http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2013/03/18/telegram-for-the-fcc-set-a-date-now-to-retire-the-telephone-network/#6c31a2a07271

    The IP Transition legislation & regulations were finalised in 2015 and brought in to law.

    AT&T, Verizon and other telcos are shutting down copper networks while deploying FTTH on their footprints.

    This is only just the tip of the iceberg.

    I am afraid to advise, the only continuous prolonged and boring debate loaded with more myths than a Hans Christian Andersen novel, is solely in the realm of a country known as Straya!

    You have to keep up you laggards! bwahahahahahaha

  8. None of the commenters at Delimiter trumpeting on over 1Gbps broadband would never need that type of connection in their homes. A residential customer would never utilize the bandwidth because generally their Internet usage is limited to email and web browsing. Take up of other applications such as MMORPGs is poor compared to the U.S. and Europe!

    Gigabit broadband has been available since 2011 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who where the first to deliver in the United States. All citizens are connected. It also drives the communications for their SmartGrid technology.

    Only EPB’s competitors used to say “No one needs the gig”! Proven wrong a long time ago.

    Chattanooga currently has a population of 167,674.

    There are currently 7000 of subscribers to EPBs gigabit service. They are all entrepreneur businesses, incubator hubs and communities who were attracted to Chattanooga who require the bandwidth to innovate including development of new ideas for broadband applications. The take up was very rapid.

    The remainder of the population who are residential subscribe to 100Mbps service & bundles which include IP TV and IP Phone although they could subscribe to the gigabit service if they wanted to but it wouldn’t warrant the additional expanse on the household budget on something they don’t need, except maybe use it as a status symbol.

    EPB now offer 10Gbps connections as they upgraded using TWM-PON broadband technology. The number of subscribers at the last count stands at 10. Now why would they do that? But it is still only early days.

    Australians don’t understand broadband innovation and its economic benefits and they never will. I guess eventually you will manage to crawl from the primal slime and get with the program. But I won’t be holding my breath!

    • Good stats.
      My wort is limited by connection speed. Faster speed would significantly improve my life

      • Yeah, people that haven’t used it, just don’t get how much better it is to use, or how it just speeds everything you do on the net.

        • A few years ago I subscribed to Verizon’s FiOS 300/300Mbps with a Triple Play bundle. It was more than sufficient for all of my needs and was no where near saturated even with web browsing, email, gaming, IP TV, IP Phone all at the same time. LoL

          These days I am on a Sonic Fiber 1Gbps connection. But I have a rack of 10 servers /w SDN (Open Stack) hanging off it. Yesterday we installed a new IBM Z Series (z13s) yesterday which is the platform for our new hybrid cloud development project which has just commenced.

  9. Yep, MTM is idiotic.
    It was a smart idea for an incremental upgrade within an organisation such as Telstra, however it is a poor plan for a government driven infrastructure project.
    Digital bleeding edge status within Australia depends on a strong internet within Australia.
    We have the developers to deliver the sites and technology which would make use of that data however we have to develop to the lowest common denominator with regards to internet access (or around 90% of the market depending on the company worked for).

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