Re: The Lounge Wi-Fi Speedtest Thread
If you have anything other than a "Vanilla" set up, then it is likely gunna cost: (
Preparing for the NBN )
Isn't that exactly what I was saying though - and a "solution" to the issue you have with it potentially costing you money for the install? i.e. you can continue with what you have now (well, likely actually better, as you'll get a full-speed 24Mbit ADSL connection from the emulation port on the NTU) with the included, free install, and then pay for the extra wiring if/when you want anything more? Or have I misunderstood you?
May be so, but at what cost?
A NBN under the KRudd evisagement might be nice, but I doubt our country can afford it currently.
At what cost indeed, as that seems to be the one remaining commonly raised objection to the NBN (i.e. arguments about whether it is the best technical solution, whether Australia actually needs better broadband, etc, appear to have finally all fallen by the wayside).
I haven't read any economic modelling around the coalition's FTTN proposal, so I can't comment on that, but in the case of the NBN, at it's budgeted cost, it's a money-maker - ergo, not a cost. As has been said over and over, and as many seem to choose to ignore. So, if it turns out to be that simple, we clearly can afford it.
I'm sure that your insta-response to that will be that it will go severely over-budget and hence end up costing money, despite the economic modelling and revenue it will generate. The reality is that that is currently an unfounded assertion, despite it being oft-repeated by some politicians and journalists. However, let's assume for a second that it does turn out to be true to some
reasonable extent.
The economic modelling that has been done around the NBN - the modelling which shows it generating a profit over the medium-to-long term - is extremely conservative, once you dig into the detail. Plus, it only counts the direct revenue that the NBN will generate, and does not even contemplate wider econonic benefits (which will be significant by any measure), nor social benefits, nor benefits to health, nor benefits to eduction, and so on.
It's impossible for anyone to say with certainty whether these indirect benefits would be sufficient to make up for any potential increase in the NBN's cost, but based on what we already know about how access to increasingly-faster-and-more-prevalent internet access has changed our economy and society already, it's fair to say that there is a
lot of leeway for the NBN's price to increase before it truly starts to "cost" our nation anything.
While on the topic of cost, now that we
finally know what the coalition plans entail, I think it's worth a quick comparison of the two options side-by-side:
On the one hand we have a FTTH network that is budgeted to cost ~$38B, and on the other a FTTN network that is budgeted to cost ~$30B (again, I'm using the budgeted costs here, because these
are the best figures we have right now - and if you want to argue that the FTTH cost is wrong, the same argument can equally be applied to the FTTN cost).
The former is capable of a guaranteed 1,000Mbps right now (technically capable now, retail availability later this year), and far, far more in the future. The latter will be capable of a guaranteed 25Mbps at launch, a guaranteed 50Mbps in six years time... and realistically not a whole lot more (if anything) beyond that. The former is a game-changing (or should I say nation-changing) difference in speed, the latter is just spending a lot of money for a marginal improvement over the status quo.
The former offers high upstream bandwidth as well as high downstream, whereas the latter almost certainly will not (I say "almost certainly" as I don't believe the coalition have said what type of DSL they will use, but even if it's VDSL2 there will need to be sacrifices made on the upstream speed to guarantee the downstream speed). You might not get why now, but this is important.
The former is reliable, and being built to last 50+ years without significant maintenance, whereas the latter is reliant upon the ancient, under-maintained and unreliable copper network for the last-mile - a copper network which already does, and will continue to, require constant and expensive maintenance. I'd be interested to know whether the FTTN budget includes the cost of maintaining the copper - I strongly suspect it doesn't, and if you include this the ~$30B figure is set to get a lot higher.
The former is incredibly upgradable and won't require changes to the expensives parts of the infrastructure (the cables) over its lifespan, whereas the latter is a short-term, stop-gap solution, that will require another round of spending / upgrades (to FTTH) in the not-too-distant-future. This one is pretty important, as it makes the true cost of the FTTN proposal greater than the cost of the FTTH proposal - it just defers some of this cost for a period of time.
I could go on, but I think that's probably enough.
Given the many complaints that the NBN is wasteful (and many of those complaining now supporting the FTTN proposal), I think the real irony is that it is actually
FTTN which is the truly wasteful option.
The NBN costs more in the short-term, but for that extra money we get something truly revolutionary (in the space of broadband at least, even if you don't believe it will have a huge impact on the wider economy / our society). FTTN, on the other hand, still requires the government to spend 75% of the NBN's price - ~$30 billion dollars - and what we get in return is something barely better than the status quo. Now
that is a giant waste.
The only sensible / non-wasteful alternative to the NBN would be to not build a new network at all (and perhaps invest a much smaller amount of money fixing blackspots, improving backhaul, etc), but that is no longer an option given the contracts already signed by the NBN, and the two competing pieces of policy in play. So, our choice now is not whether to spend $0 or $38B, it's whether to spend ~$30B on FTTN (and more later upgrading it to FTTH) or ~$38B on FTTH. An $8B difference. It's hard to even imagine a logical argument that the difference between the two isn't worth spending the extra $8B on now.
This article from the ABC
indicates the Coalition policy cost is achievable, while pointing out:
It's now demonstrable that the Government's all-fibre NBN, with its nominal price tag of $37.4 billion, cannot be built within either its promised budget or timeframe. In the first 10 weeks of this year, NBN Co, the company charged with the fibre rollout, passed only an additional 28 households a day. At that rate it would take 1,200 years to build the NBN. The rollout has stalled and targets are continually revised downward and missed, while the cost of actually connecting homes remains a state secret.
(new emphasis mine)
One person saying something does not make it true, especially when he doesn't provide any real data to back up his assertions. Not to mention, the author of that article loses all credibility when he writes something as stupid as the bit I've bolded above. /facepalm
I must say that I also find it interesting that you are quick to dismiss the costings / schedule for the NBN as unachiveable, but equally quick to assume that the costings / schedule of the FTTN option are achievable? I can understand scepticism of budgets / schedules associated with government infrastructure projects (or any large infrastructure project for that matter), but not being selective about said scepticism?
Yes, a litter slower. NBNCo is two years into a ten year rollout plan - one which has a rapid ramp-up in roll-out rate about a third-to-half of the way through. In that (true) context, they're going a little slower than originally planned.
I'm (genuinely, not flippantly) not sure which part of that article you are referring me to?
But yes, a lot of catching up happening now. The rollout has accelerated again over the past month or two.
Not sure where you get your facts from but his company was not a retail reseller purely because they did not exist when it started ( as you point our ADSL was in its infancy when Ozemail was sold, which was the product that evolved pure retail ISPs), it very much had its own infrastructure just like its peers, at the time having 16 POP across Australia when they listed on the NASDAQ.
Sorry, you are of course correct re Ozemail not being a retail reseller at that stage - what I intended was to draw a comparison between what Ozemail was in Turnbull's time, and the retail ADSL resellers of today. Ozemail did have it's own POPs (as did all larger dial-up ISPs back then, and most ISPs now, although they "look" a little different - as I'm sure you know), but like the retail ADSL retailers of today they did not own nor build nor operate infrastructure that in any way resembles that which is involved in a national wholesale broadband network. As I'm also sure you know.
I note you also missed his involvement in Webcentral, etc.
I didn't miss it - I simply didn't mention it because it has no particular relevance to Turnbull's expertise in the field of the NBN (or equivalent proposals). Web hosting != wholesale broadband infrastructure. Again, as I'm sure you also know.
As someone who has been in the IT/ Telco industry for 30 years, I don't need Wikipedia to tell me someone's background when I have experienced it myself,
Neither do I (although I will admit to referring to Wikipedia to check the exact year he exited Ozemail) - and I'd add that personal jibes don't really contribute to a constructive discussion.
his knowledge of the industry and what works is not something you get at uni, and his bank account is no doubt a pn indicator of how well that knowledge has been applied.
I'll repeat what I said before: Turnbull's experience makes him far more knowledgeable and authoritative than average in this field (designing and implementing a national broadband network). But it does not make him an "expert". And even if it did, his opinion is
far, far outweighed by the number of "experts" who support a FTTH model. And, to again repeat what I said earlier, by "experts" I do
not mean myself, politicians, journalists nor random internet commentators. I'll also add "people who just went to uni" to that list, if you like.
EDIT: Fixed reference to FTTH in the final paragraph - originally typoed "FTTN", meant "FTTH".