NBN Rollout Scrapped

[drsmith]

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.

It's interesting that having taken 15 months to come to terms with that presentation to listen to it in full, you want to blame a section of the media for the outcome under Labor rather than the government that was in charge.

What's clear is that even after your long sabbatical from this discussion, your political perspective hasn't changed.

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?

What's also clear from the above and at least one other point from that particular post is that you haven't reviewed the ongoing discussion that's taken place on this forum before contributing to the discussion again.

There's a link within a post on the previous page of this thread that highlights the timing of that decision to spend $800m to take over a 15yo network that was in such disrepair.

 

[drsmith]

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.

For one side of politics, the above is a somewhat kind characterisation of an outcome analogous to trains crashing through the end of stations both in absolute terms and relative to the other.

Both sides have underestimated the job at hand with their respective plans but the political starting point for the Libs was Labor's optimistic projections. Ultimately, this element has been a pox on both their houses and the overall political process.

In terms of the current rollout, the additional cost of upgrading the copper and the Optus component of the HFC network as recently reported is relatively small compared to the overall project cost and more importantly, the cost difference between FTTP and MTM. The cost rollout relativities between the varying technologies on a per premise basis has been outlined in NBN's latest corporate plan and previously discussed on this forum.

 

[boofhead]

The HFC and copper replacements do seem to be a waste in consideration that MTM is a shorter term fix where fibre to the premises is a longer term plan.

 

[NBNMyths]

It's interesting that having taken 15 months to come to terms with that presentation to listen to it in full, you want to blame a section of the media for the outcome under Labor rather than the government that was in charge.

What's clear is that even after your long sabbatical from this discussion, your political perspective hasn't changed.


What's also clear from the above and at least one other point from that particular post is that you haven't reviewed the ongoing discussion that's taken place on this forum before contributing to the discussion again.

There's a link within a post on the previous page of this thread that highlights the timing of that decision to spend $800m to take over a 15yo network that was in such disrepair.

The 'section of the media' released an endless stream of factually inaccurate anti-NBN stories, which was in part responsible for the political pressure brought to bear on NBN Co. Funny how they seem far less interested in the failures of the NBN since the Coalition came to power. I wonder why? If Labor were presiding over the stream of debacles that have beset the MTM NBN over the last 18 months, it would have been on the front page of the Australian/Telegraph a dozen times!

Yes, the former Government paid Optus the $800m to close down the HFC and transfer the customers to the NBN when it was overbuilt. A prudent move considering the state of the network. The details of the change to the agreement is a bit sketchy. I wonder when NBN Co take possession? Will they have to pay to maintain the network until they can overbuild or repair it? In a masterful display of due-dilligence, the new Govt apparently didn't actually investigate the network before deciding to take it over. So the bold promises surrounding the deal of faster rollout and lower cost are now inaccurate.

Dated November 2015, the leaked report containing the HFC revelation came after the August update of the corporate plan (which increased the peak funding to ~49bn). The subsequent leaked report on the blowout in copper remediation is also post-corp plan. So we can expect that both the timetable and cost will have blown out since that corporate plan was released. The minister apparently didn't even know about the HFC issue before the report was leaked, continuing to claim that it would be used in the NBN to speed the rollout and save money. Oops.

Fifield won't even answer questions about it now. Funny how demands of transparency and honesty in opposition are quickly forgotten once you're running the show....

The fact that NBN Co is leaking secret documents like a sieve doesn't instil much confidence of staff moral levels, following the technology and management changes made by the Coalition. Simon Hackett said it was a bit of an unhappy workplace when he started there. I wonder what he'd say about it today.

The cost of the MTM has almost doubled since Turnbull announced it. It's gone from "1/3 - 1/2" the cost of FTTP to being very, very close. Perhaps still slightly cheaper, but clearly very poor value for money once capability is taken into account. As I've stated many times before, we will blow $50bn on obsolete technology, which future generations will be lumbered with upgrading in the future.

Do it once, do it right, do it with fibre. Words that will come back to haunt us.

 

[drsmith]

I can recall a factually inaccurate story from the ABC about the hands of asylum seekers being deliberately burnt during a boat turn back and more broadly, their asylum seeker biased commentary.

Did that stop the government from successfully implementing its border protection policies in this regard ?

Governments are responsible for the policies they put forward, not the media that comment on them.

Perhaps $800m was too much to pay for the Optus HFC network regardless of its future use given the state it was in. It doesn't magically become worth more if you want to close it down relative to other uses. Too much was paid for the asset under Labor in the first place.

As for your interpretation of Simon Hackett's commentary on the overall situation under Labor,

Simon Hackett said it was a bit of an unhappy workplace when he started there.

I suggest you listen to it again, this time with your ears and eyes open.

As for cost relativities, that's in this year's corporate plan and I have also noted, has been in your absence, discussed on this forum. You can go back, review that discussion and do the math for yourself if you like. You'll find that the latest reports regarding copper and Optus HFC are relatively small when compared to the overall cost difference between MTM and FTTP.

 

[NBNMyths]

As for cost relativities, that's in this year's corporate plan and I have also noted, has been in your absence, discussed on this forum. You can go back, review that discussion and do the math for yourself if you like. You'll find that the latest reports regarding copper and Optus HFC are relatively small when compared to the overall cost difference between MTM and FTTP.

According to Turnbull's 2013 Strategic Review, 'radically redesigned' 93% FTTP could have been done for $64bn peak funding. The latest corp plan puts the peak funding of the MTM at $46-56bn. That's 10-20 times the capability for ~$10bn more cost, which would also generate more revenue. And in the 3 months since the Corp plan and with almost no FTTN actually built, the MTM has already added $0.6bn in copper remediation costs and an unknown amount for overbuilding the Optus HFC which was supposed to be used. And if you think 0.6bn will be the final blowout for remediation, I think you'll be sadly mistaken.

Citing only my own anecdotal evidence, I think there will be much, much more to do. My street was developed in 1970. So the original copper is ~45 years old. Quite young, and in a well-drained rocky area well away from the ocean. So it's 'new' and with little corrosive exposure relative to much of the Telstra network. Yet despite being just 1km from the exchange, I was only getting 7Mbps sync speed. Theoretically, I should have been getting ~17. 3 years ago a tree fell on the power lines, bringing them down onto a Telstra pole, melting all the phone lines in the street. Telstra replaced them all the way back to the exchange, and my sync speed immediately went up to 16.5Mbps. Now it's already dropped back to 12. After just 3 years. And we are to believe that this (undersize), poorly maintained copper network will deliver the ~100Mbps+ that thick, new copper does in a lab?

Our data consumption continues to double every 12 months. There is no sign of the growth slowdown predicted by Mal et al. Remember Turnbull told us just 5 years ago that we didn't need more than 12Mbps. He said 3 years ago that the new NBN satellites were a 'Rolls-Royce' solution, when a Camry will do. Now it's looking like even the Rolls Royces won't be able to cope for more than a few years, and they'll need to look at launching a third new sat. People (and conservatives in particular) consistently underestimate the rate of growth and change in technology. MTM is a perfect example of this. A 2010 Camry solution to problem that requires a 2050 Tesla.

Sorry, but the MTM will go down in history as one of the most backward-looking infrastructure projects ever undertaken by Government in Australia. I suspect it will be obsolete and overwhelmed before it's even finished.

 

[drsmith]

Michael Malone, founder of Perth-based internet service provider iiNet, says the NBN's problems were cemented when Labor failed to get bipartisan support for the project in the first place, and let it become a "political plaything".

He still believes fibre-to-the-node will be cheaper and faster, and that controversy around the state of Telstra's copper has been "definitely over-hyped".

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/te...litions-nbn-came-unstuck-20151203-glermm.html

My bolds.

 

[NBNMyths]

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/te...litions-nbn-came-unstuck-20151203-glermm.html

My bolds.

Time will tell. But, yes it probably will be (slightly) cheaper and (slightly) faster to deploy. The issue is what is better value for money. How much cheaper and how much faster? Is it worth saving $5-10bn and 1 or 2 years to build a network that has 1/10th to 1/20th of the capability, and will generate lower long-term revenue, given what we know about historical bandwidth demand growth and current trends?

I also notice you've quoted rather selectively from that article. In fact you found the only comment that wasn't lambasting the state of the MTM, and the operation of the new NBN Co. Here, let me balance it out for you:

From Rod Tucker, who was awarded John Howard's Prime Ministers Prize for his services to communications:
The University of Melbourne's Rod Tucker, who advised Labor on implementing its NBN, argued in The Conversation that if NBN had in 2013 hired the extra 1000 construction staff it finally did in 2015, a full-fibre NBN could have been completed as soon as 2021, but with the benefits of a faster network with lower operational costs and higher revenue.

Telecommunications analyst Paul Budde believes Turnbull ignored good advice on the state of the networks for political reasons, and "only surrounded himself with friends who all had the same sort of view on the NBN".
Budde is concerned that the NBN's mix of "second-rate" technologies, which lag significantly in speeds compared to fibre-to-the-premise, will leave the NBN vulnerable to competition from private players like Telstra, which is investing heavily in its fixed-wireless network.
"If the NBN is no longer super duper, the next thing obviously is others [telco providers] are going to step in [and offer quality of service that the NBN is not delivering]," Budde says. "That will massively undermine the core business model [of the NBN], no doubt about it."

RMIT University's Dr Mark Gregory, a prominent commentator on the topic, says current NBN management is "stonewalling everyone" and creating an "adversarial" relationship with media because it is "trying to hide all the bad news". "There are no facts coming out of NBN Co, no transparency," he says.

 

[drsmith]

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:

I'm amazed as to how much the prospects for wireless have advanced in the past three days,

Budde is concerned that the NBN's mix of "second-rate" technologies, which lag significantly in speeds compared to fibre-to-the-premise, will leave the NBN vulnerable to competition from private players like Telstra, which is investing heavily in its fixed-wireless network.
"If the NBN is no longer super duper, the next thing obviously is others [telco providers] are going to step in [and offer quality of service that the NBN is not delivering]," Budde says. "That will massively undermine the core business model [of the NBN], no doubt about it."

 

[NBNMyths]

I'm amazed as to how much the prospects for wireless have advanced in the past three days,

Budde didn't use Telstra's fixed wireless (Payphone WiFi) network as an example that could undermine the NBN, the journo did. The payphone WiFi isn't really competing with the NBN, it is (or will be) connected to it and only exists in a ~50m radius around Telstra payphones.

What will compete with the NBN and wreck its business case are things like TPG's FTTB program.

As Budde says, if the NBN is only offering 25Mbps, then there's a whole raft of tech that could do as well or better. That isn't the case if the NBN is offering 100 or 1000Mbps.

 

[Tisme]

Budde is concerned that the NBN's mix of "second-rate" technologies, which lag significantly in speeds compared to fibre-to-the-premise, will leave the NBN vulnerable to competition from private players like Telstra, which is investing heavily in its fixed-wireless network.
.

Isn't Telstra already the NBN and that's why it (the NBN) is a hotch potch of bandaids and spin? Telstra is one of those Moo Moo land resorts that Liberal politicians and their families retire at to milk the public purse until the Lord beckons isn't it?

 

[drsmith]

Budde didn't use Telstra's fixed wireless (Payphone WiFi) network as an example that could undermine the NBN, the journo did. The payphone WiFi isn't really competing with the NBN, it is (or will be) connected to it and only exists in a ~50m radius around Telstra payphones.

What will compete with the NBN and wreck its business case are things like TPG's FTTB program.

As Budde says, if the NBN is only offering 25Mbps, then there's a whole raft of tech that could do as well or better. That isn't the case if the NBN is offering 100 or 1000Mbps.

The journo ??

You can't resolve the inconsistency in what you said that easily. You presented it as your own argument.

With regard to your reference to FTTB above, here's another,

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

 

[NBNMyths]

The journo ??

You can't resolve the inconsistency in what you said that easily. You presented it as your own argument.

With regard to your reference to FTTB above, here's another,

Yes, the journo. Budde's quote makes no mention of Telstra's "fixed wireless". He wouldn't be silly enough to call it that, because it isn't fixed wireless. It's WiFi at payphones, connected to the fixed line network. Telstra doesn't have a fixed wireless network, NBN Co do. The journo is confused.

I just copied and pasted the sections of the article. If I'd taken Budde's quote in isolation, it wouldn't have made sense. I do not believe (and have never believed) that wireless is a viable alternative to fixed lines for the vast majority of the market. Which I have said all along.

Yes, I have no problem with FTTB. It's good, because the copper loops are short so you can get good speeds. Which is why TPG's will erode NBN Co's income where it's available.

 

[NBNMyths]

Isn't Telstra already the NBN and that's why it (the NBN) is a hotch potch of bandaids and spin? Telstra is one of those Moo Moo land resorts that Liberal politicians and their families retire at to milk the public purse until the Lord beckons isn't it?

Telstra's dilapidated copper network is being transferred to the NBN, so they can spend a few billion fixing it so it works in the rain.

 

[drsmith]

Yes, the journo. Budde's quote makes no mention of Telstra's "fixed wireless". He wouldn't be silly enough to call it that, because it isn't fixed wireless. It's WiFi at payphones, connected to the fixed line network. Telstra doesn't have a fixed wireless network, NBN Co do. The journo is confused.

I just copied and pasted the sections of the article. If I'd taken Budde's quote in isolation, it wouldn't have made sense. I do not believe (and have never believed) that wireless is a viable alternative to fixed lines for the vast majority of the market. Which I have said all along.

Perhaps you can clarify what that statement (quoted below) was meant to say,

Budde is concerned that the NBN's mix of "second-rate" technologies, which lag significantly in speeds compared to fibre-to-the-premise, will leave the NBN vulnerable to competition from private players like Telstra, which is investing heavily in its fixed-wireless network.

bearing in mind,

Budde didn't use Telstra's fixed wireless (Payphone WiFi) network as an example that could undermine the NBN, the journo did. The payphone WiFi isn't really competing with the NBN, it is (or will be) connected to it and only exists in a ~50m radius around Telstra payphones.

 

[NBNMyths]

Perhaps you're unaware of what these things are: " "

They are called quotation marks. I learned about them around 3rd class I think. You put them on either side of text, when that text is a direct quote. You'll notice that they are missing from the bit of the article that mentions Telstra's fixed-wirelsss network. Like I wrote, this would be because Telstra doesn't have a fixed-wireless network, so Budde wouldn't have said that. This explains (to most people at least) why the fixed wireless is not in quotation marks.

The quote from Budde is:
"If the NBN is no longer super duper, the next thing obviously is others ... are going to step in ... That will massively undermine the core business model ..., no doubt about it."

The journo is the one talking about fixed wireless. Budde's quote does not identify any particular technology.

 

[NBNMyths]

First dog on the moon nails it again:
http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...om-helpful-and-important-to-ferret-underpants

"The Malcolm Government bought 1800km of the finest, fastest copper tubings money can buy from Crapstick & Sons Ye Olde Copper Tubings Pty Ltd"

 

[drsmith]

The quote from Budde is:
"If the NBN is no longer super duper, the next thing obviously is others ... are going to step in ... That will massively undermine the core business model ..., no doubt about it."

The journo is the one talking about fixed wireless. Budde's quote does not identify any particular technology.

That's not the bit to which I refer but frankly, you're not going to be taken seriously in any forum where you present commentary as your own and then attempt to blame someone else when it turns out to be wrong.

 

[trainspotter]

And that Sir is how you play snooker.

 

[orr]

Cheers NBNmyths.......

The NBN will end up making FOXTEL cable network infrastructure obsolete and will open up the market to many competitors which is why you see the Murdoch rags conducting such a concerted campaign against the rollout.

thanks derty circa 2011

And here we are now with Netflix and Stan... Hulu that gets you content from all over the world...


From drsmith circa 2012....for insight... and you want to be taken seriously???


Today's Bolt Report was outstanding.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/a...eport_today10/ ........ A truely outstanding forward analysis of the Clean Energy Finance Fund from Bolt in this one.

And still on the NBN the retro grade rear guard actions continue from the Murdoch toadies . Lets not forget that the one hundred and sixty odd editors of murdochs world wide publication network were 100%, bar one, behind the Iraq invasion form the get go, the hold out from memory in Hobart caved in and got in lock step after about ten days.