On-line: NBN Petition

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by tlgerdes

Not Done!

Yes Trevor, down with the NBN! And while we're at it, let's burn down the remaining observatories as well, they are so not commercially viable!


Cheers
Steffen.

[MrB (Simon)]

Perhaps Trever didn't sign simply because he didn't like change.org's TOS or Privacy Policy?
I didn't sign simply because I couldn't be bothered reading them, but moreso because I don't think the Lib's are going to give a rats about a petition.

[Steffen]

Originally Posted by MrB

Perhaps Trever didn't sign simply because he didn't like change.org's TOS or Privacy Policy?
I didn't sign simply because I couldn't be bothered reading them, but moreso because I don't think the Lib's are going to give a rats about a petition.

If that turned out to be the case I would offer my unreserved apology. However, going by how this whole debate is unfolding (not just on IIS), I'm not holding my breath.

Cheers
Steffen.

[Barrykgerdes]

not done
I don't sign petitions (even for money)

Barry

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Steffen

Yes Trevor, down with the NBN! And while we're at it, let's burn down the remaining observatories as well, they are so not commercially viable!

Generalisation + tantrum.

Originally Posted by Kunama

I thought the election was a petition of sorts, and Tony got lots of signatures to do as he sees fit .......

I reckon.

[bobson (Bob)]

Everyone knows (I hope?) there are good and bad policies from all political parties. So many times we could see good policy been refused just because its coming from opposition party. Then the same policy would be presented again later on from party that refused it when they were in power only to be refused now from party which originally presented the policy. This is crazy! How many times they say we need bipartisan agreement because its in Australian interest for all Australians regarding what party they voted for? But sadly this never works and real losers are Australians not the politicians and their parties.

cheers

bob

[Moon (James)]

Not done! Where is the non state owned monopoly option?
I want Google fiber.

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

The NBN wasn't going to hit my place anytime before 2019 (more likely 2020). That meant no infrastructure spend by any ISP in the mean time in my area. With the Libs option I get something new by 2017.

[GTB_an_Owl (Geoff)]

say's Who? Trev

NBN or the Libs?

geoff

[gary]

As at May 2013, we were scheduled for FTTH connection at Mt Kuring-Gai for
June 2016.

Nobody knows yet what the rollout schedule for the current government is because
there is no schedule in place.

However, an article by Lucy Battersby in the Sydney Morning Herald on Septermber
4th this year quotes Malcolm Turnbull as saying that Australia's largest cities
where there are pay TV cables have "pretty good service now".

The article goes on to say that "The Coalition would delay fibre-to-the-node upgrades
in cable areas until the 2017-18 financial year, according to its policy paper."

Article here -
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/governm...903-hv1m1.html

And that is much slower fiber to the node via large ugly cabinets in the street in front of
thousands of unlucky residents homes that require power lines running down
to them from the power poles, not passive super high-speed, ultra reliable
fiber to the home.

The language of the electrical engineering profession is full of technical terms,
acronyms and jargon but when I search my vocabulary the only expression that presses
forth in my mind is "a dumb mistake".

Gary Kopff
Member Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 35 years

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by GTB_an_Owl

say's Who? Trev

NBN or the Libs?

geoff

The liberal party states

"The Coalition’s plan to transform the NBN will see:
· Download speeds of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by the end of 2016 and 50 to 100 megabits per second by 2019."

The "current" NBN stated that I am not on their forward estimates for servicing.

I am halfway between the Sydney CBD and Parramatta, 12km each way.

FTTN would put a node within 500m of my house and the copper is pretty good here, so I should would be better off with that. For the next 10 years at least. Then, once that is serviceable, they can then work out the future logistics to FTTH.

It is not as though FTTN is a waste of money, they have to put that in regardless of FTTH or FTTN, it is the last 500m that everyone is quarreling about.

[wasyoungonce (Brendan)]

Ask Mr Turnbull what the projected upload speed will be with FTTN ...4~6mbps.

Petition signed and email sent to Mr Turnbull on this matter asking why Foxtel (Murdoch) and Telstra hold such sway in the coalitions FTTN plans. Rhetorical question I know, they are the major foxtel shareholders who do not want competing business that could occur with FTTH.

Sad day when the top end of town overrides the needs of the public.

In my case I have my optical fibre RIM 400m away and pair-gain system to the house. I can only ever get ADSL1 on this unless Telstra do a Top hat upgrade (which they stopped and won't) or I get FTTH. It took years to get the RIM upgraded now looks like years to get better than ADSL1. Many many other estates are in the same situation as me.

[Rick Petrie]

Yep, signed

[gary]

Originally Posted by tlgerdes

The liberal party states

"The Coalition’s plan to transform the NBN will see:
· Download speeds of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by the end of 2016 ..

Hi Trevor,

If you walk out your front door and look up, do you see the Optus or Telstra broadband
pay TV cable in the street? The one that carries Foxtel?

If so, that is what Malcolm Turnbull pointed up to as far back as February and
effectively said "that is your fast broadband connection we promised".

In any case, your street already has it and in other words, you are suppose to go
out to Optus now and sign up for their 100Mb premium speed pack or the
equivalent offering from Telstra.

If you live in an apartment and it doesn't have an Optus or Telstra cable, then
you are out of luck. You will need to stay with ADSL2 indefinitely.

As Turbull said, “You wouldn’t be overbuilding the HFC [Optus/Telstra cable network]
areas in the near term because they’re getting very good service already."

Here is the paragraph out of "The Coalitions Plan for Fast Broadband And Affordable NBN" dated April 2013 -

Originally Posted by http://optics.michaelwyres.com/documents/coalition_nbn.pdf April 2013 page 11

Under the existing contacts between NBN Co on the one hand and Telstra and Optus on the other,
the two carrier's HFC networks cannot carry either broadband or voice services to
any premise once it is connected to the NBN. The NBN Co has made
substantial financial commitments in return for this thoroughly anti-competitive
arrangement. Subject to an equitable re-negotiation of these provisions satisfactory to
NBN Co and the Government, our goal would be to remove any contractual impediments
to the use of existing HFC networks for broadband and voice. A key consideration in
such negotiations will be ensuring open access to networks and scope for enhanced
competition in the relevant areas.

Here is the link to the document -
http://lpaweb-static.s3.amazonaws.com/Policies/NBN.pdf

In other words, that paragraph is saying that we will just start calling the
Optus and Telstra HFC pay TV cables, that have been ubiquitous in all the
major Australian cities for years, part of the NBN and that you go sign
up with Optus or Telstra.

Not so much of a "transformation" of the NBN but more a case of "do nothing".

But pretty slick in selling something old and already in existence as new.

You might get FTTN at a much later date.

In our own case here in the northern Sydney suburb of Mt Kuring-Gai, if we ever
do see FTTN, it will now definitely be several years later than what our rollout
schedule had been for the much faster FTTH. We have gone backwards.

Article here dated 18 Feb 2013 in the Business Spectator -
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/...ulls-hfc-folly

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

I wanted to quote from Gary but IIS has decided to tell Firefox it can't, so I'll cut and paste.

If you walk out your front door and look up, do you see the Optus or Telstra broadband pay TV cable in the street? The one that carries Foxtel?

If so, that is what Malcolm Turnbull pointed up to as far back as February and effectively said "that is your fast broadband connection we promised".

In any case, your street already has it and in other words, you are suppose to go out to Optus now and sign up for their 100Mb premium speed pack or the equivalent offering from Telstra.

Here Optus and Telstra cable are both underground, and ADSL2+ works. If it wasn't for the salespeople coming around from time to time you'd never know cable was available.
In Glenhaven (about 4Km as the crow flies) you have a choice of Bigpond cable, 3G wireless, satellite or nothing. I'd like to stay with my current ISP but there is no infrastructure they can use to provision me.

NBN claims to be coming to Glenhaven in the next year, but if cable is supposed to be an NBN service (and hence no fibre to be laid) will Telstra be forced to wholesale to other ISPs, and then will we be able to get static IP addresses?

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by wasyoungonce

Ask Mr Turnbull what the projected upload speed will be with FTTN ...4~6mbps.

And is that a problem? What applications/requirements do you see for greater than 5Mbps upload? And don't say HD video, because a correctly encoded 1080p H.264 stream can be had for under 3Mbs.

[bobson (Bob)]

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates

bob

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Working from home for one thing.

All going well I will have an NBN fixed wireless service after Thursday next week. That will get me around 5Mbit/sec upload, that in turn will make working from home relatively feasible. I have done it a couple of times in the past but have been badly hamstrung by my beautiful 0.5Mbit/sec upload rate on DSL.

At least I will go from almost unworkable to reasonably so. The download rate will help a lot too, but when I try to send a few meg CAD file via a net based secure mail system it is painful. The time taken to attach files is terrible as the system first has to download them to my local machine from my office via VPN while simultaneously uploading it to the mail system via the even slower upload rate. The uploads impact on the downloads by tying up the upload bandwidth and slowing down outgoing requests and the whole lot seizes up. Getting a 5Mbit/sec upload rate will speed things along significantly, but should my mother (Who I share a rural property with) need to upload a magazine file (Print publishing and large files) at the same time we both may as well go have lunch.

Unless you buy hook line and sinker the line that the NBN is just an entertainment delivery system, sub 10Mbit/Sec upload speeds are not going to cut it for very long at all. They will look great on delivery (So long as they deliver in the time frame they promise, something I am VERY skeptical of) but by the time it is finished they will look very sickly indeed. the internet was a one way street 15 years ago with thousands of content producers serving up to millions of content consumers but it becomes less so with every passing day and low upload speeds hamper it more and more.

Saying that 5-6Mbit/sec upload is enough and using a current application to justify that is to ignore the entire history of technology.

Regards the HFC networks, Optus don't want to sell it, my sister spent a time on Optus HFC recently and had to do some hard talking to get them to sell it to her, then some more when she turned out to be the rear unit on a block of two. Only saved by the high pitched roof on her house and being on the low side of the road opposite the pole the service drop came from. If you are in a block of flats then you have no hope as Optus gave up on MDUs years ago. Telstra, can't answer that one, but plenty of "Passed" hoses marked as unserviceable there too by all reports. The libs plans are going to perpetuate pot luck connectivity for entire suburbs based on the fact that 20 years ago Optus and Telstra chased each other down the streets with technology that was pretty flash at the time.

[tlgerdes (Trevor)]

Originally Posted by bobson

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates

bob

I didn't say there wasn't any, I asked what are they? So 99.9% of use cases there is no current requirement. It is not to say there wont be in 10 years time.

How far has technology come in the last 10 years, for copper based communications. Everyone said 56K was as fast as you can drive a line, then someone invented ADSL. ADSL was as fast as you can drive a line, then came ADSL2,.... then ADSL2+,.... then Annex M, now VDSL,......

Same was said with Ethernet, now we are drive Ethernet at 100Gbs. Same for Optics, that one almost bankrupted Corning when they found the put optical splitters on a fibre.

Don't judge future technology by what you can do with todays technology.

As the old proverb says, "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

Qui-Gon Jinn: Obi-Wan. Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs.
Obi-Wan Kenobi: But Master Yoda says I should be mindful of the future.
Qui-Gon Jinn: But not at the expense of the moment.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Ethernet is irrelevant though to the point of this discussion. Try pumping 100Gb/s over ethernet cables of a couple of hundred meters in length and see what happens.

It is also not really valid to compare current DSL speeds to dialup. The basis of the technology is different. Dial up was cramming as much bandwith as possible into a voice architecture. If you ever wondered why 56K was the limit for a dial up modem, it was not really the case, 64K would have been, but we had to follow the bigger market so we only got 56K. A voice channel on the POTS network is 8 bits at 8Khz giving a 64Kbps data rate, that would be the max for a dial up modem and is limited by the technology placed on the ends of the copper pair, not by the pair itself (In a perfect world, obviously lots of people had copper in poor enough condition to prevent seeing connection speeds as fast as 56K) the reason we got 56K not 64 is that the larger markets used 8 bits at 7khz for a voice channel rather than the 8 bits at 8khz we do which gets you 56kbps, not 64 (I may have the figures the wrong way round there and 7 bits at 8khz, but you get the picture)

From there we have moved on from the termination equipment being the limiting factor to the line being the limiting factor. They can't just magic away the fact that a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand meters of copper pair has limited bandwidth. It is about maxed for ADSL flavours and VDSL is going to be right on the bleeding edge of it's abilities to deliver the Libs plan to a significant portion of the population assuming good quality copper. Most of the other magic bullets proposed by the liberals over the last couple of years are pair bonding variants where they use multiple pairs for simultaneous transmission that is aggregated at the ends. Given how many housholds struggle to get one pair in good enough condition and suitable architecture for DSL, how are they going to get multiple pairs?

You also can not use the increases from up to 1500K to 8K to up to 24K connection speeds to say how much copper technology has improved as they have been driven by commercial considerations as much as technical ones. The last in particular relating to the switch on of ADSL2+ which Telstra has a history of not doing in any given exchange until a competitor installs a DSLAM there and enables it first even though the equipment in the exchange may already support it. The original 1.5K to 8K "Increase" was the dropping of imposed limits by Telstra rather than improvement in DSL technology.


The fact remains that even if built on time and on budget an FTTN plan is going to be struggling to meet demand by the time it is finished and will by design, impose limitations that really do make it into an entertainment delivery medium with content producers at one and and passive consumers at the other. It is like setting a 40KMH speed limit on the hume freeway with a speed camera every 500M to ensure it is adhered to and saying that you obviously do not need a higher limit as everyone is doing 40. Except that in this case there would have to be a dedicated lane for a lucky few who have a 110KMH limit and theothers will be going at varying speeds depending on how lucky they were.

Given that it will be struggling to meet demand by the time it is finished, why waste billions of dollars on an obsolescent network that will be up for replacement in a fraction of the timeframe that its initially somewhat more expensive, vastly technically superior, already available and already started alternative would be?

I have thought pretty long and hard (As I work in the industry) about the design complexities of FTTN and and from a pure design perspective it is more difficult to achieve than FTTH. FTTH you design from scratch and put the network where you need it. FTTN you are constrained by the existing network, you need to hit a certain number of homes per node with a maximum distance between node and home in the nhundreds of meters and have to examine the existing copper network, which was built on the assumption of voice services which could be run over tens of kilometers without major problems and try to find somewhere to put nodes that will both service a reasonable number of homes AND not be too far away from any of them.

I can see significant amounts of copper network having to be hauled out and replaced with new copper in our future either to remedy poor quality or insufficient cable capacity.