A riposte to Nick Ross and slipshod NBN advocacy from the ABC
Posted on: Friday, 22nd February 2013
Nick Ross has established a reputation as Australia’s highest profile media advocate of the NBN. There’s nothing wrong with supporting the NBN – many sensible people do and one’s support for it is really dictated by what one thinks public policy should prioritise or not prioritise. There are legitimate debates to be had between both sides.
But Nick is a special case. He is the technology and games editor for ABC Online, the website of the national broadcaster and one of the most highly read sources of Australian news and analysis on the web. He is subject to a code that governs how he exercises his duties – specifically in terms of the need for balance and standards.
However, Nick has used the web platform he edits to publish article after article expressing highly personal views that advocate the ALP Government’s NBN policy and totally disparage the Opposition’s.
All websites have their biases: there is obviously a great degree of support for NBN on say Whirlpool and some of the specialist tech sites, less so in say News Limited outlets and the Australian Financial Review. These biases often reflect their audiences. A website with a largely financial audience may find it hard to support the NBN policy as it stands both through editorial policy and the types of comments its readers make; a website with say a pro-gamer or IT industry audience will tend to the reverse.
This week Nick attended a tech media conference in Queensland and challenged speaker Malcolm Turnbull to an extended argument over the NBN (basically over what Nick saw as the superiority of the ALP’s Fibre To The Home network over the Coalition’s proposed Fibre To The Node alternative). His actions were unpopular with other attendees who thought him both rude to Malcolm (I am using first names here for the sake of consistency) and others who were denied the opportunity to ask their own questions. Malcolm implored Nick to undertake more balanced journalistic inquiry on the NBN and, voila, several days later, Nick has published a several thousand word opus which purports to compare the ALP and Coalition policies, and, inevitably, finds almost complete fault with the Opposition’s.
Well, the best that can perhaps be said is that Nick is a consistent believer. But in reading this opus last night, I was struck by Nick’s loose construction of research, argument and expression. Not only is the piece unbecoming of acceptable editorial standards regarding bias, but also those of accuracy and logic. It is a disservice to both the ABC’s audience and the cause of NBN supporters.
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of Nick’s looseness with logic and facts:
“Over 80 per cent of the nation’s copper network is over 30-years old and copper expires after 30 years” - if the copper has truly expired how can it still be operational? Telstra reports fault-free performance of over 99% after all (98.7% for line faults, 99.98% for service availability).
“A standalone reason for the NBN is that it replaces the expired ‘rotting’ copper network” and “The Coalition has not addressed copper’s age and need for refresh with its choice of technology” - actually, the FTTN topology replaces a substantial percentage of the copper line length with fibre, so presumably the potential for faults and diminished performance reduces accordingly. That’s actually the whole point of adding fibre.
“In short (fibre) will revolutionise healthcare for everyone especially the elderly and those living in remote communities” – The NBN calls for lower speed wireless and satellite connections to remote communities. It is also quite likely that many elderly people will choose not to subscribe to NBN internet services if they lack digital literacy skills.
“It will revolutionise power distribution through the ability to micro-manage peak electricity demand” - There are already substantial smart grid projects underway across Australia aimed at doing that and they almost all use wireless platforms which are superior at tracking spatially disparate assets. The NBN can be used for smart grids but it will not revolutionise them, mainly because FTTH will lack the granularity of wireless coverage. For example, http://www.ericsson.com/article/ausgrid_1595655399_c
“Fibre also offers revolution to television with every household being able to access the bulk of the developed world’s TV channels” - right now using a DSL connection, I can watch many channels using third-party Justin.TV-style portals or original websites of the broadcasters. Fibre access in my last mile may help my experience a touch but probably won’t solve many of the issues of buffering and quality which come from the international side of the network. I can also quite easily watch many of the developed world’s TV channels using a satellite dish or other pay TV service.
“Fibre is the only medium capable of broadcasting to the new Ultra High Definition “4K” TVs” - Not at all. The world’s first 4K channel is actually available by satellite from Eutelsat and Qualcomm is developing mobile chips which support the standard. The first mass 4K broadcasts, of the next Soccer Asia Cup, will be broadcast by satellite in Japan. One suspects that future physical media formats will also support the new display standard. At the moment there is not much 4K content and the television sets cost $A10,000. Free-to-air HD is already stillborn in this country, not because of the limitations of terrestrial broadcasting, but because of a lack of content and business case.
“Fibre also means an end to paying phone line rental and expensive phone calls” - One of the more cutting edge NBN RSPs, iiNet, does offer a VoIP-based “no phone line” service over the NBN. But it requires a $9.95 monthly service charge and it does charge for calls: to mobiles which account for 2/3rds of all possible phone terminations in Australia and for all international calls. Phone calls will still have a cost under the NBN. VoIP is available over DSL and mobile; ever heard of Skype?
“Telecommuting means many more people won’t have to commute to work anymore and nor will they need to live in cities” - Telecommuting takes place now using today’s technology. The NBN may enhance the capabilities of telecommuting but it isn’t a pre-requisite. Personally I work with telecommuters everyday in Asia, Europe, North America and regional Australia and none of them are on the NBN.
“For instance, if people could communicate with CentreLink by talking to their TVs instead of spending time travelling to offices, hardly any offices would be required – everything could be outsourced to a low-cost regional location. There are over 900 offices in Australia” - The very nature of social welfare suggests that the people most likely to be in need of CentreLink services are the ones most likely to not have an high speed NBN connection, either because of expense, their lack of permanent residence or their socio-economic or socio-educational level. A mobile-centric effort would be more meaningful. President Obama has identified this and acted accordingly in the US.
“The ‘telehealth’ opportunities afforded by fibre are so dramatic that the savings to the vast $120bn (and rising) annual health budget will pay for the entire rollout on their own, while simultaneously revolutionising healthcare for all Australians, particularly the elderly and those living in rural areas” - One big problem with this, the government has just abolished Medicare rebates for telehealth consultations in metro areas, the ones slated to get fibre. Sorry Nick, but your revolution is dead in the starting gates. http://www.medicalobserver.com.au/news/rebates-slashed-rural-gps-forced-to-cut-telehealth
“National emergencies, whether fire or flooding, are becoming a part of Australian life. Consequently, the benefits of a fibre-based NBN are becoming increasingly important” – Despite Nick’s belief that fibre is water proof, the NBN didn’t hold up too well in the recent Queensland floods. Like other tech platforms, it is a touch vulnerable itself to natural disaster. As always, wireless techs prove best in these situations. http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-co-telcos-continue-to-combat-qld-flood-outages-7000010466/
“Fibre-based broadband requires very little power to transmit a full-speed signal over many kilometres. Conversely, a network based upon VDSL and wireless technologies require so much power that, according to Rod Tucker at Melbourne University, Australia will need to build two-to-three small new power stations to make it work” – One loves the logic here. FTTH allows you do all these great new things not possible on VDSL: for example, home-based health care monitoring, giant 4K ultra HD televisions, 3D printers and so on but apparently these have zero impact on the power grid! FTTN by definition stops you from doing all these things but doubles the power requirement!
“The Coalition has not yet addressed this” - Again, Nick is guilty of not performing basic research. Nearly a year ago at CommsDay Summit 2012 in Sydney, Malcolm Turnbull said “A key advantage often cited for FTTP over FTTC/VDSL2 is reduced energy usage, given GPON is not powered. But in practice this saving is minimal compared to the vast gap in capital costs. According to Verizon, annual central office power usage is 32 kWh for a DSL line and 12 kWh for a FIOS line. At 25 cents per kWh, a move from copper to FTTP therefore cuts annual energy costs per line from $8 to $3. Across the 8 million premises forecast to be connected to the fibre when the NBN Co rollout is complete, FTTP therefore saves $40 million a year in power costs.” http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speeches/three-years-of-nbn-2-0-what-have-we-learnt/
“Fibre maintenance is much cheaper than that of copper” - Again Nick seems to forget than FTTN network replaces much of the copper with fibre and that under the NBN, the most expensive part of the copper network – covering the most uneconomic and sparse 7% of the population – is retained!
“The net cost is zero and it will pay for itself in at least four different ways” – The net cost is not zero! The NBN is not forecast to recover its costs for between twenty years and twenty seven years, depending on the scenario. Fibre networks are commonly depreciated after 25 years!
“Rather than using tax-payer’s money that could be used on other things (a common myth) it sees Australia borrowing $27bn using its Triple-A credit rating (Australia is currently one of only seven countries in the world to have this. It provides us with the cheapest form of borrowing) to use in addition to another $11bn of private investment” - Actually 15 countries have AAA ratings and there is no planned private investment at all in the NBN. There is a plan for it to raise its own debt. That is a different thing.
“This money ultimately comes back to the government with a seven per cent profit” - That is a projection, not a guarantee. Many business plans fail to come true.
“In addition, the cost savings to existing infrastructures, particularly health and power generation are such that the money saved from their annual bills will pay for the network on their own” - How are these savings captured and quantified in order to pay for the network? I’m intrigued.
“Here’s the premise: all of the Coalition claims about its ‘FttN-based technology being around one-third or one-quarter of the cost of the current NBN’ are based on overseas examples where an incumbent telco already owns a copper network (which presumably is well-maintained and in good condition). But neither the government nor NBNco own a copper network and that means it must obtain one. A new one would cost around $40bn and is subsequently non-viable. That means enacting an election promise to buy or lease Telstra’s copper network” - Telstra has already signed a deal with $11 billion of “net present value” – which means more than $15 billion in actual cost – to retire its copper network, lease its ducts and transfer customers to the NBN. The government already has declared Telstra’s network and has the legal power to appropriate it for third-party access. There is also legislation in place that allows the minister broad discretion to structurally separate and otherwise punish Telstra if it doesn’t co-operate with the NBN. In aggregate, this combination of legal powers and already agreed upon expropriation of the copper network suggests a deal can be done that will probably accelerate revenues to Telstra simply because FTTN can be built faster. Right now, Telstra can’t get full earning potential from leasing to the NBN until next decade.
“It’s difficult to envisage private companies investing in a copper-based network which is already moribund, literally on its way to the scrap heap and comes with enormous power bills, maintenance costs, no premium applications and no obvious return on investment” – That’s exactly what Telstra and its access seekers do right now. It’s called the DSL market.
“It’s not clear why the Australian public would, en masse, subscribe to the new network” - Perhaps because they are already subscribers and they would simply be leased or sold new modems?
“Malcolm Turnbull recently and bizarrely said of the fibre-based NBN: “There is no evidence whatsoever that the massive increase in speeds delivered by fibre-the-home will deliver any extra value or benefit to Australian households.” One can’t help but wonder what the reaction would be if that statement was read out at an international broadband conference” - Indeed, Malcolm made a similar statement very recently at an international broadband conference in Europe held by Informa. Given he has been cordially tweeting with Informa analysts as recently as last week, everyone seemed calm about it. Again, Nick betrays his lack of research. http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/dont-suspend-the-laws-of-economics-malcolm-turnbull-speaks-to-broadband-world-forum-paris-27-september-2011/
“It appears that the Coalition’s broadband alternative will be colossally more expensive than the current NBN and not cheaper by any reasonable definition” - It won’t be if the Coalition simply sets a finite budget for it, rather than the current approach of defining the network topology first and costing it later. I would really wait and see for the policy/CBA given that at $5000 per home the current NBN is much more expensive than the $350-600 per home figures cited across several vendors and carriers in Europe for FTTN. But if you don’t believe me I simply submit what Stephen Conroy said on April 20 last year: ““It would be quicker and will cost less to build a fibre-to-the-node network. That is just an unambiguous fact.” http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/conroy-coalition-alternative-%E2%80%98quicker-and-will-cost-less%E2%80%99/ and http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/stephen-conroy-on-telstra-and-nbn-co/3962212
“After completion it will likely be sold but the government will remain in control of maintenance (a good idea)” - Why is it a good idea for the government to maintain a repair force for a privatised NBN? When has this been suggested?
“The wholesale price drops over time (Page 67 of NBNco’s corporate plan) and, once sold, will be subject to market forces – the initial requirement of them being artificially high (to subsidise the rollout to rural and remote Australia) will no longer exist” - NBN Co’s actual corporate plan envisages a doubling of ARPU over a decade, this is hardly a fall in price. Why will there be no requirement to cross-subsidise rural and remote Australia in the future? Will the wireless, satellite and loss-making parts of the fibre network have no opex or replacement costs? Or is this going to be placed on the federal budget?
“An enormous problem with the current system (and with networks around the world) is that incumbent operators are in charge of everything” – No they are not in “charge of everything.” This is nonsensical. Is Telstra in charge of Optus? AT&T in charge of Comcast? They are heavily regulated in the first place.
“That said, a potential problem is that some smaller-scale players won’t be able to afford the minimum AVC (Access Virtual Circuit) from NBNco. Their option will be to buy rolled-up NBN wholesale from the likes of Nextgen and AAPT.” – Again Nick reveals he doesn’t understand how the NBN works. The AVC is the capacity sold on the end line eg the $24 12Mbps link. There is no way to get a cheaper version of it by buying it from a wholesaler. Nick is confusing this with the backhaul behind the POI where there is contestability and arguably the Network-to-Network Interface which potentially could be wholesaled or shared between smaller RSPs.
“When Telstra last looked at implementing FttN in 2008 it said that sharing access to its cabinets with other service providers using all manner of different contractors would cause all manner of problems, that “In practice it would be a disaster for customers” - This is misleading. Telstra was still bidding in tenders to build FTTN the following year using a bitstream protocol, the same as the proposal put forward by Optus and other service providers under Terria at the same time. The NBN topology of bitstream with a network POI interface remains the same whether FTTH or FTTN is used.
“Alcatel-Lucent Zero-Touch vectoring is a single-vendor solution. Without vendor competition, you have a monopoly supplier” - Again, where is the attempt at research? Huawei are selling a vector DSL solution to Swisscom, Adtran are also tendering for contracts for vectored DSL right now in the US and Europe. And as it so happens, Alcatel-Lucent is the lead supplier for the FTTH network right now!
“Vectoring is incompatible with “local loop unbundling” – So is GPON! So what! You use bitstream for both GPON and FTTN! There is no proposal for local unbundling on the NBN as it stands.
“Low-density, long-loop areas are non-viable because you’d have a DSLAM serving fewer than 100 customers, because most cable fanouts today serve fewer than 100 customers. In other words – VDSL2 plus vectoring would serve more like 50 per cent of the country than 93 per cent (a rough estimate; significant time and resources would need to be spent turning that into hard data)” – Indeed, between 2006 and 2009, Stephen Conroy proposed to serve 98% of the country with VDSL and there was not a peep of objection that he could only technically achieve it to half. Where was Nick then? Right now about 93% of the population can get DSL. To suggest only half of them can receive a capacity improvement from the deployment of what Nick himself suggests elsewhere in the article would be a 50,000 node network is fanciful. With no new nodes and simple exchange-based vectoring, about 50% would get an improvement already!
“In the absence of wide adoption of the Vectoring standard, No telco will deploy a technology like vectoring on a wide scale. Experience suggests it would take at least 3-5 years. In other words “VDSL2 with Vectoring” deployment would be unlikely to start until 2017 or so.” - As it so happens, Swisscom, Belgacom, Deutsche Telekom and Fastweb Italy are all planning multi-million line deployments beginning this year and reaching full scale in 2014. These are announced contracts.
“Any suggestion that an NBN monopoly inflates prices is already disproved as nonsense” - The experience of the last few years is that wholesale prices have been stable or declined (ULL has been priced at between $12 and $17 in Band 2, LSS nationally (DSL only) at just $2.50). The minimum NBN wholesale access price is $24 and wholesale ARPUs are envisaged to climb to $52 in seven years as customers climb speed tiers and RSPs order more connectivity circuits. The average price for a retail broadband service currently is around $50. In eight years the average wholesale price will exceed that under NBN forecasts ($52). This reverses the trend for more capacity for the same or less end user price.
“There are many plans available right now and they are practically all better value and/or cheaper than existing alternatives”- Nick again seems unaware that initial NBN wholesale prices are designed to meet the DSL market with price rises to only come later through the CVC and speed tier bracket creep. The same higher speeds that are apparently so essential to realise NBN benefits.
“The Governments already own public infrastructure like the electricity network and the road and railway networks. It does this to facilitate economic growth and social benefits” - Indeed, but the trend of late has been towards privatisation, deregulation or toll-compensated private investment in these fields.
“Regulatory intervention is frequently required to maintain services and competition, and prices (for example in the electricity sector) have risen in spite of the expected efficiencies of private ownership. The question is raised, why should the communications network be any different?” - Is Nick unaware of the pervasive thousands of pages of regulation which cover telecommunications competition, incumbent obligations and other rules? Perhaps there is a clue here as to why there was an investment failure in the local loop in the first place, specifically dating back to 2001 when the ACCC first mandated local loop unbundling?
“Unless a detailed alternative is released by the Coalition we’re forced to assume that its “market-driven” plans will only cause local monopolies, duopolies and inflated prices because that’s what all of the available information and overseas examples (such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand), currently point towards.” – Malcolm has said on several occasions he will persist with a separated Telstra and a neutral wholesaler. Again, where is the attempt at research?
“The boost to business has been measured (by IBM) at $1 trillion over the next few decades while last year a Deloitte study stated that the digital economy will increase from $50bn to $70bn per year in the next five years due to expectations from the NBN. Also a Nielsen study found that 93 per cent “of Australian businesses believe that participation in the digital economy is important to their on-going business strategy” and 75 per cent said “National broadband infrastructure will increase their ability to engage in the digital economy. Meanwhile the OECD (and others) believe that the NBN will increase GDP by at least one per cent ($15bn per year). That’s before cost savings and revenue from the system itself. As such the NBN would cover the cost of capital in just two years” - The digital economy is based on many things: use of ICTs, mobile technology and fixed networks of varying speeds. There is no evidence, as Nick implies, that economic gains from the digital economy can only be made through pervasive FTTH. Indeed, he has spent so much time telling us how the NBN allows us to avoid costs, one wonders if he has thought about the losses that might accrue to some quarters of the economy from it as well? His example of how we can all bypass retirement homes might not be seen as a positive in that industry. For example, he says “Why spend a fortune on a new server that has a short life expectancy and requires expensive support when you can rent one in the cloud?”
“The Coalition might just be the only government entity not to even refer to the importance of the cloud or broadband benefits to business in general.” – The Coalition is a political party (two in fact) and not a government entity, but as it so happens its state equivalents in power in Victoria and NSW both have advanced digital economy strategies.
“As long-term licensing agreements expire in Australia, more and more premium content will become available over the next decade and we’ll see US-like traffic usage where one-third of ALL internet download traffic comes from video distribution service, Netflix” – which begs the question, can we bill Netflix for a third of the cost in building the NBN? But I make a serious point here. Is this worthy of so much government mindshare if the main beneficiary is American movie distribution? Can they help build it, like cable TV companies do?
“There are many other benefits to seniors. This is particularly important with so many baby boomers hitting retirement age – apparently there are over 800,000 65th birthday’s every month” - So there are 9.6m Australians turning 65 every year?
“The bad state of the ducts is a double problem for the Coalition because the technology also relies upon the quality of the copper within those ducts and most of it is over 30 years old. In NBNco’s case, where the Telstra duct is declared unusable, it makes its own new one. For the Coalition to do this would involve rolling out new copper – a ridiculous notion” - An FTTN rollout doesn’t rely on disturbing the ducts with last mile copper in them, it doesn’t touch them. It deploys fibre to replace the bundles of copper that feed exchanges.
“The Coalition’s FttN technology node requires mains electricity power being connected to every single cabinet in the street. NBN contractors have already queried how this could possibly be achieved as local power companies are the only ones who can install power to infrastructure. The notion of coordinating electrical engineers with NBN engineers without massive delays, across 50,000 to 70,000 nodes drew very cynical comments from leading NBN contractors” - Yet mysteriously every telco which bid for the 2009 FTTN tender didn’t see this as a problem and somehow all those street lights, payphones and traffic signals manage to work!
“In the UK the standard cost of connecting a node to power has frequently ballooned from 2000 UK Pounds to 25,000 UK Pounds” - The actual quote he links to says “sometimes” not “frequently”.
“But many such people don’t already have broadband because they are either too far from an exchange or are connected to poor-quality copper FttN technology won’t fix all of these issues” – the whole point of FTTN is to place the nodes closer to people far from the exchange. That is its underlying principle and purpose for existence as a platform.
“Some have said that having the large fridge-sized FttN cabinets outside your house will lower value. It probably depends on the premises’ outlook. Some won’t care, but as Selling Houses Australia tells us repeatedly, they are likely to polarise buyers and reduce the market – some will view them as monstrous carbuncles” - Is Nick aware that the NBN requires tens of thousands of fibre distribution hubs in streets that look just like… bar fridges?
OK enough is enough and I have made my point. Yes, there are legitimate questions to be asked about FTTN in Australia and in between the nonsense and inaccuracies, Nick manages to ask some good ones. Yes FTTH is a great, albeit expensive, technology that would appear to be future proofed for many decades.
But that isn’t the point. The point is that in a world of a noisy blogs and message boards there are some “institutions” that should be making an effort to research their facts, attempt to provide balance and help us all get closer to truth. The ABC is one of them. I help pay for it, you help pay for it, and its mere existence crowds out the economics for other quality media.
I have just provided nearly 50 examples from one article published by our national broadcaster that arguably fail to meet basic standards of fact, accuracy and logic. Not everyone will agree and no doubt I will be accused of bias and having advanced my own apologia for the other side of politics. That’s not what I am really attempting though. What I am trying to do is to directly influence Nick to start servicing his own side of the debate with more effective arguments and to actually consider the merits of the opposing side. Because right now he is letting down the cause of NBN advocacy with his slipshod and embarrassing campaign. It is a serious enough issue that it deserves more than this tawdry analysis from the national broadcaster for something that remains Australia’s most ambitious infrastructure project – ever.
Grahame Lynch
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The problem with the Opposition's NBN plan is they're arguing against best-practise and best-technology for digital comms. It's like arguing the Sun revolves around the Earth, or claiming that the world is flat; it might fool some of the people for some of the time, but you can't argue against reality forever, because eventually reality notices and kicks you in the teeth.
There's a reason why the majority of ACT government uses fibre for comms (ICON) and why ever major telco uses fibre for WAN. Even for the last mile, you'd be hard pressed these days to find a telco recommending copper for business. Even the cheap last-mile comms are moving rapidly away from Frame and ADSL towards Ethernet over fibre. Fibre is simply better in every measurable way, including cost of ownership.
Datacentres went from copper to fibre years ago. You can only just now achieve 10Gbps over copper, and only for 40m, a transmission rate we were doing 10 years ago over 300m using fibre. Now we're planning for 100Gbps fibres. Copper is a second-class citizen in the datacentre.
Local fibre suppliers are now gearing up for the next wave, which is fibre to the desktop in building refits. Why bother with distribution switches when you have 300-500m fibre runs back to a central core? Even the desktop is going fibre.
So fibre long-haul, fibre data-centers, fibre-desktops. If business and government has already recognised the futility of any future investment in copper, why is the Opposition so hell-bent on recommending copper for residential? Copper is not cheap. Copper is not reliable. Copper is not fast. Fibre is, and always has been, the future of digital comms. And that future is here *today*. Actually it was here 10 years ago, but the government moves very slowly.
Any argument against the current FTTH plan for NBN is IMO completely political. And I accuse anybody who argues *for* the Opposition's NBN plan as being a biassed political hack. You're arguing against physics. Give it up.
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LikeFantastic article.
I live in rural NSW outside Alstonville/Ballina and can't get DSL during to reach/pair gain/RIM/whatever is wrong in the copper network.
For me, I desperately need NBN (25mbps LTE with 200GB data) as I run 3 online businesses and my partner is a photographer.
Apparently there is no commercial return from serving our road (small business owners, director of ASX listed miners etc) so for our whole road we need NBN.
That's not to say that what you say isn't without merit especially with respect to putting fibre everywhere. Putting fibre all over metro areas is just being silly.
Rural/Regional Oz needs NBN MUCH MUCH more than metro AU.
Tim
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Liketim_marsh
That's the problem with copper. Distance. And now it's getting quite old. I'd be very thankful of the NBN in your circumstance. As there has been a major push by people in the cities beliving they should come first. As they arguably need the speed more than more rural people. However the flip side to that, as you illustrate, is that with copper's issues in the 'bush' (from 15 years of neglect) is old copper, and distance. Distance is where fibre shines. And NBNco's fibre links can work around the 15km mark without a repeater (aiui). Ditto for fixed wireless. If you are around the 12-14km mark from a Fixed Wireless tower, depending on geography, those in the Fixed Wireless areas should be covered with 25/5 internet. A god send for those stuck on dial up for 15 years. And satelite will cover the last 3%. Again at 25/5. Both with potential upgrades into the future. What's even more exciting, is as the Fibre stretches the country, we can look at ways to take it further out again. Just like copper originally did. After all, for most Fixed Wireless towers, they are fed by fibre, so the option then come available to stretch that fibre to the surrounding towns and regions as the years pass. We have some very exciting times ahead indeed (unless some political muppets with vested interests screw the whole thing up :-) ).All best
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
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LikeAnthonyWasiukiewicz I am not an advocate of government spending at all except for some basic needs, and I think NBN is one of them, so don't me wrong.
(I think Malcolm Turnbull is pushing something uphill, or up that creek without a paddle).
We are <2km with direct unimpeded LOS to a fibre enabled comms tower so LTE at 25/5 won't be a prob. Our 3G on TLS is around 12Mbps and pretty good but the data caps are shocking. SHOCKING.
I was a telco engineer in Melb for 12 years so appreciate the technologies, challenges and everything else.
Also I appreciate the benefits of fibre, really (I'd LOVE fibre at our place - we are only 3.8km from a fibre).
I just happen to appreciate the challenges RARA people face as well as appreciating the circumstances described vis a vis some people in "metro" areas not having ADSL2 or 2+. (I don't call areas way outside a CBD as metro...outer metro more accurate).
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Liketim_marsh Hey Tim.
"Rural/Regional Oz needs NBN MUCH MUCH more than metro AU."
To be fair, this is not entirely equitable. There's absolutely no question in my mind that Regional and Rural Australians desperately need an upgrade to their BB. I mean, for goodness sake, some people can only have dial up they so far from exchanges or their RIMs have no ADSL!
But I think you need to realise, while there are 30% of Australians in Regional areas and many DO need BB upgrades, there are 70% of Australians in cities and at LEAST some 30% of them have as bad or WORSE access to BB. Just because you are in a city, does not mean you have good access to BB. Friends of mine are in a new Estate in Western Sydney on a RIM. They've been in that estate for 2 years (bought a house there- estate is about 3-4 years old). They have 2Mbps ADSL because of RIM congestion. Next-door neighbours can't GET ADSL because there's no ports ON that RIM. Old friends of mine who lived in Wollongong couldn't get ADSL because they were on a pair-gain system....5 mins from the centre of Wollongong!
Look, my point is, ALL of Australia needs upgrading, even those in HFC footprints, because many simply cannot physically access that infrastructure due to legal issues with MDUs and businesses connecting, so are stuck on congested ADSL or no ADSL because there's no ports or damaged copper. FTTH to 93% of premises makes sure no matter where Australians move in the cities they will know they have guaranteed BB and the VAST majority of people in Regional towns as well. And 4% wireless and 3% sat again ensure even those in Rural and Remote Australia get a GUARANTEED speed of 12Mbps or now, even 25Mbps. We (currently) have no such guarantee from FTTN the Coalition wants to use. And the speed you get, as now, will VERY much depend on where you are. Want 40/40 to run a Small business from home based online? Call up....sorry, you're 800m from the node- best you can get is 10/10 symmetrical or 30/5 residential.
ALL of Australia needs upgrading, that's the problem, it takes time. Regional and Rural as WELL as Urban. That's why the wireless and Sat are first and the FTTH isn't being rolled out from cities to Regional, but from POIs, both regional AND Urban, outwards.
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LikeI have found many errors in the first item of your riposte, here;
"Over 80 per cent of the nation’s copper network is over 30-years old and copper expires after 30 years” - if the copper has truly expired how can it still be operational? Telstra reports fault-free performance of over 99% after all (98.7% for line faults, 99.98% for service availability).
“A standalone reason for the NBN is that it replaces the expired ‘rotting’ copper network” and “The Coalition has not addressed copper’s age and need for refresh with its choice of technology” - actually, the FTTN topology replaces a substantial percentage of the copper line length with fibre, so presumably the potential for faults and diminished performance reduces accordingly. That’s actually the whole point of adding fibre.
The Copper networks suffers a huge amount from Water ingress, this effects the attenuation, reducing performance, especially with xDSL technologies. The copper he is referring to is the copper in this state it is Ok for Voice but no good for Data.
1. Over the last 15 years, the Copper installed has been single pair, which will not work with the proposed VDSL it needs two pairs.
2. Many properties are on pair-gain and not able to support VDSL2
3. Replacing Copper is the same cost as installing Fibre
4. The sealant use by the Technicians, attracts a bacteria which produces a corrosive gas that destroys the copper now a major issue.
Additionally by Using VDSL the maximum distance between the 'node' and the furthest premises in 400 Metres, whereas with the NBN it
is 1KM and can go to 20K of the gpon spec., the Coalition's plan will need 6-9 times as many nodes, these nodes will need power, ups, expensive electronics, and active cooling, and batteries. NBN Nodes do not. Alcatel/Lucent identified Oz will need 70,000 of them at say a minimum $100,000 each that is $7 billion, they will use $3Billion in power over 10 years @ 2kw/hour, will need maintenance and replacement especially in a disaster, so double that to $14 Billion. the copper will cost 5-10 BIllion in Maintenance in that period. The VDSL Modems for 8 million users is over $2 Billion at $250 each, they are several thousand at the moment.. Starting to get the picture, this Cheaper solution will cost more than the $12 Billion that the current NBN FttH will cost and will not support data over at 80Mbps, Fibre in now will support 1gbps and supports 40,000 Mbps. All these numbers are on the low side so 20-30 Billion, Not mentioning the Issues with the HFC thay want to use yet which will cost much more $.
There is plenty more wrong with the FttN, system especially during a natural disaster, where FttN handles very well. FttN could easily cost a Billion to fix. People love stealing the UPS batteries in FttN node cabernets.
Your second part saying that part of the copper will be replaced with Fibre, is also a fallacy, The coppy is always the bottle-neck and
according to the Australian Beuro of Statists, Australian Data use in quadrupling every 3.5 years, VDSL will give a 4 by performance increase so it will be obsolete before it is complete.
Copper has a very limited future for speed improvement and it degrades rapidly after a distance of 400 Metres. It will never do 1Gbps, Fibre being laid now as part of the NBN will allow 1gbps to users, and 6% of residence can get PtoP at 2.488Gbps now. The second Fibre being installed into all residence is for the upgrade to 10-GPON, and eventually 40GPON, 40gigabits/second.
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LikeMunixJust to clarify a few points Munix firstly being VDSL. It can utilise 1 pair and work. It's when you add in vectoring that multiple pairs become beneficial. Basically the more pairs, the faster the speed. Howvever it will work over 2 pairs. If you have two pairs to your home, arguably you could get faster speeds than a person who only has one pair (on the assumption the length is the same along with quality). Nonetheless, that doesn't make it a good idea to utilise it in Australia.
2nd point. VDSL vectoring (which MT has illustrated once or twice) actually works best under the one telco. If you have multiple telcos the interference between pairs is harder to overcome.
3rd point. The main issue with the copper to refute Grahame's point, is that Telstra stopped replacing pairs (as was illustrated by another posters comments below). Telstra just started using 'redundant' pairs. As a copper pair died, they used another one that was already there. Only problem is, there are less and less of them with each dead pair. And the only way to get more is to replace them with copper, or have network with no redundancy. Not a good idea in the 21st century. Either that, or you put in FTTH.
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LikeMunix FTTN doesn't have to be VDSL2. HFC (cable) specifications allow for speeds up to ~400Mbps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS), and there's already plenty of HFC in Australia which allows up to 100Mbps. I'm in Geelong and I can get it today!
And don't start on contention, because even ADSL2+ suffers with contention for backhaul at a ratio of about 1:50 for domestic use. So put out HFC and increase the fibre reach as and where required, and then WHEN required turn the HFC fibre nodes to FTTH fibre cabinets or better still build out dedicated fibre-to-the-home (or whatever is cheapest at the time).
The problem with this debate is that it isn't just a technology debate. It's also an economical one - with $30bn in debt, one must service the debt, paying interest on capacities (gigabit speeds) only wanted by a fraction of the customers. If HFC can be rolled out to 98% of the population for say $10bn, you're not paying interest on a loan for no reason. The term future-proofing is a deceptive term which ignores variables affecting the whole business.
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Liketodd hubers Munix Hey todd
While HFC certainly has the ability to be upgraded, there are a few things to note:
1- Telstra and Optus both use DOCSIS 3.0, allowing for 100Mbps per user. Telstra uses EuroDOCSIS 3.0 with 8 channels for IP transit, giving a combined throughput for an optical node of 450MBps down and 130Mbps up. Optus use DOCSIS 3.0, 8 channels, same as US companies, which has 340MBps down and 130Mbps up. Difference is Telstra use about 200 users on a node, giving (at 100Mbps, which is pretty much all they sell now) a 1:45 contention ratio. Optus however use anything up to 2000 users, giving a whopping 1:500 contention ratio (again, they only sell 100MBps now...or rather, they give free upgrades to 100MBps).
2- To upgrade, Telstra and Optus have a few choices:
- DOCSIS 3.1 (not yet commercially available, around 2015). Gives total throughput on a node of 1Gbps minimum, up to 10Gbps. HOWEVER, it requires using specific QAM setups AND, most importantly, frequencies. Neither Telstra NOR Optus currently use the same frequency bands as DOCSIS 3.1. That would mean a full shuffle of frequencies, not to difficult, but a full firmware upgrade or full replacement of current Cable modems would be required. DOCSIS 3.1 developers suggest beginning to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1 modems next year in preparation when they hit the market (several hundred dollars each). Uploads increase significantly on DOCSIS 3.1, even symmetrical if it is employed.
- Node-split. This is a PHYSICAL fix, rather than equipment fix, which allows the nodes to have the same bandwidth (therefore requiring no equipment changes) but reduces the number of users per node. It would be, essentially, somewhere between the cost of laying FTTN and FTTH. This however gives to ability of HFC for uploads. They'd be capped at about 2Mbps.
It is not the ability of HFC to a SINGLE user that is the issue (as it is with FTTN). IT is the shared medium. Either node-splitting OR DOCSIS 3.1 would require SIGNIFICANT CAPEX to upgrade. And those WITHOUT HFC would essentially, if rolled out to, cost the same as FTTH.
I don't see the point in using an inferior technology (coax) and system (HFC) when it costs the same or close to the same amount to rollout. HFC to 98% would be, basically, the same cost as FTTH to 98% - about 50% of the cost in the 30% who already have it. There is not enough savings overall to warrant it. Interest on $30 billion is about $1 billion a year at bond rates. NBNCo, when finished, will be making $3-4 Billion....PROFIT. And that assumes 45% of people of 12/1! There isn't an issue with servicing debt in NBNCo's current plan.
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Likeseven_tech todd hubers Munix
Munix I think seven_tech has covered the main points. Basically to UG HFC, and to connect the rest of the homes in the HFC footprint, it will cost near on exactly the same as installing FTTH. You would have to upgrade back haul, upgrade the nodes, connect the homes not connected, then later upgrade to Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG). And to allow competition you would have to a) UG twice (both Telstra and Optus Networks), or b) pay Telstra to make theirs open access.
The 2nd point to obeserve is the debt myth. This is oversold by the media and the people really don't understand the truth. The big issue with debt is 'servicability', and if you look at our debt levels in comparison to GDP, it's around 20%. We have been at that position multiple times since WW2. $38Billion for an asset that pays itself back is peanuts. Especially when most of the servicing costs would currently be spend by telstra to maintain the copper. And likely increase into the future. FTTH is alot cheaper to maintain. Even moreso as it will be new. After the great depression we had debt levels of 60% of GDP, and it went to near 100% as the wars took hold. The GFC drove the world into crises with many countries sprouting unemployment of 25% and 50% of under 20s. We have ~6%. We can afford the NBN. And we can service the debt. And we will need the NBN more as the minining starts to slow, and we have to compete in other markets who are also rolling out FTTH...
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LikeGrahame,
If I may point out an e-health and government limitation at the moment and that is Centrelink will not communicate with me by email, supposedly because of privacy concerns, and I cannot send my Doctor and have him reply in kind.
What could be more easier than providing an email service so I can be in contact from wherever I may happen to be at that moment.
And if they cannot cater for email communication at the moment how the hell will they be able to 'make it better' with the NBN?
With my slow broadband 3G wireless connection I can monitor my own condition and symptoms by doing an internet search and inform myself so I am best able to assist my Doctor in prescribing medications.
And I have 3 seperate medical conditions that impact my life.
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Likenofixedaddress E-mail and telephone are not a consult and have privacy issues. A video call means the doctor is actually seeing the patient, and the privacy concern and due care issues go away.
So in fact the NBN by giving a workable video link connection at enough quality for the doctor to be able to judge the patient's condition visually is a very different thing from an e-mail.
A lot of what a GP does is done by observing the patient. The e-mail will not provide this. Most surgeries are equipped to handle e-mail but it is not acceptable.
"cannot cater for email communication at the moment" - yes they can but it's a bad idea.
"will they be able to 'make it better' with the NBN?" - yes by providing something that e-mail can't.
"With my slow broadband 3G wireless connection I can monitor my own condition and symptoms by doing an internet search and inform myself so I am best able to assist my Doctor in prescribing medications." - right so you know what you have because you diagnosed yourself? Or because the doctor did?
I monitor my symptoms also - I take my own blood pressure and am recording that in an app and uploading it. Yes - this kind of telemedicine is possible at pretty much any connection speed. So is ECG for non-urgent situations, there are now cases for iPHones that can do ECG by holding the phone against the patient. This is going to be game changing even on 3G.
We had a family member collapse in the bathroom and felt unable to move. Using my blood pressure meter and in consultation with the online advice service we established that we needed an ambulance to take her to hospital. This was in effect telemedicine using HFC for phone.
What is missing here is the detail of information that can be gained by a higher rate and reliable data connection. HD video streaming that doesn't fail due to network congestion for instance is a big change from a voice on the phone.
You may feel like you can use google to outdo being seen by a doctor - doesn't mean that others can or in fact should replace their doctor's visual assesment with google.
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Likerwerkh
Thank you for sharing about your medical monitoring requirements and I will trust in the Universe, if you don't mind me putting it that way, that your health continues as well as one could wish for.
And having a family member collapse is a frightening occurrence. I trust that all was resolved satisfactorily.
Please do not think that I do not want the finest broadband service available to every Australian.
And I do not see how a video can resolve due care and privacy issues.
And that is true and I will appreciate your explanation.
I have offered Centrelink a legal document that absolves them from any privacy issues but to no avail, alas.
And yes.
I had to spend approximately 25 years to diagnose one of my conditions and it is clinically proven.
But the other 2 were diagnosed via the doctor's resources which entailed being sent for tests because the doctor cannot say for sure until he has some empirical evidence that he can rely upon.
Kind Regards
NFA
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Likenofixedaddress rwerkh
Just on your legal document situation nofixedaddress , Centrelink cannot accept it. They are bound by Commonwealth Law that prevents them from breaking their rules of Privacy. My mother has had this issues several times with them when she could not attend face-to-face interviews. The ONLY way they can currently conduct interviews is face-to-face because of Commonwealth Privacy laws binding them.
Of course, this is an issue for the NBN and potential video feed too. But an easier one than email, by far.
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Likeseven_tech rwerkh
I appreciate your point that they are bound by Commonwealth Law regarding Privacy and, please, that is all I am trying to say.
They have to sort out the existing privacy rules to enable email communication otherwise how do they think people can trust the security of the network when it goes live video.
The existing so called privacy laws are only covering the government.
The Australian Government Centrelink department will not send you an email because they cannot guarantee that someone is not sitting on their data links and recording every single bit of traffic going in or out.
Add video to the mix and what is the potential for someone to record intimate medical details.
No thanks. I will continue to search the internet and go and see my doctor at the first available opportunity.
Kind Regards
NFA
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Likenofixedaddress rwerkh
NFA- Actually, there is a fundamental problem to email that does not exist for Video- identification. Currently, there's no guaranteed way (without sniffing software and many hours of computer forensics, not to mention breaking several privacy laws) to confirm an email has been sent or received from an individual. You MIGHT be able to confirm the network and EVEN the computer it was sent from. But the person? Nope.
That isn't a problem for video. The streaming nature of video, if used correctly, means its' origin can be constantly tracked. Add in Bio-metric (finger/retina scan) feedback in real-time...plus of course the fact that you can see them in HD and have a picture of them and you have a 99.99% positive on the person you are speaking to....unless of course someone were to steal your fingerprint, eyeball and....face....
In essence, it is as secure as someone walking into a Centrelink office and saying they're Mr .X with no proof other than a licence....which, if you ask any number of my friends who've had their wallet stolen, is not hard to either get or fake. Actually, even just the Video Feed and requiring them to enter a password and known IP address would be more secure even than a licence. Unless you believe someone is going to hack a video feed to try and impersonate someone....
Email, by its' nature, is anonymous. Yes, there is secure email, but it is only used by companies and government and only secures the contents. But it still doesn't ACTUALLY identify the person who sent it positively. Video does, again, unless you believe someone is going to go to the trouble of faking somebody's face?....
Of course, it will be many years before something like that can be implemented. But that's many years before email ever could, because it simply can't be done with email. Hell, video is even more secure than an online Portal like Centrelink have now! Why- human identification. You can't (easily) fake somebodies face.
Am I suggesting we'll all be using HD video for government services in 5 years? Of course not. But that is the way we WILL be heading in the coming years. 10 years? Maybe, 15 years? Probably. 20? Almost certainly. Just look at the change to even musty old Centrelink in that time.
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Likenofixedaddress seven_tech The issue is not the security of the link - in the same way it's not the security of a letter.
Emails regularly go out over faked names, this is how most spam works, which also creates what is known as blowback spam when the spam bounces to the faked originator address. I run a mail server - I see this every day.
As my doctor is very close then yes I will see my doctor.
As for people whose doctor is not so close then they might use a teleconsult where it helps.
As for a GP tele-consult being the be-all and end-all of tele-medicine? Not even close!
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Likerwerkh nofixedaddress
I wan't actually talking of GP tele-medicine. I was talking of Centrelink and Government services. You're not going to email your GP about heart palpitations....
The security of the link was only one option I was speaking of- IDENTIFICATION was what I was actually trying to get across. And a live-video feed is hard to fake....
And of course- the GP tele-consult isn't the be-all and end-all. Remote surgery is already possible, but only in major hospitals because of access to equipment AND reliable connections. Remote diagnosis even more so.
There are many avenues. Not all will contribute significantly to lower of health costs or raising of efficiency. But many will and that cumulative effect will be billions over the years.
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Likeseven_tech nofixedaddress Reply was to nofixedaddress and not aimed at you - and it's late and I crossthreaded - sorry.
Seemed to be the same issue though.
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Likerwerkh nofixedaddress
No problems. It is late.
Bed time!
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Likeseven_tech rwerkh
thank you both for this discussion.
and seven_tech I agree with your prognosis but I believe we have the technology 'now'.
And I hope it is a lot shorter than your worst case of 20 years!
A lot of biometric monitoring is done now.
I would have to do some internet searching but I think you will find it is already happening.
We already have programs like skype, ym or teamviewer... and i am not endorsing nor knocking any of them.
But really it is a service that your ISP could provide.
Secure connection between an individual sitting at home and an organization such as Centrelink or your doctor, or your assigned tele-doctor.
Kind Regards
NFA
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Likenofixedaddress rwerkh
NFA
Indeed, much of technology IS available today. And I would not knock that either. It's vital for some people's treatment. My only issue is looking at what we have today and saying "we don't need the NBN to use it". Of course we don't NEED it, but treatments and diagnoses will improve, markedly with access to such high speed connectivity.
Imagine a point in time where you could have an 3D MRI, the equipment of which was paid for by the community in a small region, but had no specialists within 200km. Instead, your MRI data is streamed direct to a major specialist in a capital and streamed back to you graphically and you can discuss your results only 20 minutes after you have it done, rather than days or weeks. All without leaving your local hosptial. Or even from your home, while you wait for the data to be computed at the other end.
My issues is with people who think faster connectivity isn't needed for what we already have. It isn't what we ALREADY have I'm worried about, it's about what we COULD have that COULD save lives and even money, less importantly, because of reliable, fast connectivity.
Security is always an issue, but it can be dealt with. Either by the ISP or the government direct, via an ISP.
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Likenofixedaddress rwerkh Correct, telemedicine is the baby elephant in the room. Diagnosis must be in person, treatment must be in person, there is a narrow margin of what can be done over video, even simple catch-ups with the patient in Australia would 1) Only be relevant for private doctors and private health insurance, 2) Would still be useless because the doctor would still want you to come in and pay full price, and see your condition first hand - perhaps even run a blood pressure test.
They may as well be peddling tele-massage...
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Liketodd hubers nofixedaddress Diagnosis of some conditions has to be in person, not all conditions.
Again some of my diagnosis currently happens over Fibre now. In fact the major diagnostic tools in recent years have used fiber to communicate to the specialists.
As for Blod pressure - re-read my real life examples. Telemedicine involving blood pressure readings.
There are home use diagnostic tools about to hit the market for the other major tests done by doctors, namely ECG & O2 and a few other things. These things can be done remotely quite well, and are the tests that mostly won't require the connection speed.
These tools are being engineered for 3rd world situations and are already on trial in 3rd world environments, and are designed for low cost.
As for privacy - no the issue with privacy is communication with a person other than the intended one. A visual ID solves the problem.
As for coming in to be billed, well yes there has to be a medicare item for teleconsult - I would look into this, but it's a regulatory issue and obviously easily fixed.
So nothing in your elephant that is actually a reason telemedicine won't happen - cause it will and it is already in some places.
Not to mention that telemedicine is more than remote consults to homes, it is also about giving doctors access to hospitals and to diagnostic data, such as that which has been used for me in the past by doctors based in hospitals which have fiber to talk to diagnostic facilities which have fiber.
One of these diagnostic facilities was listing it's fiber connection as a selling point long before the NBN fiber was looking likely. This is a real need and advantage not invented for the NBN.
Countering it with imaginary elephants is not going to help.
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Liketodd hubers rwerkh
tele-evangelists
tele-marketers
?
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Liketodd hubers nofixedaddress rwerkh
>"Diagnosis must be in person, 'today'."
There, fixed that for you.
Most geriatrics have a blood preasure monitor at home. They buy them.
There is nothing stopping future models having a USB dongle that downloads the information. For all I know, they are available today.
Nonetheless something similar will be available in the future, and if not, the GP can use this little thing called a camera to view what is on the patients blood monitor screen.
Now I know this isn't common today. And won't become common tomorrow, but as the fibre grabs foothold in 10 years, we well gradually see a transition to these sorts of things. And problems will be overcome.
The paperless office didn't come over night, but we are nearly there.
Fibre allows this process to begin.
And telemedicine is only ONE future benefit of it. There are many many more.
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LikeAnthonyWasiukiewicz todd hubers nofixedaddress rwerkh "Fibre allows this process to begin." - No it doesn't, next you'll be telling me we can venture into social networking, online video and other amazing new frontiers! Moores law isn't technological, but economical, it's not always technology that stalls progress - culture and many other issues are often the blocking barriers.
"The paperless office didn't come over night" - a good case in point. Nothing has stopped the paperless office for the last 10-20 years, except economics and culture.
A blood pressure monitor and ECG system could easily transmit it's data to a doctor over a dial-up internet connection in minutes.
So much huffing and puffing about the possibilities, I'm not saying fibre is bad, I'm not saying I don't want 1gbps internet to my home, but I don't want to proceed with a flawed plan.
It's had no cost benefit analysis, and even the profit margins are a fairy tale at best (remember that the profit from NBNCo needs to pay the interest and principle back to the tax payer, meaning a net profit for the first 20-30 years of 1-2% and that's if it runs smoothly).
"And telemedicine is only ONE future benefit of it. There are many many more." Not really, it's hard to differentiate the additional benefits from >12Mbps. SmartGrid? Nope the power companies did that themselves, VideoConferencing? Heard of Skype? It's all hot air, desperate supporters talking in vague general terms about a future that's already here.
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress
Yes BP monitors that talk to cellphones are readily available today (try David Jones for instance)- and BP data can be sent over anythinga s it's 3 numbers and usually needed at most every few minutes.
The point is that this diagnostic tool is not a requirement to visit the doctor to be read. This can be done at home as part of a teleconsult.
"2) Would still be useless because the doctor would still want you to come in and pay full price, and see your condition first hand - perhaps even run a blood pressure test." - which you stated above is false. Your point gets disproved so you reverse the meaning without reading the other comments, let alone your own.
"Nothing has stopped the paperless office for the last 10-20 years, except economics and culture." and a need for access devices that replace paper in context. The rise of the iPad (and similar) and the e-reader is a part of the replacement of paper, and will most likely reduce the tendency to print things to read away from the desk.
" but I don't want to proceed with a flawed plan." - The coalition plan is flawed by amongst other things the flawed copper network. The copper network itself is the source of a lot of problems, and many are due to the way it is dual use and the state of lnes in premises, neither of which is fixed by introducing nodes in the street. So you can't want that then!
The FTTH plan is not flawed by intent, it may have technical issues to solve and labor force issues to deal with, but it is not setting out to do a bad thing at a cheap price. It is just the harder and better thing to do with higher up-front cost for greater effect.
So good but hard and requiring higher investment or keep the problems but easier and maybe cheaper, then need to do the other option in 5 yrs anyway, by making the consumer pay directly for the added cost you create by doing the wrong thing initially.
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Likerwerkh AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress "The rise of the iPad...", this points to a change in culture due to an embracing of technology by a previously resistant user. They had tablets before the iPad for example. And paperless often refers to the huge document archives business had - useless if it simply scanned and archived onto storage media with software access and search.
"The copper network itself is the source of a lot of problems..." - I agree, the copper network is starting to fall apart. I'm not going to follow the coalitions plan like a sheep, but I do prefer their direction (and ability to manage) better. They are not focusing their policy solely on VDSL2, they are using a mix of technologies where economical. I would hope that they will be rolling out FTTP in business districts for example, FTTH in green fields, perhaps VDSL2 for places close to exchanges, and HFC further out.
"then need to do the other option in 5 yrs anyway", there is no consumer demand for even 50mpbs today (I'm happy with my 10mbps at home), they are very price sensitive and many prefer volume to speed. The problem with this debate is many technical people putting in their opinion are super users of the internet torrenting large files and the like, all of my aquaintences want to receive email, lookup map directions, and let their kids watch Peppa Pig on iView. And then beyond that, they go to parks, beaches, and live life.
I see the NBN as the ultimate case of a consultant telling a customer they need to have the latest PC with the best graphics card on each desk in an office, because the raw power gives them butterflies in their stomach. I call such people technomotivated, always upgrading to the latest computer.
(BTW, I'm a programmer and I work on a PC with an i3 processor, the computer boots up in 20 seconds, and I run virtual machines and the like with 4GB of RAM)
And again, I'm all for FTTP in the right place at the right time for the right price.
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Liketodd hubers nofixedaddress rwerkh
Todd you do make points, I will never deny it.But I'm a shut the gate before the horse is bolted kinda guy. Mainly because I've watched people have a 'reactionary' mentality most of my life, and be no better off for it. But that's just my 'personal' standpoint. There are many other factors why NBN FTTH should go ahead. Economy, as you point out, is one of them.
>"next you'll be telling me we can venture into social networking, online video and other amazing new frontiers!"
- No I won't. I full well know that a large percentage of the country won't need fibre in the short term. And NBNco have stated it into their corporate plan predictions of 12/1 for 50% in the early years. However so far (though it's early), take up is beating these predictions. Time will tell for sure. - The only issue then is, that FTTN can't guarantee 12/1 unless you bring the nodes closer to the homes. Which means, 're routing' the copper. Which means.... laying new copper in the 21st century.
>""The paperless office didn't come over night" - a good case in point."
- That's why I mentioned it. Close the gate before the horse has bolted. Don't play catchup once the rest of the world has moved on. Countries Like the Ukraine are deliving FTTH. Should we be in front of them or behind? (remembering the issues with both Australia and Copper is 'distance'. A hurdle that Fibre solves.
>"A blood pressure monitor and ECG system could easily transmit it's data to a doctor over a dial-up internet connection in minutes."
- And I'm sure the doctor on the other end of the line can just 'believe' that it's getting sent by the person in question. The security issues of this have already been discussed in the comments on this article. I'm not going to repeat them cause you haven't taken the time to read them.
>"So much huffing and puffing about the possibilities, I'm not saying fibre is bad, I'm not saying I don't want 1gbps internet to my home, but I don't want to proceed with a flawed plan."
- and your evidence that the plan is 'flawed' is?
Look up the defintion of White Elephant. You will see that Fibre isn't one. FTTN, is.
>"It's had no cost benefit analysis, and even the profit margins are a fairy tale at best (remember that the profit from NBNCo needs to pay the interest and principle back to the tax payer, meaning a net profit for the first 20-30 years of 1-2% and that's if it runs smoothly)."
- How can you define a CBA? Well, NZ attempted it. And the results show that the increase to 'their' GDP by laying FTTH, is enough to pay for 'ours'. Why do a CBA unless you believe New Zealands is flawed (remembering that NZ's pop. is ~4.5 million. Ours is ~23million. And we both have distance issues that fibre solves).
- Even if half the country is on 12/1, and the other half on 25/5 including business (unlikely), and there is absolutely no growth for 10 years at all (way unlikely), NBNco still meets budget requirements. If you had done the maths, you would understand why FTTN is crazy and why FTTH will work. Hence why the govt made their decision to ditch FTTN. Which was then evidenced by New Zealand.
>"Nope the power companies did that themselves, VideoConferencing? Heard of Skype? It's all hot air, desperate supporters talking in vague general terms about a future that's already here"
- Have you even noticed the changes both google and facebook have made over the last 12 months? And the 12 months before? Where once I could use 1.5mpbs, today, is nearly impossible. I've never stated these advances will require 100mpbs tomorrow. However in 10 years, FTTN will struggle to cope with it. Remember the speeds 10 years ago? And what is the average now? 5mpbs if you cared to look it up. That's what's 'available'. Not necessarily what people need. 5mpbs divided by a family of 2.91 = what.....?
- There's only one more point I can make in realtion to your cries that we won't need NBN, and that is "That we shouldn't be spending money on the Telegraph, what we actually need is more Messenger boys." - You can google that for attribute.
Do we all need 100mpbs in 10 years? No.Will we need it after then? yes.
And considering the copper last mile hasn't really had any maintenance in the last 10 years, probably a good time to ditch it.
Unless your ideologies get in the way.
Sincerely and in good faith.
Anthony Wasiukiewicz
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Liketodd hubers rwerkh AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress
" but I do prefer their direction (and ability to manage) better."
Well, let's leave that firmly in the "your opinion" pile, shall we?
" They are not focusing their policy solely on VDSL2, they are using a mix of technologies where economical."
Ok, for a start, can I just say SO IS THE NBN. Fibre is to 93%, not 100%. And at LEAST 75% of that 93% would need no significant alteration in delivery from the rest, so there's no REASON to have a different technology. Secondly, they haven't even said VDSL2 yet. Turnbull has mentioned it, but he knows there's no currently available commercial equipment, so there's that to contend with too. Ans it won't be cheap when it comes out late this year or early next. Thirdly, "economical" is only important FOR A COMMERCIAL COMPANY. NBNCo. is not a commercial company. They can AFFORD to do what is UNeconomical, as long as the cross-subsidise with that which IS economical. Otherwise we wouldn't even be serving the last 7%, let alone 20% of the 93%.
"I would hope that they will be rolling out FTTP in business districts for example"
He has never mentioned this. Ever. And what is a "business district"? Anything with more than one business per building? Or one business per block? What?
"FTTH in green fields, perhaps VDSL2 for places close to exchanges, and HFC further out."
HFC will NOT be extended beyond its' current footprint. Turnbull has never stated he would extend HFC. Simply reuse what is already there.
"there is no consumer demand for even 50mpbs today (I'm happy with my 10mbps at home),"
Ok, again, can I state that is YOUR opinion. You actually qualify that yourself, when you say YOU don't need 50Mbps. I do. Actually, that's not technically true, I WANT 50Mbps, mainly for the 20Mbps upload, but the 50Mbps download is bloody nice too. I get 9Mbps on ADSL if I'm lucky. 400 000 people added services >25Mbps last year. That's almost 4% of ALL Australians! In one year! And you are forgetting the oncoming tide of IPTV- it hasn't booted up properly here, ironically because of our wide ranging bandwidth capabilities. But GIVE people those abilities and VOD and IPTV will be catapulted forward. You could happily say that isn't a NEED, but it is a DEMAND. And you are forgetting the 2 MILLION SMEs in Australia too- who says they don't want OR need greater than 25Mbps or even 50Mbps? Not to mention, again, UPLOADS, which FTTN will struggle to provide. As will HFC. It's not about downloading. It's about CONNECTIVITY.
"they are very price sensitive and many prefer volume to speed. The problem with this debate is many technical people putting in their opinion are super users of the internet torrenting large files and the like"
I'm sorry, but you're moving on to the "all people want is faster prons and warez for the kiddies" argument. I download neither porn NOR "warez" and I torrent only on the odd occasion when our market refuses to make a piece of software available for a decently competitive price (ie Without the Australia Tax). BUSINESSES use GIGABYTES of data and use hundreds of Mbps to move it around. Likewise a family of 6 may need a combined speed of WELL in excess of whatever their ADSL can provide when everyone is home and many have no choice in that regard. You are speaking of demand driven only by the top end when ALL studies and statistics point otherwise. I can point you at the ABS and several University studies which show, year on year, people are DEMANDING higher and higher speeds and quotas, which, in LESS than 10 years, FTTN will NOT be able to provide.
"I see the NBN as the ultimate case of a consultant telling a customer they need to have the latest PC with the best graphics card on each desk in an office, because the raw power gives them butterflies in their stomach. I call such people technomotivated, always upgrading to the latest computer."
And I'm sorry, but you would be entirely incorrect. Computers have lifetimes of years because of the speed of technology and the IT industry's change in software and processing requirements. The NBN will have a lifetime of DECADES. It is like saying to someone "Don't buy a tablet, by a laptop" But why, they ask? "Because a tablet is a fad sure, it'll do most of what you want and be fun along the way and cheap too. But come that day you need to redesign a company marketing poster or do a PowerPoint presentation when you move up the Corporate ladder in a few years....you'll be reaching for you laptop. And you've now spent MORE in total on both, than by getting a Laptop in the first place." That's not a perfect analogy, but you see the NBN as just a "faster graphics card". It isn't. It is an entirely new concept on how to compute graphics which is THOUSANDS of times faster than anything available today at only twice the price.
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress The iPad is a tablet and yes there were other tablets before but they were clearly not right for the user.
The culture has followed the change in technology.
"And paperless often refers to the huge document archives business had - useless if it simply scanned and archived onto storage media with software access and search." - and yes it often refers to that, yeah. Is that a point? Driving often refers to trucks, doesn't mean cars aren't the major form of transport.
"BTW, I'm a programmer and I work on a PC with an i3 processor, the computer boots up in 20 seconds, and I run virtual machines and the like with 4GB of RAM" - And? I decided in 2000 that it was quite possible to work with the bottom end of the available spec range for most tasks. I proceeded to buy bottom end Macs and use them to serve video content for Telstra, Optus, Intel, Fairfax etc. etc.
So when you say "I see the NBN as the ultimate case of a consultant telling a customer they need to have the latest PC with the best graphics card on each desk in an office, because the raw power gives them butterflies in their stomach. I call such people technomotivated, always upgrading to the latest computer." - I know you are just plain wrong.
i always recommend the right level - and advise people to not overspend, but instead spend wisely.
"there is no consumer demand for even 50mpbs today (I'm happy with my 10mbps at home), they are very price sensitive and many prefer volume to speed" - No there is consumer demand, it is not high yet. The reasons for that demand are starting to hit the market - and we are building a network for the demand about to happen not the current demand, that would be insane.
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Liketodd hubers rwerkh nofixedaddress
> " but I do prefer their (the coalitions) direction (and ability to manage) better."Just on that point todd, it's actually a bit of a myth. Both sides of politics have the ability to manage the budget and spending given the circumstances they are dealt.
Just because Howard sold everything, and brought debt levels down to 'unprecedented' levels, doesn't make it a good thing. As this is easily likened to a CEO who comes in, cuts all maintenance, puts up prices, drives the budget up, and then leaves. The shareholders think they've got a good deal, until they start to look at the spending they need under the new Head. This is what happened over the last years. Telstra didn't spend cause they didn't want to. Copper started to rot. Someone has to spend the money to get it up to scratch. Ditto Power. Ditto Schools. Ditto Roads etc etc etc. Labor is spending more on Victorian roads than Howard did for example yet Howard had the money. Change of Head, next mob picks up the pieces. That's what Labor had to do. And deal with a world wide GFC at the same time.
One can only ask; Why didn't homes have insulation in them??? 10 years of Howard to improve energy efficiency and home design. But squat. Far better to dig some more coal, burn it, and turn the heater up full bore and let the heat seep out the plaster...... Next you'll be telling me we don't need curtains, as bed sheets will suffice...
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Likeseven_tech todd hubers
"
" but I do prefer their direction (and ability to manage) better."
>'Well, let's leave that firmly in the "your opinion" pile, shall we?"
No, you should break it down for him. You seem to make good points.
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Liketodd hubers rwerkh nofixedaddress seven_tech
>"this points to a change in culture due to an embracing of technology by a previously resistant user"
Telstra and ilk have been falling over themselves to improve their towers because they didn't predict the growth for data bandwidth. Over a few short years the spectrum has gone from having plenty of room, to being nearly full. One fibre can carry 30,000 times more than then whole Electro Magnetic Spectrum. From there, you add on a dongle, and get all the wireless you need. Inside the walls free from signal degredation.
Telstra also scaled back their data plans from 1.5mpbs to 1mpbs per month. Optus has recently removed free social networking. Why? Because data growth was so high it threatened reliablility.
>"and HFC further out."
There is no way in the world anyone laying technology would use HFC for internet. It was designed for TV with one way traffic. They would just lay FTTH. Telstra and Optus both stated they wouldn't be growing the HFC footprint 'BEFORE' NBN was announced for that very reason. It was designed for TV.
>" there is no consumer demand for even 50mpbs today (I'm happy with my 10mbps at home),"
Actually there is. Many pay for the 100mbps package on HFC. And that is today. However they often get 50mpbs or less in peak times on Telstra. Optus much much worse. That is today. Not in 10 years time.
">problem with this debate is many technical people putting in their opinion are super users of the internet torrenting large files and the like, all of my aquaintences want to receive email,"
So Julia Gillard and the Labor party a big torrentors are they? They ditched FTTN for two reasons. 1) Telstra wanted 27% ROI with a monopoly to only a portion of the country. 2) FTTN was seen to have a whole heap of problems in being implemented. Julia and Labor made the decision. For the very reasons you pretend don't exist. Those 'technical people' you reference, concur cause they have done the maths.
>"(BTW, I'm a programmer and I work on a PC with an i3 processor, the computer boots up in 20 seconds, and I run virtual machines and the like with 4GB of RAM)"
Good for you. I don't personally need it. Though I understand that the demand is there. And will be more accurately in 2021 by the time it's built.
>"And again, I'm all for FTTP in the right place at the right time for the right price."
And the current govt would have delivered it piece meal IF they owned a large stake in the network. Alas, someone sold it... as a monopoly.
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LikeAnthonyWasiukiewicz todd hubers
I've already been through why Howard wasn't automatically a "good" economic manager....selling $80 billion of our assets to pay debt doesn't automatically make him a good economic manager.
Someone who believes, by default, the Coalition are better economic managers, will not listen to someone who doesn't believe EITHER party is automatically good at it, but believes in their ACTIONS on the economy.
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LikeAnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress rwerkh "Copper this, copper that" - HFC, FTTP and Wireless don't use copper, so talking about copper all the time to attempt to bash NBN-unsupporters is simply deception and a waste of time, causing the argument to go around in circles. I agree copper isn't sustainable.
However, it certainly can serve those <.5 Km for a few more years very well without requiring the most expensive part of what is required under the NBN (laying new cables). When/If required (Speeds of FTTP) I'm sure there will either be 1) Better methods to lay the fibre cheaper, 2) Other communications technology that are better/cheaper, 3) More time to lay it slower and cheaper (instead of quickly raising labour costs).
"How can you define a CBA?" - Quantifying the options side-by-side so external observers can see whether decisions are being made well. For example one potential political reason for the NBN could be that Labour wanted to throw more money/work to their traditional voting base - 'ye old hard working class man. $15bn to Telstra or $38bn to every-one else (and still ~$10bn to Telstra).
"Where once I could use 1.5mpbs, today, is nearly impossible" In the 1.5mbps days you probably had animated GIFs, and now we have HD Video, what new media are you proposing will take us up the bandwidth requirement chain? Ultra-HD will only enhance a movie, not a business video call, it's not a need it's not a demand.
"That we shouldn't be spending money on the Telegraph" - again, I don't see any new media. Morse > Voice > Images > Music > Video > Higher-res video > Super hi-res video....
"Do we all need 100mpbs in 10 years? No.Will we need it after then? yes." - Then build it then, and prioritise where the demand is. I believe it is this very article above, that it was noted that Google is using direct fibre, not PON because it's more economical now (apparently).
"Unless your ideologies get in the way." - No, I want fibre for my business. And I also potential technology on the boil that's cheaper,faster and importantly more decentralised than a fibre network
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Likeseven_tech AnthonyWasiukiewicz "selling $80 billion of our assets to pay debt doesn't automatically make him a good economic manager."
He inherited $96 billion debt, and turned that around to having $20bn surpluses in the budget. The economic crisis in the EU is exactly because of too much sovereign debt - they agreed no more than 3-5% of their GDP would be debt, but this was not enforced.
He was mocked that he didn't make more during the mining boom.
Now we have $174bn in debt, and that's during a larger mining boom and higher tax revenue. And what do we have to show for it? Some school halls? The kids feel so much smarter with all the brick and mortar.
"Someone who believes, by default, the Coalition are better economic managers, will not listen to someone who doesn't believe EITHER party is automatically good at it, but believes in their ACTIONS on the economy."
When Rudd said that he was going to run surplus, I thought, beauty it will be the first time since Hawke that a decent Labour prime minister will get it right. Maybe this is a new sustainable direction for labour! Boy was I wrong.
I don't "believe by default", the numbers speak for themselves. On the contrary, it appears it is you who cannot face the economic facts. You seem well entrenched in the idea of spending public money as if there's a never ending supply.
I bet you believe in all the global warming hype. I bet you believed that the dams would never be filled again, and you probably also deny that there was no global warming for the last 17 years despite the empirical data from all observational instruments.
I don't expect to change the world. Just look for the real facts, and debate occasionally with people such as yourself, and to challenge the popular ideas of the day.
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress
FTTN - which is the Coalition option does use copper, it uses the existing copper that we are using now - this is the supposed advantage.
HFC - stands for Hybrid Fibre Copper and is copper for the consumer end
FTTP - is the NBN and it does not use copper to connect the customer, it uses fiber and this is why I support FTTP over FTTN
I am on HFC now at 100Mbps - currently this speed is the standard offered to all HFC customers by Optus, There is no longer a slower option from Optus. Getting this speed is another story though.
Do we need and can we use 100Mbps now? Yes!
Do we need better than the 1.8 Mbps upload speed I get on my 100 Mbps HFC? Yes have done for years.
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress rwerkh
I'm sorry Todd but you've made several assumptions here which are incorrect:
1- That FTTP, HFC and wireless, all which you've said will be (and indeed appear they WILL be) part of Turnbull's plan have no copper and are therefore it is disingenuous to say the copper is the problem. However, you left OUT FTTN which will make up THE MAJORITY OF THE ROLLOUT. Also, HFC IS copper- Coax is copper, just in shorter lengths on HFC. So the vast VAST majority of the Coalition rollout, WELL over 75%, will be copper based. So it IS a legitimate argument.
2- <.5km for copper providing speeds that are adequate currently. This IS true, but that's not what the Coalition are planning. Turnbull has stated nodes within 1Km, not <.5km. Why? Because he KNOWS nodes within .5km would be very nearly as expensive as the NBN as the amount saved by not running the last 500m, would be substantially taken up by the extra equipment and power provisioning for the nodes. And there would need to be about 50 000 of them for 50% of the premises to get to within .5km
3- That there will better/cheaper ways to lay cable....cable laying is cable laying. There IS no cheaper or better way to do it, unless you do it all aerial. Laying a fibre is EXACTLY the same now as in 10 years. How could it POSSIBLY be different with the same infrastructure in the ground?
4- Something better than fibre will come along....in 10 years?....4G LTE for wireless is 2-3 years off full commercial adoption. There is currently not even a WORKING draft standard for anything approaching 5G and many research papers are saying MINIMUM 10 years. There are NO landline communcations technology known or even in research that is better than fibre. Those are all facts and I can provide references if you need them?
5- The assertion that "no new demand applications will be forthcoming". I'm sorry, that's just plain silly. Do you REALLY think anyone in the mid-nineties thought that Skype would be a serious option in less than 10 years?? Here's a couple of options for you, some are more distant than others:
- 4K HD video conferencing. This isn't coming, it's here right now, just not widely adopted. You don't know what the difference is between speaking to someone on Skype and a 4K chat with them. It is incomparable and with speeds and data rising people will WANT to use it, if not need- there's your demand
- 3D modelling in real-time- an ABSOLUTE boon for scientific and engineering firms. Of which there are THOUSANDS, both large AND small, across the country- again, there's a DEMAND for it, not necessarily a need
- 4K VOD- The way we are consuming content is changing rapidly. In 10 years, TV channels will likely be struggling to exist with the onset of all-you-can-eat type VOD offerings for people to choose WHATEVER series they want for a reasonable fee each month.- again a DEMAND, not a need.
- Virtual Reality (not game style, REAL virtual reality) training, simulation and practical streaming. Military, medical, industrial ad even residential uses of this technology are already being developed and used in high end systems now. High end eventually becomes consumer. That's not maybe, it's inevitable.
There are many others, those are just some of the high bandwidth ones. To think that we have ended the possible media and bandwidth hogging applications of the Internet is, frankly, foolhardy at best. People have been doing that for decades with computers. And EVERY time they've been proven wrong.
6- Google used PTP fibre because it's "more economical". That's not true at all. Currently, NBNCo. uses between 144 and 588 cores in their fibres for the distribution network. The same, but with PTP, would require between 5 000 and 25 000 cores. The physical cabling would be a HIDEOUS expense and you physically can't make cable that big, so you'd have to have multiples, so you don't save on labour costs. Google are using PTP because it is an EXPERIMENT. They want to be the biggest and the best. PTP is a luxury and will be for MANY decades to come. GPON can provide, currently, 1Gbps and into the future, 10Gbps and possibly even 100Gbps to each user, while the shared bandwidth starts, now, at 2.5Gbps, is rising to10Gbps and on to 40Gbps in THIS iteration of the NBN. Further iterations can foreseeably provide 1 or even 10Tbps total shared bandwidth and beyond. PTP is being used by Google....essentially, because they can. And, don't forget, it's partially paid for connections by user fees already, before even being connected ($300 deposit). That goes some way towards mitigating the extra expense.
7- There will be technology cheaper, faster and more "decentralised" than fibre. Can you please point me where this technology is? I do ALOT of reading on it and I can genuinely say, if this technology is even THEORETICALLY being looked at, I'd be interested in having a read about it?
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz
"He inherited $96 billion debt, and turned that around to having $20bn surpluses in the budget."
Todd, I've been through this above- Howard inherited $96 billion in debt of which $39 billion was from HIS TIME as Treasurer under the Fraiser government. And $72 billion of it was ASSET SALES. He provided $50 billion over 10 years, or $5 billion a year, of which HALF was from the mining boom with him doing nothing. So he produced $2.5 billion a year. Labor SAVED $16 billion from last years budget alone.
"Now we have $174bn in debt, and that's during a larger mining boom and higher tax revenue. "
I'm sorry, that's entirely untrue. $90 billion, more than HALF, was from the stimulus packages which allowed us to be the ONLY Western country on the planet that not only avoided a recession but still has a healthy 2-3% growth already.
"Some school halls? The kids feel so much smarter with all the brick and mortar."
You miss the entire point of the stimulus. Even if it produced NO asset gain, it would've been prudent, because it kept us afloat while the rest of the world went down the gurgler. And yet, we DO have assets out the end of it and some 2 MILLION houses that are saving a combined $200 million on heating bills and some 650 000 tonnes of CO2 a year, from it.
"The economic crisis in the EU is exactly because of too much sovereign debt - they agreed no more than 3-5% of their GDP would be debt, but this was not enforced."
No, they RECOMMENDED no more than 35% GDP, which is unsustainable with economic fluctuations. Between 20 and 40% GDP is the maximum recommended debt levels by the IMF AND the OECD. And we are BARELY over 20%. Britain? 130%. Greece? 200%. Portugal? 180%.See the difference here? It's not 5 or 10% it's 100 or 150%!
" On the contrary, it appears it is you who cannot face the economic facts. "
The economic facts are clear to anyone. How you interpret them is what I'm arguing against.
" You seem well entrenched in the idea of spending public money as if there's a never ending supply."
Did I say the NBN should be able to spend what it likes? Where did I say that?Where?
"I bet you believe in all the global warming hype. I bet you believed that the dams would never be filled again, and you probably also deny that there was no global warming for the last 17 years despite the empirical data from all observational instruments."
I have no idea what you're talking about. Global Warming isn't a "fad" it is a cyclical climate force that is measurable over millions of years. What you're talking about is the idea that WE caused Global Warming. Of course we didn't. Did we speed it up this cycle? Quite possibly- several volcanic eruptions have spewed less CO2 than we've put in over the past 100 years into the atmosphere in the past and have been shown to have severely impact the cycle. I'm more incensed by the incessant use of Fossil fuels that WILL run out and leave us with respiratory illnesses and mutations in the meantime.
"I don't expect to change the world. Just look for the real facts, and debate occasionally with people such as yourself, and to challenge the popular ideas of the day."
If you would like to prove that I am "just agreeing with popular ideas" I would like to here you try and argue that.
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Likerwerkh todd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress
Actually rwerkh just FYI, HFC actually stands for Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial. But, as I've said to todd below, Coaxial is just another form of copper and in HFC is simply shorter than the Copper CAN we use for ADSL...ie. FTTN :)
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Liketodd hubers nofixedaddress rwerkh
I'm unsure why I'm wasting my time,...> "HFC, FTTP and Wireless don't use copper"
- No one suggested they did. However the coalition are proposing using copper.
>"Wireless"
I hope you aren't talking anything substantial? The US is already having issues with spectrum availability.
>"I agree copper isn't sustainable."
- You can agree or disagree to your hearts content. Fibre is better suited for the future.
>" it certainly can serve those <.5 Km for a few more years very well"
- And for people like me who are further? Carrier Pidgeon?
- Are the network designers/NBNco/The Australian Taxpayer going to write off all those active nodes that have to be replaced with passive Gpon in 'a few more years''?
- Is what the coaltion is proposing? We don't know. Is 'economically' irresponsible if you do the maths.
>"most expensive part of what is required under the NBN (laying new cables)."
- Do you mean like re-arranging the copper like Telstra was proposing in 1997?
Or do you mean laying more backhaul Fibre to HFC to allow more subscribers and faster speeds?
(sarcasm if you didn't pick up on it)
I've done the sums multiple times. The money spent on Upgrading HFC (that is designed for TV and has little uploads) will pretty much buy FTTH. Similarly the money spent on laying FTTN, and designing it in a way that is easily upgradable cost nearly as much as laying FTTH. the figure of 1/3 - 1/4 for FTTN that MT quotes doesn't factor in a heap of external monies like subsides etc. That is the point. FTTN is nearly as dear as FTTH. HFC to UG is nearly as dear as FTTH. Wireless to allow proper thoughput, is nearly as dear as FTTH. And would need 52000 more towers. We have 18000 currently. Get it?
>"Quantifying the options side-by-side so external observers can see whether decisions are being made well."
- If the media did their job, you wouldn't need to. It's so obvious its astoundings. Do the maths. It's been done multiple times. FTTN $10billion + Pits and Pipe and Copper $10+billion. HFC - $x billion to pay Telstra to UG it. $4billion for wireless and sat. And that's just capex. Opex for FTTN and HFC is higher than FTTH, and end user pricing will be dearer from lack of 'ubquity' and 'up to' speeds.
There is very little difference. I've seen it done with all sorts of numbers, and the answer just screams 'DO FTTH'.
Do the maths.
Buy lease the copper.
Buy lease the HFC.
Pay the incumbent to UG.
Allow for the eventual UG to FTTH.
Allow for all the extra civil works in 10 years time.
It just doesn't make sense.
You also fail to factor in that the deal with Telstra is 'already done'. Do you think they would just change the deal if it wasn't in their favor financially.....?
>"Ultra-HD will only enhance a movie, not a business video call, it's not a need it's not a demand."
- That sceams of opinion, and many reports suggest otherwise. Do you use a mobile? Or do you use a landline? Do you use a Microwave? Or do you use a conventional oven? Do you use a meat keep? Or do you use a fridge.
Next you'll be telling me there is no need or reverse parking sensors as your mirrors work just fine.
Welcome to progress..
For the record. I've learnt more from you tube than I ever learnt in school. It's a good research tool. I would learn more if I didn't have to make the video low res so my connection could handle it.....
>"again, I don't see any new media. Morse > Voice > Images > Music > Video > Higher-res video > Super hi-res video...."
- You wouldn't. As you have your blinkers on. Did you watch Big Bang Theory last night? Heard of a thing called 3D printing. You can get one for a grand. Ergo, you can print replacement car parts. And car companies are starting to design cars with this in mind.
And that's just one.
Get your head out of the sand.
>"Then build it then, and prioritise where the demand is. I believe it is this very article above, that it was noted that Google is using direct fibre, not PON because it's more economical now (apparently)."
I'm glad you add in 'apparently'. Google is doing a tiny city. With people paying up front to get it. NBN is a mobile phone plan. You pay it off over the years. Coalition want you to pay up front for yours. Do you think mobiles would have taken off if it wasn't for pay as you go? Would have been hindered for a couple of years.
(it's just rained. my connection has gone laggy. If this was FB, it would have crashed by now and I would have lost all my text...)
>"No, I want fibre for my business. And I also potential technology on the boil that's cheaper,faster and importantly more decentralised than a fibre network"
What do you mean 'decentralised'. Like in the Atlantic?
If you did the sums, you would know the coaltions (thought bubble) NBN is argued cheaper and faster, cause they are delivering 'LESS!!!!!!'
If you buy a cheaper car you get? Less
If you buy a cheaper house you get? Less.
That is all.
I can sell you a cheaper fridge too. Doesn't mean it will meet your needs.
And doesn't mean it will last.
I can also deliver it faster. But doesn't mean i'll get it to you in one piece...
You need to do the sums.
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Likeseven_tech todd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress Yes - I've been explaining the copper part so long I've slipped on the exact acrnoym.
And yes the coax part is relevant as the RF signal would not work over the distances it is being pushed otherwise.
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Liketodd hubers seven_tech
I don't really need to cover your financial point. I think seven_tech has pretty much covered it. And besides, is off topic.
However just for a start, your $174 figure is wrong. Which suggests you haven't done your own research. It's actually higher to be honest. But even though we are in debt and unemployment has just risen, it's still around ~6%. The rest of the world is around 10.
Which means we can still feed our families. Which is what it's about.
The true problem, is high 'comsumer' debt. Which means people are maxed out and can't spend any more. So they don't. Stymieing the economy. So it needs stimlus or infrastrucutre projects to keep it afload.
And as for Greece et al, they were given access to outside monies they never had access to before. And weren't very good managers. It was like giving a $40k CC to a 17 year old.
We don't have that problem. And our debt is at relative levels compared to the last 50 years.
If I may be so bold to suggest stop reading the newspaper headlines. I was surprised too when I did my research. As I too thought the Libs were just good economic managers. It's a myth.
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Liketodd hubers seven_tech
Ooops, missed this (though again off topic).
>"I bet you believe in all the global warming hype."
Take 30 of your friends, put them in your bedroom, then tell me the climate doesn't change in about an hour.
Further, take coal that has been buried in the ground for eons, burn it, and release it into the atmosphere upsetting the unique life preserving balance.
The unique balance to sustain life on a planet is so sensitive, that you only have to adjust one parameter a little, and there would be no life. This is now leading scientists to believe that we are alone. As the chance of another planet having these unique properties balanced in the way they are here, is so statistically unlikley it isn't funny.
Only one thing needs to change a little, and we all die. It really is that simple.
Next, cut down all the trees in your yard, and see how it affects the neighbouring fauna.
Next, rub your hands together, feel that warmth? Then go and look at the road tarmac the next wet morning on your daily commute and let me know what you see. Then on your lunch break, stand next to the AirCon units outside, and tell me whether they feel warm or cold.
The science is in that the climate is changing.
The real argument is 'by how much?' And 'how much of it did we cause?'
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Liketodd hubers seven_tech AnthonyWasiukiewicz
"and to challenge the popular ideas of the day." "Some school halls?" - you need to work out why you should do the same and challenge the myths about school halls.
Numbers speak for themselves? And the personal debt encouraged by Howard speaks for itself too!
The numbers are questionable - and they are by no means the complete picture. Compare Aus debt to most countries!
Compare the other economic figures to most countries!
And no the mining boom is not an acceptable answer to every good number, nor is it anything other than selling off public assets yet again!
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress
Twitter: "@rwerkh I have no interest in what you say. Seriously. You do not know what HFC means!"
No - factually incorrect - I do know what it means.
What I was thinking:
HFC - stands for Hybrid Fibre Coax and since the Coax is copper the C stands for the copper part of of the cable.
What I typed:
HFC - stands for Hybrid Fibre Copper
Which is factually correct in that it is copper and more explanatory in the context of the thread but incorrect as to the actual acronym.
Amazing how easily someone can find a reason to write off anything that contradicts their world view. Play superior based on spurious reasons rather than find the truth.
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Liketodd hubers AnthonyWasiukiewicz nofixedaddress And for completenes for those that don't know what HFC is.
HFC sends multiple channels of RF channels down the line to the consumer modem.
The C part that arrives at your home is coax - which works just like your TV antenna cable. Like your TV antenna cable the longer the line the worse the signal. Yes they use amplifiers along the line but this is not the best way to get good signals a long distance.
To achieve greater distances an HFC network uses fiber for part of the run from the headend to carry the RF signal and then puts this signal onto coax for the later part of the run to the consumers. Of course it also has to take the return channels from the consumer modems and put these back onto a fiber to get back to the headend.
In effect HFC / DOCSIS is a collection of channels designed to be like TV channels and to exist alongside TV channels and is a way to turn a cable TV network into something it wasn't originally designed for.
A telephone line is not coax - it is twisted pair. The line is balanced - which means that it is terminated at a transformer. The benefit of a balanced line is that a signal picked up by the wires acting as an antenna will be the same on both wires and will not pass through the transformer.
Coax achieves noise shielding by using the outer conductor as a shield for the inner conductor. Generally speaking Coax is much better at RF (radio frequencies) than balanced line.
The copper that makes up the phone line was of course designed for carrying a voice call and not even at full human hearing range. It also generally carries the power for the phone handset as DC.
DSL (DIgital Suscriber Line) was developed as a way to improve the quality of voice calls and also to carry basic data services over existing lines. This capability was developed after doing a survey of the line condition to work out what was likely in most cases to be able to be sent over the existing network. The first application of DSL in any scale was ISDN.
ISDN basic rate was 2B+D where B was a 56K channel and D was an 8K signalling channel for dialling and some messaging. The 56K channel could be used as a voice channel or as a data channel. You could combine the 56K channels to get one faster data line.
Telstra decided to play with the standard and create a 64K B channel - this resulted in a new standard, with some local maufacturers and some very expensive modems at a time when in Europe the 56K standard was reaching volume production and cheap enough to compete with analogue telephones, the local standard was way too expensive and Telstra therefore continued using analogue phones.
Had Telstra stuck with 56K and rolled out the cheap ISDN products for all new connections as they had informed me they were going to do we would have had 56K or 112K connections to every subscriber long before the internet became available outside universities.
Imagine when the internet hit if every Aus had 56K reliable connections sitting there ready to go!
At ISDN speeds the copper phone network in Australia is quite reliable.
Meanwhile DSL was being developed for higher connection speeds. As the speed rose the likelihood of probems rose, balanced partly by developments in technology to cope with line issues.
My first DSL (SDSL) connection at higher speed was 1Mbps up/down. Suprisingly maybe if you were on the internet at that time you probably used my connection in some form.
To get 1Mbps connection from North Sydney CBD to an ISP meant leasing a copper pair from North Sydney to Crows Nest. Now Telstra only guaranteed lines for voice and 300 bps (if I remember correctly). The Nokia modems cost $7,000 for the pair as I had to supply the modem at the ISP end also.
Now this was fine till Telstra did something somewhere on the line and the connection failed. The line still met Telstra specs. What to do? Well since many of the local websites went out when I did (including parts of Telstra) I had to rapidly move my servers to the ISP. Negotiate, plan, move in under 2 hrs. Yes - colocated server when it was the new thing.
This is the wonder of using a Phone network for something it was never designed to do.
Eventually we put the 1mbps link back up using a leased copper pair from North Sydney to Circuar Quay. Leaving the server where it was at the ISP. Thereby regaining a spectacularly impressive internet connection for the time. No contention issue. Modem in the data center.
Now ADSL is common and yet upload speed of 1 mbps is also quite normal. In fact several people I know are dealing with less.
And for those that wish to investigate this HFC and the current issues such as the need to run the fiber closer to the consumer to get greater broadband capacity you might check out Cisco's HFC product range PDF. This PDF has quite a detailed introduction to the state of play with cable companies.
I found this document whilst researching the availability of DOCSIS 3.0 cable modems out of self need as Optus supplied me a Netgear modem that was making my life much more difficult than the Cisco modem was.
In Australia we built our HFC networks around the time when DOCSIS had evolved to having a return channel and could be used for internet without a dial-up modem for the upload channel. (Although Foxtel set top boxes only recently stopped using dial-up for the back channel)
So our cable networks were a little more prepared for data than most of the US.
If you remember when optus@home launched they were promoting the ability to watch TV over the internet. The flip side of this is that you couldn't do so for very long as it would have excceded your user agreement. The other irony was that I provided them with a non-streaming video product and they were most interested as in their words 'our engineers don't like streaming'.
Mr Commsday - still want to tell me I don't know about HFC, have no cred and must be ignored?
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Likenofixedaddress Yes sometimes doctors need help with diagnosis.
On the other hand quite often the opinion of a doctor seeing a problem is much more useful than anything you can find on the internet.
My symptoms were mostly those of a heart condition, an internet diagnosis would have told me I was having a heart attack.
Now that required a sudden trip to a doctor in the middle of a work day.
With the new diagnostic tools I could have in my phone I could have had my ECG checked in minutes, potentially saving my life.
Instead I assumed I wasn't dying but went to the doctor and had an ECG and I was not having a heart attack. Meanwhile work wondered where I was.
Result of much testing - including wearing a monitor for 24 hours and having Ultrasound & stress testing - the symptoms and my heart are unrelated.
The 24 hr monitoring is about to be a ubiquitous technology as it's just constant ECG. The ultrasound technology is close to being cheap enough to have at home, the issue is computing power. The stress testing is doable with a treadmill and an ECG.
This testing found another issue more serious (aneurism) , which then required CT & MRI scans - again a good fiber application between diagnostic centre (private), a hospital and Cardiologist (private)
Also found was the cause of the symptoms (reflux, relatively minor for now) , which then required a CT scan (hospital). Because the previous MRI scan was accessible to the radiologist reading the CT scan some years apart the radiologist compared previous to now and established that my aneurism had not enlarged which is critical to my survival.
All in all the ability to exchange data is critical to me and to many others.
The diagnostics involved are in some cases going to be home level technology real soon (ECG has passed certification), just like thermometers are ubiquitous now, and BP monitors are already readily available.
I am glad you got your diagnosis sorted though
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