NBN Rollout Scrapped

[Smurf1976]

So as technology catches up and the shiny blue cable is being eaten by rats who ya gonna call?

the company in charge of the network's roll-out failed to lay rodent-proof cables in a bid to cut costs

There might be an exception somewhere, but in general terms government funding + private contractor delivering the work = shoddy workmanship.

Very rarely do governments properly hold contractors to account on either cost or quality and that leads to an "easy money" situation especially with underground works that are out of sight and impractical to properly inspect.

Been there, played this game.

 

[So_Cynical]

I wrote this on the 7th June 2011 post #583

So as technology catches up and the shiny blue cable is being eaten by rats who ya gonna call?

http://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/rats-put-bite-on-nbn-roll-out/1410950/

A source close to the telecommunications industry claims the company in charge of the network's roll-out failed to lay rodent-proof cables in a bid to cut costs.

A source = some guy at the pub wearing hi vis.

The story is a beat up.

 

[trainspotter]

Possibly not the first time this has happened ...

"It turned out a rat chewed the cable that runs through the conduit ”” it's a pipe concreted into the bridge walls on the Minnamurra Bridge. The cable length from one site to the next is 1.9 kilometres. The cable feeds a mobile tower on the western side of the highway, which services thousands of customers," a Telstra spokesperson said.

"The rat unfortunately chewed through the working fibres and all the dark spare fibres. Given the number of customers affected, we made the call to run a temporary cable to restore service to the mobile tower."

http://www.zdnet.com/article/nbn-cable-replaces-rat-chewed-telstra-fibre/

 

[boofhead]

Speaking of new technologies ....



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

Tell me why we need the NBN again?

Seems it is better designed for indoors after reading that story. Seems many wireless based technologies have issues once they go outside, have weather and distance.

 

[trainspotter]

Seems it is better designed for indoors after reading that story. Seems many wireless based technologies have issues once they go outside, have weather and distance.

Absolutely bh ... I completely concur. That particular piece of technology was light based and not wireless. My portent was to evidence that in 4 years since I posted that technology will surpass the NBN (as in infrastructure cabling) they now have a light based technology that does not require total internal reflection. (as in NOT inside a cable) This is just the start.

 

[drsmith]

A source = some guy at the pub wearing hi vis.

The story is a beat up.

I looked at the date and noted 2012.

More recent but also with a connection to 2012 is the following,

http://www.afr.com/business/telecom...st-hit-on-aging-optus-network-20151125-gl7eii

Check out how many people have actually taken up the NBN and how many houses have been passed ...

http://www.mynbn.info/stats

More up to date but lacking the pretty graph is NBN's weekly updates.

http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-i...co/corporate-plan/weekly-progress-report.html

 

[sptrawler]

I

More up to date but lacking the pretty graph is NBN's weekly updates.

http://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-i...co/corporate-plan/weekly-progress-report.html

So it still looks around a 50% take up, which is pretty average IMO.

 

[Knobby22]

I've got the NBN.
No more expensive than my old DSL.
New inner city estate so it is fibre. Watched the guy come out and install it, about half an hours work.
I reckon it could be done nation wide if it was done like Foxtel. Run it along the street but pay a fee if you want it connected.

 

[Tisme]

Speaking of new technologies ....



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook

Tell me why we need the NBN again?

Because we need the NBN to stay with the pack. It could be a decade (already been 5 years) before the technology hits the shelves.

I do like the idea of transmitting via LED bulbs that light up the rooms in the house. It will still probably need a light pipe at the door though and thus the need for FTTP instead of bandaid FTTN.

 

[Tisme]

So it still looks around a 50% take up, which is pretty average IMO.

Had my premises made ready, just have to wait for brownfield works to commence.

 

[DB008]

Got something in the mail the other week that l'll be getting the NBN next year. Fingers crossed. The internet is so slow here.....

 

[trainspotter]

Got NBN in street. Got NBN on outside wall. Have phoned 3 ISP providers who really don't seem to give a rats @rse that I am with Telstra for 2 land lines and want to "bundle" them with my internet. "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" they say ... "Yeah that's great" ... I say "But what about the telephone lines?" to which they reply "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" ... "Ermmm and can you tell me about the telephone lines I want transferred onto this one account .. you know ... bundled and all that?" I plead and the response is "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" ... "No you don't seem to understand, do you actually contact Telstra or do I have to contact them as I want only ONE bill for the lot." to which they reply "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" by now I am hitting Defcon 4 and I say in my sweetest voice "Can you please advise me if there is an additional cost to change my land lines from Telstra to (insert ISP providers name here) and do I contact Telstra or do you do it for me yourselves as part of the service?" ... "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" .... CLICK !

 

[Tisme]

Got NBN in street. Got NBN on outside wall. Have phoned 3 ISP providers who really don't seem to give a rats @rse that I am with Telstra for 2 land lines and want to "bundle" them with my internet. "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" they say ... "Yeah that's great" ... I say "But what about the telephone lines?" to which they reply "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" ... "Ermmm and can you tell me about the telephone lines I want transferred onto this one account .. you know ... bundled and all that?" I plead and the response is "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" ... "No you don't seem to understand, do you actually contact Telstra or do I have to contact them as I want only ONE bill for the lot." to which they reply "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" by now I am hitting Defcon 4 and I say in my sweetest voice "Can you please advise me if there is an additional cost to change my land lines from Telstra to (insert ISP providers name here) and do I contact Telstra or do you do it for me yourselves as part of the service?" ... "Oh we will send a technician around to your place to connect you to the NBN" .... CLICK !

The phones would be swapped onto the internet with Cisco digital babies; same numbers, pstn gone.

 

[Tisme]

You Liberal voters should be ashamed of yourselves:

http://mobile.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/412733,analysis-the-destruction-of-the-nbn.aspx

could have at least connected me up to the NBN before it heads south.

 

[NBNMyths]

I must admit to having lost interest in the NBN somewhat since the Coalition set about wrecking it.

But, given the extent of the unfolding disaster, I thought I'd drop in to summarise all the I told you so's. I think it might be time to revamp the nbnmyths website too.

Completion:
Remember when Mal promised that everyone would have access to 25Mbps by 2016? Pretty sure I said that would never happen. And, what a surprise. Here we are just a year out from deadline, and the only parts of the NBN with any volume of connections are the FTTP, Wireless and Sat parts that all commenced under Labor. There's almost no-one connected to FTTN.

What are we at? 1.3M premises passed out of ~10M required. Top job, Mal.

Cost:
$29bn, Mal promised. It's currently up to ~$49bn peak funding, although Mal assures us the Govt is only stumping up $29.5. My bet is they'll guarantee the rest of the debt though, which given the NBN is a GBE is essentially the same thing. "1/3 the cost of FTTP", Mal said. The projected cost per premises for FTTN is now almost the same as the actual cost of FTTP.

FTTN:
Of course the copper network is fine for FTTN, said Mal. No problems at all. The network is in great shape....
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the original $60M budget to fix up the copper has now blown out 10fold to $650M. And this is with less than 2% of premises passed so far. Wow, who could have seen that coming?

Then there is the 1,800km of new (obsolete) copper that NBN has bought so far in order to get FTTN working. What a great investment that is.

NBN have now quietly delayed FTTN connections, so they can "undertake further testing". Although they assure us there are no problems. It's not really a delay....

HFC:
HFC is used right around the World for broadband. The NBN would be mad to overbuild it, when they could use it for the NBN, Mal said.
What could possibly go wrong spending $800m to take over a 15yo network that's seen no routine maintenance for a decade? After all, the grown-ups are in charge now and they perform due-diligence on such things.

Whoops. Seems the Optus HFC is in such bad condition, they'll have to overbuild it.

Remind me again why we were changing to an MTM? To save time and money? How's that working out?


Satellites:
Back in 2012, Mal said there was no need for new NBN satellites. There will be massive spare capacity, he said....
Now in 2015, they can't come fast enough. The interim satellite service, which uses all the available capacity on existing satellites (which Turnbull said would be adequate for the foreseeable future), is already operating beyond capacity.

Wireless:
There was no shortage of conservative tech luddites who said we'd all be using some imaginary superfast wireless technology by now, and the NBN would be obsolete. Yet cellular data is as expensive as ever, and 4G speeds are plummeting, just as the tech-heads said they would. The ABS data shows that fixed line downloads continue to grow at a rate that dwarfs mobile:

 

[drsmith]

I must admit to having lost interest in the NBN somewhat since the Coalition set about wrecking it.

Welcome back Myths. I was quietly hoping the photography business was so busy that you simply didn't have time.

Have you after all this time listened fully to that presentation from Simon Hackett ?

 

[NBNMyths]

Welcome back Myths. I was quietly hoping the photography business was so busy that you simply didn't have time.

Have you after all this time listened fully to that presentation from Simon Hackett ?

Yes, that has been the case. I have been ridiculously busy of late, modifying a LandCruiser and working on a camper-trailer website...... But I think given the situation, that I should dedicate some time to the NBN again.

I think Simon's old presentation has been superseded by his more recent lament.

 

[drsmith]

I think Simon's old presentation has been superseded by his more recent lament.

Strictly speaking, that doesn't answer the question.

I refer specifically to his commentary about the state of the rollout under the former Labor government. I again post the link,

http://simonhackett.com/2014/09/06/rebooting-the-nbn/

 

[So_Cynical]

Strictly speaking, that doesn't answer the question.

I refer specifically to his commentary about the state of the rollout under the former Labor government. I again post the link,

http://simonhackett.com/2014/09/06/rebooting-the-nbn/

Ok so the execution may not have been perfect under Labor, but the Noalition deliberately set out to wreck it, told lies and massively underestimated the job at hand...a near complete balls up.

 

[NBNMyths]

Strictly speaking, that doesn't answer the question.

I refer specifically to his commentary about the state of the rollout under the former Labor government. I again post the link,

http://simonhackett.com/2014/09/06/rebooting-the-nbn/

Right, yes I have listened to it in full now. Here are some comments:

There wasn't really anything unexpected in there. I admire Simon's theory and desire to improve the "less-than-ideal" MTM. In practise, it's probably not going as well as he thought it would.

Being a very political process, NBN Co was always going to suffer issues due to the influence of its political masters. This is still the case, and it always will be.

Unfortunately, the nature of politics, a tech-illiterate public and the heavy (and generally false) campaign being run by News Ltd in particular, meant the NBN Co was under massive pressure to show progress. Nice to say they should have been more transparent with results in the early years, but doing so would have added more fuel to News's fire. Would have been nice if it were bi-partisan from the beginning, based on expert advice instead of politics.


Clearly, the $29.5bn MTM budget was a fantasy, as we all said it would be. Given the recent large budget blowouts and subsequent discoveries about the copper and HFC condition/remediation, I question whether FTTN/HFC is still being undertaken because it is the most prudent option (even if capability is removed from the equation). I sense a strong political reason for continuing with FTTN at least partially to save some political face. Can you imagine the howls if Mal admitted that FTTP had been the best solution for most of the network all along?

Given the Optus HFC debacle and pending the knowledge about the status of Telstra's HFC, Simon's conclusion that HFC will be a great part of the NBN is currently rather shaky.

"Service class zero", which Simon was critical of under the previous NBN management, was at 55,000 premises at June 2013. This then rose to a peak of 99,000 premises under the new management team, before dropping back to 49000 currently. Not exactly a stellar improvement.

NBN Co had already changed to a process of installing lead-ins during the rollout prior to the change in management/government. IIRC, this was impeded originally because legislation didn't give NBN Co the right to enter property without express authorisation (while Telstra, for example, did have that right). The Victorian coalition Govt, for example, blocked the NBN from having this access.

The build maps weren't just removed, the order of the build was changed. For example, the maps originally showed the lower Blue Mountains commencing June2015, with no timetable for the upper Mountains. This was changed to the upper Mountains being first, and the lower Mountains commencing in 2017. This is not a 'reality check' that Simon described, it is an (unexplained) change in priority.

Yes, the interim satellite service is oversubscribed, and cannot cope. That's the same service that Mal told us would be good for the foreseeable future, with ample spare capacity available. He would have cancelled the new satellites if the contracts hadn't been signed pre-election. Lucky Mr Red Undies got them signed, huh?

Ive said before I have no problem with fibre to the basement.

He says FTTN should be switched on mid-2015. Didn't happen. FTTN is late, and all the budget-blowouts since the new Govt relate to FTTN/HFC. FTTP is the only part of the terrestrial rollout that is on-budget. So is the new team actually doing any better than the old one?