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NBN Rollout Scrapped

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This, also from the Fairfax press,

Mr Quigley talked the committee through 19 pages of pie charts with breakdowns of costs.

''I'm here to give the committee some confidence that $37.4 billion is the right number,'' he said.

However, Mr Quigley's estimated costs remained contentious. For example, on the amount it costs to connect a premises with fibre, Mr Quigley's forecast costs for future connections were about one-third of the price of what it had been costing to date.
Click to expand...

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...ghts-to-coalitions-policy-20130419-2i4c5.html
 
NBNMyths said:
Yes I did. And I have no issue with it. However, it's somewhat beside the point. I'm looking for an example of the Howard Government undertaking an infrastructure project that went to plan.

I had actually assumed there must be a few examples after 11 years of Government, but I'm yet to be presented with one.

It's not that they didn't do anything. There was the Darwin-Alice railway, but that didn't turn out very well.

My point, which seems so far to be accurate, is that the Coalition were no better at project management than the ALP. I still await presentation of any evidence to the contrary. So why do we assume that their management of the NBN will be any better than the ALP's?
Click to expand...

Project management perhaps not, policy roll out was a lot better though. Think Timor intervention, Gun buyback, IR reforms, gst, foresight on mining boom etc. Almost (if not) all of labors big policies have failed to some degree, the majority seem to go badly. I was in support of a few of their policies until the just seem to let them fall apart and move on. Labor just needed one or two big policies that they got right instead of the weekly announcements followed by failure we get now.
 
drsmith said:
Have you got around to a detailed read of the Coalition's NBN documentation yet ?
Click to expand...

For some reason I've been unable to post from my Mac to this thread for the last few days. Keep getting a cloudshare error page, whatever that is.

Anyway, to cover a few points since then:

Yes, I've read the background notes.

The notes are more a critique of the Labor NBN than anything to do with the Coalition policy. It's really relegated to the last couple of pages.

It's funny that Malcolm thinks it will be impossible for NBN Co to meet a pass rate of 6800 premises/day after 2 years of trials and 5 years of ramping up, but he thinks the Coalition can manage to actually migrate (not just pass) 24,000 premises to VDSL/FTTN per day for two years, after a couple of months of trials and zero ramp up. That equates to physically connecting and testing and migrating the ISP billing/service of an average 3,000 connections per hour, every working day for 2 years....About 1 per second. :eek: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Not a snowball's chance in hell.

=====

NBN Co have always said that doing Fibre to the basement of apartment blocks was an option, albeit one they don't favour. This is not a new idea, and it is not anything like the coalition's FTTN plan. The copper used in such a situation would be under 100m long, and in far better condition that 500m of copper that's been in a water-filled trench on the street for 50 years.

=====

Turnbull's claim that the cost of maintaining copper has not been disclosed by Telstra, and is estimated to be $750m pa is incorrect. I was listening to a parliamentary hearing last year (sorry, can't remember if is was house or senate), where the Telstra rep testified that the cost of maintaining copper was "well into the billions" per year.

Mal's spin on the TUSMA contract is a good indication. Even assuming the rural section is the most expensive to maintain per line (likely), what sort of voodoo maths leads one to conclude that a cost of $6.4bn ($320m pa) NPV to maintain ~7% of the current network, equates to $750m for 100% of it? Especially considering that there's a very good chance that a huge chunk within that 7% will abandon their copper lines during the 20-year period anyway, removing their cost completely.

=====

Turnbull's claims criticising NBN Co's projected capex in the years post-2021 are atrocious.

NBN Co are simply assuming that our desire for ever-increasing bandwith will continue into the future, and indicating what such upgrades to the NBN may cost, even with a capability in 2021 of 1Gbps for fibre and 25Mbps for wireless/sat.

Turnbull on the other hand, is presenting a policy that simply stops in 2019 with people at 50-100Mbps for FTTN and 25Mbps for wireless and sat. His plan doesn't indicate any provision for additional capex post-2019, because there is no plan post-2019. How can you criticise the NBN for projecting upgrades when your own policy doesn't consider future requirements at all?

If he thinks it's bad that a 1Gbps network will need another $6bn of capex for upgrades, what on earth does he foresee as the additional capex required for his network? Or is he assuming that people will be happy with 25-100Mbps in 10 years time, and no further upgrades will be required?

If he's right, then the $6bn forecast by NBN Co won't be required at all. If he's wrong, then the capex required to upgrade his network will be closer to $40bn than 6. Either way, he's hardly in a position to criticise.
 
Your loyalty to the Conroy/Quigley rollout is admirable Myths. Nevertheless come September your heroes will be consigned to irrelevancy.
 
Why? Why does the opposition want an NBN?


Without knowing why the opposition wants an NBN we cannot know – and we cannot check – whether they have selected the right policy for the technology they have chosen for their version.

If you don't know why you want an NBN, how can you develop the right policies and strategies to achieve what I assume they agree is necessary, a national digital infrastructure outcome?
Click to expand...


The fact that it aims to include competition in its infrastructure rollout could indicate the opposition indeed sees NBN Co as a national utility. If infrastructure competition is allowed then that competition will concentrate on the most lucrative markets – along the same lines as we see now around developments in ADSL2+ and HFC upgrades.

If that level of cherry-picking is allowed then there will be no way for NBN Co to deliver a positive financial outcome, as it will be left servicing only the areas that are not commercially viable – roughly 50 per cent of all broadband connections.

It follows then that the NBN Co under the opposition will not be based on providing any serious commercial return.
Click to expand...
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/govern...want-an-nbn-20130419-2i4fg.html#ixzz2QxPAmP8S
 
NBNMyths said:
For some reason I've been unable to post from my Mac to this thread for the last few days. Keep getting a cloudshare error page, whatever that is.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the reply. I'll assume the other posts you've made over the past few days were from something other than your Mac. ;)

Questions/comments in blue,

Anyway, to cover a few points since then:

Yes, I've read the background notes.

The notes are more a critique of the Labor NBN than anything to do with the Coalition policy. It's really relegated to the last couple of pages.

It's funny that Malcolm thinks it will be impossible for NBN Co to meet a pass rate of 6800 premises/day after 2 years of trials and 5 years of ramping up, but he thinks the Coalition can manage to actually migrate (not just pass) 24,000 premises to VDSL/FTTN per day for two years, after a couple of months of trials and zero ramp up. That equates to physically connecting and testing and migrating the ISP billing/service of an average 3,000 connections per hour, every working day for 2 years....About 1 per second. :eek: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Are you saying that the Coalition's rollout schedule is technically unachievable and if so, what specific technical background do you have to make that judgement ?

=====

NBN Co have always said that doing Fibre to the basement of apartment blocks was an option, albeit one they don't favour. This is not a new idea, and it is not anything like the coalition's FTTN plan. The copper used in such a situation would be under 100m long, and in far better condition that 500m of copper that's been in a water-filled trench on the street for 50 years.

Their political master, Stephen Conroy would beg to differ.

Under Labor everyone living in apartments and units will get Labor's NBN – a world-class communications system, fibre to their apartment, unit, home.
Click to expand...

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/govern...pposition-on-nbn-in-flats-20130419-2i3y1.html

What's happening here is that NBN Co are realising that in an economic sense, the Copper in not necessarily redundant yet as a whole. This interestingly is Malcolm Turnbull's principal. What NBN Co's acknowledgement above does is make Stephen Conroy and Labor look increasingly isolated in their point of view on the existing copper.

=====

Turnbull's claim that the cost of maintaining copper has not been disclosed by Telstra, and is estimated to be $750m pa is incorrect. I was listening to a parliamentary hearing last year (sorry, can't remember if is was house or senate), where the Telstra rep testified that the cost of maintaining copper was "well into the billions" per year.

It would be interesting to see the transcript to understand the quantum, breakdown (if any) and the context.

Mal's spin on the TUSMA contract is a good indication. Even assuming the rural section is the most expensive to maintain per line (likely), what sort of voodoo maths leads one to conclude that a cost of $6.4bn ($320m pa) NPV to maintain ~7% of the current network, equates to $750m for 100% of it? Especially considering that there's a very good chance that a huge chunk within that 7% will abandon their copper lines during the 20-year period anyway, removing their cost completely.

Is that 7% of the network by premises, or by length of Telstra's copper to serve those connections ?
What condition is that portion of the copper in, relative to the rest ?
Has the abandonment of the copper lines over time that you refer been factored into the underlying TUSMA contract value ?
What is the discount rate on the TUSMA contract value and how would that differ from, say the cost of Labor over time ?

The reality my not be as simple as the picture painted above.

=====

Turnbull's claims criticising NBN Co's projected capex in the years post-2021 are atrocious.

NBN Co are simply assuming that our desire for ever-increasing bandwith will continue into the future, and indicating what such upgrades to the NBN may cost, even with a capability in 2021 of 1Gbps for fibre and 25Mbps for wireless/sat.

Turnbull on the other hand, is presenting a policy that simply stops in 2019 with people at 50-100Mbps for FTTN and 25Mbps for wireless and sat. His plan doesn't indicate any provision for additional capex post-2019, because there is no plan post-2019. How can you criticise the NBN for projecting upgrades when your own policy doesn't consider future requirements at all?

If he thinks it's bad that a 1Gbps network will need another $6bn of capex for upgrades, what on earth does he foresee as the additional capex required for his network? Or is he assuming that people will be happy with 25-100Mbps in 10 years time, and no further upgrades will be required?

If he's right, then the $6bn forecast by NBN Co won't be required at all. If he's wrong, then the capex required to upgrade his network will be closer to $40bn than 6. Either way, he's hardly in a position to criticise.

What proportion of capex post 2021 is for upgrades, what specific upgrades are envisaged, and what would they achieve in terms of bandwidth ?
 
Calliope said:
Your loyalty to the Conroy/Quigley rollout is admirable Myths. Nevertheless come September your heroes will be consigned to irrelevancy.
Click to expand...

How about you confine your posts to the topic? This post has added no value to the discussion.
 
Calliope said:
Off topic. :topic Criticism of me is not the topic.:D My post was relevant...the topic is NBN Rollout Scrapped:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

irony.jpg
 
Myths,

I didn't look very closely at your math in my previous response,

NBNMyths said:
It's funny that Malcolm thinks it will be impossible for NBN Co to meet a pass rate of 6800 premises/day after 2 years of trials and 5 years of ramping up, but he thinks the Coalition can manage to actually migrate (not just pass) 24,000 premises to VDSL/FTTN per day for two years, after a couple of months of trials and zero ramp up. That equates to physically connecting and testing and migrating the ISP billing/service of an average 3,000 connections per hour, every working day for 2 years....About 1 per second. :eek: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Not a snowball's chance in hell.
Click to expand...
There are approximately 250 working days per year (weekdays minus public holidays).

24,000 x 250 = 6,000,000.

My bolds.
 
drsmith said:
Myths,

I didn't look very closely at your math in my previous response,

There are approximately 250 working days per year (weekdays minus public holidays).

24,000 x 250 = 6,000,000.

My bolds.
Click to expand...

Yes, 6,000,000 per year for two years. For a total of 12,000,000 connections.

To be fair, it could be a little less than that if Turnbull ignores the HFC footprint until after 2016. But the promise is for everyone to be able to access 25Mbps, and there are many buildings within the HFC footprint (ie MDUs) that cannot access HFC, and would therefore need to have FTTN/FTTB installed by 2016 to meet the promise.
 
Questions/comments in blue,

My answers in red.


Yes, I've read the background notes.

The notes are more a critique of the Labor NBN than anything to do with the Coalition policy. It's really relegated to the last couple of pages.

It's funny that Malcolm thinks it will be impossible for NBN Co to meet a pass rate of 6800 premises/day after 2 years of trials and 5 years of ramping up, but he thinks the Coalition can manage to actually migrate (not just pass) 24,000 premises to VDSL/FTTN per day for two years, after a couple of months of trials and zero ramp up. That equates to physically connecting and testing and migrating the ISP billing/service of an average 3,000 connections per hour, every working day for 2 years....About 1 per second. :eek: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Not a snowball's chance in hell.

Are you saying that the Coalition's rollout schedule is technically unachievable and if so, what specific technical background do you have to make that judgement ?

I would say it's almost impossible. I don't have any background, but I do have some common sense and ability to assess!

Compare the target to BT's FTTN rollout, for example:

They have been rolling it out in the UK for three years already. They began their rollout in January 2009, and hit 10 million premises in June 2012. An average of 16,000 per day over their first 2.5 years.

The coalition expect to pass ~125,000 per week ~(24,000 per day) in the first 2 years of their rollout.

Despite:
• BT being the owner of the copper network, and their existing trained and familiar staff performing the rollout. Compared to NBN Co not owning the network, and not having a workforce trained and familiar with that network.

• BT have a total workforce of 89,000 people (although I don't know how many are involved in FTTN deployment). Compared to NBN Co's contractors having a workforce of a few thousand, who have all been trained in FTTP, not copper.

• The population density of the UK being quite a bit higher than Australia's.



=====

NBN Co have always said that doing Fibre to the basement of apartment blocks was an option, albeit one they don't favour. This is not a new idea, and it is not anything like the coalition's FTTN plan. The copper used in such a situation would be under 100m long, and in far better condition that 500m of copper that's been in a water-filled trench on the street for 50 years.

Their political master, Stephen Conroy would beg to differ.



http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/govern...pposition-on-nbn-in-flats-20130419-2i3y1.html

What's happening here is that NBN Co are realising that in an economic sense, the Copper in not necessarily redundant yet as a whole. This interestingly is Malcolm Turnbull's principal. What NBN Co's acknowledgement above does is make Stephen Conroy and Labor look increasingly isolated in their point of view on the existing copper.

As I wrote, there is a huge difference between general FTTN, and FTTB in MDUs. A distance difference of ~50m of copper to ~500m of copper, and considerable differences in the condition of that copper. I have no problem with FTTB if it's too hard to run the fibre up, and NBN Co have been saying its a possibility since the beginning.

=====

Turnbull's claim that the cost of maintaining copper has not been disclosed by Telstra, and is estimated to be $750m pa is incorrect. I was listening to a parliamentary hearing last year (sorry, can't remember if is was house or senate), where the Telstra rep testified that the cost of maintaining copper was "well into the billions" per year.

It would be interesting to see the transcript to understand the quantum, breakdown (if any) and the context.

Mal's spin on the TUSMA contract is a good indication. Even assuming the rural section is the most expensive to maintain per line (likely), what sort of voodoo maths leads one to conclude that a cost of $6.4bn ($320m pa) NPV to maintain ~7% of the current network, equates to $750m for 100% of it? Especially considering that there's a very good chance that a huge chunk within that 7% will abandon their copper lines during the 20-year period anyway, removing their cost completely.

Is that 7% of the network by premises, or by length of Telstra's copper to serve those connections ?
What condition is that portion of the copper in, relative to the rest ?
Has the abandonment of the copper lines over time that you refer been factored into the underlying TUSMA contract value ?
What is the discount rate on the TUSMA contract value and how would that differ from, say the cost of Labor over time ?

The reality my not be as simple as the picture painted above.

I'm only going on the figures quoted by Telstra and Malcolm.

=====

Turnbull's claims criticising NBN Co's projected capex in the years post-2021 are atrocious.

NBN Co are simply assuming that our desire for ever-increasing bandwith will continue into the future, and indicating what such upgrades to the NBN may cost, even with a capability in 2021 of 1Gbps for fibre and 25Mbps for wireless/sat.

Turnbull on the other hand, is presenting a policy that simply stops in 2019 with people at 50-100Mbps for FTTN and 25Mbps for wireless and sat. His plan doesn't indicate any provision for additional capex post-2019, because there is no plan post-2019. How can you criticise the NBN for projecting upgrades when your own policy doesn't consider future requirements at all?

If he thinks it's bad that a 1Gbps network will need another $6bn of capex for upgrades, what on earth does he foresee as the additional capex required for his network? Or is he assuming that people will be happy with 25-100Mbps in 10 years time, and no further upgrades will be required?

If he's right, then the $6bn forecast by NBN Co won't be required at all. If he's wrong, then the capex required to upgrade his network will be closer to $40bn than 6. Either way, he's hardly in a position to criticise.

What proportion of capex post 2021 is for upgrades, what specific upgrades are envisaged, and what would they achieve in terms of bandwidth ?

No idea, and it doesn't matter. If NBN Co need to perform capex upgrades to meet demand at that time, then it is essentially inevitable that the coalition would also have to do this, and equally inevitable that the cost of upgrading the coalition's network would be higher given its lower initial capability.

Malcolm cannot berate NBN Co for projecting capex in the years beyond the projections of his own network, when clearly it would also require capex over that period. He simply doesn't want to estimate how much it will be.
 
NBNMyths said:
Yes, 6,000,000 per year for two years. For a total of 12,000,000 connections.

To be fair, it could be a little less than that if Turnbull ignores the HFC footprint until after 2016. But the promise is for everyone to be able to access 25Mbps, and there are many buildings within the HFC footprint (ie MDUs) that cannot access HFC, and would therefore need to have FTTN/FTTB installed by 2016 to meet the promise.
Click to expand...

I see. You've presented a deliberate falsehood about the Coalition's rollout schedule in order to try and make another point and then gone on to repeat that falsehood in a subsequent post.

NBNMyths said:
The coalition expect to pass ~125,000 per week ~(24,000 per day) in the first 2 years of their rollout.
Click to expand...
 
drsmith said:
I see. You've presented a deliberate falsehood about the Coalition's rollout schedule in order to try and make another point and then gone on to repeat that falsehood in a subsequent post.
Click to expand...

What figures would you present then?

Considering that any household that's currently on ADSL and not due to get FTTN from the current NBN will have to be cut over to a node by 2016 to receive the 25Mbs minimum speed that meas there's a lot of premises that will need to be cut over in a very short period of time.
 
drsmith said:
I see. You've presented a deliberate falsehood about the Coalition's rollout schedule in order to try and make another point and then gone on to repeat that falsehood in a subsequent post.
Click to expand...

Not at all. Because the Coalition's policy is so light on detail, all we know about it is that everyone must have access to 25Mbps by 2016. If we ignore HFC, then the quoted figure is accurate.

Presently, about 25% of the country is passed by HFC, but (by Optus' statement), only about 15% of premises can actually access it. Additionally according to Optus, 24% of their HFC customers cannot access speeds over 8Mbps on their cable.

The other issue for HFC is that both Telstra and Optus have agreed not to sell broadband connections on cable, so those agreements would have to be varied if the Coalition want to use HFC as part of their target.

And the final issue is that neither Telstra nor Optus' HFC networks are designed to be offered on a wholesale basis, and I can't see them investing the money to allow it when it will be overbuilt as soon as the Coalition can manage it.

Thus, it is by no means certain that the Coalition will be able to use HFC as part of their 'plan', and even if they can use part of it, they will still have to roll out FTTN/FTTB to every premises within the footprint that cannot get access to the cable. Which will include pretty much every MDU. This means they'll have to haul fibre right through areas they don't plan on providing FTTN in yet, just to get to each premises that cannot access HFC.

But, let's be generous and use the Optus figure of 15% coverage, and remove that from the Coalition's target. That leaves them 10.4 million connections, or 104,000 per week / 20,800 per day / 2,600 per hour.

Or 1 FTTN connection every 1.3 seconds....Every day for two years.....With a network that they essentially know nothing about.....Starting from nothing.....With an untrained workforce of a few thousand..... And then there are the areas where the copper is unusable, and will need FTTP instead. Turnbul admits he has no idea how many premises will fall into this category.

And all that is assuming they can complete three public studies, completely change the focus of NBN Co, renegotiate with Telstra, redesign a network from scratch, vary contracts, let new contracts and get started all within a year of the election.


Incumbent telco BT have been doing FTTN for three years with a trained workforce in the tens-of-thousands, on their own network, in a densely-populated country with high unemployment, and they are only just achieving the numbers now that Turnbull is claiming his startup can do from day 1.

Do you honestly think the Coalition will succeed? :eek:

I have absolutely no doubt that it won't happen. What I am curious about is who will cop the blame for the failure come 2016. I predict it will be a combination of:
1) "The incompetent Labor Govt that left us with a mess".
2) "We had no idea the copper was this bad. Nobody warned us".
3) "The unions are making excessive demands on contractors, reducing their efficiency".

There will be no acknowledgement about all the people that said "we told you so" in 2013....
 

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