NBN Discussion

[whatmeworry]

NBN $30 million over budget with copper purchases.

While the National Broadband Network (NBN) company had originally said it would be spending AU$14 million on purchasing 1,800 kilometres of copper to last the company five months, it has now revealed that actual spend reached AU$44.2 million as of March 10.
Citing commercial in confidence due to continuing negotiations, NBN could not provide any extra detail on volumes and costs of copper.

NBN clocks up more than AU$44m in new copper | ZDNet

Meanwhile Internet Australia, urging the government to switch from FTTN to FTTdp.

Lobby group Internet Australia is calling for a rethink and urging the government and the opposition to "put politics aside and agree on a bipartisan NBN strategy".
This comes with the availability of new, lower cost, optical fibre used in FTTdp trials and survey results that show 80 per cent of Internet Australia members are dissatisfied with the current mixed-technology method (MTM).
According to Internet Australia, there is currently a rising level of debate about the NBN, partly due to the impending election, which follows ongoing claims of slowed deployments, installation problems and switchover issues.

Read more: 'Abandon FTTN for FTTdp': Internet Australia calls for NBN rethink
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[moa999]

$40m to replace bad copper and construct new nodes is but 0.1% of the project cost - hardly relevant

Plenty of things wrong with the NBN rollout more than this.

 

[exceladdict]

Ok so I'm pretty happy... The original ETA was December, but now at least I can apply to an RSP!

 

[exceladdict]

Just in case anyone is interested:
- Exetel quoted business 25 day connection time (?!)
- Exetel generally cheapest for 100/40 but lots of complaints on whingepool, aparrently traffic routed from PER to SYD or SIN.
- Belong do not offer 100/40 on FTTB (?!)
- TPG with no contract looking like the winner, even with contract they seem to have more reasonable relocation fees than Exetel.

 

[whatmeworry]

Just in case anyone is interested:
- Exetel quoted business 25 day connection time (?!)
- Exetel generally cheapest for 100/40 but lots of complaints on whingepool, aparrently traffic routed from PER to SYD or SIN.
- Belong do not offer 100/40 on FTTB (?!)
- TPG with no contract looking like the winner, even with contract they seem to have more reasonable relocation fees than Exetel.

Another person having a whinge on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/4hecjt/do_not_sign_up_for_any_service_with_exetel/

 

[Moindardt]

I have tried to read this forum but it seems to be mainly a handful of anti-coalition bashers on here. Can I ask if any of you have any commercial experience providing internet services or dealing with fibre optics on which to base these comments?

 

[whatmeworry]

I have tried to read this forum but it seems to be mainly a handful of anti-coalition bashers on here. Can I ask if any of you have any commercial experience providing internet services or dealing with fibre optics on which to base these comments?

I wish I could help, but my pits were remediated 2 years in anticipation of FTTP in 2015. However with faster, cheaper, sooner (TM), FTTP was then stopped in my area. I don't know when or if I will get FTTP, FTTN, HFC or FTTdp, but I might be able to answer your question in 2019-2020, maybe earlier if Labor win the next election.

 

[Moindardt]

<redacted>

Can I suggest you actually do a small cost/benefit analysis of a commercial installation of fibre, doesn't need to be fibre Internet, just running fibre optic between 2 building 100m apart. It might give you some aspect on what you pretending to know about.

And credible providers of commercial internet have never included Exetel or TPG. They are the LCC of Internet providers.

 

[moa999]

Re Belong on FTTB not offering 100/40 - there is a reason

 

[Cossie]

Stayed in Kingston, Tasmania last Friday, the receptionist gave us the details for wi-fi and then added "you may have problems with access and speed, it hasn't been as reliable since we went over to the NBN."

I immediately thought of this thread and had a chuckle.

 

[drsmithy]

I have tried to read this forum but it seems to be mainly a handful of anti-coalition bashers on here. Can I ask if any of you have any commercial experience providing internet services or dealing with fibre optics on which to base these comments?

Would we need to be teachers to have an opinion on whether public schooling is a good idea ?

 

[exceladdict]

Back on NBN questions, just because everyone is so interested in my decision making cycle, I've circled back to exetel thinking I'll only need 500gb/month, and $100/month on internet is hard to justify.

Does anyone have exetel FTTN/B - particularly in PER - and want to scare me out of this decision?

 

[Moindardt]

Would we need to be teachers to have an opinion on whether public schooling is a good idea ?

The question is not whether you have an opinion, it is whether it is an informed opinion you have derived or whether you are just regurgitating something someone else said, be it factual or otherwise? Do you derive only the facts that back up your pre-conceived opinion or do you derive your opinion from a well balanced analysis of the facts?

I am not going to go into the school debate except to say, go ask the teachers union for a full breakdown of all income per student from ALL sources, broken up by any or all categories. There is a reason they removed information from the myschools website. Keep the ignorant, ignorant and obliviously happy. If you want to start another thread and discuss facts of schooling, more than happy to, but this is the NBN thread.

I am more than happy for someone else to analyse the same set of data and arrive at a different conclusion, in fact, it makes for many of my more interesting conversations. My question was, do any of you have an "informed" opinion or is it just more political grandstanding?

 

[RooFlyer]

NBN Fixed Wireless being installed today, a week after I signed up to Dodo for service and 3 weeks after the service was switched on.

Its for my holiday rental place, which is in a remote-ish area of Tas, 50 km from the highway, at a 'dead end', with a couple of hundred people permanent population.

They put up the Fixed Wireless tower in about 10 days, then commissioned it over a month. Its fed by a microwave link (I think) to an optic fibre source across the bay, in a much larger town.

So people - how much do you think it would have cost to put optic fibre in that distance to service a few hundred people of whom only a small minority would actually want it? I wonder when that would have happened?

I'm very happy, Jan. Up till now I couldn't even get ADSL 1 !!!

Those of you who want the Rolls Royce optic fibre service - you can still get it, I believe. Just call up the NBN and they will quote you for it. If you want the Roller, you pay for it.

BTW Install is organised by NBN Co, and arrangements have gone very smoothly. On the other hand, Dodo service is execrable. Off shore call centre, reading (or interpreting) a script, ended up being told 3 untruths in the sign-up call. A complaint to Tele Industry Ombudsman in progress, based on the recording of the call, which I asked for, was refused initially, then reluctantly given. Dodo is cheap, but they make you work for it. Didn't go with Telstra (where I have my other accounts) as they make you 'bundle' and didn't have unlimited data.

 

[whatmeworry]

Those of you who want the Rolls Royce optic fibre service - you can still get it, I believe. Just call up the NBN and they will quote you for it. If you want the Roller, you pay for it.

You can get a quote but it will cost a couple hundred dollars for the quote. IIRC someone on reddit or whirpool got quoted tens of thousands of dollars for a FTTP connection.

No word on labour’s plan for the NBN but FTTdp probably a minimum when they win the DD.

“NBN Co has conceded that the cost of rolling out fibre to the pit out the front of your house is now almost the same cost as fibre to the node.

Bill Shorten still hasn't outlined Labor's NBN plan clearly | Business Insider

 

[coriander]

FTTB was presented to five residential towers in our neighbourhood in late Sep 2015, with our OC committee agreeing to acquiring FTTB by late November (other OCs are arguing(?) with TPG over the power consumption, one OC wanting a separate power point and wiring back to a separate meter). Fibre was pulled from the street into our MDF during the last week in March 2016. All installation was completed in week after Easter.

FTTB in our building went live on 11-April. Our OC covers a residential tower, townhouses and apartments. The townhouses and apartments have separate street addresses. This created a problem as only the tower address was listed in the TPG/Wondercom database. I shot off an email to the TPG manager who initially presented the system to us and the new addresses were added to the database over the weekend of 23-25 April.

I signed up for Wondercom Tuesday 26th at 10.00am.
By 3.00pm an email advised that the modem was coming via Startrack.
At 3.45pm, I received a phone call from a Wondercom techie advising me to ring him as soon as modem arrives.
Wednesday modem arrives. I ring TPG techie who was happy to install that afternoon! First available morning appointment was Friday 900am.

Techie rocks up Friday morning, cuts us over to Wondercom in 5 minutes. Our home is approx 100m from MDF (following the conduits in garage ceiling and allowing 5m for cabling inside our residence to the modem).

Below is the speedtest from Exetel just before cutover and FTTB after cutover: we've gone from "slower than 69%" to "faster than 98%" of Australia.



Service was fast, communications were excellent. We've gone from an Exetel ADSL2+ $59 unlimited plan (paying for phone calls) to the TPG/Wondercom 100/40 unlimited plan with all but calls to mobiles thrown in for $69. Meanwhile here at work in Sunshine ADSL runs at 3-4 Mbps and fails every 9 months or so due to corroded / failing copper in the pit outside. No fibre of any description till 2019 (I think we're in the last tranche - HFC?).

 

[RooFlyer]

Would we need to be teachers to have an opinion on whether public schooling is a good idea ?

Only if you think one has to be a 'climate scientist' to express a sceptical opinion on (anthropomorphic) climate change .

 

[Deleted member]

Would we need to be teachers to have an opinion on whether public schooling is a good idea ?

Teachers would be the last people to ask !!

 

[moa999]

Service was fast, communications were excellent. .

Very nice...
The only issue i see reported with TPG is some of their international connections aren't the best.
But owning their own fibre means they can offer kickass FTTB deals and don't need to pay the NBNs stupid (and this is a thanks Labor era decision) CVC charges which mean that the NBN is getting very congested over peak streaming periods.

Being in a MDU I would expect NBN to ultimately rollout a similar FTTB solution. (unless of course the development is precabled with coax as well)

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

Very nice...
The only issue i see reported with TPG is some of their international connections aren't the best.
But owning their own fibre means they can offer kickass FTTB deals and don't need to pay the NBNs stupid (and this is a thanks Labor era decision) CVC charges which mean that the NBN is getting very congested over peak streaming periods.

Being in a MDU I would expect NBN to ultimately rollout a similar FTTB solution. (unless of course the development is precabled with coax as well)

My recent technical advice is that you cannot run two VDSL service providers in the same building due to crosstalk. It's more likely NBN will be lazy and just compulsorily buy up these TPG assets eventually.