NBN Discussion

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

The NBN should have focussed on ADSL black spots followed by cheap to implement and high yielding MDUs (apartments) to get the revenue rolling in.

NBN weren't chasing TPG, TPG were using a loophole to go gangbusters installing FTTB within their existing fibre footprint, thinking they'd then sell that to NBN at huge profits. NBN decided to overbuild them in many cases.

TPG started their rollout of FTTB because of the change to the MTM by the liberals. It wasn't a worthwhile option for them previously. You wont find any mention of TPG FTTB before the 2013 election.

Yes TPG has used a loophole to rollout their FTTB, but then Optus / Telstra / Vocus could do the same if they wanted to, but they'd also have to go through setting up fully separate wholesale divisions to do so.

I agree, NBN would have been better off offering FTTB as an option at the start of the rollout as it would have put the decision of going fully fiber or reusing the internal copper, and there would have been a few hundred thousand extra connections by 2013 which would have helped to make the rollout look more successful than it had been (the Liberals never talk about the backbone network that was nearly completed by 2013).

The point I'm making is that the Liberals on the one hand tell us the NBN should be a private endeavour, but on the other hand are happy to have NBN spend money on FTTB in buildings that are only receiving it from TPG. Since TPG has to offer the service on a wholesale basis, and the ACCC has declared access on them, would it not be better for NBN to prioritise the rollout to areas that don't have access to decent broadband speeds? Wouldn't this mean the rollout could be done with less CAPEX? NBN could then target areas for competition if TPG or other providers are screwing the customers.

I will note that in some of the larger MDU developments, copper runs to apartments can be well over 500M. These apartments are unlikely to get sync speeds of 100/40, but TPG gets around this by offering a 50 - 100Mbs speed claim, and since they don't have to follow the CVC pricing model of the NBN, those connected to it will probably have a better service than being on the MTM NBN.

 

[drsmithy]

Unfortunately your left wing mates decided to build infrastructure to focus on the other 25%, where building the 75% would have generated more than enough revenue to build the last 25% shortly thereafter.

Best not to assume who my "mates" are, and the Alternative Liberal Party hasn't been left-wing for decades.




Building out areas not already well-serviced by existing infrastructure is a perfectly reasonable plan for public services and infrastructure. Why would short term Federal Government spend on an asset with a life measured in decades need revenue to cover it ?

 

[drsmithy]

One of the most urbanised? Depends on your definition of urban. Australian urban areas are known for its sprawl. So the population density is lower than other urban areas.

Indeed. But the point is that the population is very concentrated into a small number of cities, so averaging out the population density across the entire country as if it were even remotely evenly distributed (or as if there were a large number of cities, like Europe or the US) is extremely disingenuous.

Almost everyone in this country lives in apartments, townhouses or suburban houses. The impression trying to be given is that the NBN could never work because so many people living out woop-woop make it impossible. We got telecommunications to nearly everyone in the past, it's absurd to argue we can't do it in the present.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Building out areas not already well-serviced by existing infrastructure is a perfectly reasonable plan for public services and infrastructure. Why would short term Federal Government spend on an asset with a life measured in decades need revenue to cover it ?

it's preferable to have govt spending on infrastructure that generates a return on the investment so that it's self liquidating.

i think we are focusing on a too short time frame with the NBN, which means the CVC has to be artificially high to meet the short term goal, but it's preferable that the govt does invest in infrastructure that generates a net economic return over the life of the asset.

much of what the nbn will offer the economy and users have not been developed yet, are prob not even being conceptualised as yet. heck adsl has only been common in australia for around 15 years, and look at the impacts that has had.

 

[Quickstatus]

Indeed. But the point is that the population is very concentrated into a small number of cities, so averaging out the population density across the entire country as if it were even remotely evenly distributed (or as if there were a large number of cities, like Europe or the US) is extremely disingenuous.

Almost everyone in this country lives in apartments, townhouses or suburban houses. The impression trying to be given is that the NBN could never work because so many people living out woop-woop make it impossible. We got telecommunications to nearly everyone in the past, it's absurd to argue we can't do it in the present.

Yes but the population density in the "very concentrated" (Australian) areas will be still significantly lower than that of the usual high density cities.

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much of what the nbn will offer the economy and users have not been developed yet, are prob not even being conceptualised as yet. heck adsl has only been common in australia for around 15 years, and look at the impacts that has had.

Yes you are most correct. That is why going the very expensive way (FTTN) into marginal electorates instead of improving ADSL blackspots was a great idea for Kevin747 but a bad idea for taxpayers.
Why do taxpayers have to fund an infrastructure that currently for most people allows them to do no more than Streaming movies, songs, cough and low latency gambling.

Futureproofing never makes sense.

Get everyone to a basic minimum say 5/1 Mbps first. The quickest way to do this is Wireless (or microwave in old school telecoms speak)
They should have gone Wireless first. Get the areas without internet or slow ADSL up and running first. If wireless tower is not possible then FTTN. Then ramp things up. When wireless get maxed out (due to the number of channels able to be physically built into the Wireless base stations) then do FTTN for the high demand areas.

My kids school are connected via a Wireless basestation tower. Their internet is 100/100 Mbps unlimited data uncontended (meaning its always 100/100 - no sharing with other users outside the school). Bad weather and rain has not interfered with the connection.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Yes you are most correct. That is why going the very expensive way (FTTN) into marginal electorates instead of improving ADSL blackspots was a great idea for Kevin747 but a bad idea for taxpayers.
Why do taxpayers have to fund an infrastructure that currently for most people allows them to do no more than Streaming movies, songs, cough and low latency gambling.

Futureproofing never makes sense.

Get everyone to a basic minimum say 5/1 Mbps first. The quickest way to do this is Wireless (or microwave in old school telecoms speak)
They should have gone Wireless first. Get the areas without internet or slow ADSL up and running first. If wireless tower is not possible then FTTN. Then ramp things up. When wireless get maxed out (due to the number of channels able to be physically built into the Wireless base stations) then do FTTN for the high demand areas.

My kids school are connected via a Wireless basestation tower. Their internet is 100/100 Mbps unlimited data uncontended (meaning its always 100/100 - no sharing with other users outside the school). Bad weather and rain has not interfered with the connection.

* 5/1 mbs internet is laughable. try to work from home with that accessing decent sized files. you'd give up and drive into the office.

* optic fibre has theoretically no maximum data carrying capacity. 100Gbps per wavelength is rolling out now, with wave division multiplexing allowing ever increasing 100Gbps streams to be sent over the same fibre. Quite likely we'll get to at least 80 * 100Gbps streams as the technology evolves or 8 Tbps (terra bits per second)

* wireless is a low bandwidth medium, expensive to run, degrades quickly as the number of users increases.

* if our internet is not comparable to the majority of our trading partners we will increasingly find we are left behind in the applications available for business and resi customers.

 

[moa999]

Get everyone to a basic minimum say 5/1 Mbps first. The quickest way to do this is Wireless (or microwave in old school telecoms speak)
They should have gone Wireless first. .

They have.
Satellites are in the air and live (although have some issues) and most FW towers are complete.

The slow post is the fixed line - FTTP, FTTB, FTTB and HFC

 

[whatmeworry]

Well my area was meant to get FTTP in 2015 (pits even remediated), cancelled for FTTN, then HFC sometime by 2016 which has now been pushed back to 2018 with HFC deemed unfit for purpose with now either FTTN or FTTdp now planned.

In the interim, my adsl is driving me bonkers with my isp (iprimus) denying they are throttling my speed instead blaming my modem and other hardware. It took me asking more then a dozen times to give me a reference number. TIO complaint coming.

While I wait for a reliable modern connection, the NBN co spends on ads like this.

[video=youtube;kQX47NOSsb8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQX47NOSsb8[/video]

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

In the interim, my adsl is driving me bonkers with my isp (iprimus) denying they are throttling my speed instead blaming my modem and other hardware. It took me asking more then a dozen times to give me a reference number. TIO complaint coming.

what do you mean by throttling?

do you mean sync speed or something else?

 

[Pushka]

what do you mean by throttling?

do you mean sync speed or something else?

It means the download speed is slowed down by their system.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

It means the download speed is slowed down by their system.

so the speed of your download is lower than your ADSL sync speed?

What's the difference? Is it during off peak or just the night time peak?

I work for an ISP so this kind of issue is my bread and butter.

 

[whatmeworry]

Happens day and night lately. I might be downloading something and out of nowhere my speeds drops by a quarter, half, 3 quarters, 90 percent.

Turn off the modem and speed back to normal.

Run trace routes and nothing abnormal. Run diagnostics on the Ethernet connection and then the DNS server is not responding. Tech wants me use another modem... Yeah right blame the modem.

Its either them or a faulty phone line.

I have done all these steps myself:
[h=4]Reboot your modem[/h][h=4]Hard reset your modem[/h][h=4]Isolation Test[/h]Iprimus used to be really good when their main call centre was in Australia.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Happens day and night lately. I might be downloading something and out of nowhere my speeds drops by a quarter, half, 3 quarters, 90 percent.

Can I suggest a few things to try and narrow down what is happening. You could be on a Telstra / Optus / Primus DSLAM so the testing options Primus has will differ depending on this. Obviously if you're on their DSLAM they have the greatest visibility. Same issues faced by a lot of ISPs, especially those who are pure resellers.

Log into your modem and see what your sync speed is. Also record your noise margin and attenuation.

When you have a problem log into the modem and see if the line characteristics have changed. If you can check the log file of your modem that could point to something as well.

before resetting your modem try a traceroute to the primus DNS in your state

https://www.iprimus.com.au/technical-support/general/dns-settings/

If that works then try a traceroute to google.com.au - it should resolve to an IP address.

How old is your modem? If it's a cheap one provided by primus then after 3 years they do tend to get a bit flaky. It's common with most ISP modems as they're bought based on volume pricing not quality. I often think it's the power wart rather than the modem but hard to prove. After 3 years the modems have had over 26000 hours of "use". i generally buy at the higher end VOIP modems and have had to upgrade after about 5 years as my internet has started to have issues. Just had to replace a 4 year old billion for my parents which is on fiber NBN.

I have to deal with Telstra on a daily basis. My company has its own line techs to test ULLs and the issues we face with getting a decent Telstra tech to repair a line fault is hair pulling frustration at times. Often we're reduced to loging an interference investigation with a 5 business day wait for them to send a tech out with decent gear to work on the fault on an hourly basis which is then billed to my company. In other words Telstra runs a network where they force customers to pay them to repair faulty lines, rather than having qualified techs who can fix the faults.

Considering NBN is going to be on the hook for all repair costs of copper, you can kiss goodbye to Telstra doing anything but some plastic shopping bags and corrosive gel as a repair fix.

this is a photo from a few weeks back from one of our WA field techs and shows the state of the copper network.

 

[cove]

At least you still have NBN connected. Our Sydney one got disconnected early in January and it is scheduled to be reconnected today. We did not request a disconnection and it happened.

 

[moa999]

this is a photo from a few weeks back from one of our WA field techs and shows the state of the copper network.

Looks like lazy techs who haven't been bothered to clean out pits or properly so anything.
Copper itself looks in great condition.

Human influence is the weakest link in this case

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Looks like lazy techs who haven't been bothered to clean out pits or properly so anything.
Copper itself looks in great condition.

Human influence is the weakest link in this case

Telstra techs these days are contractors from companies like BSA or Vision Stream.

They are paid a flat rate per fault. I've been told they earn $45 a fault. If that's true then I don't know how they survive. It would be nigh on impossible to work on a fault per hour once you include the time it takes to get from job to job.

I've noticed a marked decline int he quality of service from Telstra since they moved away from techs who are paid an hourly rate and happy to sit for 3 hours to fix a fault to a system whereby techs are rewarded on volume not quality.

 

[whatmeworry]

Iprimus wants to send out a Vision Tech.

Had a Telstra Tech check the line couple of years for a phone line fault. Even post privatisation, he was a great tech.

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Iprimus wants to send out a Vision Tech.

Had a Telstra Tech check the line couple of years for a phone line fault. Even post privatisation, he was a great tech.

Keep a track of the stats I suggested and that will help to narrow things down.

 

[PLANT]

Mate area shoes nbn and neighbour in court has access. His isp says he does not. Going to get him to call them and use 3 magic words........Service qualification test

 

[jb747]

It's supposedly going to be available in my area in two weeks. I'm considered giving Aussie Broadband a go, simply because they are not Telstra/Optus/TPG, and their call centre is in Oz. I'm looking forward to getting (if lucky) ADSL 2 speeds...