NBN Discussion

[Daver6]

Finally just got connected to NBN long after the other 99% of the country. Went with Exetel 50Mbps supposed plan speed FTTN connected and I must say I am completely underwhelmed.

I honestly can't tell any difference at all from the ADSL I had before. Yes, technically speaking if I go to speedtest.net the numbers that come out are three times higher than before, but this does not translate into a faster feel browsing the internet. The ping speed is exactly the same as before, which translates into page switching speed which is exactly what you feel when browsing and that hasn't changed at all.

Everyone I know who is also on FTTN is saying the same thing. They can't tell any difference at all and are wondering what the hell the $50bn spend has got us? Is this the biggest, most fraudulent scam in history? Did Bernie Maddoff burn more than $50bn in his Ponzi scheme?

Admittedly I had pretty good ADSL before at 12-13Mbps easily and reliably, so I didn't have a lot to complain about and I realise that others had much poorer ADSL speeds than I had, and for sure people so afflicted will notice a much greater improvement, but is it unfair to say that all we've got for $50bn is an upgrade from bad ADSL speeds to good ADSL speeds? That's my experience so far of having it connected for a week.

On another note, my supposed 50Mbps speed translates into a maximum I've seen so far of only 32Mbps which seems a very long way from what's being paid for to me, though I doubt I would notice another 18Mbps speed anyway. If I barely notice any difference in going from 12 to 32, then it's highly unlikely I'm going to notice another 18 on top again.

Another trap for players not familiar with the technical sides of it is that Exetel use CG-NAT on their servers which makes forwarding ports completely impossible for things like p2p sharing and access back into a private NAS. Of course Exetel don't tell you this before you sign up and it's definitely not something you think of to ask beforehand either. I'm now in discussions with Exetel to get the CG-NAT turned off and it's meeting some resistance. They don't wanna do it (though they admit they can) without a justifiable reason.

Firstly on CG-NAT. Just tell them you want remote access back to your house to access a security camera/internal server. ABB do the same, but one quick phone call, no reasons required and they disable it. It mames sense of RSP to use CG-NATing. Saves them money on IP addresses and for the majority of the connections, people don't care. I think opt out at no cost is reasonable. If Exetel are giving you are hard time, just give them the flick and go elsewhere.

Secondly, I'm curious what your expectations were of the NBN that your faster connection is underwhelming? That's not a loaded question at all.

Using an analogy that non-technical people might understand a little better. Lets say you go from single to three phase power in your home. All this means is you can draw more power. It isn't going to make your kettle boil any faster if you already had enough power to your house on single phase. However, three phase will give you sufficient power to boil the kettle at the same speed as well as have the oven, air-con and a bunch of other high current devices all going at the same time. In a similar manner, the extra bandwidth you have will mean you can stream TV, download some large files and still browse your webpage without it taking longer to load.

 

[Quickstatus]

In a similar manner, the extra bandwidth you have will mean you can stream TV, download some large files and still browse your webpage without it taking longer to load.

That might be relevant for some not everyone. It’s like buying a car. No use buying an expensive when a cheaper model is sufficient. Of course over time bandwidth requirements will only increase. But until then...

 

[Legoman]

Thank you for posting. I had been considering Exetel due to their good pricing. I was already aware of their overseas Call Centre and long wait times.

When I first called them to make sales type inquiries of the new business sales team, I was very much speaking to Australian-based people. No doubt about it, they understood slang and metaphors and euphamisms & Australian colloquialisms. That was the first, only and last time I've spoken to someone in Australia with Exetel. To be fair though, that's not unique by any means to Exetel. Unless you physically walk into a Telstra shop in a shopping centre, you'll never speak to someone in Australia from Telstra either with comical results. I rang Boost this morning for a copy of a receipt for payment of credit for my work phone (no, Boost do not provide any form of receipt for any pre-paid payments by default) and got a receipt in USD. When I complained this wouldn't work with the ATO, they apologised and said the mistake came from them being in Philippines and more used to USD.

The cheap price has got to come from somewhere and that's from offshoring all the staff roles, 90min long wait times for tech support on the phone behind queues at least 150 callers long and using CG-NAT to share IPv4 addresses and economising on bandwidth allocations, guaranteeing that you'll never be able to actually get anywhere near the speeds you're paying for that were promised.

 

[Legoman]

Firstly on CG-NAT. Just tell them you want remote access back to your house to access a security camera/internal server.

Yeah, did this and they got rid of it. Good thing too. I did notice a small speed increase after rebooting the modem to make the configuration change take effect. Awfully nice of them to not bother telling their customers that they're deliberately crippling connections to save themselves some costs.

Secondly, I'm curious what your expectations were of the NBN that your faster connection is underwhelming? That's not a loaded question at all.

Conventional wisdom with computers is that you need a doubling of whatever metric it is, before you are pleasantly surprised by the increase in speed/performance. Be that RAM, Disc space, access speed, processor capacity etc. It has to double at least, otherwise the difference is so incremental that you may as well not bother.

Based on that as my understanding, my expectation was that based on Exetel's promise, I was going to have an at least 3x speed increase in internet connection. I was going to go from 12Mbps to (at least) 36Mbps and as high as 43Mbps according to Exetel. I expected to be blown out of my chair by how quickly webpages would just load instantly in the blink of an eye. I had visions of not even needing to run an adblocker at all anymore because the page would load so fast even with all the ads that the adblocker would actually slow it down by all the filtering. This is the case with my brother's FTTP connection. His ping speed is consistently 0ms and webpages load instantaneously. The whole page loads at once as soon as you click on it. There is no waiting for videos to load, no buffering, no waiting for large pictures to load, it's all just there instantly as fast as you can click the mouse. It works like you see in the movies or in Apple ads on TV, where they use trick effects to speed everything up to ridiculous impossible speed and then have to put the disclaimer at the bottom that says 'images appear quicker than reality'.

My reality is nothing like this. I have exactly the same webpage loading speed as I had before and I still need to run an adblocker.

Using an analogy that non-technical people might understand a little better. Lets say you go from single to three phase power in your home. All this means is you can draw more power. It isn't going to make your kettle boil any faster if you already had enough power to your house on single phase. However, three phase will give you sufficient power to boil the kettle at the same speed as well as have the oven, air-con and a bunch of other high current devices all going at the same time. In a similar manner, the extra bandwidth you have will mean you can stream TV, download some large files and still browse your webpage without it taking longer to load.

Except that this is very much NOT what the NBN has been sold to everyone on. If this was the case, then the sales tactic would have been, now you can have 4 computers in your home instead of just the one all connected to the same phone line. None of them will go any faster or work any better, but you can have 3 more computers than you need!

And if that had been the honest sales pitch, then no-one would have bought it. So, no, they went with lightning fast connection speeds so you can do more in a faster time sales pitch, and that's just cough.

 

[jb747]

That might be relevant for some not everyone. It’s like buying a car. No use buying an expensive when a cheaper model is sufficient. Of course over time bandwidth requirements will only increase. But until then...

The cheaper model is almost certainly always sufficient. Unlikely to buy it though....

 

[Daver6]

Yeah, did this and they got rid of it. Good thing too. I did notice a small speed increase after rebooting the modem to make the configuration change take effect. Awfully nice of them to not bother telling their customers that they're deliberately crippling connections to save themselves some costs.


Conventional wisdom with computers is that you need a doubling of whatever metric it is, before you are pleasantly surprised by the increase in speed/performance. Be that RAM, Disc space, access speed, processor capacity etc. It has to double at least, otherwise the difference is so incremental that you may as well not bother.

Based on that as my understanding, my expectation was that based on Exetel's promise, I was going to have an at least 3x speed increase in internet connection. I was going to go from 12Mbps to (at least) 36Mbps and as high as 43Mbps according to Exetel. I expected to be blown out of my chair by how quickly webpages would just load instantly in the blink of an eye. I had visions of not even needing to run an adblocker at all anymore because the page would load so fast even with all the ads that the adblocker would actually slow it down by all the filtering. This is the case with my brother's FTTP connection. His ping speed is consistently 0ms and webpages load instantaneously. The whole page loads at once as soon as you click on it. There is no waiting for videos to load, no buffering, no waiting for large pictures to load, it's all just there instantly as fast as you can click the mouse. It works like you see in the movies or in Apple ads on TV, where they use trick effects to speed everything up to ridiculous impossible speed and then have to put the disclaimer at the bottom that says 'images appear quicker than reality'.

My reality is nothing like this. I have exactly the same webpage loading speed as I had before and I still need to run an adblocker.



Except that this is very much NOT what the NBN has been sold to everyone on. If this was the case, then the sales tactic would have been, now you can have 4 computers in your home instead of just the one all connected to the same phone line. None of them will go any faster or work any better, but you can have 3 more computers than you need!

And if that had been the honest sales pitch, then no-one would have bought it. So, no, they went with lightning fast connection speeds so you can do more in a faster time sales pitch, and that's just cough.

What results do you get using your computer at your brother's house? There is much more to page rendering speed than just the connection to the internet.

 

[Quickstatus]

Like my Jindy friend, my intention is to start high then move down. I suspect I’ll only need 25/5 based upon my experience at Jindy friend’s house.

AdSL remarkably had a stable month at 4/0.2 even with the rain.

 

[Legoman]

What results do you get using your computer at your brother's house? There is much more to page rendering speed than just the connection to the internet.

That's too difficult to test. My computer is not a nice portable laptop. It's a massive gloss piano black tower with Boocoo RAM, multiple SSDs and HDDs and connected into a world of other network devices all the time as the central pillar of a home network. It doesn't move anywhere. If I need anything from my brother I just take USB-3 portable HDDs in cases and bring it home instead.

 

[Legoman]

3 weeks after NBN connection and still no home phone. Exetel blaming TPG & TPG blaming Exetel. Me the customer left paying for two internet service providers so I don't lose the phone number I've had since 1974. So it's off to TIO I go. I wish this was unusual, unfortunately I suspect this is all perfectly normal and just how dealing with Australian telco providers goes eventually in 99% of cases.

 

[serfty]

So, he has referred it to "civil works", who apparently will come along and send a signal along my copper and use detectors to trace the wiring. (There was a sort of suggestion that when "the NBN" workers came through in January, they would not have been able to find the pit either; despite this, documentation exists that shows my address as having been NBN readied at that time.)

They came last Wednesday - found the pit along the street some thirty metres from where the map indicated. It had been overgrown with 6cm of turf.

A tech is booked to attempt installation for Friday morning,

 

[DaveB]

I am in the process of finishing a new redevelopment of an industrial site for my business in western Sydney.
Nearing completion, we booked NBN in late May through TPG to come out on 24 June to install the new FTTN service.
The NBN rep actually arrived on 24 June as scheduled, but advised he couldn't do anything as our conduit at the property boundary would need to be connected a distance of 600mm to the Telstra/NBN P5 pit. He further advised he would have to elevate the matter so that a civil works crew could come out. Only needing to dig a 450mm deep trench across the nature strip, he even declining our offer to do the work which would literally take 10 minutes with a shovel. We even had an excavator right there as we were reconstructing the kerb and gutter, driveway and footpath along the frontage.
Following up the matter and finding out a civil works crew would not be coming out for at least three weeks, we then located the old property conduit feed and linked our new conduit to it so no excavation or laying of new conduit would be required. This saved us a week and probably longer as it took one step out of the process.
NBN's 2nd visit occurred on 10 July where a crew of 3 proceeded to only feed a cable draw line from the street pit through the conduit to inside the building. We were surprised that the crew didn't come back after lunch to then draw the cable through and connect.
NBN's 3rd visit occurred on the 19th July whereby the rep said he couldn't do anything as he only did connections and had expected the previous crew to have laid the cable.
We have now been told NBN will be turning up for the 4th visit sometime by the 9th August to draw the cable through.
We thankfully do not rely on our office number for sales which has now been down for a month and at this rate with NBN requiring at least two more visits, we will be without the office number for at least 2 months.
The other crazy thing is Telstra has a coaxial cable running through the P5 pit with no connection points and we have been unable to get an answer why we are unable to get FTTB.
NBN will go down in folklore as why governments should never set up a monopoly service entity.

 

[moa999]

Sad story, and all too common.

I don't think the monopoly is the issue. In the old PMG/Telecom/Telstra days you would have been connected first time.

The issue is with the NBN reliance on head and sub-contractors. The guys coming out to do the connection are paid a per task rate and seemingly have limited flexibility to alter the scope or get paid more for a difficult job, so that all gets deferred.
End up you have four or five visits, takes twice as long and costs NBN twice as much, but they have the figment of managerial cost control

 

[Hvr]

I wrote a couple of months ago about NBN missing the original appointment. They have since paid ABB $27.50 who have applied it as a rebate to my bill. Well done ABB.

 

[DaveB]

A monopoly is definitely a big part of the problem as we would go elsewhere if we had a choice. Same as for our home service as our original Optus feed was forced to be switched of with NBN despite it delivering twice the download speed at cheaper price.

The old Telstra/Telecom days created part of the headache for NBN as unsupervised contractors were mainly used to layout the network being paid terrible rates to lay by the length and number of connections. Accordingly, street cables were rarely laid at 450mm depth and rarely laid in conduits to the property. My civil works business encounters this on a daily basis right across Sydney with street cables laid directly under the footpath slab, even knocking out the Westpac Strathfield branch for a week with their cables within the footpath slab 25mm down from the surface.

This was the main reason why we ended up with FTTN as standard as FTTB would have doubled the cost of the NBN project which was already financially not viable.

NBN clearly don't know anything about running field operations as a small crew of 2/3 could do all the works instead of breaking down the tasks. Even better, get out of the connection business and just focus on rolling out the network. TPG have been as exasperated as us providing us with direct contact within NBN despite being against the rules.

 

[Quickstatus]

@DaveB
What would be the cost if you did FTTP for the industrial site - leave a pull cable inside conduit in case it makes sense?

 

[Legoman]

Everything about the NBN has been an embarrassing disaster as far as I can tell and probably the biggest waste of public funds outside of wartime ever. My experience has been that it's all about diverting responsibility. It doesn't matter who I try to contact in the ridiculous chain of 'suppliers' involved in my mess, it's always someone else's responsibility and someone else's fault. No-win, catch-22, vicious circle, all of those terms apply. You can never get anyone to own up to admitting anything. If the construction of the NBN is an example of the future of construction contracting and management, then god help all of us, because the shambolic quality of NSW apartment blocks that crumble and crack into dust is just the beginning.

If I'd known in advance what I know now having experienced it, I'd have been more than happy staying with ADSL2+. Yes, technically it would be ultimately slower, but at some point you have to ask whether the pain has been worth it. It hasn't.

 

[DaveB]

@DaveB
What would be the cost if you did FTTP for the industrial site - leave a pull cable inside conduit in case it makes sense?

In our instance, it would not cost anything more as the fibre optic has been laid right next to the copper line feeding through the old local Telstra distribution pits. So instead of connecting us to the fibre optic, they will connect us to the old Telstra copper line back to their connector cabinet half a km away.
The Fibre optic is clearly shown on Telstra Maps for the area yet are going to waste with NBN.
TPG amongst others are rolling out their own FTTB cables targeting commercial areas. To get the cable to my premises, it would cost $60,000 which I declined though now wish I had tried to negotiate a total package price including a heavily discounted service contract. TPG owned networks are offering standard service speeds of 400 & 1000 MBps.
Would be interested to hear anyone's experience from Adelaide involving the City of Adelaide and TPG roll out of a 10Gbps service.

 

[Quickstatus]

The myth about fibre passing the premises is that NBN can/should just splice into it wherever your driveway is. They can’t. A fibre needs to be pulled from an upstream junction where the fibre is spliced/split
Current TCP technology choice program quotes are running at around $13000 per 500m (+/-)

 

[moa999]

And Telstra sure won't let the NBN touch their fibre cables, particularly those serving backbones or mobile towers.

Splitting a fibre cable is not easy unless it's been designed to be split from the start

 

[DaveB]

Having been in the business for 40 years, I know the fibre optic cable was meant for local distribution with plenty of slack, ie around 1-2 metres of fibre optic looped in a small P5 boundary pit.
Splicing fibre optic in the field is no big deal for those trained and with the right equipment.