NBN Discussion

[whatmeworry]

Meanwhile claims by Cloudfare that Telstra and Optus are abusing market position with some of the most expensive net prices in the world.

Reverse proxy provider Cloudflare claims Australian carriers Optus and Telstra are abusing their monopoly positions to jack up network charges.
To demonstrate the pricing disparity, Cloudflare founder Matthew Prince said that if bandwidth in Europe and North America costs the company 10 units, in Australia and NZ, it costs 85 units.
Australia/NZ has the highest effective bandwith cost, even more than South America (68 units) and Asia (28 units), Prince said.
Telstra and Optus sit on the list of Cloudflare's six most expensive networks alongside HiNet in Taiwan, Korea Telecom, Telecom Argentina, and Spain's Telefonica.
The six account for almost half of Cloudflare's bandwidth costs, but pass only six percent of the provider's traffic, the firm said.
Cloudflare claims Telstra and Optus refuse to peer or directly interconnect and exchange traffic with the company.

http://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-optus-network-fees-among-worlds-highest-cloudflare-434176

 

[moa999]

Maybe Cloud flare should build their own fibre optic sea cables to Aus... Cost of international data traffic would be somewhat proportionate to distance, we are a long way from anywhere

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

The problem is the CVC is the expensive component to deliver. With potential gigabit to households, this was always going to be back haul constrained.

CVC isn't expensive to deliver. Backhaul generally is relatively cheap these days too, unless you're in a remote area.

The company I work for has a 10Gbs backhaul to just about every POI now. We'd be hitting maybe 25% on a few that have or are close to closing down the copper network, but in general terms we're nowhere near hitting the capacity that the backhaul could handle. We can't afford to increase the CVC as much as we could due to the inflated cost structure

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Maybe Cloud flare should build their own fibre optic sea cables to Aus... Cost of international data traffic would be somewhat proportionate to distance, we are a long way from anywhere

The internet exchanges have helped to limit their power. Back 10 years ago they could really gouge other ISPs, but these days it's relatively easy to peer with most other companies.

Telstra and Optus have monopoly pricing power over services they host, but that power is continually decreasing as large content providers provide caching equipment directly to large ISPs or have it located in data centres which connects directly into the internet exchanges.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

CVC isn't expensive to deliver. Backhaul generally is relatively cheap these days too, unless you're in a remote area.

The company I work for has a 10Gbs backhaul to just about every POI now. We'd be hitting maybe 25% on a few that have or are close to closing down the copper network, but in general terms we're nowhere near hitting the capacity that the backhaul could handle. We can't afford to increase the CVC as much as we could due to the inflated cost structure

So it's inexpensive but you can't afford to increase it? Which is it?

Also if homes are provided 1Gbps without contention your POI can now feed 10 homes.

I reiterate, back haul IS expensive, and the major delivery issue in high speed networks such as NBN.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

So it's inexpensive but you can't afford to increase it? Which is it?

Also if homes are provided 1Gbps without contention your POI can now feed 10 homes.

I reiterate, back haul IS expensive, and the major delivery issue in high speed networks such as NBN.

NBN has reduced the charge for CVC to $15 per 1Mbs of capacity per month. Any backhaul supplier charging near that would find they'd have 0 customers unless they were the monopoly provider

The currently bottleneck for NBN is the CVC. Lower that cost and RSPs will buy more. NBN may take a short term hit to income, but the faster they encourage use to increase, the faster they make money.

In NZ their version of the NBN is called UFB and their CVC equivalent cost is just $4 per 1Mbs capacity, and even that's not particularly cheap.

I would hazard a guess that the majority of NBN POIs are sitting at < 30% capacity, and quite a few much lower than that since they have not been in operation too long.

CVC is really just like an internet exchange peering on physically located ports. It's VERY cheap to provide, but is being used to cover the cost of the network rollout etc.

Possibly a combination of small increase in AVC charges with regular CVC price drops is what's needed to encourage uptake and make it profitable for RSPs to properly provision CVC capacity.

 

[whatmeworry]

Meanwhile the AFP has raided the parliament over the NBN leaks.

Senator Stephen Conroy's response:

"The whole investigation is about covering up Malcolm Turnbull's incompetent administration of the NBN and its rollout and its cost," he said, questioning the legal justification of the company's action in asking the AFP to investigate, given it was not a public authority.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/24/afp-goes-under-parliament-nbn-raid

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

Meanwhile the AFP has raided the parliament over the NBN leaks.

Senator Stephen Conroy's response:



http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/08/24/afp-goes-under-parliament-nbn-raid

Except both NBN and the AFP have confirmed the investigation was at the request of NBN, not the government.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Except both NBN and the AFP have confirmed the investigation was at the request of NBN, not the government.

Silly decision for NBN and the Govt. All they're doing is bringing the issues back into the spotlight.

 

[UP4014]

Except both NBN and the AFP have confirmed the investigation was at the request of NBN, not the government.

Except the owner of the NBN is the Government, board members appointed by same.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

Silly decision for NBN and the Govt. All they're doing is bringing the issues back into the spotlight.

Agreed, which is why government involvement is questionable.

 

[whatmeworry]

Meanwhile Malcolm’s NBN is going to remove 1.2 million homes destined for HFC, FTTP, FTTB and getting to them to connect to the much inferior FTTN (copper).

Geez what can I say Malcolm's mess.

In a marked change from previous plans, the new document reveals the HFC footprint will be cut back from a previous estimated 4 million premises to between 2.5 million and 3.2 million, with an expected final number of 2.8 million.
The 1.2 million premises to be taken out of the HFC rollout will be moved into the FTTN footprint, served either by a node, fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB), or the currently under testing fibre-to-the-distribution point (FTTdp).

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Meanwhile Malcolm’s NBN is going to remove 1.2 million homes destined for HFC, FTTP, FTTB and getting to them to connect to the much inferior FTTN (copper).

Geez what can I say Malcolm's mess.

Likely due to them finding out just how poorly maintained and expensive it is to upgrade HFC networks to reliably provide 100/40 in peak periods.

FTTN seems to be Ok up to 500M - as long as your copper is in decent shape you'll be syncing at close to 100/40.

Past 500M speeds start to drop and between 650 and 700M your ability to get 50Mbs relies on your node lotto entry.

 

[whatmeworry]

So more premises are getting the third rate NBN but the federal government will have to pour another 20 billion dollars to finish Malcolm's grand design which will now cost more then double he quoted and this doesn't include the amount of money we will spend on things like maintenance, additional power demands, and compensation.

The federal government will have to plow another $20 billion into the national broadband network as it battles higher than expected costs next year.

NBN needs another $20 billion of public money to finish rollout

 

[moa999]

I suspect in many cases FTTN is better than HFC (but not on long lines as mentioned above)

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

I suspect in many cases FTTN is better than HFC (but not on long lines as mentioned above)

Depends how many node splits they are willing to do to limit congestion. the more they do that the more expensive it gets. nbn has already admited optus was running highly contented on some hfc nodes.

note that when NBN released some testing last Feb they were able to achieve 84/33. You'd think they'd have dodged things up in a similar way with FTTN where they had a pare (brand new??) pair with just a few services to the node running a single test at a time to show FTTN could achieve 100/40 speeds.

i'm also not sure how fast they'll be willing to rollout till DOCIS 3.1 gets approved, and since it's near bleeding edge tech lots of unknown issues will arise, and equipment will be expensive for a few years till mass production drives down prices and R&D costs are repaid. every cable modem will have to be replaced to get the wonders we've been promised with docis 3.1

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

I suspect in many cases FTTN is better than HFC (but not on long lines as mentioned above)

I would say the opposite. HFC using DOCSIS 3.0 can already deliver gigabit speeds, with Telstra's cable network delivering me real world 120Mbps down and an artificially restricted 2.5Mbps up. Theoretically the same equipment is capable of 1300/216Mbps.

FTTN will rely on potentially very old copper in the last mile and simple copper pairs, whereas HFC cables are max 10-15 years old and are higher grade coaxial cabling which is far more robust.

 

[whatmeworry]

Meanwhile NZ is getting 1Gbps speeds.

On Friday last week New Zealand fixed-line telco company Chorus announced it will extend its 1Gbps fibre broadband service across the entirety of its Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) footprint beginning in October.

NZ internet about to leave Australia in the dust - Business - NZ Herald News

 

[NM]

Meanwhile NZ is getting 1Gbps speeds.

But remember that they can cover most of NZ with about 300km of fibre

 

[moa999]

And the major difference:

Chorus has been building the NZ government's ultra fast broadband project which was 57 per cent complete at the end of last financial year, but unlike the NBN it does not have any sort of mandate to provide service to people in rural areas.