NBN Discussion

[Quickstatus]

My NBN is still “planned”.
I feel like my area is the last to be built. There is a benefit of being the last - we get FTTC instead of FW or FTTN

 

[drsmithy]

And yet it has been for the last 10 years, buying over $10bn in private assets to do so, and as a monopoly telecommunications provider funded entirely by taxpayer dollars (outside of the revenue it generates, with which nbn co finished up negative to the tune of $4.8bn last year) is absolutely currently fulfilling the role that it has for the last decade as a public utility.

And while I can't wait to see what sort of fantastic privatisation deal will be cooked up in the coming decade after the losses have been socialised, I dare say Telstra would not be rushing in to buy an asset which would cost them 48% of the compensation that they recieved for their entire copper and HFC networks in a one-off transfer of their assets, per year.

So I am afraid that for now it remains a public utility regardless of nomenclature.

I think you are missing the point. Complaining that public utilities are no better than private companies, using an example of an organisation that was essentially setup from the get-go to operate like a private company (just one that happened to be bankrolled by the public) is not really a valid complaint against public utility models.

 

[33kft]

I think you are missing the point.

I think you and @Quickstatus are missing the point.

If you build a road, it's a road. You can have commercial aspirations for that road but it is a road. If you build a monopoly telco utility it is a monopoly telco utility. If it's going to run for 20 years as a public utility and the sole form of fixed line communications for the country, only to be sold afterward than it's a utility for 20 years and a private corporation afterwards.

Nobody is agreeing to fund a private corporation from public tax dollars with no purpose or provision of service to the public. No matter what it is called, what it is intended to be or how it is structured, it has always been a telecommunications utility that provides a tariffed and metered service to the public.

So far the entire basis of the argument is that there is an intention to sell it down the track and that it is called nbn co. The problem is, it has 2 shareholders and they are the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Communications. The entire board answers directly to the Federal Government. At present there are no ongoing commercial negotiations, so it remains a public asset. Here are some other organisations that are entirely government owned with a corporate structure:

• Airservices Australia
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation
• Australian Government Solicitor
• Australia Post
• Australian Rail Track Corporation
• Reserve Bank of Australia

So are we suggesting that none of the above enterprises are funded by the public to provide services to the public? Are they all part of a special category that suggests they will be imminently spun off and therefore do not constitute public services or utilities? Do they also not stand up to criticism of public administration of services?

 

[drsmithy]

I think you and @Quickstatus are missing the point.

No.

It is the difference between creating an organisation whose objective is to deliver a service vs an organisation whose objective is to be profitable.

 

[serfty]

NBN workers have been around my local area readying for a June 'availability date'.

On Saturday 19th, at 6PM there was a notified service outage for landline for up to 6 hours.

Last Thursday 24th, it came back on, > 110 hours later.

It seems the NBN 457 dudes managed to cut a main cable (According to the Telstra tech who found a 'new pair' for us, it appears to have taken them two days to admit to having done so).

We did get to enjoy ~26Mbps 4G in the mean time.

Now our ADSL2+ had gone from a solid (i.e. consistent) 5.9Mbps to a variable up to (at best) 3.9Mbps with occasional complete drop outs.

That post was on Jan 30 2019.

These days I would be happy with a consistent 3.9Mbps, but a lot of the time now,our 'phones simply reject the wifi while waiting for "the connection to improve" and use 4G. Of course this is little help for the desktops and other devices.

I was going to wait at least a year, but feel this is no longer viable, so have bitten the bullet and arranged to have the FTTC connected. I managed to negotiate a deal with my existing ISP (Telstra) for the same monthly cost as current, no "connection fee", same data more inclusive home landline IP phone call rates and retaining our 20+ year old email addresses.

 

[moa999]

These days I would be happy with a consistent 3.9Mbps,

At 4Mbps or below I would have been jumping on FTTC the second it went ready for service.

While there is still an element of copper involved you are going from probably 4km of it to 50m.

 

[serfty]

At 4Mbps or below I would have been jumping on FTTC the second it went ready for service.

Well, until January it was 6Mbps, but reliable.

 

[Hvr]

How Netflix and the streaming revolution killed the NBN's dream of super fast broadband on fixed wireless

How 'the Netflix effect' killed the NBN's dream

Fixed wireless internet promised so much, like the ability for high-tech businesses to base themselves almost anywhere in Australia. But then along came Netflix and everything changed.

www.abc.net.au

About 7 per cent of all NBN customers were always going to be connected to the NBN via fixed wireless or satellite, with fixed wireless servicing 75 per cent of that 7 per cent.
Fixed wireless promised so much — the ability for high-tech businesses to base themselves almost anywhere in Australia.
But then along came Netflix and everything changed.

Yet another excuse for failing to deliver what has been paid for and is now a realistic expectation.

Noting that cable television has been operating in the US for 70 years (yes since 1949!) the failure to consider that its use would take up significant bandwidth surely has to be a major failure to plan effectively.

 

[serfty]

The problem relates to Fixed wireless as envisaged in the original Kevin 07 NBN incarnation.

It would have happened whomever was in government.

 

[Pushka]

We’ve now moved house and simply unplugged our Optus WiFi modem then plugged it into the new place. No NBN for us. Speeds here are amazing. Last night download was 69mps and upload was 24mbs. Why bother with NBN. We never get through more than 20% of data allowance and pay only $45 a month.

 

[Archphoto]

I'm still utterly confused as to which telco is going to give me the best bang for my buck. They are all promising the world, yet I know darn well they simply aren't going to deliver.

Additionally, my sister's experience with slow speeds since having to change does not instil me with any desire to change, however, I can't put it off much longer. I need something reliable which offers a decent upload speed for transferring large image files, but so far drawn a blank as to which is better and which is the worst.

Most of the info is so light-on, it's next to useless and I certainly don't have the time to phone/text/chat online or visit telcos. I know asking who you guys would recommend is like asking how long is a piece of string, so who would you avoid at all costs and if you feel your telco does step up to the plate and offer a decent service feel free to recommend them.

For the record, I'm based in Adelaide, currently use Optus as my landline Telco, and have Foxtel. Both are under consideration, although bundling with Foxtel would definitely save some $$, note though, that is in no way a deal breaker; if getting a stand-alone service offers me a better deal with regard to speed (up and down), reliability and overall they're reliable, they'd get the tick well above a bundle.

 

[Daver6]

We’ve now moved house and simply unplugged our Optus WiFi modem then plugged it into the new place. No NBN for us. Speeds here are amazing. Last night download was 69mps and upload was 24mbs. Why bother with NBN. We never get through more than 20% of data allowance and pay only $45 a month.

Latency and jitter would be the main reasons for fixed line broadband over 4G. This will be less of an issue with 5G of course.

 

[serfty]

At 4Mbps or below I would have been jumping on FTTC the second it went ready for service.

While there is still an element of copper involved you are going from probably 4km of it to 50m.

This is now just in time.

Over Saturday we had lots of ADSL dropouts - I'd reset the modem ... it would sync. then drop out ashort time later - anything from 5 seconds to 15 minutes.

On Sunday I turned them modem off for two hours to perhaps help by letting it 'cool down'. After that it would not turn back on. A quick check with the multi-meter showed the issue to be the 22v power pack. Opening that up revealed a blown diode in the interestingly complex circuitry (for a power pack).

I was not going blow $30 on a replacement, nor try to repair it given it would be redundant in three days.

Bring on FTTC FTTK!

 

[Pushka]

Latency and jitter would be the main reasons for fixed line broadband over 4G. This will be less of an issue with 5G of course.

We stream Foxtel, Netflix, Stan and Amazon Prime. No issues. Happy campers.

 

[VPS]

I'm still utterly confused as to which telco is going to give me the best bang for my buck. They are all promising the world, yet I know darn well they simply aren't going to deliver.

Additionally, my sister's experience with slow speeds since having to change does not instil me with any desire to change, however, I can't put it off much longer. I need something reliable which offers a decent upload speed for transferring large image files, but so far drawn a blank as to which is better and which is the worst.

Most of the info is so light-on, it's next to useless and I certainly don't have the time to phone/text/chat online or visit telcos. I know asking who you guys would recommend is like asking how long is a piece of string, so who would you avoid at all costs and if you feel your telco does step up to the plate and offer a decent service feel free to recommend them.

For the record, I'm based in Adelaide, currently use Optus as my landline Telco, and have Foxtel. Both are under consideration, although bundling with Foxtel would definitely save some $$, note though, that is in no way a deal breaker; if getting a stand-alone service offers me a better deal with regard to speed (up and down), reliability and overall they're reliable, they'd get the tick well above a bundle.

I used Telstra cable in Adelaide (they had a deal where you got it for free and got free Foxtel for a month which I didn't continue) I was very happy with the speeds and reliability

 

[jb747]

We've been connected for a bit over two years. I was pretty well the first in our area to try to connect, once it went live, and that was a painful disaster. What a turd of a company to deal with....the ISP was fine. NBN finally started playing ball after I found a couple of helpful parliamentarians.

Once connected, we initially had synch at about 45-47meg. That has slowly dropped to be around 43 on average now. I'm about 700 metres from the node, so it's about as good as I could hope for.

A couple of weeks back, I was having a drink with some friends who live in the next block. They are much closer to the node, and by rights should be getting in the 80-90 meg range. A speed test showed that they had all of 10. Wow. We know the line route, as another neighbour was the local Telstra technician. They are about 300 metres from the node. Good old copper.

 

[Quickstatus]

Have they checked the copper inside their house?
Jindy friend is still able to get an NBN 100/40 plan on their FTTN and approx 500m. He is still on a 25/5 plan

At 300m should easily get 100

Still waiting for mine. Apr-Jun2020 planned. Unlikely to be built by them

 

[Buzzard]

We stream Foxtel, Netflix, Stan and Amazon Prime. No issues. Happy campers.

What is your monthly data limit?

 

[serfty]

What is your monthly data limit?

@Buzzard This is the likely answer ...

We have our phones in the plan as well, so max of 212 gb a month but with three very active phones plus internet at home, streaming etc, the most we have used is 30% of that. We don’t have a teenager who massively downloads and we would stream five times a week. Plus all the usual game and movie downloads, updates etc etc. Plus it’s portable. When we move we just unplug the modem then plug it in at new place.

Currently it’s slowed to around 20mbs I’m guessing peak time.

 

[amaroo]

Have they checked the copper inside their house?
Jindy friend is still able to get an NBN 100/40 plan on their FTTN and approx 500m. He is still on a 25/5 plan

At 300m should easily get 100

Still waiting for mine. Apr-Jun2020 planned. Unlikely to be built by them

I'm probably between 300m and 500m FTTN and get 72/32.