NBN Discussion

[drsmithy]

All this talk about "competition" yet the government is building a wholesale monopoly. Go figure.

Yeah, those crazy moderates with their ideas about treating different things differently !

 

[RAM]

Certainly. But without competition (or regulation) prices do not drop (or product do not improve).

I think you will find, going forward, that people care about whether their internet lets them download 3-10GB/mo, vs tens or hundreds, more and more.

People can already access unlimited downloads, free local calls, free 13 & 1300 calls, free std calls etc - for under $70 and from some under $60 per month. That's without the NBN.

If you look at some broker modelling of the NBN - ARPU of $50, $60 or even $70 per month = HUGE loss to tax payer.

Talking about planning for 50 years in respect of the internet is a poor attempt to move the focus away from reality.

Planning for computing (from the 60s looking ahead) would have seen errors in magnitude on space and power requirements in excess of 10 to the 8.

from the 70s around 10 raised to the power of 7.

Planning for telephony for 50 years from the 60s, 70s or 80s equally would have seen billions wasted needlessly.

Planning for medicine 50 years ahead (in deliverables) woudl see trillions wasted. Just look at how much was wasted in a futile attempt to plan 1 year ahead for flu vaccines (worldwide).

Planning for electricity transmission within Australia for just 3 years ahead has seen over $35 billion wasted and yet the transmission companies are bidding and taking the regulator to court (State Govt entities taking the regulator to court) at the concerns ove rtheir bids to add another $30 billion in transmission spending in the next 3 years.

Great way for a State Govt to levy a tax as they are guaranteed a rate of return on every dollar invested that is about 3 times the cost of funding it. makes selling off the assets much more lucrative.

Planning for electricity generation for just 5 years in advance has been shown to be hopelessly wrong in most developed economies with new power stations commissioned and then mothballed. The advances in wind and solar especially were forecast yet the public authorities decried the analysis - MUCH LIKE WITH THE NBN.

Planning for volume (of service supply) is something lacking in most countries. Not enough space (open ground) is left for future schools, hospitals, fire stations, police stations, storm water etc let alone park land for high-rise refugees to use.

Throwing out planning for the internet for the next 50 years is not financially nor technically possible - but a good 'political' catch=cry with no substance.

The rate of technological change with telephony/internet is such that 2 brand new national phone systems who's owners went broke - had no bidders (going back just 10 years and less). Even the OEM did not bid for either network - they finally were sold for less than 2 cents on the dollar as scrap (what could be sold). Other parts (more than a certain distance from a city were left to the owners of the land they were on to dispose of.

What is certain is that today's technology will be superseded and be virtually worthless within 10 years.

Retro-fitting, as you've pointed out repeatedly above, is at best a band-aid solution.

 

[drsmithy]

People can already access unlimited downloads, free local calls, free 13 & 1300 calls, free std calls etc - for under $70 and from some under $60 per month. That's without the NBN.

Please don’t take comments out of context. The context was offering cellular connectivity as an option (since 4G+ can be fast), but with the constraint that mobile data plans tend to be quite small.

If you look at some broker modelling of the NBN - ARPU of $50, $60 or even $70 per month = HUGE loss to tax payer.

It would be nice if you can link to something you’re referencing so we don’t have to try and guess what it is.

Talking about planning for 50 years in respect of the internet is a poor attempt to move the focus away from reality.

We’re not. We’re talking about telecommunications infrastructure. FTTP in the ground will have a lifetime of decades and can scale massively further than FTTN+MTM.

The technology of copper lines laid down previously for telecommunications hasn’t fundamentally changed in half a century. Yet it's gone from having to talk to an operator to make a phone call, through to high-speed broadband connectivity.

If you have some technology in mind that is going to replace optical fibre for reliable, high-speed, high-bandwidth, low-latency, low-hitter data transmission in the foreseeable future, I’m sure the networking world would love to know about it.

What is certain is that today's technology will be superseded and be virtually worthless within 10 years.

No it’s not. If that were true the technology we were using ten years ago would be completely superseded and virtually worthless, yet that clearly isn’t true. Heck, I had cable internet over HFC nearly twenty years ago, that same cable is probably going to deliver MTM NBN.

If you think telecommunications companies do, or have any interesting in doing, complete technology refreshes every decade you’re crazy.

Ethernet, the backbone of most LANs, has been around for twenty years.

SATA, the internal connectivity to your computers hard and CDROM drives, has been around since 2003.

Etc.

Just because Apple likes you to buy a new iPhone every year or two, doesn't mean planning for the future is impossible. Especially at the hardware/infrastructure layer, nearly all improvements are unremarkable, evolutionary and predictable. Despite the widespread scaremongering, a FTTP NBN is not going to be "obsolete before it's finished".

 

[whatmeworry]

Malcolm's out of control NBN costs are blowing out again today. The optus cable Malcolm bought is so bad it looks like they have to replace the whole lot. Question time will be interesting today.

The Optus cable TV and broadband network bought by the National Broadband Network for $800 million is in such poor condition the NBN is considering replacing it entirely.
Replacing the network would see costs blow out by up to $375 million and 600,000 premises forced to wait until 2019 before connecting to the NBN, according to documents obtained by Fairfax Media.

Read more: Leaked NBN budget blowout documents threaten to embarrass Malcolm Turnbull
​

 

[moa999]

As Malcolm said in QT - Labor announced the NBN with 12wks planning and no real idea about costs or timing.

Unsure about the Optus thing - obviously they would have expected to spend some money on it, but appears that it was massively underprovisioned -- ie Optus would never have been able to support everyone in a street signing up to it -- which potentially describes why people on the current Optus cable have average experiences

 

[drron]

Malcolm's out of control NBN costs are blowing out again today. The optus cable Malcolm bought is so bad it looks like they have to replace the whole lot. Question time will be interesting today.

Unfortunately for you it was "underpants"Conroy that decided to buy the Optus cable for $800 million-
NBN Co 'anti-competitive' buyout approved - Agriculture - Agribusiness - General News - Farmonline National

Note the date-2012.JG was still PM then.

 

[whatmeworry]

The HFC networks were so bad they had to decommissioned. Yet the PM's the cost of policy on the run whilst he was communications minister continues to balloon and balloon.

I would have have had FTTP this year yet now If I am lucky HFC BY 2020.

If this were freeways, Malcolm would never be PM.

 

[whatmeworry]

Analysis of how Malcom Turnbull's MTM NBN is so far behind and has blown out in cost.

“Rumours have also surfaced that Malcolm Turnbull is trying to sell the NBN after the next election at a loss to cover his mistakes. Malcolm Turnbull calls his second rate NBN the MTM – Multi Technology Mix. A better name is Malcolm Turnbull’s Mess.”

https://delimiter.com.au/2015/12/15...dence-for-turnbulls-mtm-delays-cost-blowouts/

 

[drron]

And how does it all relate to the NBN's initial Business Plan?
Oh that's right there was no Business Plan even though it was required by the Productivity Commission.Exactly why it continues to be a mess.

 

[whatmeworry]

Good reply to the article above.

Sadly true in my experience. SMBs regularly ask whether they can make use of cloud services like Azure and cloud backup and they don’t like being told there is no reasonable way for them to make use of such services with the ADSL they have available. When they ask what it will cost to improve that, they are shocked at the cost of dedicated fibre, but when you try to explain what would have been available via the NBN, that they are no longer on the toll out map and that this is a direct consequence of the LNP’s changes, they start repeating the mantra of ‘well if Labor hadn’t been making such a mess of things it wouldn’t have gone so off track’. It is very difficult to continue that conversation in a professional capacity because people with such blinkered opinions automatically assume anyone making a political argument has an ideological axe to grind. I do so anyway, to some extent, because they’re paying me for my professional knowledge and expertise and I’m used to telling Directors things they don’t like to hear ;-) Because the reality is, as a business, the full fibre NBN would have provided tremendous opportunity for efficiency improvements and cost savings that is simply not possible remaining on ADSL or low performance FTTN, so that makes MTM and the tremendous delays and cost blowouts a business risk and cost, and by extension a LNP government is a business risk, cost and lost opportunity.
But just try convincing ideologically capitalist business owners and operators to vote Labor – their immediate concern is that Labor will try to take a piece out of their super pie, or make employees more costly, both far more ‘real’ than supposed possibilities promulgated by someone who is ‘obviously’ a Labor supporter

 

[Mal]

Sadly, I bet the original NBN plan, if implemented, would also be in the red as much.

 

[drsmithy]

Sadly, I bet the original NBN plan, if implemented, would also be in the red as much.

Possibly, maybe even probably.

But at least it would have an objective of delivering modern, scalable and future-looking technology, rather than the bare minimum necessary to consume mass-market media and not be laughed at by other countries.

 

[whatmeworry]

Malcolm Turnbull's NBN will have to be upgraded in to 10 to 15 years.

 

[eastwest101]

Malcolm Turnbull's NBN will have to be upgraded in to 10 to 15 years.

Point me towards a country that hasn't had any sort of telecomunications upgrade or update in the last 10 to 15 years. Thats a meaningless statement to make as it wouldn't at all be surprising if telecomunications systems were being upgraded and updated throughout the world (including Australia) in the period 2026 to 2030 regardless of whether there is an NBN or not.

 

[Foreigner]

I'm ignorant about NBN.

If I had a business with 4 phone lines, each charged $34.95 every month, then I am switch to NBN from copper network but I still retain 4 phone numbers, would I still be charged the monthly fee in addition to the NBN charge?

 

[moa999]

Yes you will still pay for a VOIP Dial-In but depending on provider and SLA it can be a lot cheaper...

Eg. At home I went from
Telstra Budget Rental $23
TPG ADSL $40 for 50Gb

To
Belong 25/5 100Gb $55
Telecube VOIP <$1/mth
And $0.10 calls

Indeed if you have a half decent internet connection now switching some lines to VOIP might be a big saving.

Equipment wise I bought a $60 Cisco SPA112 ATA to hook up my existing DECT handsets.. And later added a secondhand Cisco SPA904 desk phone for the office

 

[codash1099]

Malcolm's NBN innovation: from helpful and important to ferret underpants | First Dog on the Moon | Opinion | The Guardian

 

[whatmeworry]

Point me towards a country that hasn't had any sort of telecomunications upgrade or update in the last 10 to 15 years. Thats a meaningless statement to make as it wouldn't at all be surprising if telecomunications systems were being upgraded and updated throughout the world (including Australia) in the period 2026 to 2030 regardless of whether there is an NBN or not.

I was referring to the hardware and I was being generous. Most elderly people on this forum don't care the NBN.

 

[codash1099]

I was referring to the hardware and I was being generous. Most elderly people on this forum don't care the NBN.

I do! With people piling onto Netflix and the like, my ADSL2+ speed have slowed more than somewhat.

 

[RAM]

I do! With people piling onto Netflix and the like, my ADSL2+ speed have slowed more than somewhat.

Yes it is wonderful of the Govt to subsidise the pay TV industry by building the infrastructure they require.

Pity about us taxpayers footing the bill.