Tonight 8.30 AEST on ABC Four Corners: What's wrong with the NBN?

[bobson]

What's wrong with the NBN?
From the start, Australia’s National Broadband Network was billed as a game changer that would future proof the nation by delivering super fast internet services.

Almost a decade on from those promises, there’s a growing number of angry residential customers and small businesses who are bitterly disappointed with the NBN.

On Monday night, as the NBN reaches a milestone, passing the half-way point in its rollout, Four Corners investigates the problems fuelling this dissatisfaction.

[Shano592]

<rant>

I hate the way that this guy, Morrow, basically tells everyone to suck it up. He needs to be put back into line, and rather than fighting with everyone who criticises him, work on getting the best out of our broadband services. Then again, he is just the stooge/mouthpiece for the clowns on the Hill.

This new network was supposed to be our infrastructure for the next 50 years, allowing speed upgrades as they become available technologically. It was supposed to make things like remote technical and medical diagnostics a simple thing, and to connect those in remote areas with the world at large, without them having to make a holiday of it.

Instead, they have used old tech, still have way too much of the old copper in place, and are still using a throttling approach to bandwidth, rather than a user pays (for data used, but at full speed) approach. Worse, rather than just sticking to one type of technology to make everything seamless, they have at least three so far, and it is a hodgepodge of incompetence, from design to application.

This is partly why we have to share the Square Kilometre Array with South Africa.

NBNCo could easily open the tap on speeds, but being aligned with a cash-obsessed series of governments, they see and of course, seize the opportunity to charge a premium price for an amateurish broadband system, held together by string, bandaids and sticky tape, that in a lot of cases gives orse speeds than the technology it replaces.

Sadly, this is all going to be for nothing, when they eventually sell this to Telstra Wholesale, TPG or Anchorage Capital in a couple of years' time. (This is what I think will happen). Then watch the throttling happen.

My disclaimer - there are some excellent techs in the field doing great work with limited skills above them in management. I salute their efforts to make this happen, with what they have to work with.

The crazy thing is, with 5G mobile broadband only a couple of years away, and Telstra successfully testing gigabit throughput already, NBNCo is now pushing for mandated protection from this technology. In other words, they want to have blackout zones for high speed mobile phone tech, to protect this sad investment. At least until they sell this train wreck.

If only they had spent another $10 billion, we would all have fibre to our doors, and the government would be a little more popular. And that's what is really important to them, isn't it?

</rant>

[VPAstro]

Well, I think that you have hit the nail fair smack on the head with this one Shano.
In addition to what you have said, the implementation is a joke. I have companies that have been left without phones and/or internet for weeks, and they (the Telcos) say that is the way it is. Well, I think with the money that has been spent, or will be spent over the next few years, we deserve better.

[The_bluester]

Three, try six. FTTP, FTTN, FTTC, HFC, Satellite and fixed wireless.



The biggest issue is the government imposed ROI that means that have to find a way to make it expensive, which resulted in the CVC charge (IMO the ALP legacy in this mess) which makes it far more expensive for an RSP to sell higher speed connections.

I would argue differently to the best thing being fixed charges for speed and variable for throughput. You want the thing to actually be used. There should be a single access charge based on the connection speed and the rest should be fixed. Even better would be a fixed charge and everyone gets the highest speed the technology supports, but that would always have been dicey by way of fairness with three technologies of widely different capacities, now you can see technologies where some will be lucky to see 25mbps for a decade to come and others could get gigabit speeds right now.



Probably, and the godawful dogs breakfast they have made of it will make it a lot harder to sell as a whole, so even worse it is likely to be sold in bits, and we will return even harder to a digital divide as the current have nots will become the "Will never haves" as no one will want to service them, no money in it.



There are also a lot of utter numpties in the field as well (Mainly to try to make the copper side of things happen) brought in cheap, often from overseas or straight out of school, with limited training and even more limited experience and with a dedicated attempt by the companies building it to get the guys who actually had the skills to train them so they could then be given the flick.



Have not looked into that much to comment, however as a rule, wireless services are very much still an infill. I would be you even Joe Hockey would still tether his famous iPad to his fixed line based home wifi.


If only they had spent another $10 billion, we would all have fibre to our doors, and the government would be a little more popular. And that's what is really important to them, isn't it?

</rant>[/QUOTE]

Don't even know that it would have cost that much extra. It all depends on if you believed Joe when he spouted his latest "Estimate" of what the ALP version was going to cost. They have already proven that the coalition version was tens of billions of dollars off.

My take on this mess.

"Malcolm, you broke it, you bought it."

The coalition have made a project that was always going to be messy and made it look like the aftermath of an outdoor rave party, just to be able to say that they were not doing what the ALP was. The "Better, cheaper, sooner" tagline rings just a touch hollow..

[Visionary]

The NBN is a car-crash yet for partisan reasons some still come to the defence of the NBN.

[The_bluester]

The NBN is needed infrastructure unless we want to remain a "Dig holes in the ground" economy, yet for partisan reasons we have effectively allowed it to be wrecked.

Tony Abbott directed Malcolm Turnbull to "Wreck the NBN" and he has proven to be spectacularly successful at doing just that.

[xelasnave]

I told them I did not want it but a box has appeared on my side wall.
I presume I will be contacted to go on some plan and hopefully coming from "I don't want it" may get me a promise of good speed...fortunately I am happy with any speed cause I don't use the net much, although utube is fun I think I can do without it...
Maybe they should work out how to get excellent service to all business government ....mmm but I guess you need good service as a mber of the public to interact.

Maybe they need to just fix it and hang the cost...how much to do it right.

Alex

[gary]

Hi Shane,

5G, as a technology, is still only in the design stage.

The irony, however, is that it is highly dependent on fiber for backhaul.

Lots and lots of fiber.

5G is being engineered to achieve peak data rates of 20 gigabits per
second (20 Gb/s).

To achieve that, engineers have been experimenting with using millimetre
waves which are at much higher frequencies (between 30 and 300 GHz)
compared to mobile phone frequency bands used in the past (below 6 GHz).

Though one can transmit at a higher data rate using millimetre waves, there is
a catch. Millimetre waves can't easily travel through buildings and they
can be absorbed by rain drops and the leaves on trees.

So a key part of the 5G architecture are termed "small cells" which act as
miniature base stations. These augment the traditional macro network.

In cities, it is proposed that "small cells" might have to be placed every
250 metres or so to provide adequate coverage and bandwidth.

In rural areas, this is obviously a problem.

Small cells, like the macro network, are all then connected by fiber.

So a 5G network is really predominantly an optical fiber network.

In their planning elsewhere in the world, there is a push to lay
down fiber network backbones as deep as possible, ideally to the premise,
and to ensure that the fiber addresses all the collective bandwidth needs,
including both fixed installations and 5G small cells and beyond.

What these same planners know, recognize and are exploiting is that
the deeper you deploy fiber, that the next need is incrementally cheaper
and quicker to do.

[julianh72]

Alex,

If you want either a fixed phone line or a fixed-line internet connection, you will HAVE to go onto the NBN at some point in the not-too-distant future. The NBN "box" will support both fixed line telephone and internet connections, or both, but the old copper phone line will be shut down after an 18-month period of "co-existence".

The "technology" that NBN chooses for your "box" is dictated by NBN - FTTP (if you're very lucky), or more likely FTTN, HFC, etc. The RSPs (Telstra, Optus, etc) will offer you a choice of "up to x Mbps" NBN plans, but your NBN connection may or may not be able to actually support the higher-speed plans - only time will tell.

If you want to tell NBN to shove their connection where the Sun doesn't shine, you'll need to find an alternative for both phone and internet (e.g. mobile, if you're in range of a cell tower), because your existing phone line and / or internet connection (ADSL / Foxtel cable / Optus cable / etc) WILL be shut-down.

[julianh72]

And this is why 5G is not "the answer" to the question of "What is wrong with the NBN?"

When 5G comes along in a few years time, it will certainly be transformative, and it MAY be an alternative to the NBN for some people, IF you are lucky enough to live in an area that gets a high-density deployment early in the program, AND you can position your 5G modem where it gets a good short "line of sight" to the nearest base-station, AND that base-station is not too congested.

The target market for 5G is to be able to provide high-speed mobile data to a large number of people in a small area. Realistically, 5G is going to be deployed first in the CBD areas of major cities, so if you live in an inner city apartment you MIGHT get lucky - some time after 2020. (And that's assuming that 5G data plans are priced more competitively than the current 4G plans; call me sceptical, but I would expect 5G to be sold at a premium over 4G initially.)

If you live in a typical suburban or rural location, think about what using 5G for home internet would require: a powered base-station (with a fibre connection as well), located every couple of hundred metres along every street where the service is offered. Telcos are simply not going to deploy that sort of infrastructure for just one or two households looking for an $80/month plan in a given street - at least, not in the short-term.

And don't forget - 5G is still just an idea - there is no committed timeline for deployment. (Heck - there isn't even a definitive technology model yet!)

[multiweb]

The whole public sh!tstorm on breakfast news and other outlets is just pollies slugging each other. Now even Rudd comes out of the closet on TV pointing fingers while the other mob points fingers back. It's become a circus.

Talking to my relos in France and Italy lots of premises overseas still don't have FTTH. The last few meters or hundred meters are the most costly obviously depending on what they find in the streets and existing buildings. Some are easier to deal with than others. But generally the use of the last bit of coper doesn't bother many in term of speed from what they're telling me. What's the difference between fast enough and super fast for private use. This will change over time as they wire the last bits and the network slowly grows and expands. In Oz they've started FTTH and figured out pretty quickly how costly it was.

The current complaints with the NBN "being slow" seems to be linked to the FTTN vs. FTTH debate. It is highly politicised but smoke and mirrors IMHO. The real issue might be how many people can the current network support and who controls the "taps". How much bandwidth do retail providers make available and how many consumers do they pack in each block?

[xelasnave]

They said I would lose the phone and I said fine only telemarketers call ...I wont miss them.

I use a smart phone and now a lap top and a little box to get on the net ...
i have avoided email as I like a paper record and if you send me something you print it if you want me to read it...

alex

[issdaol]

What’s the SKA got to do with the NBN ??

They were completely independently budgeted projects and the SKA had its own dedicated communications solution within the SKA budget.

Also the “sharing” of the SKA with South Africa came about due to completely different reasons ........

[Shiraz]

thought that the program missed an important point - why was the NBN put forward in the first place?

looking back through the history, it seems to have been born in absolute frustration with Telstra, who were sitting on a nice little monopoly earner - almost every ADSL user had to give them $30pm for access to the old network - and they didn't want anything at all done to upset that applecart. At one stage they even had a couple of High Court cases running against the Howard government to try to force their own agenda (which included locking all competitors out of access to the copper network). It looked to me like both LNP and ALP eventually got to the point of realising that Telstra was not going to do the nation building thing and that something had to be done to bypass them and drag us out of the IT stone age.

So NBN was born - not the best way to decide to do something, but it looked like there was no alternative. Then in typical ALP fashion, the plan was not really thought through before implementation began and in typical LNP fashion, it was neutered on the basis that anything with ALP written on it had to be demolished, regardless of it's worth.

And even after all that, what has survived it is better than nothing - for one thing it is much cheaper than ADSL used to be and it works OK for many. Apart from some unscrupulous retailers who cut corners on backhaul, the main problem seems to be that some customers get the ALP version while others get the LNP version (or none at all) depending purely on the whim of the gods - and no-one can explain how decisions are made on who gets the good version and who gets something else.

Let's just hope that, when it is sold at some future date, it is not given entirely to Telstra as another monoploly. Maybe the Future Fund could buy the whole thing and lease it out to interested Telcos in sections, on a competitive basis. Or maybe it could just be put on the Government books as a critical piece of national infrastructure (like roads for example) and run for the benefit of the nation.

[doppler]

Telstra was owned by the government then privatized just like power and water, all critical national infrastructure. Now it seems the less you use the more you pay?

The Govt owns the NBN so most of us already connected are getting more internet for less $ than through Telstra.