NBN Discussion

[RooFlyer]

The closest Node may not be your Node.

Or even, in my case, a micro-node.

 

[Quickstatus]

Yes I particularly like the Come and Go as you please no lock in month to month plans of Aussie Broadband.
The less services are bundled the more flexible it is for the customer

 

[moa999]

swearing black and blue that I'd go with anyone but Telstra, I ended up with ... Telstra!

The auto-failover to 4G that both Telstra and Vodafone offer is a pretty good feature (and for many worth paying a premium for), particularly if you also make use of included call credits.

 

[rogerkambah]

Just remembered that there is a Transact cable running across the back of my property with a pole about 10 metres from my current phone entry point.
iinet have an unlimited deal going with VDSL2 for 24 months (12 months at $39.99 and 12 at $79.99) so averaging $59.99/month which is what I was paying OPtus.
Evening speed is claimed at 65Mbps. Installation fee is $59 and $10 for modem delivery. Think I will check this out.

 

[Hvr]

The less services are bundled the more flexible it is for the customer

Totally agree, I am also with Aussie BB on a monthly arrangement and will not use their email preferring to have ISP based email addresses. This was reinforced when changing all of the previous addresses from my previous ISP emails.

My mobile phone is with Aldi and whilst on an annual plan it is suitable for me and number portability is very easy so that's not an issue.

 

[moa999]

Agreed.
Main email is with Gmail.

Although I've given up on chasing the cheapest NBN deal. Had issues with Belong, and then had Buzz and Telecube go insolvent.. now with Aussie on a custom 300GB plan.

Had my phone with TPG for a while

 

[NM]

FTTN: The copper pair bundle from exchange is snipped at the Node as the node is installed between the copper pairs coming from the exchange the copper pairs going to the street pillar. So the copper pair bundle (or cable carrying up to 200 copper pairs) have to carry both ADSL and VDSL as each premises switch over progressively. From the time the Node goes live that area will have 18 months of co-existence. During this time the VDSL signal power is turned down so as not to interfere with the ADSL signal on any adjacent copper pairs that may have ADSL within the cable.

Thanks for the very informative post. Does the highlighted sentence suggest that 18 months after initial availability, VDSL performance may improve when the coexistance is finished? I am a long way from my node and max performance I get is around 50/20. Is it likely that this will improve even slightly when the 18 months overlap period is over (about 3 months to go).

 

[Quickstatus]

That is the common inference. The VDSL during coexistence is on lower power, and hopefully after the 18month the higher power setting may improve speed. But the rate limiting step I believe is still distance and copper quality.

Many say that is just an NBN excuse and their experience has been that speed did not improve post coexistence.

People have reported an improvement in speed and stability by getting new copper in their house and removing copper joints and branches.

As your speed is greater than 25/5 NBN will say your connection is a success and there is nothing wrong with it. Worth getting a cabler in to examine your house copper pair

Have you also checked your actual “line speed” - get this by logging into your modem.

 

[NM]

That is the common inference. The VDSL during coexistence is on lower power, and hopefully after the 18month the higher power setting may improve speed. But the rate limiting step I believe is still distance and copper quality.

Many say that is just an NBN excuse and their experience has been that speed did not improve post coexistence.

People have reported an improvement in speed and stability by getting new copper in their house and removing copper joints and branches.

As your speed is greater than 25/5 NBN will say your connection is a success and there is nothing wrong with it. Worth getting a cabler in to examine your house copper pair

Have you also checked your actual “line speed” - get this by logging into your modem.

I guess I will know in a few months time. Apparently there is some maintenance being done at our NBN node next week. I doubt that is the 18-month period end work as my records show we are now at 15 months since initial availability.

I have changed the internal wiring slightly so that my modem is at the first wall point in the house and no longer loops to to the others. The oter home phone points now connect to the phone outlet on the modem. Practically, I replaced the original RJ11 that looped from incoming phone line to additional in-home phone outlets with a 2-gang plate with two RJ11 sockets. The incoming NBN terminates there on one RJ11 socket. And the second socket connects to the other analogue phone points in the home. That way my home phone base station does not need to be collocated with my modem and router.

My report of approx 50/20 speed is from the model sync rates, not from speedtests of actual data throughput. The model never syncs better than low 50's. I originally contracted for 100Mbps NBN, but as I could not achieve better than 50, my RSP removed the "speed pack" from my invoice and refunded some of the extra I had paid. My invoice shill shows I am contracted for 100Mbps, but only paying for 25Mbps, while I get approx 50Mbps. My perfoamance is good enough for my needs, and not paying a premium for additional performance is ok by me. But I won't be complaining if it improves slightly in a few months - not that I will notice in practical terms anyway.

Next move will be to ditch the home phone service, which will happen when our youngest child eventually gets a mobile phone. We keep the home phone so she can make emergency calls (to authorities or to us) when she is home alone. She will likely get her own mobile phone soon and we will no longer need a land-line phone in the home.

Then I can ditch the dodgy telco provided modem and directly connect my NBN service to a real router via VDSL interface. The telco modem is only in the path to provide the land-line phone, with my real router providing all my home LAN connectivity (3 separate VLANs, multiple PoE WiFi APs with multiple SSIDs etc.).

 

[moa999]

Note the 18months co-existence is a minimum.. until recently almost nothing had been cutover due to other analogue services (eg. ISDN)

But starting to see a few example on the Whirlpool forum (of people who are technically minded and hence recording results) of reasonable improvements.
Eg. 40 down to 50-55.

But if on FTTN optimising your home wiring matters even more. you want a single phone outlet, no splits, no extensions, no mode3 alarms

 

[NM]

But starting to see a few example on the Whirlpool forum (of people who are technically minded and hence recording results) of reasonable improvements.
Eg. 40 down to 50-55.

So there is hope for some improvement sometime in the future.

But if on FTTN optimising your home wiring matters even more. you want a single phone outlet, no splits, no extensions, no mode3 alarms

Which is exactly what I have.

 

[amaroo]

FWIW we’re about to tick over the two year mark since hooking up with the NBN. We couldn’t be happier, can’t remember the last outage, pretty sure we actually haven’t had one.

The speeds are consistent throughout the day...

 

[Quickstatus]

Still waiting for my FTTC.

There have been a few changes to the NBN model.

COAT : Change of Access Technology.

The NBN is now targeting upgrades in the FTTn footprint for a COAT to lift performance to above 25Mbps.

NBN Select: the RSP can request a technology change on behalf of customer.

In the meantime I’m still waiting for my NBN. Supposed to be FTTc by July 2020 with a big *

NBN Co to trial its first FTTN upgrade paths from June

Part of wider program of work codenamed COAT.

www.itnews.com.au

 

[33kft]

COAT is a good outcome for those on FTTN with poor speeds. It could probably be argued that they should have been provisioned FTTC all along but the reality of it is that FTTC deployments only started this year and the first FTTN in 2016, so there's been a significant period during the MTM approach where there was no other choice (than FTTP, of course).

 

[Quickstatus]

Yes. When FTTn was deployed, FTTc technology was not commercially available. Under COAT it seems a whole set of possibilities may exist including FTTc and FTTp. There is joy for those who had to wait in the shadows for years.

Pays to be at the end of queue sometimes. I was FW initially but when FTTc became viable I was upgraded to FTTc. Hopefully this will come to fruition. Theoretically the upgrade from FTTc to FTTp will be cheaper as fibre will be in the street, though officially c to p is not an upgrade path under TCP.

 

[coriander]

After much toing and froing with NBN and their IMHO unacceptable HFC installation at work (#2744), they've said the utility box stays where it is and there's no security problem that's been reported to them.
I've been offered relocation at my cost but they did also say I could upgrade to FTTP also at my (greater) cost.

I haven't the energy to fight/negotiate with them till my treatment finishes so we've agreed to defer further action till after 10/2019.

That said, I might see what they say about FTTP if that's supposed to be a "thing" by Q1/2020.

I'm a bit spoiled by TPG FTTB at home with its consistent 94/38 speeds.

 

[Quickstatus]

If you are getting consistent 94/38 you won’t be eligible for COAT which is more for the under 25 Mbps FTTn stragglers

 

[docjames]

Had our first difficulty last night with a brief drop out - spontaneously resolved in about 20mins.

Speed in the mid 30’s on resumption.

 

[moa999]

COAT is also only a 50 home trial.
Will be a while (if ever) before it rolls out.

Also appears to include a whole bunch of testing for faster lines for FTTC/B, HFC and FTTP with lots of acronyms mentioned (some of which have been on the NBN roadmap for many years)

 

[coriander]

If you are getting consistent 94/38 you won’t be eligible for COAT which is more for the under 25 Mbps FTTn stragglers

Sorry, I was adding to my HFC issue at my work premises in message #2744 upthread that I regard as having unacceptable security issues.