News & Discussion: National Broadband Network

[Wayno]

Excellent examples Rubberman.

[monotonehell]

Find yourselves about 20 minutes and have a listen to Simon Hacket. He outlines the challenges to supplying an NBN by various methods.
http://simonhackett.com/2013/04/09/cd-s ... with-fttn/

Since no one's responded to this I thought I'd spam it again. This seriously clarifies the situation succinctly without any politics*. If you come away from this with any specific doubts then I'd like to hear them.

(* The ending could be construed as political, but really it's just a prediction based on evidence, in the form of a joke.)

[zippySA]

There appear to be strong arguments from both sides on this matter. But a couple of observations that I haven't seen answered to date:
1. Copper maintenance - this would be required regardless of solution and must be factored somewhere (eventually) - as I understand it, Telstra will be in serious doo-doo if NBN were actually cancelled, as the maintenance regime has been run down in expectation of fancy fibre replacement
2. The user still needs to pay for NBN (as for everything in life) - and as current up-take numbers seem to indicate (targetted 200,000+ users by now, only have 25,000 currently I believe) - people will choose based on their needs, and I cannot imagine the bulk of Australian households will require 100Mbps speeds and will end up taking deals at the lower end of the spectrum (analogy (yes, from Malcolm Turnbull - 25Mbps enables 4x movies to be downloaded concurrently within 5 minutes.....how many can you watch at once?)
3. It would be great to have non-stop North-South Interconnector for Adelaide productivity as well - but for some reason it appears people can see that we simply cannot dish out multi-billions to construct this recognised critical piece of infrastructure all in one lump - why is NBN different (particularly as the bulk of the cost is associated with getting to the suburbs).

Nothing I have read or heard leads me to think we are getting value for money with FTTP - and as a few posts mentioned, the FTTN option states the final step (FTTP) will be based upon demand - and to me, demand is what drives economical and value based decisions. If the demand arises then we can find solutions - and we may even be able to afford it when the time comes.

[Archer]

There appear to be strong arguments from both sides on this matter. But a couple of observations that I haven't seen answered to date:
1. Copper maintenance - this would be required regardless of solution and must be factored somewhere (eventually) - as I understand it, Telstra will be in serious doo-doo if NBN were actually cancelled, as the maintenance regime has been run down in expectation of fancy fibre replacement

Sorry, this doesn't make sense to me, you say the copper maintenance would be required regardless and then say the maintenance regime has been run down? For FTTP the Copper maintenance is only required for as long as the copper is in place and active. Since the copper is scheduled to be decommissioned in FTTP areas 12 months after the Fibre service has gone active, there is a known end point for copper maintenance in a FTTP solution.

With FTTN, the copper has to be maintained and in some cases replaced or at least improved to be able to achieve the speeds the Coalition is talking about that, particularly on any longer runs of copper and even then it will fall short.

2. The user still needs to pay for NBN (as for everything in life) - and as current up-take numbers seem to indicate (targetted 200,000+ users by now, only have 25,000 currently I believe) - people will choose based on their needs, and I cannot imagine the bulk of Australian households will require 100Mbps speeds and will end up taking deals at the lower end of the spectrum (analogy (yes, from Malcolm Turnbull - 25Mbps enables 4x movies to be downloaded concurrently within 5 minutes.....how many can you watch at once?)

This is already accounted for in the NBN corporate plan. If fact, I recall comments from Quigley that the uptake of the higher level plans thus far has been higher than expected. As for the analogy of how many movies can you watch at once, well, how many people/devices are there in your home. I know that for me know, when I'm the only heavy user in the house I can easily max my 3.5Mbps ADSL2 connection, in 5 years time when, there me + 3 teenage kids, with potential new high bandwidth services, could easily account for 25Mbps. We have to remember that not only are services going to become higher bandwidth, but the number of people/devices using the, per household, is also going to increase.

3. It would be great to have non-stop North-South Interconnector for Adelaide productivity as well - but for some reason it appears people can see that we simply cannot dish out multi-billions to construct this recognised critical piece of infrastructure all in one lump - why is NBN different (particularly as the bulk of the cost is associated with getting to the suburbs).

Nothing I have read or heard leads me to think we are getting value for money with FTTP - and as a few posts mentioned, the FTTN option states the final step (FTTP) will be based upon demand - and to me, demand is what drives economical and value based decisions. If the demand arises then we can find solutions - and we may even be able to afford it when the time comes.

I have several problems with that, firstly leaving the FTTP section to those that can afford it creates a greater divide in the community and over time will cause houses with FTTP to be in much higher demand and much higher priced in the market as a result. Demand for such house would greatly outstrip supply.

Secondly, it would cripple innovation of services that could utilise the higher bandwidth provided by FTTP. It would not be economically feasilbe for company's to develop such services if the market was only a handfull of premisis that could afford the additional expense of provisioning a FTTP connection beyond the FTTN. It only makes sense if the service level is as universal as possible. The Argument the 25Mbps is enough to acheive that anyway also fails, because not everyone will get 25Mbps in a FTTN system. Because FTTN still relies on copper, it has the same limitations as ADSL now, If you live at the far end of the street from the Node, you'll be lucky to get half the speed of the person living next to the node. FTTN does nothing to improve the current situation of paying the same amount, but getting a lesser service, than we have to put up with now.

The Analogy of the North South corridor I also don't think is a good one, part of the traffic management is to encourage people to use public transport as an alternative to using the corridor. There are also alternative transport routes and modes, what's the alternative for Intenernet access?

[rubberman]

(snip)

Nothing I have read or heard leads me to think we are getting value for money with FTTP - and as a few posts mentioned, the FTTN option states the final step (FTTP) will be based upon demand - and to me, demand is what drives economical and value based decisions. If the demand arises then we can find solutions - and we may even be able to afford it when the time comes.

Actually, this sounds reasonable, but the devil is in the detail, and is a killer. A real FTTN killer.

Just imagine you are down the end of the street at the opposite end to the Node. First of all, you will be paying the same for your service as the person next to the node who is probably getting twice the speed for that same price. Is that fair?

Ok, let's ignore that. So suppose you decide to bite the bullet and pay to have fibre installed from the node to your premises. You go to the provider, tell them you are prepared to pay, and they tell you that only one or two others in the street are interested in paying, Making it uneconomical to extend fibre. So at the moment there are no plans to provide fibre - even if you are prepared to pay the standard fee. You have the choice of:

1). Waiting till there are enough other subscribers to fibre to make it worth while rolling out to your house. (They won't roll out a street full of fibre for just one customer for a standard fee), and this may take years, or

2). You pay the full cost of rolling the fibre to your home from the node and ripping out the copper (The fibre uses the copper ducts, so once you put the fibre in at your cost, the copper gets junked). Of course, once you do this, the fibre goes past all those other houses of customers who didn't want to pay. So they get free fibre, at your expense. Do you realistically think you might be able to get the others to pay you back? Not in my street, I suspect, maybe in yours?

So, with FTTN, you might take years to get fibre to your own house, even if you are prepared to pay for a fair share, or if you want it straight away, you will pay through the nose, and subsidise everyone else on the street. This is a problem which arises today in a very small number of areas - normally in the fringes of development where there are houses without direct water and/or power supply. In this situation people run their own small pipes from a meter at the end of the SAWater main - with no fire protection (that a larger main gives) nor with adequate flow if the distance to the house is long. Whenever someone wants to upgrade the service it is a nightmare for the providing authorities and for the regulator for just a very few locations in the State. Just imagine the situation where this happens on every street.

Having said that, if you can see a solution, hie thee to the power and water regulator and put it to them. You will have their everlasting gratitude, and probably make a fortune selling it interstate and overseas. Extending municipal services such as power, water, sewerage, gas, telecoms is a political and administrative nightmare, and if you or anyone reading this has an answer, your fortune is made. The warning is, that many many minds have been exercised over this for these other services, and it truly is the case that doing it once and doing it right saves just so much money and trouble, so your chances of coming up with something new are not hopeful.

What FTTN will do, is provide employment for hundreds of bureaucrats to manage the complaints, applications, contractors, individual extension proposals and objections.

(BTW, it gets worse for FTTN in this regard too, but I will spare you all).

http://www.sawater.com.au/NR/rdonlyres/ ... erConn.pdf

[fabricator]

Copper maintenance has been an ongoing problem for Telstra since about 2005, I've heard of serious problems before that. See copper cables are joined in special joints, for thick trunk cables these are a complex inline splice, for everything else there are various custom enclosures. One bright spark had the idea to fill these later joints with a special gel, turns out it reacts with water and gets inside the cable itself between the copper and insulation, also over the long term it is actually eating away at the copper. Point is water inside a fibre cable does nothing, inside a copper cable it causes mayhem.

Telstra spend up to $1 Billion a year on maintaining the copper, even that vast amount isn't having that much effect on fixing the endless amount of faults. A new section of fibre is cheaper than a new section of copper. Despite the extra cost of the equipment, only a fool would go with trying to fix the current network.

Labour: Build new FTTH network, money saved on maintenance, better reliability and the ability to offer true business grade services just about anywhere. Will pay for itself, and in the medium term result in cheaper service.
Liberal*: Keep patching up the old copper, money saved on construction is eaten up in repairs, less reliable and can never really offer business grade services, limited upload speed. Still no costing for the entire project, unknown costs to end users, prices likely to go up and entire network to be on the verge of being obsolete before construction.

* plus what little remains of the National Party.

Meanwhile idiots believe that money not spent on broadband will somehow go into hospitals, idiots don't have a clue. The FTTH will pay itself off, since when has a Hospital ever been anything more than a ongoing drain on government funding. With the current terribly interest rates, now is the time to invest government money in long term infrastructure.

[claybro]

Meanwhile idiots believe that money not spent on broadband will somehow go into hospitals, idiots don't have a clue. The FTTH will pay itself off, since when has a Hospital ever been anything more than a ongoing drain on government funding. With the current terribly interest rates, now is the time to invest government money in long term infrastructure.

I work in a large national company. We rely on our computers to plan logisitcs, view GPS mapping, work flows, in a fast and frantic environment. Just this week a good number of the IT department was retrenched interstate and the planned upgrade of our system has been canned indefintately. You see the economy is shot, most poeple in our company and our competitors and suppliers I speak to are fearful for their jobs. The government is now spending money at an ever increasing rate faster than it is getting inat an ever decreasing rate. The liberal plan may be a bit crappy, but what is the use of my company having access to super high speed and capacity if it cannot afford the system to properly utilise it.What is the point of the average household having access to speed they will never use, or afford the technology to use it. Its not wheather the full fibre plan will pay for itself, it is now a matter of if as a nation have the money to build it in the first place.

[rubberman]

Meanwhile idiots believe that money not spent on broadband will somehow go into hospitals, idiots don't have a clue. The FTTH will pay itself off, since when has a Hospital ever been anything more than a ongoing drain on government funding. With the current terribly interest rates, now is the time to invest government money in long term infrastructure.

I work in a large national company. We rely on our computers to plan logisitcs, view GPS mapping, work flows, in a fast and frantic environment. Just this week a good number of the IT department was retrenched interstate and the planned upgrade of our system has been canned indefintately. You see the economy is shot, most poeple in our company and our competitors and suppliers I speak to are fearful for their jobs. The government is now spending money at an ever increasing rate faster than it is getting inat an ever decreasing rate. The liberal plan may be a bit crappy, but what is the use of my company having access to super high speed and capacity if it cannot afford the system to properly utilise it.What is the point of the average household having access to speed they will never use, or afford the technology to use it. Its not wheather the full fibre plan will pay for itself, it is now a matter of if as a nation have the money to build it in the first place.

As a nation, we always have the money to pay for things, since the government prints money. So if a particular piece of infrastructure pays for itself, then yes, it is worth doing. This is because if we don't build the infrastructure, we will be even worse off. That is, if we are in a bad situation, then not building the infrastructure means we will be worse off. The reason that we will be worse off is that our hopes for any recovery are based on us being able to do things smarter and quicker than our competitors overseas. If we are competing against countries that do have a good broadband system, then if we do not have something as good, or better, we will lose. Our situation will worsen, our standards of living will drop.

Choice:

Build the NBN and face a bad situation, or
Don't build the NBN and be much worse off.

What does the rational person choose? Bad, or Worse?

One should also note that after the financial crash of 1929, world governments (including Australia) instituted austerity measures. Those measures caused the Great Depression, and extended it.

Do we really want to go down that path again? We know what awaits us if we do the same as we did before.

We cannot afford not to do the NBN.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein, (attributed)

[monotonehell]

There's three choices on offer;
1. Build the NBN properly, fibre to the home. HUGE cost over a decade, benefit long term.
2. Build a fibre to the node piggy backed on copper. Be no better off than now, no real improvement in service. Almost the same cost over a decade, plus another future cost when we have to replace copper as it degrades. No real benefit, continuing costs.
3. Do nothing. End up in the same situation as 2, but without the additional cost of building the FTTN infrastructure.

When weighed up, it's only a choice of 1 or 3. Do it or don't do it. Option 2 is a waste of resources for no real gain.

[muzzamo]

You are forgetting about the gains that come from fibre on demand in option 2.

A great many business will happily pay the 2.5-5k connection fee to get fibre all the way to their premises.

[Wayno]

What is the point of the average household having access to speed they will never use, or afford the technology to use it.

other similar quotes:
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall,1957
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

[Mr Smith]

There's three choices on offer;
1. Build the NBN properly, fibre to the home. HUGE cost over a decade, benefit long term.
2. Build a fibre to the node piggy backed on copper. Be no better off than now, no real improvement in service. Almost the same cost over a decade, plus another future cost when we have to replace copper as it degrades. No real benefit, continuing costs.
3. Do nothing. End up in the same situation as 2, but without the additional cost of building the FTTN infrastructure.

When weighed up, it's only a choice of 1 or 3. Do it or don't do it. Option 2 is a waste of resources for no real gain.

Almost the same cost over a decade - Your joking aren't you - the Lib plan is costed at 20 billion less than the ALP plan - and the ALP have a tried and true record of cost blow outs, poor execution of major projects, and massive time delays - think school halls, pink batts etc etc.

[rubberman]

You are forgetting about the gains that come from fibre on demand in option 2.

A great many business will happily pay the 2.5-5k connection fee to get fibre all the way to their premises.

You are correct.

BUT...let us just say that the fibre needs to go a couple of hundred metres to their premises. A not atypical scenario.

If they are the only business that wishes to do this. Telstra is NOT going to rip out the copper to those premises just for one subscriber. The fibre goes in the same duct as the copper, so if someone wants fibre, then the copper has to go.

Once the copper has been replaced, everyone who now has fibre running past their door can get fibre free. There is no need for them to pay anything since their service connection speed will automatically improve without them paying a cent. Why would half of them not just wait till other people pay the connection fee, have the fibre come past their house and pay nothing?

Of course, with half the people in the street not wanting to pay, the other half have to make up their mind whether they want to pay the whole cost (which would be more than the $5k) or wait and wait and wait until there are enough subscribers willing to pay the $2.5-5k.

Mr T made it quite clear that extensions of fibre on demand would be on a business case by business case consideration (an inevitable and fair enough consequence of the FTTH proposal) - and that could mean that you might be in a street where there is never ever a business case, because not enough people in your street were willing to pay. Meanwhile, your competitor in the next street who happened to be next to a box, or who was lucky enough to have enough neighbours willing to pony up the money, now has a business advantage over you - despite you being willing to pay for the extension. Such random outcomes are not good for business.

Also, realistically, once enough of this starts happening, just wait for the yelling and screaming and political pressure for 'the government to DO something about it'. The problem is, the Coalition won't do anything about it, because it will drive the costs up through the roof, and the ALP won't do anything about it, because every time they do make up for shortfalls in infrastructure, they get crucified and called spendthrifts. Once we have either FTTN or FTTH, we will be stuck with it, and if you are in a street where people don't want to extend, tough luck. Another consideration is, who is going to organise all this? If you put in an application for an extension, pay your money, and they say that you need to wait until enough people in the street sign up before the fibre is extended, who is actually going to gee up those neighbours? Who is going to do the door to door to encourage them to sign up? Most small businesses have not got the time to be door knocking their whole street and spending time convincing them to sign up for fibre. Moving might be a better option. It will cost much much more for any small business than the $2.5-5k when all that is taken into account.

I know what happens with this situation in water supply and power extensions. It is a nightmare for all concerned. Except for the unions who see an army of clerks employed to administer it.

[rubberman]

There's three choices on offer;
1. Build the NBN properly, fibre to the home. HUGE cost over a decade, benefit long term.
2. Build a fibre to the node piggy backed on copper. Be no better off than now, no real improvement in service. Almost the same cost over a decade, plus another future cost when we have to replace copper as it degrades. No real benefit, continuing costs.
3. Do nothing. End up in the same situation as 2, but without the additional cost of building the FTTN infrastructure.

When weighed up, it's only a choice of 1 or 3. Do it or don't do it. Option 2 is a waste of resources for no real gain.

Almost the same cost over a decade - Your joking aren't you - the Lib plan is costed at 20 billion less than the ALP plan - and the ALP have a tried and true record of cost blow outs, poor execution of major projects, and massive time delays - think school halls, pink batts etc etc.

LOL. Both political parties have an equally poor record.

$1.2Bn for Seasprite helicopters that never ever turned a rotor?
How many hundreds of millions for the failed re-sleepering of the main rail line from Melbourne to Sydney?
The Darwin railway cost benefit analysis is where?

I say this merely to point out that both parties are in no position to criticise the other. I would be just as critical if Labor were to accuse the opposition of cost blowouts.

I would also point out that over time as the FTTH is converted to FTTN (as is the plan as the copper continues to disintegrate), the Coalition plans MUST be more expensive in the long run since they include the cabinets and maintenance of the copper in the mean time. There is no way that the Coalition plan can be cheaper in the long run - it is physically impossible.

[Aidan]

There's three choices on offer;
1. Build the NBN properly, fibre to the home. HUGE cost over a decade, benefit long term.
2. Build a fibre to the node piggy backed on copper. Be no better off than now, no real improvement in service. Almost the same cost over a decade, plus another future cost when we have to replace copper as it degrades. No real benefit, continuing costs.
3. Do nothing. End up in the same situation as 2, but without the additional cost of building the FTTN infrastructure.

When weighed up, it's only a choice of 1 or 3. Do it or don't do it. Option 2 is a waste of resources for no real gain.

Not quite. Being 6km from the telephone exchange, I can tell you there would be some real gain. Very poor value for money, but still real.

Almost the same cost over a decade - Your joking aren't you - the Lib plan is costed at 20 billion less than the ALP plan

Remind me how much we saved by building a one way expressway?

Do you seriously think that if we go with the Lib plan it won't cost hundreds of billions to upgrade to FTTH when we do finally recognise that an upgrade is necessary?

- and the ALP have a tried and true record of cost blow outs, poor execution of major projects, and massive time delays - think school halls, pink batts etc etc.

Don't believe the Libs' spin - look at the truth about school halls and the reasons:

It's not the party who provide the infrastructure - it's usually done departmentally with limited ministerial supervision. In the case of school halls, they were managed by those in charge of the schools - mostly the state governments.

In SA, the school halls were reasonable value for money.
In WA, the school halls were excellent value for money.
In NSW and Victoria, the school halls were very poor value for money.

In SA and WA, the project was overseen by the state government.
In WA, the state government scrutinized the contracts in great detail to ensure it was all good value for money.
In NSW and Victoria, private sector firms oversaw the project, as they didn't have the public sector capability.

Considering the changes NBNCO have made to ensure it's good value for money (even though that has sometimes involved delaying the rollout) I think the situation is likely to be more akin to that of WA.