The original one. Not a fan of the hobbled FTTN version the coalition is running out now, as I believe it will be quickly obsolete and cost us more in the long term for upgrades.
Thanks. Do you support NBN?
Who would have thought? It turns out that a massive government-run telecommunications monopoly that was built from scratch and which aims to push other competitors out of the market is very expensive. As things stand, the grand monument dreamt up by the Rudd government's telecommunications minister Stephen Conroy will leave Australia with close to the highest broadband prices in the developed world.
As our Chanticleer column reported yesterday, telco retailer TPG has downgraded its profit outlook to reflect a sharp hike in its access fees to the national broadband network. NBN charges, including a controversial charge based on increased movie streaming, are driving this increase. Under its business plan, the NBN has to recoup the costs of capital over time. So the $54 billion it will eventually cost to build will be passed on to retailers, whose profit margins will be squeezed, and eventually consumers who will have nowhere else to go.
By now, competition would force a normal business to write off a chunk of this as a bad investment. In February a PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggested the NBN was worth less than half of its construction cost. Well here's the rub, the previous Labor government kept the NBN off the budget books by arguing it would generate a quasi-commercial return. That allowed it to keep the project's early shortfalls from adding to the budget deficit. But writing down a massive amount of the value would expose the fantasy of the entire exercise.
So now we live in a crazy world where both sides of politics pretend that the NBN will generate a quasi-commercial return on equity while also providing its services at competitive prices. The government doesn't want a bigger deficit on its balance sheet, and Labor thinks the NBN is a great idea no matter the cost. So the NBN has to be allowed to do what monopolies naturally do: charge monopoly prices.
The NBN was of course, the brainchild of Senator Stephen Conroy, who suddenly quit the Senate last week. One of the lowest-quality federal ministers in Australian history, Senator Conroy claimed he had "unfettered legal power" to order Australian telcos to "wear red underpants on their head" if he so desired. He claimed the NBN would cut prices for consumers and futureproof access to the internet. Well, in a sense he has futureproofed the NBN, because it is illegal for anyone from Telstra to TPG to advertise other internet technologies as alternatives to the NBN.
The Turnbull government vows to crack down on businesses whose activities have the effect of diminishing competition. Yet it has inherited a government monopoly at the heart of the information economy whose business model is based on doing just that. Under Labor, Telstra struck a terrific deal for handing over key parts of its broadband infrastructure to the NBN. That windfall for Telstra shareholders loaded more monopoly costs into the NBN business model, which it now seeks to pass on to its captive customers. Turns out we're all wearing red underpants on our head thanks to Senator Conroy.
The following opinion piece on Stephen Conroy's legacy was in today's AFR,
http://www.afr.com/opinion/editoria...d-underpants-on-all-our-heads-20160921-grkz3h
"As the first national, wholesale-only broadband service, the nbn provides wholesale access speeds to telephone and internet service providers who then deliver these services onto you.
Below are the speed tiers that are available to our service providers over NBN fibre. Of course, the actual speeds you experience depend on a number of factors outside our control, like your equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how your service provider designs its network.
Below are the speed tiers that are available to our service providers over NBN fibre. Of course, the actual speeds you experience depend on a number of factors outside our control, like your equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how your service provider designs its network.
Speed tiers
1-mbps
This speed tier provides your service provider with wholesale access speeds of 12Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload over NBN fibre.
5-mbps
This speed tier provides your service provider with wholesale access speeds of 25 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload over NBN fibre.
10-mbps
This speed tier provides your service provider with wholesale access speeds of 25 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload over NBN fibre.
20-mbps
This speed tier provides your service provider with wholesale access speeds of 50 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload over NBN fibre.
40-mbps
This speed tier provides your service provider with wholesale access speeds of 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload over NBN fibre"
Interesting how the term "access speeds" is used. I'm guessing that is a way to create the illusion that bandwidth is the same as goodput.
It's because actual and theoretical speeds will always be different. If you order 100/40, then you can theoretically get that speed, and if your ISP is good and you are downloading from a website with sufficient capacity, then you'll get very close to that speed.
But there is another major factor within the NBN (aside from all the ones outside it). The ISP also needs to buy enough total capacity at the point of interconnect to deliver to all their customers. So they balance/estimate how many of their customers will be using the service simultaneously and buy enough capacity for that estimate. Cheaper ISPs tend to under specify the back end, leading to congestion within their NBN network. e.g.: A 'good' ISP might have a ratio of 20:1. A 'bad' ISP might have a ratio of 30:1.
Remember those leaks last year about 'Operation ClusterF*#k' AKA the Optus HFC network?
The leaks that said the Optus HFC was not fit for purpose?
The leaks that NBN Co said were rubbish?
The Optus HFC that was fine and would bring down the cost of the NBN and speed the rollout?
The very same HFC that all the tech heads and real-NBN fans said was rubbish?
Guess what.....
'A lemon': NBN backflips, abandons plan to use Optus cables it purchased for $800 million
The National Broadband Network has dumped its plan to use Optus cables to deliver high-speed broadband less than a year after rubbishing reports the $800 million network was in a dire state and may be unusable....Acknowledging the Optus HFC network was not "NBN-ready", the company said FTTdp would provide a better customer experience and value for money than upgrading the old network.
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-po...urchased-for-800-million-20160928-grquam.html
As the article points out, Labor and Stephen Conroy thought the NBN a great idea no matter the cost and spent accordingly under its monopoly model.Back to the original question, if not an infrastructure monopoly, what alternative would you propose and what impacts would it have?
As the article points out, Labor and Stephen Conroy thought the NBN a great idea no matter the cost and spent accordingly under its monopoly model.
The $800m payment to Optus in relation to its HFC network is a case in point.
You're welcome to substantiate a figure if you like but don't forget that the upgrade of Telstra's HFC network is proceeding.And how much more time and money was wasted renegotiating the agreement, developing systems to integrate HFC into a back end that was never designed for it, repairing it, testing it only to find out that it was just as useless as all the experts had already told them it was?
You're welcome to substantiate a figure if you like but don't forget that the upgrade of Telstra's HFC network is proceeding.
Also, the decision not to proceed with upgrading the Optus HFC network doesn't let Stephen Conroy off the hook. It only serves to illustrate what was done wrong under his tenure.
:nono:Why was it wrong? The Optus deal existed to ensure the maximum possible uptake of the NBN, and therefore create a return for taxpayers and minimise costs for all NBN subscribers. You might have a philosophical opposition to that method/decision, but that doesn't make its 'wrong'. It makes it 'wrong in your opinion'.
:nono:
Your attention span is better than that.
27 September 2016
745,000 Fibre-to-the-Node premises are now Ready for Service (RFS) and 235,000 premises have been activated just 12 months after commercial launch of the product.
Nearly three quarters of a million Australian premises can sign up for an nbn Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) service just one year after the company commercially launched FTTN services. Further, nearly a quarter of a million premises are now activated on the nbn™ network via FTTN.
If you include the figures from our Fibre-to-the-Building (FTTB) deployment then we have a total of 854,000 premises Ready for Service (RFS) across FTTN and FTTB combined.
The current count of total ready for service combined FTTN/B premises stands at 1.03 million, with 138,684 specifically on FTTB.
Sometimes it's a good idea to read more than the headline before being a critic. The observatory isn't on the fixed line network.Another demonstration of Turnbull's failure.
Global research opportunity stalled after connection failure
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-12/milroy-observatory-at-coonabarabran-nbn-internet/8113268
The owner David Baker said the NBN satellite did not provide a strong enough connection to allow global access to the telescope.
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