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NBN Rollout Scrapped

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medicowallet said:
I am quite happy with my ADSL2.
Click to expand...

I agree and I would suggest that 15-24 Mbps ADSL2+ is quite adequate for most people.

A problem many (myself included) are currently experiencing is network congestion during peak times (~5pm to ~9pm). Line speeds plummet to 25% or less of what they should be because there are simply too many people doing too much downloading for the network of routers and servers that make up the internet to handle. This is a worldwide problem and has nothing to do with the copper wire technology, and a shiny new blue fiber optic cable won't fix this, in fact the NBN will probably exacerbate the problem unless all of the exchanges are massively upgraded to accommodate the increased demand. I wonder if upgrading all of the exchanges was factored in to the NBN plan?

I also wonder how well the critical fiber optic connections in the underground pits will stand up to our storms and deluges over time.
 
Chris45 said:
in fact the NBN will probably exacerbate the problem unless all of the exchanges are massively upgraded to accommodate the increased demand. I wonder if upgrading all of the exchanges was factored in to the NBN plan?
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What has the exchanges got to do with the NBN?
 

Every exchange has fibre into them.

The issue you are highlighting is one that is similar to the electricity network. The advantage with the internet is you can allow congestion to occur, where with the electricity network you have to pump the power through or suffer brownouts or even blackouts if things run too hot, rather than spend the money to have the capacity to meet the infrequent peak demand that would then cause access prices to be far higher than they are. It's one of the reasons why some ISPs have off peak quota because basically the network isn't particularly used from around 2am till 10am and this encourages people to do their downloads out of peak hours. At work when looking at the bandwidth graphs of the core links you always see a 10-15% spike in traffic at 2am that then settles back down after an hour or 2.

I'd say change ISPs so you go with one that has a lower contention ratio and your slow peak speeds should improve quite a bit. If you're in a more reginal area then possibly Telstra hasn't provided enough bandwidth into the exchange, and there's no alternative fibre.

The issue you have highlighted is FAR more likely to occur within an FTTN network as a single node is far more likely to experience congestion than a FAN (Fiber Access Node).

Why? I'm glad you asked.

With a node you'll be stuck using a single link speed - hopefully 10Gbps but I'm expecting they might only have 1Gps backhaul, or maybe 2*1Gbps for redundancy. With a FAN you can afford to install WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) which allows multiple light frequencies to be sent over the same fibre. This equipment is expensive so it works well when you can share the cost over a large subscriber base. A node would not be economical for this. Current Dense WDM offers up to 800 Gps via 80 * 10Gbps wavelengths.

The NBN has been built so a FAN can support up to 152PB of data / month. I'm sure you know what a GB (Gigabyte) is as most hard drives use this to measure their size. 1 PB (Petabyte) is a million gigabytes / thousand terabytes. There would have been 714 FANS around the country connecting back to 195 Service area POIs (Point of Interconnect) which then connected back to 14 Aggregation POIs. This will no be partially replaced with thousands of exchanges and 50-60 thousand of nodes. I know which network will be easier and cheaper to support - hint it's the network with the least amount of hardware that can fail.

The other advantage of the Fiber NBN is that because you are aggregating quite a few users over the FAN they connect to, the law of averages works in your favour. The NBN FAN is designed to support over 76000 customers. On a single node you only need a few heavy users to start clogging up the backhaul for the entire node.

As for fibre resiliency, well it survives thousands of KMs under the oceans, and spanning 10s of thousands of kilometres around the country. Generally it takes a backhoe to take out a fibre cable, or a subsea quake / fishing trawler anchor, at least in my experience in supporting networks than run on it.

Note that it is under the FTTN that exchange backhaul is more of an issue - did MTs plan take into account the requirement for this?

A final note. Because the NBN is based on xPON and is a loop style network, you can have a cable cut and things still work. You would need 2 cuts to the GPON loop for a total outage. Not knowing what MT will use to backhaul his nodes I don't know if his network will have near as much resiliency.

Do you know if MT has factored in the building of a new small power station to cope with the increased electricity demand his network will cause?
 
Thanks Sydboy. With your IT background you obviously have a much deeper understanding of all this than I do. OK, I accept that fibre will probably be resilient so, PROVIDING it's all connected up properly, the NBN may be more reliable than the current copper network. But if we spend these $zillions on the NBN, and when the fibre eventually reaches my home in several years time I find that the congestion problem persists, I'm going to feel a bit cheated!

Anyway, we're under new management now so whether we like it or not, a new plan is underway.

When I first got ADSL2+ a couple of years ago, it worked perfectly and a $30/m, 15Mbps, 10GB plan satisfied all of my needs, so when it works properly it's perfect for ordinary users and I'd like to see the money spent on getting the ADSL2+ back to what it should be asap.

sydboy007 said:
On a single node you only need a few heavy users to start clogging up the backhaul for the entire node.
Click to expand...

This would explain why speed slows dramatically at certain times, usually after hours and at weekends. From reading posts on Whirlpool, it seems that people with other ISPs are having similar problems ... even those with Optus, so churning to another ISP may not help.

How do I find out the contention ratios of alternative ISPs?

I'd like to know what speeds others get around 6-7pm. Perhaps some could visit http://www.ozspeedtest.com/bandwidth-test/ and report back here.

I'm currently with Eftel who, as I understand it, resells bandwidth from Dodo who uses the BigPond network. Eftel arranged for a Telstra guy to come out one day and he spent the afternoon testing all of the cables etc. He tried everything including giving me a new port at the exchange, new wire pair from the exchange to my Telstra pit outside, and then running a new temporary cable from the pit into my house to connect to HIS modem and HIS laptop, thus bypassing all of my cables and equipment. The lines all tested OK, but the interesting thing was that using HIS modem and laptop and HIS BigPond account, his speed was actually WORSE than mine. This suggests to me that the problem is not with my ISP but, as you suggested, maybe to do with insufficient bandwidth into the exchange. Telstra have scheduled some maintenance at my exchange for Wednesday so hopefully there might be an improvement afterwards.
 

Chris

Your 15Mbs sync speed puts you in prob the top 20% of ADSl connections. I have a sync of around 12Mbs when it's dry. My colleges mostly live in the burbs and they're lucky to get 4Mbs, with lots of issues. 1 of the senior managers lives in Manly and has copper that is exposes in places, but Telstra have yet to fix the issue so he continues to have regular loss of his internet.

If you're not in a capital city area then I dare say there's no alternative backhaul to Telstra. It's a major issue as Telstra charge an arm and a leg for it. In the cities fibre can be generally quite cheap to rent.

Generally you can tell from the ISP pricing what their contention ratio will be like. Exetel and Dodo are likely to be quite high, TPG as well on their unlimited plans, where as internode or iinet have a far better ratio. To a degree you get what you pay for and the ISPs with the cheap high download plans tend to attract the torrent leachers that clog up the network, though most companies these days run hardware that can slow down torrent traffic so that your standard web traffic takes priority.

Don't expect a bandwidth upgrade that quickly by Telstra. My company is pretty big in terms of services we have with Telstra and prob once or twice a month we will face having a customer on a congested Telstra DSLAM and there's little we can do. Telstra offers no compensation for it, yet we wear the brand damage for it.

I honestly see the FTTN being a waste of money, but as you say we have new management. I dare say doing some sweetheart deals with Telstra on the construction of the fibre NBN may have moved things along a bit faster, and if we had focused more on the cities to increase the number of customers connected and revenue flowing, perceptions might be vastly different too. Malcolm is going to face a whole new unknown issues as he gets his rollout started. I don't envy him his job. It will be interesting to see if the Coalition are forced to have a rural bias in their rollout schedule as well. If not then the Nationals really have turned into a useless party for country areas.

As a Telstra shareholder I will be expecting a very high extra payment from the Government to gain permanent access to the copper network now that it retains a very high economic value. It will be interesting to see what this value comes to, as the current leasing of access to the ducts is still required by the NBN. Current ULL monthly rental (think copper line for naked DSL) is from $16.21 in metro areas and higher in non metro and rural areas (which is why you don't see anyone installing their own DSLAMs outside the capital cities and major secondary cities). I'd expect some similar kind of rental income from the new NBN - slightly less since less of the service is Telstra copper, but certainly a monthly rental of $8 per service wouldn't be too unreasonable.
 
Hi sydboy007, just wondering if you could answer something I've been wondering about the coalition NBN. Home owners have the option to upgrade to FTTH at the cost of upwards of $5000. My understanding is that there is not enough room for both the fibre and the copper in the same duct. What I'm wondering is if someone wants to pay the $5000 then is this going to impede the other copper users in the same duct? Also given the age and degradation of the copper is this process of inserting fibre down the duct likely to further hinder those homes still using the copper?
 
Sydboy, thanks for the info. I'm in central Gold Coast, so suburban capital city more or less. I'm 1.651 cable km from my Ashmore exchange and my estimated maximum speed is 16.666Mbps.

During the day I currently get ~10Mbps, so 2/3 of what it used to be, but it's acceptable and it sounds like I'm doing reasonably well given that I'm on a budget plan.

However, in the evenings I'm lucky to get 4Mbps, also with lots of issues, so I usually just give up and try again later. If this is what everyone else is getting when they get home from work then I can understand the frustration because it really is quite hopeless sometimes.

According to nbnco, the NBN rollout is supposed to commence in my area "within one year", but they said that a year ago so I guess it's probably not going to happen now. If MT's plan can can get us back to ~15Mbps evening speeds in the near future, then a lot of people, myself included, would be happy enough with that.

I don't know the technical or expense details but wouldn't it be better to build FTTN first to get everyone up to speed asap, and then progressively rollout the FTTH when the budget allows?
 
sydboy007 said:
So lets start the countdown for Malcolm

target Date: Dec 31 2016
target installed nodes: 40000 (i think it will need to be closer to 45000 but will be conservative)
Currently installed: 0
Required monthly avg install rate: 1025
Click to expand...
With a new government, question number one will be the actual state of the current rollout.
 
drsmith said:
With a new government, question number one will be the actual state of the current rollout.
Click to expand...

I would say fairly irrelevant since:

* Current 3 year rollout will be completed as contracts are to be honoured - so MT says

* Current NBN rollout schedule has been known long before the Coalition Broadband Policy was released so the FTTN build would be for all other areas.

Remember, this is a no excuses Government. Either MT has the appropriate project management skills or he doesn't. I'd say this time next year we'll be to close to answering that question.
 

Chris

This site might give u the option to move to Optus - http://www.yourbroadband.com.au/exchanges.php?Exchange=ASHM - seems they have their own DSLAM in your exchange so will most likely have separate backhaul to your current Telstra Wholesale ISP. www.whirlpool.net can help if you jin up and let people know you're thinking of moving to Optus off the Ashmore exchange, hopefully someone can give you an idea of their current experience.

I do think NBN bit off more than they could chew in terms of beign the managers of the NBN rollout. Possibly teaming up with Telstra could have allowed some of the isues to be handled better. I also feel that the rolout was allowed to occur in the most efficient manner with the focus (generally rightly) on rural areas and those with poor internet speeds, though this was never acknowledged by the opposition.

Labour is the single biggest expense for both networks. The FTTN network saves most of its CAPEX via being less labour intensive, though I have my doubts as to how big the savings will be as probably the single biggest issue faced will be the fact that there is no up to date records for the pair mapping of the main cable to the pillar and from pillar to premises. When a pillar to node cutover is to occur it will be a very time consuming process to map the correct premises to the correct node port so your internet and phone continue to work. So yes we save some money now, but in 10-15 years when the households receiving the lowest minimum speeds are finding it inadequate we will be faced with a pretty expensive upgrade process, most likely involving the junking of the node and moving to a complete xPON as the current NBN is based on.

They say in the USA currently Netflix represents over 50% of total usage. When they finally make it to Australia I wont be surprised to see them represent a similar level of traffic. They've even started to make their own content as that is what sells. Looking at my households consumption tastes, there is some overlap, but aroudn 50% is only watched by 1 of 3. Imagine in 5 years trying to keep up with watching 2 or 3 different tv shows online at the same time. Some will say it's TV and not important, but to my way of thinking entertainment is just as important as anything else in life. Nothing more annoying than a bored human being .

I blame Labor for combining Telecom and OTC many years ago. Would have been better to have had OTC going head to head with Telstra, preferably with a Telecom infrastructure wholesale company. Howard made things many times worse by selling a vertically integrated monopoly that had a legal obligation to use it resources to maximise profits for shareholders, even if this wasn't the best thign for the economy.

All FTTN rollouts have occurred by the incumbent carrier (owner of the copper) doing the work. I have a suspicion this is what MT intends to do by giving some high profit construction contracts to Telstra to get his rollout done ASAP.
 

No one knows what the fibre upgrade option will cost. Not even MT has an idea. We also don't know if it will be an option for every node, and if it is I dare say it will be limited as you will have to install a special card to allow this, so the number of ports will be limited.

So far there is no information on the upgrade process. If it happens as requests come in then you will find it quite expensive as there will be a lot of repeat labour costs. Will they make you wait awhile to see if someone else wants an upgrade so the unit labour costs are lower? No one knows. I suspect MT doesn't either as his attitude seems to be it wont be that popular.

How much room will be available in the ducts, well that's probably a question you wont have an answer to till they go to run the fiber through.
 
Have all the contracts been signed for the current three year rollout schedule ?

Also, isn't there an update on the progress (or lack of ??) of the current rollout that Labor chose not to release before the election ?
 
Chris45 said:
I don't know the technical or expense details but wouldn't it be better to build FTTN first to get everyone up to speed asap, and then progressively rollout the FTTH when the budget allows?
Click to expand...

You have to remember that FTTH/N is 'off-budget'. It is initially funded with T-bonds raised by the government and is therefore capital in nature. The interest on the bonds will be paid off by the subscribers. All indicators point to the average revenue per customer being higher than anticipated as people opt for the larger plans.

As the networks are topologically different you can't just 'roll-out' to the FTTH, it is a complete redesign and you would be doubling up on labour costs (and of course, future labour is more expensive than labour consumed today).
 
drsmith said:
Have all the contracts been signed for the current three year rollout schedule ?

Also, isn't there an update on the progress (or lack of ??) of the current rollout that Labor chose not to release before the election ?
Click to expand...

Once again irrelevant.

MT and the Coalition have been saying the current NBN will take 30 years to complete, so if they have not been setting their own policy around that, then what were they doing the last 3 years in opposition?

They can't have it both ways. Either they were lying when they said the NBN rollout was going far to slowly, or they have not bothered planning around the fact that it has been slower than planned.

MT has said all current contracts will be honoured. My understanding is pretty much all the contracts for the initial 3 year rollout have been signed. if someone has info to show otherwise then I suppose it will depend on MT as to what happens with those areas.

All these issues are known unknows. The coalition may have not know the specifics, but they did know they would have these grey areas to deal with on assuming power, so they're in no way an excuse for the FTTN rollout to not meet its targets.

MT has set the criteria. The ONLY benchmark that is relevant is that ALL Australians have access to a minimum of 25Mbs by the end of 2016. Anything less is failure to implement their policy, which should see at a minimum MT stepping down as communications minister. Excuses will not be accepted as they were not for the previous Government. Any delays in doing a deal with Telstra will not be accepted. MT saw how long it took Labor to come up with the initial deal with Telstra.

A second criteria is that FTTN plans will be no more expensive than current ADSL plans, as current Fiber NBN plans are. Should we see an increase in broadband pricing, then the Coalition will have to answer why their cheaper policy has not been implemented correctly.

Am I biased against MT and his FTTN. For sure. Am I using objective criteria supplied by MT to rate his performance. For sure.

This will be one area of Coalition policy that will be very easily monitored for meeting the policy objectives. No excuses.
 

Sydboy, thanks for your comprehensive and helpful replies. I checked with my sister who lives a few suburbs away and is with Optus and her speed is also down 30-50%, so no simple solutions at present, it seems.

If current NBN contracts are going to be honoured by the new govt, then the NBN may eventually make it to my street and if I can get a 12Mbps, 5GB plan for $30 (eg SkyMesh) I'd probably be happy with that.

I shudder to think what will happen if/when that Netflix starts up here. I get more than enough TV down my antenna and via iView etc. so I certainly won't be subscribing. Can't help feeling that we'd all be MUCH better off spending less time sitting staring at screens and more time moving around and interacting with each other (works for me), but that's "progress" in C21 I guess. How on earth did the kids of 50yrs ago manage to entertain themselves without all of this technological wizardry??? Dunno ... but we did!

Ufo, thanks, so much for that idea then.
 
IIRC, the Coalition were assuming 565,000 premises in established areas by June 30 2014. This is somewhat less than the NBN's schedule to that date.

When you say pretty much all the contracts for the initial 3 year rollout have been signed, what specifically do you mean be initially or to put it another way, 3 years to when ?

Also, what is the basis of this understanding ?

It would also be interesting to know when the most recent contracts were signed.
 

My Dad is with exetel on the 12/1 plan and uses their free VOIP account - cost him $30 to transfer his old landline number. He gets 10c untimed local / std calls. He's been quite happy with the performance. Certainly a big jump for him from the 1.5Mbs connection he was on. Unfortunately the plan he's on is no longer offered by them - $35 for 20GB a month. It was certainly a good plan for someone who watches a bit of video and emailing / skype.

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/ lets you see what's available in your area. Possibly IINET or TPG have their own DSLAM in your exchange.

I dare say if you are on the current 3 year rollout map you will get fibre.

I can understand you frustration. I'm with MNF who use Optus DSLAMs and noticed quite crappy speeds some nights. Was advised there is congestion at the exchange but Optus do not plan to upgrade the backhaul till March 2014. They said i could leave without penalty or take a $10/month price cut. I took the price cut as the slow speeds at night prob only annoy me 1 or 2 nights a week. Probably 1 of the benefits of being a shift worker .

I'd like the Govt to step in and stop the infrastructure owner from signing up any new customers UNELSS they are transparent and let the customer know they are experiencing congestion and when they expect the backhaul to be upgraded. Should get the ISPs upgrading things a lot faster.

Have you made a complaint to EFTEL? If you can get them to admit there is congestion then you can try your luck with getting some form of price reduction like I did.

I wonder how we didn't kill each other off during the long euro winters when we were cave dwellers. Months on end with nothing to do. I think each generation looks back and wonders about the current one. I certainly think I was lucky to grow up without mobile phones and tablets being the norm. It's hard being poor these days. it's certainly a lot more obvious as the poor kids don't have all the tech toys.
 

I suppose at the end of the day it's all irrelevant, from my perspective anyways.

The coalition went to the election and supposedly got a mandate to change from a FTTP to FTTN rollout with the promise of a minimum 25Mbs by December 2016, with a lower cost to the public.

The only things relevant to me is:

* Do 100% of premises have access to a minimum of 25 Mbs by December 2016

* Is the cost of broadband access no more expensive than current ADSL / Fiber NBN plans.

Any issues are for the Coalition to overcome, and to be honest I don't really feel the Coalition should be talking about them as it will sound like an excuse.

So I hope within a few months MT has the complete rollout schedule for all the punters to access. I'd certainly like to know when my speed upgrade is going to occur.

At present we have little to benchmark their performance, except for the above to criteria which is a tad over 3 years away, but a rollout schedule should help with gaining an understanding of how on target they are.

It will certainly be interesting to see if MT took into account the lower copper quality here compared to the UK (0.4mm to 0.6mm) and how much closer the nodes will need to be to premises to achieve the minimum 25 / 50 Mbs target.
 
Regardless of your perspective, if the current state of the rollout and future contracts signed renders that date unachievable with the Coalition rollout, that's not their fault.

Some reporting on rollout numbers to June 30 2014 are appearing in the media,


http://www.brw.com.au/p/tech-gadgets/disconnect_nbn_to_miss_rollout_target_AiWA74uQ0wHwovDpNRLUiO

In relation to recently signed contracts, the above article also had this,

 
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