Telcos want to write own guideline for broadband speed claims

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news Telecoms industry body Communications Alliance, along with the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA), have together proposed a new industry guideline for firms making representations to consumers about the speed of their broadband services.

The organisations’ proposal comes in response to a discussion paper released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) titled Broadband Speed Claims.

The ACCC paper, published by the regulator in July, invited submissions on how consumer information about broadband speed and performance could be improved.

The associations suggest in their proposal that retail service providers (RSPs) are “best placed” to communicate information to consumers about the broadband performance they can expect to receive – including taking account of the “wide range of different factors” that can affect service performance.

The associations said they would create the Communications Alliance Guideline in collaboration with government, regulators and consumer representatives.

Their submission discusses up the current impediments to RSPs being able to provide precise speed information to customers and argues that upload and download speeds are “typically not the highest priority” for consumers when deciding which service to sign up for.

It also provides some “context” to complaints about Internet services being made to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), according to the two industry organisations.

Finally, as well as listing tools available to consumers to enable them to monitor the quality of their broadband service, the proposal casts doubt over the ability of a broadband quality monitoring programme (as proposed by the ACCC) to achieve its objective – warning that the result of such a program would be costly and “might in fact be anticompetitive”.

Since 2013, the submission explains, the ACCC has been considering creating a Broadband Performance Monitoring and Reporting (BPMR) programme that would install monitoring probes in customers’ premises.

The proposal states: “Many industry participants are deeply sceptical as to whether such a program can achieve its objective and believe that the ACCC is significantly underestimating the costs of such a scheme.”

It also says that the BPMR would “force Australian broadband prices upward and/or remove the more affordable broadband options”, putting lower-income consumers in particular at a disadvantage.

28 COMMENTS

  1. As if RSP’s are best placed to write their own description of the speed consumers should expect from their service. That’s exactly the system we have right now and it’s the precise reason the ACCC had to get involved.

    RSP’s – you screwed up, now we have to regulate you because you weren’t competent to do it yourself. Adult supervision required.

  2. Richard: I’ll write the guidelines! I’m amaz balls!
    Reality: ooohh your are amaz balls Richard. Can I shove my cock up your arse?
    Kingforce: I want to too!
    Matthew: and me!
    Richard: I’ll get the lube.

  3. Self-regulated scamming. Its the only way to flog off faulty DSL. Tell people they get 100mbps but in reality they get 2mbbs and 5 days downtime.

  4. Telstra want to be able to scam people into taking up their faulty insecure AC routers. Telling them it will make their faulty DSL faster.

  5. Google Fibre, the fiberartzi’s dream project crashes into reality:

    “But digging up streets and dealing with local municipalities to lay fiber is expensive in urban areas and out of the question for remote regions. According to Recode, it cost $1bn to lay fiber in Kansas. Yet for all the costs sunk into Google Fiber, the service only had around 200,000 subscribers by the end of 2014, according to The Information, a figure that is well short of the five million hoped for within five years.”
    http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-fiber-reportedly-told-to-cut-half-its-staff-to-offset-subscriber-shortfall/

    Well Duh;-)

    Google Fiber changes to wireless channel
    https://www.ft.com/content/3f11e798-6302-11e6-8310-ecf0bddad227

    The losses to Australian taxpayers (and Alphabet shareholders) is going to be tens of billions. All pointed out from the beginning to fanboy abuse…2016 was always going to be a very bad year for them.

    • Yes wireless is an initially cheaper option that is easier on the wallet to be deployed in a shorter time frame.

      Fibre optic is a long term investment. It has a much higher bandwidth capacity and less prone to most types of interferences that EM carrying mediums have to deal with.

      NBN is meant to be an investment, it opens a lot of options for the next decade or even century. (depending on how far ahead we look at).

      Copper lines have served us well for a very long time. We are pushing its limits (even though assisted with IEN being fibre and CAN being all copper).

      Wireless is good but not as reliable and it is a shared medium. It also faces EMI and it is less secure than a wired option.

      So how would you spend you money?

      • @Daniel: “So how would you spend you money?”

        You wouldn’t. That’s the basic line Richard and their like are getting to. Let the market handle it because the market will provide anything if it’s needed anything else would be a waste of tax payers money.

        Never mind the fact Australia has a distinct Galapagos syndrome when it comes to our IT of course which kinda skews the definition of “what the market will need”

        But because Labor has already initiated as what they see as a waste of money then the best option would be the “cheapest” option. ie. recycle everything you can

      • Taxpayers money could’ve been directed at underserved markets; not overbuilding well serviced markets with an massively inefficient GBE.

        Investing money today for IT demands more “the next decade or even century” is absurd. Even Google’s plaything is finding that out!

        • The once a fortnight comment from me.

          “Taxpayers money could’ve been directed at underserved markets” — thats what Labor wanted to do, but every whinger complained that the areas that had been cherry picked time after time should still get priority, because of the saturation of clients.

          Cant have it both ways, you either overbuild the prime locations, or deliver services to those most in need. Which one is it?

          Back to my 100/40 connection, have a good couple of weeks.

          • @gg it is exactly as I said; taxpayer subsidies directed towards the few uncompetitive markets, private industry the rest. See BT, Eircom, Chorus, …

            There’s no shortage of those wanting others to pay for things, ask Alex about his home installation. Well beyond the point the few can support the many.

          • You ignore my point. Taxpayer dollars WERE being directed to underserved markets. Rural Australia has consistently been left behind the urban honeypots, and the original plan tried to address that by helping those underserved areas catch up.

            Instead, its back to the same old scenario of giving the better connection to those that already have good service. Once again ignoring the most needy.

            And when you leave it to private interests, they arent going to do anything, and for good reason. They make no money out of it.

            MTM has failed.

          • The policy has failed. It’s announcement killing all private sector telco investment a decade ago. Soon to get even worse; costs becoming clearer, service quality poor (the govt delivery standard).

          • Lol Richard making stuff up again how could it kill off investment when there wasn’t any to begin with.

            Now with the policy you could have written is prioritising areas already served lol. Leaving the areas underserved high and dry.

          • So your summary of ‘the policy has failed’ is thanks to the Liberals. When you comment that the ‘Taxpayers money could’ve been directed at underserved markets’ can you understand thats what we had, and the anti-Labor shills were saying the exact opposite.

            The LIBERAL policy has failed. The Labor one may have in the long run, but as we’ll never know its moot to argue. I dont have to care.

          • @ JK

            “Lol Richard making stuff up again how could it kill off investment when there wasn’t any to begin with”.

            Indeed JK and herein lies the irrationality of the cultist… what actually occurred is forgotten, dismissed, rewritten and blatantly lied about, to adhere to the cult theory (disproved cult theory at that, admitted, right at the top of the cultist chain)… Let’s enjoy this again…

            Waxman: “In other words you found your view of the world, your ideology was not right, it was not working?”

            Greenspan: “Precisely, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well…”

            Oh well, maybe such realisations will “trickle down” (see what I did there) to the average brainwashed foolish cultist, eventually. But I’d assume the average cultist goon, will not be able to handle the truth and simply keep the cult trumpet blowing regardless… such is the cultist way.

            https://delimiter.com.au/2016/08/01/accc-opens-superfast-broadband-competition/#comment-757236

            Our dear cultist conveniently forgets about the FTTN network Telstra were gonna build, but at each opportunity didn’t… The FTTN G9 were gonna do, but didn’t… He forgets that while our competitors abroad were already rolling out FTTP (some since 1999) we didn’t even get ADSL2+ en masse until 2008 (iirc) and ironically it was big bad Conroy who was able to successfully negotiate with Sol… etc, etc…

            Amazing…

        • @Richard
          Copper cabling was installed many years ago, and we have pushed it to achieve a lot more than it originally could.
          Though that push has reached its limits.
          There is only so much upper frequency that can be played with before the EM in the copper emits out of it.
          No to mention the losses of transmission due to the higher frequencies needed to get more bandwidth out of it needing to travel longer distances and the deterioration of the copper cables over the many years.

          They should have just replaced all the copper with fibre, gradually (preferably without these nodes). No rushed deadlines and killing yearly budgets.
          Planning by our Government in general is terrible.

          Our main parties, throwing poo at each other like monkeys and not focusing on what the people want.

          I favour Labor’s plan for FTTH, it is the ideal method.
          With Abbott starting the poo fight, it has gone downhill from there.

          FTTH, make a proper project plan, set a definitive budget. If people like the proposal and can see its benefit for the country. Then there would be no problem with it and let it finish uninterrupted.
          Then we can move on to the next agenda.

          • “Copper cabling was installed many years ago, and we have pushed it to achieve a lot more than it originally could.
            Though that push has reached its limits.”

            A wonderful irony in your post. Copper speeds continue to improve.

            Fibre has many positives, however it is expensive and time consuming to deploy. Reusing existing copper is cheaper and is able to deliver demanded speeds (NBN CVC per customer is 1.09mbps!!).

            If the public sectorish GBE wasn’t delivering it it would have been completed years ago at a fraction of the spend, profitable every year (as comparative upgrades have been).

            The LNP should be working out how to extract themselves from this disaster. Not allowing NBNCo to use skinny fibre and ensure their grossly inefficient monopoly position for decades.

          • @Richard
            “A wonderful irony in your post. Copper speeds continue to improve.”
            You commented without reading the rest…

            “There is only so much upper frequency that can be played with before the EM in the copper emits out of it.
            No to mention the losses of transmission due to the higher frequencies needed to get more bandwidth out of it needing to travel longer distances and the deterioration of the copper cables over the many years.”

            “Fibre has many positives, however it is expensive and time consuming to deploy. Reusing existing copper is cheaper and is able to deliver demanded speeds (NBN CVC per customer is 1.09mbps!!).”

            Fibre itself is quite cheap, the cost is mainly from digging up terrain to access some of the conduits and also removing the copper.
            Expense can be budgeted over a long period (as long as there is no political agenda interference) [this is where the bickering of the parties that then sabotage each other’s plan, they do worse for our country]

            NBN can set any figure of expense for CVC (due to the pressure to deliver fast and the costs involved) they have pushed to make up the costs and charge higher rates.
            Of course this cost dominos down to the final consumers.

            If a sound policy was set and given time to deliver with good project planning, things go smoothly. (Labor could have probably done a better job of this, and WORK with the Liberals to fine tune it)

            I actually believe our current system is getting worse and not working well.
            The parties need to work on the issues, not each other.

            Come on don’t talk about LNP being angel’s caught in a mess.
            Now you are being a sheep, don’t think as a LNP supporter, think like an individual.

            NBNCo meant to be a government monopoly, not quite as they only control wholesale and have no retail gain.
            They simply provide to whichever RSP wants to buy from them.
            Government, should be working for our behalf (the people) as it meant to be.

            Sorry if I am ranting a bit, but I am just about fed up with both parties, the governments handling of everything.
            For many years now, many Australians feel the same.
            We need good leadership from all our representatives.

          • @d you won’t get good leadership from any of them, they’re not interested. Only Interested in their own gold, and trinkets for those that fund them (Dastiyari just the latest).

            I can’t remember the last successful govt project; ALP projects State and Federal a trail of disasters. Hundreds of billions wasted, all borrowed against future generations earnings (see EU for how that’ll work out).

            Drop the sheeples comment; I’ve provided more analysis and illuminated more details of this policy than all the leftoids combined.

            As for copper it continues to improve (as stated), speeds well beyond those demanded (as shown). Fiberartzi squealing gigabit expose their shallow Internet understanding.

          • @R
            Though I do agree that Copper has come a long way, and some tweaks to transmission protocols have always been key to the latest push.
            UTP is limited in comparison to Coaxial in regards to throughput.
            Coaxial has a very large pool of bandwidth, though it is shared.
            Coaxial (existing and whatever they have mustered to extend in coverage) will be able to last us for a few years more.
            I know I sound like a “Fiberartzi” at times, but it is the next generation “wired” medium to deliver high bandwidth services for the general public. There is no denying that.
            Eventually demand will bring it into the picture for most of the population.
            FTTN is not a terrible option IMO (i prefer it over Cable Coax) and it is still possible to future extend the fiber from that point to the homes. It can last us as long as the nodes are well placed and the CVC issues are sorted out (which is the biggest obstacle at the moment).

            There will always be 2 opinions.
            + Those who want “super fast speeds” now. (100Mbps/1Gbps/10Gbps…)
            + Those who are more conservative. (12Mbps/25Mbps)

            Everyone had different expectation when the NBN plan was introduced.

    • Lol look Richard nbn talking about doing a second rollout for fttdp for xgfast. Talking apparently about speeds we don’t need claiming by you.

      • @jk posting his ignorance over at the Australian:
        “Fttn is a shared medium they have to share the fibre from the node. Current design for fttn is only 2Gbps fibre to the node with an average of 192 on a node it’s only 5-10Mbps not up to 100Mbps as claimed. While fttp has a 2.5Gbps fibre share with 26-32. So a min 80Mbps if everyone wants to use 100Mbps at the same time.”

        Some 5 errors a single post. Given the components list supplied by myself with their capabilities such stupidity is unusual, that Derek corrected his errors by pointing to my data establishes his competency (comically posting such “knowledge” all over the Internet.

        NBNCo continues to waste money investigating technologies they can read about in the telco journals. It’s what monopolies do. As posted a longtime ago; such speeds aren’t required, not demanded, and impossible to deliver on any substantial scale (not the capacity). Actual 1.09mbps CVC per customer! One day they’ll understand what that means (typically takes them several years).

        Jk once argued against improving copper speeds, now points to them;-)

        • But Richard a node can support up to 382 doesn’t it. But please point out the 5.

          Yes Richard 1Mbps on cvc but when that increases it will show the waste that fttn is won’t it.

          But got to love your ignorance on the counter factual claiming its calculated different. As simple put you think a cost of fttp-mtm-fttp is comparable to mtm lol.

          Or you would claim ““If I have a copper line that can deliver 1 Gbps via G. Fast or 5 Gbps via XG. FAST then this belongs exclusively to that end-user premise, it is not shared.”. But then that speeds we don’t need.

          Yes fishyboy so me how I can get 5Gbps on xgfast of 40km of copper :-) as you claim copper speeds improve so you should easily show me how.

          • So Richard of copper speeds improve why has nbn said only 33% can get between 80-100Mbps but all accounts as you mis represent with your claim is everyone should be able to as you have said improving copper speeds

  6. Ok. Just as I thought. They were slapping up their DSL without the scammy noise reduction in place. Now going to spend more money after the fact to experiment with an unproven technological scam in Australia ?

    How many more billions ? Who in the Liberals has shares in Alcatel / Nokia ?

    The DSL is faulty plain and simple. The fact the noise is there in the first place is a problem. It certainly won’t stop it falling over ? It certainly won’t provide constant 100mbps.

    More junk to add to their trash.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/nbn-co-to-trial-xgfast/news-story/79363767168970b8ce4b051a8e6a9dea?utm_source=The+Australian&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial

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