24 January 2017

NBN has abandoned Canberra

| Kim Fischer
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National Broadband Network

The Christmas and New Year break has long been a preferred time of year for government agencies to deliver unpopular news. However, NBN Co has taken this practice one step further than usual.

Knowing that an update for the rollout plan on the National Broadband Network could be delayed no further, NBN Co quietly removed the plan altogether from its website just before Christmas. Its new “interactive search tool” makes it much harder to compare the old rollout schedule with the new one.

Once you manually collate the dates, the truth is damning: Nearly all of the ACT has been pushed to the very back of the NBN’s revised rollout schedule.

  • See ACT NBN Co Rollout Delays broken down by suburb here.

When meeting residents during the ACT election campaign last year, it would be no exaggeration to say that access to the NBN was one of the top issues raised with me.

Just 14 months ago, NBN Co was predicting that 18 of Belconnen’s 25 suburbs would have commenced NBN construction by now. Instead, all residents of Belconnen will now have to wait until at least June 2019 to receive access. Weston Creek has also been moved to the very back of the pack, as have as over half of the suburbs of Woden Valley and central Canberra.

Tuggeranong has been finally given a scheduled date for NBN availability, but this is the same “magical” date of June 2019 that fully half of all Canberra suburbs have been assigned.

Given that NBN Co had connected less than 50% of Canberra’s promised suburbs by the end of 2016, healthy scepticism about the these forecast dates seems wise. Indeed, based on current delays and rescheduling of dates the rollout of the NBN in the ACT isn’t likely to be completed until 2025.

Residents in Dunlop remain stuck on the decade-old ADSL technology. No telecommunications company is going to invest in improving fixed-line connectivity when the NBN is continually “about to be installed” everywhere.

The Federal Government’s complete lack of interest in prioritising robust broadband for its largely Canberra-based public servants is baffling. Recent studies show that the productivity benefits of telecommuting to an organisation can be worth up to 20% of an employee’s wages due to lower absenteeism, higher morale, more hours worked, improved access to highly qualified parents needing more workplace flexibility, and more productive hours worked due to fewer office distractions. But a prerequisite for effective teleworking is access to fast and reliable broadband services.

Delivering the NBN earlier in Canberra would unlock productivity benefits and cost savings, but unfortunately the Federal Government doesn’t appear to recognise the financial benefits of that outcome.

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Chris Mordd Richards2:12 am 02 Feb 17

Considering the price of 4G data to 3G data at the moment, I dread to know what the per GB charge for 5G data will start at, probably around $40 or so per GB I would guess. It might be faster, but it comes at a price, and has a diminishing value the more concurrent users accessing that network tower. It’s a great supplementary technoglogy, but still requires fibre from the tower to the rest of the network anyway, we won’t do away with physical cable backhaul for a very long time still (decades or more).

dungfungus said :

I don’t think connecting cells to support mobile broadband is part of the NBN plan as you have alluded to so it won’t happen for a while.

It’s not. This technology is mobile phone technology which NBN has no interest in. That is still very much the domain of the legacy carriers.

Whole idea of NBN was to have one company rollout the core infrastructure and open that up to all and sundry to provide services to the community over.

Without an NBN type organisation, no one would get a service because all the infrastructure would have to be duplicated for every competing service provider, and even then they would only cherry pick the areas that would make the most amount of money. NBN was a leveller. IMO when Telstra was sold off it should have been split down into retail and infrastructure lines with the infrastructure side doing more or less what NBN is now. Building and owning the assets in the street, and opening that to retail competition. Only real way it could work in a country like ours.

wildturkeycanoe said :

I just read an article today saying that Telstra has tested a new generation wireless broadband technology, Gigabit LTE running on the 5G network. This technology apparently has incredible speeds of up to 900Mbps, faster than NBN.
It doesn’t seem Telstra has any info on this in their plans, but unless the costs of their wireless broadband get drastically reduced, it won’t be a viable competitor to NBN. Until we see more fiber in the ground though, there won’t be any competition in a lot of areas for many years to come. In that respect I bet we will see Telstra maintain their grip on the fast speed broadband monopoly for quite some time. This also means a lot of people will be paying exuberant prices for the speed they want.
It will remain to be seen if this will have any impact on the rest of the wireless network in terms of congestion, as more people use more data than ever before.

Mobile data is all well and good, but will not be a replacement for fixed line broadband. Core reason is simple, the speed figures that get quoted are a single user on what is actually on a shared medium. So in ‘real life’ the maximum 900mb/s then gets divided up by the number of people using it. And like WiFi speeds are all theoretical, as the moment you start moving away from the cell you maximum speeds drop off. So next to impossible to ever get maximum speeds, except in a lab or commissioning environment.

So wireless is great for mobile devices, but not so great for houses.

Also out of interest this is NOT faster than NBN (Fibre) which is what an article I read claimed. NBN fibre uses GPON, which is already Gigabit to the house, however few RSP’s offer a service higher than 100mb/s because NBN charge an exorbitant CVC fee for the backhaul from the FAN to the POI for higher speed circuits. Some do however. The reason for the higher charge is above 100mb/s NBN believes you are conducting a business of some sort and hence should pay more. Maybe not a totally unfair assumption.

Plus mentioned it above NBN (fibre) was designed to also have separate IP, phone and video providers too, which all use the same gigabit fibre back to the FAN. The Network Termination Deveices (NTD) that NBN install are capable of 4x network ports, 2 analogue voice ports, and not well known are capable, with the installation of a daughter card with a TV antenna connection of providing video streaming too. Though think for the time being NBN has abandoned the hope of streaming TV. The plan was for local FTA TV to be inserted at the POI, but with fibre all but being abandoned there is not point developing this further as TFFN is not capable of this.

And getting OT, Transact fibre used to offer this, and the estates where Transact fibre was provided had a NO external antenna policy, but when Transact sold out to NBN, and the Transact equipment was replaced all those people then had to get antenna installed to watch TV.

NBN Fibre to the node, different story…. Single service over crappy copper, where you would be lucky to get 100mb/s.

wildturkeycanoe said :

I just read an article today saying that Telstra has tested a new generation wireless broadband technology, Gigabit LTE running on the 5G network. This technology apparently has incredible speeds of up to 900Mbps, faster than NBN.
It doesn’t seem Telstra has any info on this in their plans, but unless the costs of their wireless broadband get drastically reduced, it won’t be a viable competitor to NBN. Until we see more fiber in the ground though, there won’t be any competition in a lot of areas for many years to come. In that respect I bet we will see Telstra maintain their grip on the fast speed broadband monopoly for quite some time. This also means a lot of people will be paying exuberant prices for the speed they want.
It will remain to be seen if this will have any impact on the rest of the wireless network in terms of congestion, as more people use more data than ever before.

There has been talk like this of new developments in wireless broadband technology recently and it is surprising that Telstra are not commenting on introducing it until at least the next generation 5G systems.

It won’t be commercially viable unless it is available everywhere and this would mean all cells would have to connected to fibre optic cable to handle the higher speeds.

I don’t think connecting cells to support mobile broadband is part of the NBN plan as you have alluded to so it won’t happen for a while.

wildturkeycanoe8:04 am 01 Feb 17

I just read an article today saying that Telstra has tested a new generation wireless broadband technology, Gigabit LTE running on the 5G network. This technology apparently has incredible speeds of up to 900Mbps, faster than NBN.
It doesn’t seem Telstra has any info on this in their plans, but unless the costs of their wireless broadband get drastically reduced, it won’t be a viable competitor to NBN. Until we see more fiber in the ground though, there won’t be any competition in a lot of areas for many years to come. In that respect I bet we will see Telstra maintain their grip on the fast speed broadband monopoly for quite some time. This also means a lot of people will be paying exuberant prices for the speed they want.
It will remain to be seen if this will have any impact on the rest of the wireless network in terms of congestion, as more people use more data than ever before.

JC said :

Chris Mordd Richards said :

JC said :

Here NBN hands off to the RSP’s network (read ISP’s).

Second time i’ve been forced to google a technical acronym from the comments here, and I am damn techie who used to do phone tech support for ISP’s and POTS (plain old telephone service) and I should know them all already.

Except our NBN Co. likes being different it seems:
RSP: Retail Service Provider, an end-user supplier for the Australian National Broadband Network

AKA an ISP yes. Do we really need our own term for that? Jeez Louise!

I think you will find the reason for the different term is because on NBN you also have choice of voice supplier. RSP covers ISP and voice supplier. Though reality with bundling etc they will be mostly one in the same anyway.

Plus also forgot to say NBN (fibre) was also set-up to provide separate video over IP services too. Separate in so far as you could go to a separate service provider for your video services. None of course have ever been set-up, though do note Foxtel are now selling Fox over IP, but over their own Internet service, not as a separate service.

Chris Mordd Richards12:00 pm 31 Jan 17

JC said :

Chris Mordd Richards said :

JC said :

Here NBN hands off to the RSP’s network (read ISP’s).

Second time i’ve been forced to google a technical acronym from the comments here, and I am damn techie who used to do phone tech support for ISP’s and POTS (plain old telephone service) and I should know them all already.

Except our NBN Co. likes being different it seems:
RSP: Retail Service Provider, an end-user supplier for the Australian National Broadband Network

AKA an ISP yes. Do we really need our own term for that? Jeez Louise!

I think you will find the reason for the different term is because on NBN you also have choice of voice supplier. RSP covers ISP and voice supplier. Though reality with bundling etc they will be mostly one in the same anyway.

So there is no existing industry term to cover this already? RSP seems to be AU only from what I can work out. We can’t be the first ones to need to differentiate providers like that, surely there is another existing term more appropriate than just making up new ones?

JC said :

gazket said :

How could anyone roll out the NBN at a decent speed with no money ? Remember ACT and federal Labor have already spent our taxes for the next 50 years.

The NBN wasn’t funded from the budget it was set up more or less on commercial terms and bonds with it to pay for itself coupled with sell off once complete.

And the cost has blown out under Turnbull. Would have been cheaper and better result to have let labors NBN plan cone to fruition which would have also made it more attaactive to sell later.

Secondly story in paper yesterday showing federal Libs have more or less doubled the rate of increase on the national debit. In other words not only are they not saving any money (and you could blame cross bench for opppsing their savings measures) but they have actually increased spending and reduced income. But Labor’s fault, hey?

You are correct about how it is being funded but as far as I know there are no specific bond issues that refer to the NBN so it comes out of aggregate borrowings so no one knows how much it is really costing.

Agree mostly with you comments about the national debt and the coalitions attempts to rein it in have definitely been thwarted by the cross benches (in which case the government should resign/keep calling elections to resolve the problem).

But Labor started the rot and in creating grand social schemes like NDIS and Gonski without explaining (and their media mates not asking) where the money would come from.

Also, the apathy of some Australians (and their political advocates) refusing to have even a piddly $5 co-payment for means tested “free” medical services has to be challenged. I don’t know what your arrangements are but everytime I go to my GP I make a co-payment of about $45.

The NBN will not save the financial Armageddon about to hit Australia.

gazket said :

How could anyone roll out the NBN at a decent speed with no money ? Remember ACT and federal Labor have already spent our taxes for the next 50 years.

The NBN wasn’t funded from the budget it was set up more or less on commercial terms and bonds with it to pay for itself coupled with sell off once complete.

And the cost has blown out under Turnbull. Would have been cheaper and better result to have let labors NBN plan cone to fruition which would have also made it more attaactive to sell later.

Secondly story in paper yesterday showing federal Libs have more or less doubled the rate of increase on the national debit. In other words not only are they not saving any money (and you could blame cross bench for opppsing their savings measures) but they have actually increased spending and reduced income. But Labor’s fault, hey?

Chris Mordd Richards said :

JC said :

Here NBN hands off to the RSP’s network (read ISP’s).

Second time i’ve been forced to google a technical acronym from the comments here, and I am damn techie who used to do phone tech support for ISP’s and POTS (plain old telephone service) and I should know them all already.

Except our NBN Co. likes being different it seems:
RSP: Retail Service Provider, an end-user supplier for the Australian National Broadband Network

AKA an ISP yes. Do we really need our own term for that? Jeez Louise!

I think you will find the reason for the different term is because on NBN you also have choice of voice supplier. RSP covers ISP and voice supplier. Though reality with bundling etc they will be mostly one in the same anyway.

gazket said :

How could anyone roll out the NBN at a decent speed with no money ? Remember ACT and federal Labor have already spent our taxes for the next 50 years.

But, err, doesn’t money grow on trees? All the governments have to do is plant more trees, isn’t it?

Chris Mordd Richards2:26 am 31 Jan 17

JC said :

Here NBN hands off to the RSP’s network (read ISP’s).

Second time i’ve been forced to google a technical acronym from the comments here, and I am damn techie who used to do phone tech support for ISP’s and POTS (plain old telephone service) and I should know them all already.

Except our NBN Co. likes being different it seems:
RSP: Retail Service Provider, an end-user supplier for the Australian National Broadband Network

AKA an ISP yes. Do we really need our own term for that? Jeez Louise!

How could anyone roll out the NBN at a decent speed with no money ? Remember ACT and federal Labor have already spent our taxes for the next 50 years.

Arthur Davies said :

J C’s comments are very interesting. I know that Transact installed 2 new cables from the pole (& I assume from the nearest node) to each customer, abandoning the existing old phone cable, one new cable was dedicated to the new phone, the other to data & cable TV. In my area the original phone cables were put in around 1952 & had never been replaced/upgraded, they were very unreliable & failed each time it rained. This unreliability was a major factor in my changing to Transact. The original phone cables, where they still exist, will certainly be quite unsuitable for a data connection & would have to be replaced for broadband.

I assumed the optical cable went from the nodes to the exchange, but maybe they go to a separate Transact distribution point. In any case it is a much smaller & cheaper option to connect Transact’s distribution point to the NBN system than to wire up the whole suburb from scratch.

iinet does own Transact’s network now so it would have to be taken over to become part of NBN. The Commonwealth has the power to take over an asset at any time so long as it pays just compensation, they do it with homes & farms all the time. Given that Transacts network is now years old, depreciation (which the company will have claimed in their tax return I am sure) will have substantially reduced its value. The fact that they have not chosen to do this shows me that they have another agenda, one which does the ACT no good at all.

Another problem is iinet’s refusal to allow any other provider to use their cables, so unfortunate customers are effectively forced to use iinet only. iinet are not offering good service as shown by the high number of complains to the communication ombudsman. I assume that their action constitutes a restraint on trade but no one is interested in investigating/prosecuting them for this, one has to ask why not & in whose interest it is to ignore the trade practices legislation. The fact that it is occurring in the ACT is surely a major factor.

Arthur, will dispel a few alternative-truths there.

Firstly Transact is an open access network and there are ISP’s other iiNET who can provide service. So not sure where you get this restraint of trade idea from. Sure the selection isn’t great and a couple of the companies were Transact owned, but still very much open access. So not sure your rant about restraint of trade etc, and even if they weren’t open access if you were a company that invested money into infrastructure why should you be forced to then allow others to use it?

Anyway see below for list of Transact ISP’s.

https://www.transact.com.au/internet/vdsl2

Also the way it works is quite simple.

When Tansact rolled out to suburba (forgetting their apartment network for a moment) what they did was install their nodes in the street and then strung new multicore copper along the power poles. Quick and easy, hence why they didn’t venture into underground areas like Gungahlin or southern Tuggeraning. Then when someone wanted a service they would send a tech around who would install a new cable from the pole to the house. Never seen two separate Transact cables, but the Telstra cable was left installed. Sometimes inside the house they would cut the Telstra cable and join the Transact cable to negate the need for them to install a new socket (lazyness IMO).

Then from the node it was fibre to Transact house in Civic where the data was then separated into the various ISP’s.

Their fibre to the basement model is similar except the node is in the basement and they use the buildings internal wiring to get to the customers premises.

In the NBN world it is similar.

If it is fibre to the premises, the fibre goes from the house to fibre access node (FAN), which mostly would be housed in a Telstra exchange. Though not necessarily the same exchange that provide phone to the same house, NBN only planned to use about half the number. The FAN houses the active equipment that drives the fibre. The FAN then connects via backhaul links to one of about 120 points of interconnect around the country. In the ACT region there is one in Civic (north of lake) and one in QBN (south of lake). Here NBN hands off to the RSP’s network (read ISP’s).

The main reason for this is to limit the number of places that RSP’s need to provide service to access the NBN system. Under the current ADSL model ISP’s need to have a connection to every exchange area they wish to service, which can be expensive or they buy off Telstra wholesale which is also expensive. Under NBN they limited the number of POI’s to encourage smaller players into the market.

Interestingly some people complain about NBN speed, well the main cause of that is between the FAN and POI the RSP’s need to buy backhaul bandwidth off NBN, and many of the smaller players in particular don’t buy enough for peak demand. So your 100/40 service might be good at 2am, but at 6pm forget it. But people blame NBN not their RSP. Go figure.

On the NBN fibre to the node model, what happens is NBN installs node in the street, takes ownership (and cost of maintenance) of Telstra copper. Then when customer orders a service their Telstra service is disconnected and the physical line connected to the node.

The node connects via fibre to one of the fibre access nodes, then like FTTP back to the POI and the customers choice of service provider. In theory the node has spare fibres which can be extended to a customers premises at ridiculous cost. But not enough for every house.

NBN has also brought Telstras HFC (Coax network), and here it works much the same as fibre to the node. In fact HFC is very much fibre to the node, just using coax rather than twisted pair copper.

Interestingly in greenfield development the developer can go to their choice of provider, they are not forced to go to NBN. Some that come to mind are Telstra and Opticom. Though my understanding is any provider also needs to be an open access provider, and NBN won’t overbuild.

Which gets back to Transact and Canberra, does seem odd that Transact is open access and NBN is planning to overbuild. Would have thought it would be excluded like in greenfields.

And as much as I like to bag the current government, I don’t think they have an agenda when it comes to Transact. I just think they are clueless and Transact is small fry. And whilst the network is years old, it has been upgraded so not sure your point about the cost. End of the day if TPG/iiNET doesn’t want to sell they cannot be easily forced to sell either.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

Arthur Davies said :

I assume that their action constitutes a restraint on trade but no one is interested in investigating/prosecuting them for this

Their restraint on trade as you call it, is a perfectly legal capitalist monopoly, like exists in any other industry in our country. If you want to change that, stop voting for LNP or Labor.

It doesn’t matter who you vote for anymore. Global financial collapse is about to happen again. Marx was right.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/marx-was-right-five-surprising-ways-karl-marx-predicted-2014-20140130

Chris Mordd Richards9:41 pm 29 Jan 17

Arthur Davies said :

I assume that their action constitutes a restraint on trade but no one is interested in investigating/prosecuting them for this

Their restraint on trade as you call it, is a perfectly legal capitalist monopoly, like exists in any other industry in our country. If you want to change that, stop voting for LNP or Labor.

Arthur Davies2:07 pm 29 Jan 17

J C’s comments are very interesting. I know that Transact installed 2 new cables from the pole (& I assume from the nearest node) to each customer, abandoning the existing old phone cable, one new cable was dedicated to the new phone, the other to data & cable TV. In my area the original phone cables were put in around 1952 & had never been replaced/upgraded, they were very unreliable & failed each time it rained. This unreliability was a major factor in my changing to Transact. The original phone cables, where they still exist, will certainly be quite unsuitable for a data connection & would have to be replaced for broadband.

I assumed the optical cable went from the nodes to the exchange, but maybe they go to a separate Transact distribution point. In any case it is a much smaller & cheaper option to connect Transact’s distribution point to the NBN system than to wire up the whole suburb from scratch.

iinet does own Transact’s network now so it would have to be taken over to become part of NBN. The Commonwealth has the power to take over an asset at any time so long as it pays just compensation, they do it with homes & farms all the time. Given that Transacts network is now years old, depreciation (which the company will have claimed in their tax return I am sure) will have substantially reduced its value. The fact that they have not chosen to do this shows me that they have another agenda, one which does the ACT no good at all.

Another problem is iinet’s refusal to allow any other provider to use their cables, so unfortunate customers are effectively forced to use iinet only. iinet are not offering good service as shown by the high number of complains to the communication ombudsman. I assume that their action constitutes a restraint on trade but no one is interested in investigating/prosecuting them for this, one has to ask why not & in whose interest it is to ignore the trade practices legislation. The fact that it is occurring in the ACT is surely a major factor.

Yep, Queanbeyan has NBN. FTTP for me to boot. Move to Quangers. Cheaper house prices and NBN.

Arthur Davies said :

Firstly I am totally unsurprised, the feds consider Canberra bashing a good sport which gets them votes (they think) in the rest of Australia.

Our members are quite useless, I have seen no real agitation from either branch of the Laboral party, nor the greens.

Worse, a substancial chunk of Canberra was wired up by Transact years ago with “fibre to the node” & with new copper cables to the premises. This is the Govt’s current system. All it would require to connect these premises to NBN is a quick minor change at the exchange end, almost no cost & no field work is required at all. Yet we still have no NBN, given that it so cheap & quick to change over, one has to assume that the delay is purposeful & malicious.

After the vote at the last ACT election where the poor governance standards were rewarded by another term, there is no incentive to do anything. In fact given the ACT Govt’s “risk averse” policies & its look backwards to 1890s transport solutions, I am surprised we don’t have a network of strings with tin cans at each house! Unfortunately we can certainly not look forward our local polys getting exercised over this.

Two points. The change is a bit more substantial than a change at the exchange. In fact nothing needs doing at the exchange what it needs is to drop a new transact lead in to the house to the node. The whole idea of the node is it is in the street and bypasses the need for an ‘exchange’ Not hard of course.

But the biggest problem with your theory is transact is owned by a private company who is not selling the business. Though must admit I do wonder if the significant delay to parts of Canberra is so the (federal government) can somehow try and swing a sale as it is, appart from FTTP the most logical solution for Canberra.

JC said :

A Nonny Mouse said :

dungfungus said :


Trams are what we chose… I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband…

Get over the ‘tram’ issue! And don’t conflate a local hobbyhorse with discussion of a federal matter. It is the Federal Govt. that is supposed to be doing the NBN. It is a local govt. issue only in as much as our local representatives can try to influence better outcomes from the Federal govt, as Kim Fisher is doing by writing this article.
The only benefit from coming last is that more of us might get proper fibre to the premises. My part of Cook was shown as commenced just before Abbott got in and Turnbull became the relevant minister. It really was commenced because I saw work being done on the ground – clearing and checking pits and conduits and so on. Then the election happened and it all stopped and we were no longer commenced on the map.

Correct they had started work on cook, Macquarie, Aranda and the Belconnen town centre. Then it just stopped.

Interestingly QBN was started around the same time and its rollout continued even to the point that after the technology change it was one of the few areas to have fibre to the home in brown fields areas. Only part of the QBN are to not have fibre will be the southern section of Jerra which is being done now.

Wonder what electorate QBN is in? Hmmm.

Queanbeyan is in swinging electorates. Canberra will never have that luxury.

Arthur Davies5:34 pm 27 Jan 17

Firstly I am totally unsurprised, the feds consider Canberra bashing a good sport which gets them votes (they think) in the rest of Australia.

Our members are quite useless, I have seen no real agitation from either branch of the Laboral party, nor the greens.

Worse, a substancial chunk of Canberra was wired up by Transact years ago with “fibre to the node” & with new copper cables to the premises. This is the Govt’s current system. All it would require to connect these premises to NBN is a quick minor change at the exchange end, almost no cost & no field work is required at all. Yet we still have no NBN, given that it so cheap & quick to change over, one has to assume that the delay is purposeful & malicious.

After the vote at the last ACT election where the poor governance standards were rewarded by another term, there is no incentive to do anything. In fact given the ACT Govt’s “risk averse” policies & its look backwards to 1890s transport solutions, I am surprised we don’t have a network of strings with tin cans at each house! Unfortunately we can certainly not look forward our local polys getting exercised over this.

A Nonny Mouse said :

dungfungus said :


Trams are what we chose… I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband…

Get over the ‘tram’ issue! And don’t conflate a local hobbyhorse with discussion of a federal matter. It is the Federal Govt. that is supposed to be doing the NBN. It is a local govt. issue only in as much as our local representatives can try to influence better outcomes from the Federal govt, as Kim Fisher is doing by writing this article.
The only benefit from coming last is that more of us might get proper fibre to the premises. My part of Cook was shown as commenced just before Abbott got in and Turnbull became the relevant minister. It really was commenced because I saw work being done on the ground – clearing and checking pits and conduits and so on. Then the election happened and it all stopped and we were no longer commenced on the map.

Correct they had started work on cook, Macquarie, Aranda and the Belconnen town centre. Then it just stopped.

Interestingly QBN was started around the same time and its rollout continued even to the point that after the technology change it was one of the few areas to have fibre to the home in brown fields areas. Only part of the QBN are to not have fibre will be the southern section of Jerra which is being done now.

Wonder what electorate QBN is in? Hmmm.

searcher3489 said :

and its a shame that TransACT was sold off to iiNet, TransACT was, for a long time, the only competitive cable internet provider putting it to Telstra…now they are part of the machine…if TransACT was still an independent Canberra-based business more people would be able to get a decent cable connection…

Also those comparing the trams to NBN, you’re putting local ACT Government priorities in the same basket as Federal Govt ones, get the facts straight!

Transact, like NBn is an open access platform. Whilst iiNET/TPG own it there are other service providers. Not much of a choice that’s for sure especially compared to NBN but better than nothing.

See below.

http://www.transact.com.au/internet/vdsl2

searcher3489 said :

and its a shame that TransACT was sold off to iiNet, TransACT was, for a long time, the only competitive cable internet provider putting it to Telstra…now they are part of the machine…if TransACT was still an independent Canberra-based business more people would be able to get a decent cable connection…

Also those comparing the trams to NBN, you’re putting local ACT Government priorities in the same basket as Federal Govt ones, get the facts straight!

No one is comparing trams to internet.
The reason trams were mentioned is that someone suggested the Federals wouldn’t assist funding anything in Canberra and when that person was reminded of that in fact the Federals had made a recycled assets grant of $67 million (which was applied to the tram project) the person tried to water down the import of that grant.
My facts are straight, OK?

Now some more facts about TransACT allegedly being competitive with Telstra.

This was true initially but limited because TransACT was delivering cable services via “free” electricity poles they owned in customers backyards.
That was the extent of their “competitiveness”.
When the rest of Canberran ratepayers who had underground electricity could not get access to TransACT the government forced TransACT to find a way to deliver services to all Canberrans and this necessitated TransACT using Telstra exchanges and Telstra copper wire.
That’s when it started to go off the rails.

searcher34891:08 pm 27 Jan 17

and its a shame that TransACT was sold off to iiNet, TransACT was, for a long time, the only competitive cable internet provider putting it to Telstra…now they are part of the machine…if TransACT was still an independent Canberra-based business more people would be able to get a decent cable connection…

Also those comparing the trams to NBN, you’re putting local ACT Government priorities in the same basket as Federal Govt ones, get the facts straight!

searcher34891:03 pm 27 Jan 17

funny that now the benefits of having a decent internet connection are better appreciated the need for the NBN is now being demanded instead of requested…funny that its only taken nearly 10 years since the argument for a National Fibre broadband network to change from “Why do we need it” to “WE NEED IT NOW!!” should have pushed more when Gai and Andrew were in the Government, I note that Kate Lundy was a great proponent for the NBN and her contributions are the reason why Gunghalin residents, such as myself, are able to enjoy the FTTP NBN and we should be putting more pressure on the odd couple of the Senate, Zed Seselja and Katy Gallagher to get moving and start to represent Canberrans on the issues and not their personal political agendas!

A Nonny Mouse said :

dungfungus said :


Trams are what we chose… I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband…

Get over the ‘tram’ issue! And don’t conflate a local hobbyhorse with discussion of a federal matter. It is the Federal Govt. that is supposed to be doing the NBN. It is a local govt. issue only in as much as our local representatives can try to influence better outcomes from the Federal govt, as Kim Fisher is doing by writing this article.
The only benefit from coming last is that more of us might get proper fibre to the premises. My part of Cook was shown as commenced just before Abbott got in and Turnbull became the relevant minister. It really was commenced because I saw work being done on the ground – clearing and checking pits and conduits and so on. Then the election happened and it all stopped and we were no longer commenced on the map.

Your point is?

A Nonny Mouse11:18 am 27 Jan 17

dungfungus said :


Trams are what we chose… I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband…

Get over the ‘tram’ issue! And don’t conflate a local hobbyhorse with discussion of a federal matter. It is the Federal Govt. that is supposed to be doing the NBN. It is a local govt. issue only in as much as our local representatives can try to influence better outcomes from the Federal govt, as Kim Fisher is doing by writing this article.
The only benefit from coming last is that more of us might get proper fibre to the premises. My part of Cook was shown as commenced just before Abbott got in and Turnbull became the relevant minister. It really was commenced because I saw work being done on the ground – clearing and checking pits and conduits and so on. Then the election happened and it all stopped and we were no longer commenced on the map.

FifiDrew said :

We live in Sutton and may as well be in Timbuktu. We can’t even get ADSL2+. Paid $89 a month for 200GB and now have to handover $180 a month for 25GB on a sh&$$y, slow mobile broadband

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2013/0129/In-Timbuktu-a-giant-task-of-reconnecting-a-remote-city-to-the-world

Chris Mordd Richards said :

dungfungus said :

Chris Mordd Richards said :

dungfungus said :

We can’t have everything.

Trams are what we chose and trams (with wi-fi) are what we will get.

I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband.

I suppose that’s because very few people in Canberra want to use 100 GBps.

Ok, because funding for a Federal Government Agency aka NBN Co. and funding for a local ACT Government Project aka Light Rail are completely related, yes of course silly me!

Hang on, I recall the ACT Government making big of the Federal funding they received for the light rail through “asset re-generation” (whatever that is).

And (as JC pointed correctly out in another thread) the Carnel Liberal government tried to be a technology innovator in the 1990s when they got ActewAGL involved with TransACT.

If we can have a light rail running off 100% renewables surely a Territory super- broadband would be a “walk in the park” (before the developers build high density housing on it, that is).

Really quick then im not continuing to engage this line of “debate”.

1. Asset recycling fund was providing about $63m out of the (as you all like to often quote) $1.7b over 20 years actual spend. So it represents about 4% of total budget. The big thing made was about any money at all coming from a Federal source on it, but honestly, its such a small amount, it was a symbolic argument not a significant funding source.

2. Carnell Liberal government not very comparable to the Barr/Rattenbury government, not going to compare apples with seafood, bit pointless.

3. Since the NBN has been in the works for years, and given the failure of Transact, why on earth would the ACT government want to duplicate what is being done federally and waste money doing so by trying to NBN in Canberra themselves when NBN Co is already meant to be doing it.

Your argument / points are weak at best, and just trolling at worse. And you know it, you are not stupid and we both know that. Feel free to tell me again why NBN and Light Rail are connected in your mind, but it’s only in your head, not anyone else’s, so I won’t continue to engage this ridiculous thought experiment further after this post itself. Have a great day dungfungus!

1. The actual asset recycling amount was $67 million according to Andrew Leigh and the total cost of Stage 1 of the tram was $783 million. That is closer to 9%. You can’t “water it down” by adding stage 2 and costings for 20 years because the $67 million will all be spent on the one and only stage between City and Gungahlin.
In anyone’s language that is a significant amount of Federal funding.

2. I agree with your statement that the two governments are not comparable – Carnel did a much better job.

3. The current government has “lack of judgement experience” in taking on projects that should have been left to others so why not blow another few hundred million dollars on something like our own solar powered NBN?
No one cares if they lose more money.

ACT should rip out the NBN and replace it with their own fibre to the premise.

That way they can’t call it the NBN anymore.

We live in Sutton and may as well be in Timbuktu. We can’t even get ADSL2+. Paid $89 a month for 200GB and now have to handover $180 a month for 25GB on a sh&$$y, slow mobile broadband

Chris Mordd Richards2:24 pm 25 Jan 17

dungfungus said :

Chris Mordd Richards said :

dungfungus said :

We can’t have everything.

Trams are what we chose and trams (with wi-fi) are what we will get.

I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband.

I suppose that’s because very few people in Canberra want to use 100 GBps.

Ok, because funding for a Federal Government Agency aka NBN Co. and funding for a local ACT Government Project aka Light Rail are completely related, yes of course silly me!

Hang on, I recall the ACT Government making big of the Federal funding they received for the light rail through “asset re-generation” (whatever that is).

And (as JC pointed correctly out in another thread) the Carnel Liberal government tried to be a technology innovator in the 1990s when they got ActewAGL involved with TransACT.

If we can have a light rail running off 100% renewables surely a Territory super- broadband would be a “walk in the park” (before the developers build high density housing on it, that is).

Really quick then im not continuing to engage this line of “debate”.

1. Asset recycling fund was providing about $63m out of the (as you all like to often quote) $1.7b over 20 years actual spend. So it represents about 4% of total budget. The big thing made was about any money at all coming from a Federal source on it, but honestly, its such a small amount, it was a symbolic argument not a significant funding source.

2. Carnell Liberal government not very comparable to the Barr/Rattenbury government, not going to compare apples with seafood, bit pointless.

3. Since the NBN has been in the works for years, and given the failure of Transact, why on earth would the ACT government want to duplicate what is being done federally and waste money doing so by trying to NBN in Canberra themselves when NBN Co is already meant to be doing it.

Your argument / points are weak at best, and just trolling at worse. And you know it, you are not stupid and we both know that. Feel free to tell me again why NBN and Light Rail are connected in your mind, but it’s only in your head, not anyone else’s, so I won’t continue to engage this ridiculous thought experiment further after this post itself. Have a great day dungfungus!

Chris Mordd Richards2:15 pm 25 Jan 17

Garfield said :

I know you’re a Greens members and so therefore anything the Coalition does is automatically the worst thing in the world, but I’d be interested to hear why you think Labor’s NBN would have been 80-90% complete by now.

Believe it or not, a number of years back I actually thought that Malcolm himself would also bring about first rate fibre internet for Australia as well. Surely he was the one LNP member senior and influential enough, and also tech savvy enough, to make it happen. Been proven wrong on that one haven’t I by now?

I do not hate the LNP blindly. I do disagree with most of their policies, but not 100% of them, and not without actually reading and understanding them first. I do not hate all LNP elected members. I do hate a few of them, Leyonhjelm, Bernadi, Christensen would be near the top of that list – but I only hate maybe 5% of the LNP current elected members at best. I might not like the majority of them, but I don’t waste energy hating them either.

A lot of them are well intentioned to certain extents, we just have fundamental differences on how things should be achieved or what the priorities in different policy areas are. There are a few LNP members I actually quite like, the ones I think should probably really be in Labor instead, their left faction members. There are also some right faction members in Labor I hate, who I think should really be in the LNP. I don’t like the majority of the Labor members just because Labor is more left than the LNP.

I do quite like a number of Labor figures, but there are also just as many I don’t like nor hate, just like a lot of LNP figures. Again, a lot of them are well intentioned to certain extents, we just have fundamental differences on how things should be achieved or what the priorities in different policy areas are.

I don’t hide the fact I am an outspoken supporter of the Greens, but I deny being rusted on. I argue against my party often internally, and externally. Obviously I support Greens most overall, especially their welcoming of independent thought not just toeing the party line, but I am not blind to one party or another. I look at the policies themselves and the people pursuing them, and try to always make an informed judgement based on my morals, values and principles.

I supported the Greens working with LNP on the Senate Voting changes last year, as is evidenced by comments of mine on pieces on RA at the time. For better or worse how that turned out, I supported it then and I stand by that now, and at the time I touted it as an example of the Greens (and by extension my own) willingness to work with anyone on “good policy” regardless of who that is. If the LNP adopt a policy I personally support, I will support the LNP for it. This does not occur often though.

I also hoped that not only would Malcolm still give us a proper NBN a few years ago, I also thought he would bring about marriage equality via a parliamentary vote as well. Yes I had faith in an LNP member and an LNP Prime Minister, I am not making that up, there was a time when I thought naively or not that Malcolm would bring about an LNP that I liked more than less. A lot of us have realised that we thought Malcolm might do certain things that he has not though, if he has much of a policy agenda at this point, I and the rest of the nation would certainly love to hear it sometime soon.

As for my assertion Labor could have been 80-90% done by now. I am prepared to back that up, however it will require diving into a bunch of old reports, figures, rollout estimates, etc… and taking into account advances in rollout tech and speed since then which were not accounted for at the time but would have benefited them if they had started back when first proposed. I am quite busy currently working on a few different things writing wise, looking for a new job, getting ready to start Uni next month, etc…

I will try and get something put together re: the timeline if Labor had gone ahead as they wanted, but it might take me a bit, and I might not end up being able to get around to it at all in the end. Not that I don’t want to, just not my #1 priority to spend time on at the moment of course.

You are right to ask me to back up that assertion, no worries on that. I am confident in my assertion within reasonable margins of error, but I can’t prove it without spending a few hours collating the facts I would need to properly make my case on that.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

dungfungus said :

We can’t have everything.

Trams are what we chose and trams (with wi-fi) are what we will get.

I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband.

I suppose that’s because very few people in Canberra want to use 100 GBps.

Ok, because funding for a Federal Government Agency aka NBN Co. and funding for a local ACT Government Project aka Light Rail are completely related, yes of course silly me!

Hang on, I recall the ACT Government making big of the Federal funding they received for the light rail through “asset re-generation” (whatever that is).

And (as JC pointed correctly out in another thread) the Carnel Liberal government tried to be a technology innovator in the 1990s when they got ActewAGL involved with TransACT.

If we can have a light rail running off 100% renewables surely a Territory super- broadband would be a “walk in the park” (before the developers build high density housing on it, that is).

bruce_lord said :

I knew Tuggeranong had terrible internet (amongst the slowest in the entire country) but I couldn’t believe the article in last Saturdays canberra times where some areas can’t even get Dial up access. I know the hills and valleys make mobile, radio and TV reception bad, but no dial up or adsl!!!!!!!

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/there-are-third-world-countries-with-better-internet-tuggeranong-residents-in-theodore-fed-up-with-waiting-for-nbn-20170120-gtv8ho.html

I read that and didn’t understand. How can they not have dial-up or ADSL? They don’t have phone lines??

Chris Mordd Richards1:03 am 25 Jan 17

dungfungus said :

We can’t have everything.

Trams are what we chose and trams (with wi-fi) are what we will get.

I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband.

I suppose that’s because very few people in Canberra want to use 100 GBps.

Ok, because funding for a Federal Government Agency aka NBN Co. and funding for a local ACT Government Project aka Light Rail are completely related, yes of course silly me!

Kambah is still listed for this year, I hope its the whole suburb, and not just the Northern section.

Anthony David8:17 pm 24 Jan 17

Just this morning I drove past the Melba exchange and there was a fellow with an NBN van feeding two thick blue (fibre) cables into the pit. The NBN site says that Jan-Jun 2018 is our rollout date. The whole NBN mess is comical. My son in Spain just signed up for a cheap plan: 50Mb synchronous for, I think, 20Euro. He was paying 30Euro for a 300Mb synchronous plan at the previous city.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

I am absolutely livid reading this, and bloody well done for bringing this to our attention Kim, that’s some solid detective work m8!

I am very familiar with the old rollout schedule for the ACT, have perused it dozens of times the past few years, sometimes to show ppl parts of ACT are only place still in all of Aus (except about 4 new greenfields sites interstate) that is still slated to get Fibre to the Home instead of Fibre to the Street or Node.

As such, I am quite familiar with the now old scheduled dates for pretty much all of Canberra, and I can confirm that data on the old dates matches what I remember, and the new dates listed for all the suburbs makes my blood boil reading it.

My suburb was already near the very end of the list, and I put up with a 500KBps down and 40KBps up max speed atm on ADSL due to my apartment blocks old wiring that constantly gets water into the copper and slows the speed right down. Now I see I am waiting an additional 12 months more on top of that. It’s now a race between ACT Housing and NBN Co – will Housing knock down my block before the NBN arrives, their schedule has recently been delayed 1-2 years as well, or will NBN Co connect me and then 6 months later I will get moved out and the block will be knocked down, and probably require reconnection at additional cost again when they rebuild then.

This whole thing is a joke, it’s pretty damn obvious that once again, the ACT is the least important place in Australia for our Federal Government. Sure Parliament House has nice fast NBN already, what about the rest of us? Give us the NBN Labor promised which would have been 80-90% complete by now if they had been allowed to go ahead when they wanted to.

So p#ssed off right now, I pay the same for 500KBps down as someone in South Korea pays for 100GBps down – what a bloody joke!!!

We can’t have everything.

Trams are what we chose and trams (with wi-fi) are what we will get.

I don’t recall anyone demanding our local Labor/Green government give us our own super-fast broadband.

I suppose that’s because very few people in Canberra want to use 100 GBps.

Chris Mordd Richards said :

I am absolutely livid reading this, and bloody well done for bringing this to our attention Kim, that’s some solid detective work m8!

I am very familiar with the old rollout schedule for the ACT, have perused it dozens of times the past few years, sometimes to show ppl parts of ACT are only place still in all of Aus (except about 4 new greenfields sites interstate) that is still slated to get Fibre to the Home instead of Fibre to the Street or Node.

As such, I am quite familiar with the now old scheduled dates for pretty much all of Canberra, and I can confirm that data on the old dates matches what I remember, and the new dates listed for all the suburbs makes my blood boil reading it.

My suburb was already near the very end of the list, and I put up with a 500KBps down and 40KBps up max speed atm on ADSL due to my apartment blocks old wiring that constantly gets water into the copper and slows the speed right down. Now I see I am waiting an additional 12 months more on top of that. It’s now a race between ACT Housing and NBN Co – will Housing knock down my block before the NBN arrives, their schedule has recently been delayed 1-2 years as well, or will NBN Co connect me and then 6 months later I will get moved out and the block will be knocked down, and probably require reconnection at additional cost again when they rebuild then.

This whole thing is a joke, it’s pretty damn obvious that once again, the ACT is the least important place in Australia for our Federal Government. Sure Parliament House has nice fast NBN already, what about the rest of us? Give us the NBN Labor promised which would have been 80-90% complete by now if they had been allowed to go ahead when they wanted to.

So p#ssed off right now, I pay the same for 500KBps down as someone in South Korea pays for 100GBps down – what a bloody joke!!!

I know you’re a Greens members and so therefore anything the Coalition does is automatically the worst thing in the world, but I’d be interested to hear why you think Labor’s NBN would have been 80-90% complete by now.

In the first 27 months of full scale construction, starting August 2011, the NBN passed 236,000 premises, there having been around 119,000 passed in the earlier trial stages over roughly 2 years. In the next 20 months to June 2015 they added 655,000 premises and in the 12 after that another 1,880,000.

That means under Labor the NBN passed around 4,958 premises per month in the trial stages, increasing to 8,770 once full scale construction started. In the period that the Coalition took over and changed the product mix, supposedly creating massive delays, the NBN added 32,750 per month and in the 2016 financial year the rate increased to 156,666 per month. I don’t know how fast it would have progressed had Labor been re-elected in 2013, but the rate of connection and rate of increase was very slow their last 2 years, and nowhere near the exponential rate of increase that subsequently happened under the Coalition.

I’m not going to defend NBN Co leaving much of Canberra until the very end as everything I’ve heard has suggested we have some very slow connection speeds, but I will point out that until this update my suburb, along with almost all of Tuggeranong, was not even on the construction schedule. From that point of view this is an improvement for both myself and most Tuggeranong residents.

Considering Kim Fischer was a Labor candidate for the ACT election maybe she could make some enquiries and tell us why the Rudd-Gillard governments didn’t prioritise constructing the NBN in Canberra given the massive productivity gains that she claims would have accrued to the public service? A lot of the article smacks of partisan politics rather than objective journalism. I’ll suggest that the ACT is the least important place in Australia for the Federal Government regardless of which party holds power, and that’s because both lower house seats are safe Labor. If ACT voters shook things up by electing someone who wasn’t Labor every now and then I reckon we’d get a lot more consideration from both sides of federal politics.

Chris Mordd Richards4:22 pm 24 Jan 17

K_c24 said :

There’s a simple solution to this; move to QTown! My FTTP connection is fantastic.

They keep changing their preferred acronyms so much it almost makes my head spin!

Originally it was FTTH – Fibre to the House. Now they are using FTTP – Fibre to the Premises instead of FTTH, and FTTB – Fibre to the Building (eg. appt complex) which is basically the same as FTTP except the existing internal wiring from the “comms room” is used for the last short distance. At one stage we also had FTTN – Fibre to the Node, which then used the existing copper to connect to your house. We also had FTTD – Fibre to the Driveway (closer than FTTN but same principle) which used the existing copper for the last few metres, comparable to the current FTTB but for a single stand alone house.

To be fair: FTTP, FTTN and FTTB are the current preferred industry terms, but all the terms listed above have been officially used at various times by NBN and announced by Government Ministers in press conferences too. I know what the terms mean and I still get confused at this point, I feel sorry for the average joe who has no idea and doesn’t want to know either what FTTX anything is anyway!

I knew Tuggeranong had terrible internet (amongst the slowest in the entire country) but I couldn’t believe the article in last Saturdays canberra times where some areas can’t even get Dial up access. I know the hills and valleys make mobile, radio and TV reception bad, but no dial up or adsl!!!!!!!

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/there-are-third-world-countries-with-better-internet-tuggeranong-residents-in-theodore-fed-up-with-waiting-for-nbn-20170120-gtv8ho.html

Don’t forget that Zed is on the NBN Senate committee. He’s done a stellar job representing his constituents there.

There’s a simple solution to this; move to QTown! My FTTP connection is fantastic.

Chris Mordd Richards12:12 pm 24 Jan 17

I am absolutely livid reading this, and bloody well done for bringing this to our attention Kim, that’s some solid detective work m8!

I am very familiar with the old rollout schedule for the ACT, have perused it dozens of times the past few years, sometimes to show ppl parts of ACT are only place still in all of Aus (except about 4 new greenfields sites interstate) that is still slated to get Fibre to the Home instead of Fibre to the Street or Node.

As such, I am quite familiar with the now old scheduled dates for pretty much all of Canberra, and I can confirm that data on the old dates matches what I remember, and the new dates listed for all the suburbs makes my blood boil reading it.

My suburb was already near the very end of the list, and I put up with a 500KBps down and 40KBps up max speed atm on ADSL due to my apartment blocks old wiring that constantly gets water into the copper and slows the speed right down. Now I see I am waiting an additional 12 months more on top of that. It’s now a race between ACT Housing and NBN Co – will Housing knock down my block before the NBN arrives, their schedule has recently been delayed 1-2 years as well, or will NBN Co connect me and then 6 months later I will get moved out and the block will be knocked down, and probably require reconnection at additional cost again when they rebuild then.

This whole thing is a joke, it’s pretty damn obvious that once again, the ACT is the least important place in Australia for our Federal Government. Sure Parliament House has nice fast NBN already, what about the rest of us? Give us the NBN Labor promised which would have been 80-90% complete by now if they had been allowed to go ahead when they wanted to.

So p#ssed off right now, I pay the same for 500KBps down as someone in South Korea pays for 100GBps down – what a bloody joke!!!

funbutalsoserious12:08 pm 24 Jan 17

I am one of the lucky ones that has an old TransACT VDSL Internet connection with healthy speeds but I have noticed this dragging of the heels on the NBN rollout.
Interesting that they have chosen to push the roll-out back yet again and have done it through stealth of changing their website over the Christmas period.

Turnbull as the ex-Communications Minister that presided over the scope change of this NBN project from the Gillard/Rudd Government to Abbott should be ashamed of this ongoing saga – but then again it has been shown how good he is as the PM ;).

Have you complained to your local MLA about it?

I knew Tuggeranong had terrible internet (amongst the slowest in the entire country) but I couldn’t believe the article in last Saturdays canberra times where some areas can’t even get Dial up access. I know the hills and valleys make mobile, radio and TV reception bad, but no dial up or adsl!!!!!!!

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/there-are-third-world-countries-with-better-internet-tuggeranong-residents-in-theodore-fed-up-with-waiting-for-nbn-20170120-gtv8ho.html

I noticed a change to the rollout schedule a long time ago – perhaps 12 months. My suburb (McKellar) went from “late 2017” to simply “in planning”. In other words – years away.

To make matters worse we moved from Giralang, where we had a VDSL connection via the old TransACT network. VDSL wasn’t perfect but we did get a maximum speed of around 30mpbs.

Now we’re back to 2mpbs on ASDL. I’m able to get significantly better internet access on 4G mobile broadband (5mbps) although it’s prohibitively expensive as a permanent replacement for the ADSL.

It’is very unfortunate that in the year 2017 – in the capital city of Australia – many of us will be still be waiting years before we can make full use of all the online and streaming services offered these days.

“Delivering the NBN earlier in Canberra would unlock productivity benefits and cost savings”

In what way?

Holden Caulfield9:05 am 24 Jan 17

“The Federal Government’s complete lack of interest in prioritising robust broadband for its largely Canberra-based public servants is baffling.”

Not when you consider that Canberra-based voters have a complete lack of interest in voting for the Coalition (in the lower house, at least).

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