Fibre to the node

Sorry. minimum speeds of 50mbit to 90% – IE, averaging well under 100mbit.

Too little, too late.

Darkfalz said :

You’ll actually be able to get 100mbit broadband in a couple of years, not in a decade, with the option to upgrade to a higher speed at your own expense if you have a requirement for it

This statement is a pile of crap: The coalition NBN plan is to give average speeds of 50mbit to 90% of subscribers by 2019. The average upload will be only 4mbit. Of the people who get VDSL2, very few will get close to 100mbit, and not that many residences will have VSDL2 in 3 years even if everything goes to plan. Look at MT’s inspiration: BT Infinity. They’re seeing average speeds of under 50mbit.

I’m willing to bet that negotiations for with Telstra to assume control of the copper cause issues that delay things further.

Then your talk of direct fibre from the node omits to mention it’s going to be so expensive (especially compared to GPON) that it will be priced out of reach. The Node architecture isn’t suited to it, and if you’re going to roll fibre down the street why wouldn’t you just roll out GPON in that street for everyone? If you’re going to put GPON in a few streets, why wouldn’t you just roll it out properly – like we’re doing now?

In dozens of cities around Australia, people have been getting 100mbit downstream on HFC and GPON for years. Stop telling us what speeds we do and don’t need. People want FTTH and are prepared to pay for it.

The argument that you don’t “need” internet that fast, or that what we have now is “fast enough” is ridiculous…

Travel back 10 years and dial-up speeds were fast enough to get done what we needed to get done.

Try working with a dial up speeds today, even if it’s just to do the same things you did 10 years ago.

You can’t.

Most webpages won’t load, in particular email clients like Gmail and Hotmail get stuck repeatedly. You constantly run into errors on even the simplest sites, and ads that use flash and the like end up causing pages to crash… it’s just not feasible.

What you do online may not have changed, but the sites and services you use to do that have, and you need to keep up.

If the rest of the world’s internet continues to get faster than ours, content will be made with those faster speeds in mind. We will fall behind and suffer for it.

A stitch in time and all that.

Darkfalz said :

with the option to upgrade to a higher speed at your own expense if you have a requirement for it

Ignoring business premises, there are 9,117,003 private dwellings in Australia. The current NBN Co. plan is to roll out FTTP to 8,478,813 of them. At the current estimate of $3,800 for an individual to add their own fibre to the node would cost Australian home owners $32,219,488,602.

This is because when buying as a whole we have purchasing power.

Darkfalz said :

Even with multicasting which saves bandwidth for part of the trip, it is simply not practical to stream HD TV to every house in the country.

Streaming to a nation of 22 million people is entirely viable given the right infrastructure.

Darkfalz said :

Wealthy people subsidise everyone else for all of their lives that their not having a baby (ie. most of it). To be a net tax contributor, I’d estimate you need to earn at least 60-70K.

So how do you classify wealth then?

Darkfalz said :

Australian bonds are repaid with tax dollars, as is the dividend payout on them. This is just an accounting trick.

It’s not an accounting trick. In the way it is produced for NBN Co it is effectively offering shares at only a 7% dividend return. Companies would kill people to do the same.

Darkfalz said :

The Labor NBN’s revenue forecasts are ridiculous, expecting people to pay more and more for the same service each year, well above inflation.

Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network
Answers to Questions on Notice
Public Hearing 19 April 2013

Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Portfolio
NBN Co Limited

Question No: 6

Hansard Ref: In Writing

Topic: Wholesale Pricing

The Committee asked:
Will wholesale user charges per month on average increase almost threefold over the next nine
years?

Answer:
No. This question confuses wholesale access prices with average revenue per user. NBN Co’s
Corporate Plan forecasts wholesale prices to decline in real and nominal terms over time, but as
end users elect to take up higher speeds and download more, average revenue per user increases.

Connection speeds available by distance (*DSL only): http://i.imgur.com/476NpXG.gif
Connection speeds available by distance (with FTTP): http://i.imgur.com/1zXHPwt.jpg
‘Telstra Will axe copper network – Ageing lines are ‘five minutes to midnight’ http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/14/1068674351979.html
‘Australian Chamber of Commerce NBN support: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/361294/australian_chamber_commerce_industry_backs_national_broadband_network/

IIA NBN Support ‘not nice to have but needed’ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/08/the-internet-industry-association-supports-the-nbn/

“In the past decade Australia’s internet use has grown by a staggering 12,000%. That rate is accelerating. Yet despite this, we are now ranked 50th in the world in terms of our average broadband speeds.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/museum-should-reach-out-to-all-its-citizens/story-e6frg8n6-1226022747009

“”The NBN will enable us to interact with people across Australia in real time and allow us to present images from our collections in hitherto unattainable detail and depth.””

FTTC(N) speed limitations with copper usage and distance. http://linebroker.co.uk/fttc-tech.php

…and take a look at the speeds for NZ’s FTTN deployment. Can only provide an average peak of 13Mbps.

Seems I kept breaking the comments, so I’ll be splitting it up.

Darkfalz said :

Dilandach said :

Except it isn’t done with public monies but government bonds.

Government bonds is just deferred public money.

That’s partly true.

Darkfalz said :

When the government has to buy back those bonds, what do you think they use to for it?

The money that NBN Co raised by being a monopoly wholesale provider.

Darkfalz said :

The government has no money.[/qoote]

NBN Co. will.

Darkfalz said :

Their money comes from us.

This is true of any Business.

Darkfalz said :

A 4K movie in H265 or whatever they use will likely stream easily under 50mbit.

That’s just technology that is existing now. The infrastructure is for technology 5, 10, 20 and 40 years away.

Even before the Liberal NBN is finished it will be obsolete. for not much more than future proofing ourselves for 30+ years.

http://i.imgur.com/34xCRva.png

Darkfalz said :

I also think that a direct fibre connection to the node won’t mean digging up your garden

Perhaps but that’s a short term cost for a long term asset. What happened when we put in town water or sewage systems?

Darkfalz said :

For the small percentage of people who want it, it’s not going to be any different to the Foxtel cable people get now, wired to your roof from the nearest pole.

Again, we’re thinking now, and not looking forward 5/10/20/40 years from now. Also, there is a dramatic difference between HFC and Fibre. The current NBN Co. plan is only limited at 100mb/s because that was well above current usage patterns. Fibre systems go well beyond 100mb/s, 1,000mb/s, 1,000,000mb/s, and into the 1,000,000,000mb/s range.

Darkfalz said :

The expense won’t be the same as digging up half the street to wire it to your house.

The current plan for the liberal NBN roll out is to put a node every 800 metres down the road. These nodes need to be powered and maintained.

The NBN plan is to put a single fibre sub-exchange in every suburb.

Darkfalz said :

You’ll actually be able to get 100mbit broadband in a couple of years

1. NBN Co will be releasing 1,000mb/s connections at the end of the year.
2. For anybody to get 100mb/s plans from the Liberal NBN plan they will need to be no further than 100m from the nearest node. Currently Turnbull is talking about nodes every 800 metres down the street which would only allow about 50mb/s.
3. The speeds on the Liberal NBN plan are not assured. A poor quality connection somewhere between the node and your house can destroy any and all speed up grades.

Both parties have said that we will eventually have fibre to the point. The main idea is to replace the copper. The difference is how they are going to get there.

Labor – “Oh dear, the copper is at the end of it’s useful life, we are going to have to replace it all” “I know – we shall just replace it all at once (In a staged roll cos it’s a big task).

Liberal – “Oh dear, the copper is at the end of it’s useful life, we are going to have to replace it all”
Insert unneccessary step, “In places where the copper is too damaged we will replace it with fibre but otherwise we will do fibre to the node and come back in a few years and finish the job.”

The liberals might be initially cheaper (but it takes longer) but Labor’s does the job properly and fairly. Everyone gets the same product.

Darkfalz said :

We need to go H264 OTA soon, but that’s another argument.

Agree, but do not hold your breath. Consider that the analogue TV switch off was first scheduled for 2008 and it was pushed back to 2013. Digital TV transmission started in, I think, 2001 after they’d been testing since at least 1993. Television broadcasters have an inordinate political influence and have long, long since dragged the chain on any change – this is from first hand experience. Full-time colour TV in this country was introduced here in 1975, years after most other countries. I think Finland and some other countries are already going to DVB-T2, which uses h.264, but yeah, not going to happen here for a long, long, long time.

Darkfalz said :

I appreciate you dreaming of streaming 4K (8K?) movies from some cloud on the internet, rather than have the “inconvenience” of putting an actual BluRay successor disk in a machine, but to most people this isn’t a priority. A 4K movie in H265 or whatever they use will likely stream easily under 50mbit. I also think that a direct fibre connection to the node won’t mean digging up your garden or replacing the copper you’ve got. For the small percentage of people who want it, it’s not going to be any different to the Foxtel cable people get now, wired to your roof from the nearest pole. When you move, it can be taken by back down. The expense won’t be the same as digging up half the street to wire it to your house.

Time to weigh in… You make some good points but I thought I’d give another perspective.

All your posts seem to be considering what one person will be doing with their 100Mbps connection. Consider however, that the 100Mbps is for all four UNI-D ports. So, conceivably in a family house, you have one person watching HD sport (always at the top end of variable bit rates because of all the motion) on their “Foxtel via NBN”, while the kids are having a movie night via Netflix (when Netflix buys out Quickflix – please!), while yet another person is doing some work from home with a work network drive mounted.

I, like you, have a good home network for internal purposes, but love my NBN for work purposes. I can now sit there and work on large CAD assemblies at home, without bothering to download all files first (which took forever on my ADSL2+) at the same time as having ping times small enough to be able to reliably interact with a process control system (via a GUI) when users get into strife.

For a once in a multigenerational infrastructure project, it’s worth going big.

Also, no one dug up my front yard, it took the NBN contractors all of 15 minutes to get the fibre to my connection point. No digging at all. If you live in an area with overhead lines, they’ll likely come in through that.

Also, what I didn’t realise is that they don’t replace the copper to the house because Telstra still owns it. So, I can still get a phone service to the house, because I still have a couple of regular phone ports still connected in the house. That’s actually how we’re getting a regular phone service at the moment while we go through the process of getting ported to VoIP.

Anyway, that’s my 2c…

watto23 said :

Finally how can anyone ever say TV will always be broadcast over the air? Seriously we are better if it isn’t, and frees up the spectrum for other services, hell might even make 3/4G actually deliver, something the coalition thought was all we needed 3 years ago.

Even with multicasting which saves bandwidth for part of the trip, it is simply not practical to stream HD TV to every house in the country.

We need to go H264 OTA soon, but that’s another argument.

watto23 said :

Apparently for you one eyed coalition supporters its ok to subsidise wealthy people to have babies with the baby bonus and the new maternity leave scheme

Wealthy people subsidise everyone else for all of their lives that their not having a baby (ie. most of it). To be a net tax contributor, I’d estimate you need to earn at least 60-70K.

Baby bonus has been scrapped, and rightfully so (it was already means tested years ago).

Believe it or not, we’d have got more on Labor’s scheme because it allows double dipping. My wife would have got her full income from her employer for 18 weeks, plus 18 weeks of the minimum wage on top from the government – that turns out to be more than 26 weeks at only her full income.

Labor is currently giving this payment to wealthy public servants and those in the private sector who already get generous maternity leave from their employer.

watto23 said :

That service is not even being funded by tax dollars.

See reply to the other guy. Australian bonds are repaid with tax dollars, as is the dividend payout on them. This is just an accounting trick. The Labor NBN’s revenue forecasts are ridiculous, expecting people to pay more and more for the same service each year, well above inflation.

Dilandach said :

Except it isn’t done with public monies but government bonds.

Government bonds is just deferred public money. When the government has to buy back those bonds, what do you think they use to for it? The government has no money. Their money comes from us.

I appreciate you dreaming of streaming 4K (8K?) movies from some cloud on the internet, rather than have the “inconvenience” of putting an actual BluRay successor disk in a machine, but to most people this isn’t a priority. A 4K movie in H265 or whatever they use will likely stream easily under 50mbit. I also think that a direct fibre connection to the node won’t mean digging up your garden or replacing the copper you’ve got. For the small percentage of people who want it, it’s not going to be any different to the Foxtel cable people get now, wired to your roof from the nearest pole. When you move, it can be taken by back down. The expense won’t be the same as digging up half the street to wire it to your house.

The election is over. The coalition will, by their timetable, have connected most of the country to their NBN network before the next election, which Labor is unlikely to win anyway. You’ll actually be able to get 100mbit broadband in a couple of years, not in a decade, with the option to upgrade to a higher speed at your own expense if you have a requirement for it – as should be the case. I honestly don’t understand your hyperventilation.

Darkfalz said :

Dilandach said :

So you’ve stuck with your 56k modem out of principle that technology requirements never change?

There will always be TV delivered via over the air, satellite and subscriber cable. To suggest a 1gbit requirement any time in the future for broadband is to ignore the broadband the rest of the developed world has, and be premised on the false belief the web or content delivery is going to be designed to be undeliverable to the vast majority of worldwide broadband users, except he few with 1gbit capable connections. That’s just not the way technology or the market works.

I look at what is deliverable now with with the best ADSL2+ and scale that up 4x and surmise it’s surplus to the the requirements of the vast majority of even the digital generation. I use gigabit at home, and it’s for moving large volumes of content around between computers. It has very other practical use over 100mbit. There’s no content I can stream that’s going anywhere near that, and codecs can compress more with higher quality every year. Albo talking about the NBN and medical records just makes him sound like a moron. He seems to be stuck in the mindset that we click “send” on an email and watch the bars go across for 5 minutes like in the dialup days. What you can do with bandwidth increases rapidly obviously over dialup up to about 10-50mbits, and then tapers off, beyond requirements for moving large amounts of data around. Web browsing is all about latency. The buffering/streaming issue people have while browsing various websites is almost always at the remote end, not the local end.

50-100mbit, at around of 25-33% of the cost, and arriving much sooner? I prefer that to waiting a decade for a 1gbit connection I could probably not afford anyway. As stated many times, it’s not about not WANTING the superior product. It’s about not wasting time and money and going to great effort to create a product vastly surplus to requirements.

Look most don’t have an issue with doing it sooner, but its a political stunt, because the coalition realised that Australians do care about the NBN, they had to come up with something. All the polls say at least 66% support it and often only 10-20% oppose it. The main gripes being the speed it is taking to rollout. Most of the strong NBN supporters will say thats the main issue.

The issue with copper is not what speeds are possible over it, but how much it actually will cost to guarantee it. Right now you buy ADSL2 at theoretical maximums, but very few go close to those. The same will occur for FTTN. You can have a situation where a neighbour over the back fence say is on a 100-200m longer run to the node and gets half the speed, or vice versa. Also say you wanted a service from company X like say security monitoring or cloud based backup and they say it will need 6Mb link. Then another member of the house is watching a streaming video and some one else is doing something else. with VDSL it only takes dodgy copper, or a storm and suddenly something will stop working. If you have fibre and a 50Mb plan you are getting a 50 Mb plan. If you buy a non ISP service that needs x Mb its a simple subtraction.

Finally how can anyone ever say TV will always be broadcast over the air? Seriously we are better if it isn’t, and frees up the spectrum for other services, hell might even make 3/4G actually deliver, something the coalition thought was all we needed 3 years ago.

Apparently for you one eyed coalition supporters its ok to subsidise wealthy people to have babies with the baby bonus and the new maternity leave scheme, but not ok to provide a ubiquitous service to all Australians. That service is not even being funded by tax dollars. I’m personally going to rally as many National members (they support the labor NBN) and non coalition members to make the next government keep status quo on the NBN. otherwise in 2021, we’ll be starting again on a new NBN because some short sighted political idealists think it was a great idea to use it as a political tool to win an election, just like the boat people are being used to win support in marginal electorates.

justin heywood said :

Dilandach said :

several ad homs, logical fallacies, hopeful ‘modelling’ presented as a fact, the inevitable moronic Alan Jones reference, and then….

…..The fact is that the NBN wasn’t funded by taxpayers…….

I remember you now. Goodbye.

…and off he goes with his tail between his legs. Here’s some reading for you on the way out…

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network/national_broadband_network_implementation_study

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/132711/Review_of_NBN_Co_Limiteds_Corporate_Plan-Executive_Summary.pdf

Darkfalz said :

Yes. Data requirements probably refer to the amount a person downloads (in other words, the % of data intensive, rich content, as pages get more graphical and interactive).

Oh! ‘probably’ yep, that’s good enough with nothing to back it up. Lets see some sources for that statement, I showed you mine, you can show me yours. Our speed requirements aren’t going to plateau off anytime soon. Just as an example, Ultra HD TVs are being released within the next month, things never stay static and nor will our needs.

Darkfalz said :

I could show you an Indeo or Cinepak video from 15 years ago that had the same overall bitrate as a x264/AAC movie from today. One would be 320x240x15 fps and look like utter shit, the other would be 1280x720x24 fps (12x the pixels) and be hard to distinguish from a BluRay. This shows that data requirements are not linear, and digital content packs more into less every year.

Just for starters you should probably look into 8K UHTV as a pointer to where things are headed. Mix in 3D and you’ve got quite significant bandwidth requirements when looking at it from a IPTV perspective. Of course that’s just one application out of many.

Darkfalz said :

Most of the developed world is not over 100mbit for the general public and won’t be going there anytime soon. This is therefore the target of web developers and bitrates for streaming multimedia.

Really? Well you better tell Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, China, Brunei, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and Spain just to name a few (and there are many more that have or are in the process of rolling out FTTP(H) ) that they better stop what they’re doing because that doesn’t fit into your narrative.

Darkfalz said :

As stated, if you’re a power user like you or me, you can never have enough bandwidth, progressing power, graphics cards, size of monitor – whatever. But we’re talking about hooking that up to every single premises in the country, at incredible expense, for the tiny proportion of people with a real practical use (use, not requirement) for that kind of bandwidth. And that’s just not a responsible use of public money.

Except it isn’t done with public monies but government bonds.

Dilandach said :

several ad homs, logical fallacies, hopeful ‘modelling’ presented as a fact, the inevitable moronic Alan Jones reference, and then….

…..The fact is that the NBN wasn’t funded by taxpayers…….

I remember you now. Goodbye.

Dilandach said :

In your ignorant shortsightedness you completely fail to realise that data requirements increase 30% p.a[Tucker, 2010, pg. 43.4]. Do you expect this to somehow tapper off and stay stable at 100MBits for the foreseeable future with no future applications requiring anything more?

Yes. Data requirements probably refer to the amount a person downloads (in other words, the % of data intensive, rich content, as pages get more graphical and interactive).

I could show you an Indeo or Cinepak video from 15 years ago that had the same overall bitrate as a x264/AAC movie from today. One would be 320x240x15 fps and look like utter shit, the other would be 1280x720x24 fps (12x the pixels) and be hard to distinguish from a BluRay. This shows that data requirements are not linear, and digital content packs more into less every year.

Most of the developed world is not over 100mbit for the general public and won’t be going there anytime soon. This is therefore the target of web developers and bitrates for streaming multimedia.

As stated, if you’re a power user like you or me, you can never have enough bandwidth, progressing power, graphics cards, size of monitor – whatever. But we’re talking about hooking that up to every single premises in the country, at incredible expense, for the tiny proportion of people with a real practical use (use, not requirement) for that kind of bandwidth. And that’s just not a responsible use of public money.

Dilandach said :

So you’ve stuck with your 56k modem out of principle that technology requirements never change?

There will always be TV delivered via over the air, satellite and subscriber cable. To suggest a 1gbit requirement any time in the future for broadband is to ignore the broadband the rest of the developed world has, and be premised on the false belief the web or content delivery is going to be designed to be undeliverable to the vast majority of worldwide broadband users, except he few with 1gbit capable connections. That’s just not the way technology or the market works.

I look at what is deliverable now with with the best ADSL2+ and scale that up 4x and surmise it’s surplus to the the requirements of the vast majority of even the digital generation. I use gigabit at home, and it’s for moving large volumes of content around between computers. It has very other practical use over 100mbit. There’s no content I can stream that’s going anywhere near that, and codecs can compress more with higher quality every year. Albo talking about the NBN and medical records just makes him sound like a moron. He seems to be stuck in the mindset that we click “send” on an email and watch the bars go across for 5 minutes like in the dialup days. What you can do with bandwidth increases rapidly obviously over dialup up to about 10-50mbits, and then tapers off, beyond requirements for moving large amounts of data around. Web browsing is all about latency. The buffering/streaming issue people have while browsing various websites is almost always at the remote end, not the local end.

50-100mbit, at around of 25-33% of the cost, and arriving much sooner? I prefer that to waiting a decade for a 1gbit connection I could probably not afford anyway. As stated many times, it’s not about not WANTING the superior product. It’s about not wasting time and money and going to great effort to create a product vastly surplus to requirements.

justin heywood said :

Dilandach, 2 minutes on Google tells me that someone named Dilandach is a desperately keen online gamer.

See, that’s the thing about assumptions. They just end up leaving you looking like an ass. If you had spent probably 2 minutes and 10 seconds whilst you were channelling Ms Marple, you would have seen that this ‘desperately’ keen gamer hasn’t played in quite a number of years and the eveonline account was given away around the same time too, if its still active then good for the guy who bought it off me.

I honestly don’t have time for it now days nor the motivation.

justin heywood said :

Which is fine, I play online too. But I don’t expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for improving my gaming experience.

See, this is where you show both your ignorance and projection of your own selfishness but we’ll put that to the side for the moment and look at the funding.

The fact is that the NBN wasn’t funded by taxpayers. It is funded by government issued bonds, taxpayer funds don’t have anything to do with it. Funding is by those using the service whether they are taxpayers or not. The difference is that after it has been completed the return on investment (@ 7%) is higher than what the bonds were initially issued for. Go check out the KPMG report on it if you’re not too lazy.

Its a pity that you’re unable to grasp altruistic motivations but can only manage ‘why should everyone get it?’. Saying that all its good for is gaming and piracy is quite immature, ignorant and short sighted. The current infrastructure is already in excess of what gaming requires and the advent of streaming services is already making the predicted inroads to reduce piracy[1].

In your ignorant shortsightedness you completely fail to realise that data requirements increase 30% p.a[Tucker, 2010, pg. 43.4]. Do you expect this to somehow tapper off and stay stable at 100MBits for the foreseeable future with no future applications requiring anything more? The difference is between copper that will have to be maintained (That is something that your precious taxes will have to pay for, endlessly and often) and fibre is that to upgrade speeds with fibre just requires upgrading the endpoints. No requirement to re-lay new or additional cables.The theoretical limit of what can be pushed over fibre is still being researched and has been shown to be well in excess of predicted future requirements (73.7 Terabits)[3].

Then there’s the foreign investment side, we’ve already had for example Victoria (a coalition state government) crowing about having investors lured by the prospects that the NBN allows for. [4] Strangely enough you won’t get a single coalition member that has NBN being deployed in their electorate calling for it to be canned or ripped out of the ground. I wonder why that is?

My recommendation is to actually look into what the NBN delivers and can potentially deliver rather than listening to what people who barely know how to email say about it. Alan Jones and his handbag swinging ways should be the last thing that you should take advice from in technology matters. Same goes for any other politician that tries to sell the fraud that is FTTN.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10187400/Spotify-and-Netflix-curb-music-and-film-piracy.html
[2] http://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/rtucker/publications/files/tja10043.pdf
[3] http://www.extremetech.com/computing/151498-researchers-create-fiber-network-that-operates-at-99-7-speed-of-light-smashes-speed-and-latency-records
[4] http://www.invest.vic.gov.au/20110119-national-broadband-network-draws-international-companies-to-melbourne

justin heywood said :

I don’t expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for improving my gaming experience.

Another commenter ignorant of NBNCo’s financial model.

The flip side to your comment is that seem to think that some uses of bandwidth are worthwhile but others are not, but the market doesn’t care about your opinion: Today we need five times the bandwidth we had 8 years ago because we download 5 times as much, and the speeds we get today do not rank us very high internationally because mostly we’re still on 2005 technology.

In 8 years we will need about five times the bandwidth to download five times as much as today at the same speeds – which is all that the Lib’s FTTN plan is offering us. FttN will not have us any better off in 2021 than we are now – but we will have spent $30b building with it instead of $40b with FTTH, and we’ll need to build an FTTH network more urgently than ever. Will we then be able to build FTTH for less than $10b + interest? Even if we could, would it make up for the less tangible benefits realised from the better network in the meantime?

Don’t get me wrong – VDSL2 has it’s place. It is great in MDUs (apartments) today: Short lines, well-protected copper = fast and reliable connection. There’s probably an MDF ready for it to be installed into. You still need fibre down the street though, and the extra speed from the short lines doesn’t buy you more than a few years’ extra usable life.

Meanwhile, there are already hundreds of thousands of people who already have FTTH from both NBNCo *and* providers like TransACT, OptiComm and Telstra. GPON isn’t the “gold-plated” option the Libs make it out to be. It’s the best option for NBNCo.

Grrrr said :

Darkfalz said :

The “Whoa, NBN!” speeds of 100/40 described in this thread are what vDSL2 are capable of.

VDSL2 is capable of up to 200mbit on a very short line, with the 30a profile. (Hell, G.Fast will one day offer 600mbit!) The problem is the length of the line. Offering Australians an *average* of 50/5 mbit on VDSL2 – even with vectoring – means short lines, means rolling out quite a lot of nodes. A lot of nodes = a lot of expense. Then speeds will never get much faster than day 1.

k007 – Let’s talk about TransACT’s value for money, shall we? TransACT spent about $200m to date on their networks, with VDSL premises passed = 60000. Scale that nationally and how much is it? Why, about what NBNCo are spending on FTTH! TransACT charged their customers like a wounded bull, were unprofitable, and finally they sold to iiNet for a third of their build cost. TransACT cost their shareholders a LOT of money.

OTOH, the NBN (GPON) is capable of 1000/1000 *today.* It’s only an administrative/sales decision that restricts the fastest plan to 100/40 currently. Note that NBNCo plan to offer 1000/400 in 3 months. An in-place upgrade will see the network capable of 10Gig at relatively low cost.

If we roll out FttN nationally, the projected growth in demand for bandwidth will see it needing replacement with Fibre in about 2020 – making it a waste of time and money.

I’m sure this, the 578th time you’ve explained it to him, will finally get through to him.

Let’s just put it into simple terms, for those among us who don’t actually understand telecomms:

Copper is limited. It has been re-purposed over and over again and they are running out of ideas for getting any more out of it.
The NBN is only something most other civilised countries have already done.
The NBN is cheap.
The NBN is an excellent plan, progressing ahead of schedule, and customer expectations have already been over-delivered.
The taxpayer does not pay any bill for the NBN.

Additionally, please believe the experts when they tell you: The coalition plan for the NBN is destructive, will lead to massive delays, is very poorly formulated, and will lead to massive cost blowouts, eventually costing more than the NBN, with far poorer delivery of results.

If there’s one thing that will make me ensure my vote doe snot preference the Libs, it’s their completely retarded threats against the NBN, one of the best infrastructure projects this country has seen.

Dilandach said :

So you’ve stuck with your 56k modem out of principle that technology requirements never change?

Dilandach, 2 minutes on Google tells me that someone named Dilandach is a desperately keen online gamer.

Which is fine, I play online too. But I don’t expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for improving my gaming experience.

Darkfalz said :

The “Whoa, NBN!” speeds of 100/40 described in this thread are what vDSL2 are capable of.

VDSL2 is capable of up to 200mbit on a very short line, with the 30a profile. (Hell, G.Fast will one day offer 600mbit!) The problem is the length of the line. Offering Australians an *average* of 50/5 mbit on VDSL2 – even with vectoring – means short lines, means rolling out quite a lot of nodes. A lot of nodes = a lot of expense. Then speeds will never get much faster than day 1.

k007 – Let’s talk about TransACT’s value for money, shall we? TransACT spent about $200m to date on their networks, with VDSL premises passed = 60000. Scale that nationally and how much is it? Why, about what NBNCo are spending on FTTH! TransACT charged their customers like a wounded bull, were unprofitable, and finally they sold to iiNet for a third of their build cost. TransACT cost their shareholders a LOT of money.

OTOH, the NBN (GPON) is capable of 1000/1000 *today.* It’s only an administrative/sales decision that restricts the fastest plan to 100/40 currently. Note that NBNCo plan to offer 1000/400 in 3 months. An in-place upgrade will see the network capable of 10Gig at relatively low cost.

If we roll out FttN nationally, the projected growth in demand for bandwidth will see it needing replacement with Fibre in about 2020 – making it a waste of time and money.

Darkfalz said :

The “Whoa, NBN!” speeds of 100/40 described in this thread are what vDSL2 are capable of. This would be a 4x increase on the best quality ADSL2+ possible now, which most people are happy with. I know there are a section of people who dream of a Netherlands style 100mbit+ file sharing network Australia wide, but we shouldn’t spend $50+ billion extra just for their piracy dreams. They’d baulk too at the price of a 1000mbit connection with a reasonable data limit (2TB or so p/mo). Technological illiterate buffoon Albanese is telling us that the NBN will enable sick oldies to upload their medical records, and speak their nurse, as though that requires a 1gbit/sec connection or is not possible now (or that, frankly, this is what aged care is all about). He also claimed because SmartTVs come with a 100mbit ethernet socket, they have bandwidth “requirements” (100mbit) beyond what current broadband and proposed vDSL could deliver. A high quality, HD 720p x264 stream averages about 6-7 mbits/second. At least Conroy had some clue what he was talking about. vDSL2 by 2016 without having to dig up everyone’s front yard, honestly if you aren’t happy enough with that, and you’re too tight to pay for a FTTP connection of your own, I don’t know what to say.

So you’ve stuck with your 56k modem out of principle that technology requirements never change?

Darkfalz said :

The “Whoa, NBN!” speeds of 100/40 described in this thread are what vDSL2 are capable of. This would be a 4x increase on the best quality ADSL2+ possible now, which most people are happy with. I know there are a section of people who dream of a Netherlands style 100mbit+ file sharing network Australia wide, but we shouldn’t spend $50+ billion extra just for their piracy dreams. They’d baulk too at the price of a 1000mbit connection with a reasonable data limit (2TB or so p/mo). Technological illiterate buffoon Albanese is telling us that the NBN will enable sick oldies to upload their medical records, and speak their nurse, as though that requires a 1gbit/sec connection or is not possible now (or that, frankly, this is what aged care is all about). He also claimed because SmartTVs come with a 100mbit ethernet socket, they have bandwidth “requirements” (100mbit) beyond what current broadband and proposed vDSL could deliver. A high quality, HD 720p x264 stream averages about 6-7 mbits/second. At least Conroy had some clue what he was talking about. vDSL2 by 2016 without having to dig up everyone’s front yard, honestly if you aren’t happy enough with that, and you’re too tight to pay for a FTTP connection of your own, I don’t know what to say.

The words of your stories echo down the rest-home halls,
‘Cause no-one at all, can stand the sound of Grandpa.

The “Whoa, NBN!” speeds of 100/40 described in this thread are what vDSL2 are capable of. This would be a 4x increase on the best quality ADSL2+ possible now, which most people are happy with. I know there are a section of people who dream of a Netherlands style 100mbit+ file sharing network Australia wide, but we shouldn’t spend $50+ billion extra just for their piracy dreams. They’d baulk too at the price of a 1000mbit connection with a reasonable data limit (2TB or so p/mo). Technological illiterate buffoon Albanese is telling us that the NBN will enable sick oldies to upload their medical records, and speak their nurse, as though that requires a 1gbit/sec connection or is not possible now (or that, frankly, this is what aged care is all about). He also claimed because SmartTVs come with a 100mbit ethernet socket, they have bandwidth “requirements” (100mbit) beyond what current broadband and proposed vDSL could deliver. A high quality, HD 720p x264 stream averages about 6-7 mbits/second. At least Conroy had some clue what he was talking about. vDSL2 by 2016 without having to dig up everyone’s front yard, honestly if you aren’t happy enough with that, and you’re too tight to pay for a FTTP connection of your own, I don’t know what to say.

The other problem i have with the FTTN is that in 10 years time it won’t be sufficient and we’ll waste time and money arguing about this again. Remember it was only a bit over 10 years ago when ADSL started to take over from modems and in that time we’ve added ADSL2 to try and get more out of the copper.

The coalition can say they guarantee a minimum of 25 Mbps with no mention of upload speeds, but they haven’t even detailed the process or at least what will happen if someone falls below that threshold. How much will it then cost to get a run of copper replaced with copper and or fibre?

Also its a hindrance to companies offering services, when they may need a guaranteed x MBps for their service to work properly, ie security monitoring. yet some people may not be able to have that service because they can’t get any more bandwidth, yet under FTTP, the option is there for a household to pay for more bandwith. Under FTTN is much harder and more expensive to provide gains in bandwidth.

There are also features of the NBN that the coalition hasn’t even talked about. with the NBN you don’t actually need to have the internet connected as such to get a service. Right now, yes you probably do, but the termination box/NTU has outlets such that a company providing a service can use a port to connect a service, independant of having an ISP connection for the internet.

As many have said the costs are the only thing really being argued and its whether we build it right the first time now (hmm GDE anyone??) or we just improve it incrementally over time when we have to and in the mean time hamper progress and or get to the situation we are in now, where we have to wait for the FTTP to be completed.

The coalition for a party all in favour of letting business do it all, it interesting they want to fund the fixing phone black spots yesterday. Which is what the NBN is also doing, ensuring there are no network black spots.

I am completely agree with not wasting money, but it seems the coalition definition is different to mine.

“- Under NBN modelling, no more than 7% of the NBN will be provided by satellite. The suggestion that towns “in spitting distance of Canberra” will miss out on fibre to the home is flat out lie”

Wrong again. The rollout hasn’t been announced yet for much of this area, and a) who mentioned towns and b) define “town”?

“people don’t use video conferencing because it’s ineffective and the current technology doesn’t support it adequately. Do you think private or public sector enjoy spending money unnecessarily just because “people don’t like it” (video conferencing).”

Yes. Public Sector especially, as it’s not their money, Just like they won’t fly with Virgin, or use non-refundable fares, because it’s just a teeny bit inconvenient.

“And dickfungus – you are being “bullied” in this thread because to assess fact, I can’t think of any other recent example of a policy debate where one is so clearly right and the other is so clearly wrong. Do you not understand that NBN will be faster, and over the next 20 years will be LESS expensive than the Coalitions plan?”

Please refer us to the cost-benefit analysis that demonstrates this. Oh that’s right, there isn’t one. Please don’t spend 37 billion of tax payer’s money on a feelgood guess.

“And by the way, IrishPete – have you bothered checking the proposed design of the high speed rail network? It doesn’t stop in regional centres. It bypasses them to get to capital cities. It actually ceases to be “high speed” if it’s stopping in every town along the way ;)”

It creates the opportunity for fast or very fast trains to regional centres. As I’ve said before, the studies done on VFT seem designed to kill it, so maybe this is another example. And it is being “studied” to death, unlike the NBN.

http://www.infrastructure.gov.au/rail/trains/high_speed/index.aspx “The preferred alignment includes four capital city stations, four city-peripheral stations, and stations at the Gold Coast, Casino, Grafton, Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Taree, Newcastle, the Central Coast, Southern Highlands, Wagga Wagga, Albury-Wodonga and Shepparton” Looks to me like a lot of the county will be within an easy drive of a VFT railway station.

IrishPete said :

c_c™ said :

Rail network?

A rail network will only go to major centres, so doesn’t help regional people. It has massive capital and ongoing costs, but will be continually undermined by online technologies making the need for business travel decrease.

One day no doubt it will happen, but gosh these arguments go no where.

err, wrong. a rail network can’t get to major centres without passing through regional centres (unlike airplanes which fly over them).

Videoconferencing has been available for decades. and there’s a reason why it hasn’t been taken up. People don’t like it.

In some regional and most/all remote areas, NBN will be via satellite, with a fraction of a second delay (latency), which will make it useless for many purposes (e.g. some telehealth, gaming), and almost useless for others (including videoconferencing, unless people get a whole lot better at compensating for the delay, and that could a generation or two ).

There are many good arguments for the NBN, but you are spouting ALP propaganda if you think that the regions will be equal to the major cities. There will be places within spitting distance of Canberra which will probably end up on satellite NBN because of topography.

Of course if your idea of a regional centre is Newcastle or Wollongong, then you may be right.

But the VFT has had cost-benefit anaylses done, which if memory serves me correct the NBN hasn’t, so I can confidently say the VFT would pay for itself, whereas I don’t know if the NBN ever will.

IP

k007 said :

I agree with dungfungus, why are we bankrupting the nation for non-essential services?

And the NBN cheer squad have got their facts wrong with FTTN. I’ve been using FTTN (VDSL2) for the past two years and get 60Mb/s down and 17Mb/s up (which means I get my 2gb tv show in 6 minutes, for the mathematically challenged). Speed is constant too, so don’t try that crap re congestion / peak hours (which you’re still going to see with NBN ISPs, depending on their backhaul).

Reverend Tony’s band of monks really have taken his incessant lies and bullshit to heart, haven’t they?

– Under NBN modelling, no more than 7% of the NBN will be provided by satellite. The suggestion that towns “in spitting distance of Canberra” will miss out on fibre to the home is flat out lie.

– The suggestion that the NBN is “bankrupting the country” is not only a flat out lie, but it’s a level of hyperbole beyond ridiculous. Our economy remains the envy of the GFC-affected world, and the notion that our debt is spiraling out of control is another conservative lie being perpetuated by Tony and co (unfortunately one that too many Australians are accepting). Compare the expenditure of Howard and Costello to the current level of debt and expenditure and get back to me, ok? I suspect a lot of us know what that comparison shows. The fact that Howard and Costello sold every public asset they could get their hands on doesn’t justify their economic management, and it’s why the legacy of that Government has aged so poorly.

– people don’t use video conferencing because it’s ineffective and the current technology doesn’t support it adequately. Do you think private or public sector enjoy spending money unnecessarily just because “people don’t like it” (video conferencing). This is yet another lie from Reverend Tony’s cult like followers.

– The thing about VDSL 2 is that it DOES use government services – it uses an outdated copper network that needs replacing because it has already outlived it’s usefulness in terms of maintenance and technology. It’s not your ISP paying for the copper. It’s not your ISP paying for the network maintenance. And it’s not your ISP paying for the fibre optics that replaces the buggered copper network and will increase your speed further. And in any case, it’s not about you mate. Most of the country can’t get speeds like that, and this project is largely about providing services to rural and regional Australia who are stuck in the late-1990s internet age. They pay tax too, they deserve to be considered along with the rest of us. It’s also worth noting that the Government tried to get the private sector to build the NBN – the Government changed tack because the people that the NBN is being built for (regional Australia) are the same people that the major telcos weren’t interested in servicing because it wouldn’t make them enough money. I can handle most conservatives – my best friend in life is a conservative. But I detest the “it doesn’t benefit me directly, so we shouldn’t do it” conservative that you’ve shown yourself to be.

And dickfungus – you are being “bullied” in this thread because to assess fact, I can’t think of any other recent example of a policy debate where one is so clearly right and the other is so clearly wrong. Do you not understand that NBN will be faster, and over the next 20 years will be LESS expensive than the Coalitions plan?

These comments aren’t a right vs left debate – it’s actually much clearer than that, it’s a right vs wrong debate. And frankly, you couldn’t be more wrong.

And the fact that you won’t even consider reason is what makes it worse.

If you aren’t a troll or a parody, it only leaves “brain washed” or “pathological liar” because you don’t only make stuff up on NBN threads, or even on political themed threads – you do it EVERYWHERE.

Need I remind you of the 80% of French students are Muslim bullshit?

And by the way, IrishPete – have you bothered checking the proposed design of the high speed rail network? It doesn’t stop in regional centres. It bypasses them to get to capital cities. It actually ceases to be “high speed” if it’s stopping in every town along the way 😉

Honest to God, I don’t know how the Liberal/National Coalition has lasted so long. The vast majority of Canberra-based and Sydney-based conservatives don’t care about regional Australia. By and large, they see regional Australia as backwards hicks for not having moved to the affluence of the cities, and they largely ignore the immense contribution that regional Australia makes to our country.

grrr @ quoting.

dungfungus said :

I don’t call your opinions lies so don’t refer to mine as such.

You are not putting forward opinion. You are making statements of fact that are incorrect – IE, you are lying. Learn the difference between subjective and objective statements.

OpenYourMind said :

Can you give some concrete examples of where the nation benefits from this massive infrastructure investment in FTTH? Other than delivering video content (in one form or another) what can FTTH do that copper or wireless can’t? [/quote>

Firstly, wireless can’t, never could, never will be suitable for provision of most of our downloads. It costs ~100 times more to provide equivalent bandwidth on wireless than wired. Any mention of it in NBN debate is a furphy. It is a complementary technology providing the mobility that people are willing to pay extra for, especially those who don’t use much bandwidth.

Secondly, you can demand people tell you what they want to use the bandwidth for, but it’s none of your business and from a commercials point of view the application is irrelevant. The facts of the matter are that Australians are downloading an average of over 30GB per month on each fixed connection. That’s up from about 6GB in 2005. By the 2021 (IE, the time the NBN is finished) it’s likely to be closer to 200GB.

Average bandwidths need to increase with average downloads. VDSL speeds depend greatly on line length – shorter = faster. Shorter = more expensive network build. VDSL cannot compete with FTTH for bandwidth, and within a few years VDSL won’t provide enough. It will take a few years to finish a national VDSL rollout. VDSL is unfeasable.

JC said :

It looks like the NBN version of satellite broadband is both ways. In which case you can double the time delay to 500-600ms round trip of course.

As for windowing basically when you make a connection to a server to download a webpage (for example), what happens is the web server will send a few packets and wait for a response from the web browser. If the time between responses gets too great the web server will slow down the number of packets it sends before each response. This is to cater for high latency links in particular and is called windowing. What it does is gives a more reliable, though slower connection.

Thanks, hence my “half-second” rounding.

It won’t matter for downloading stuff, it’s only live applications that it will affect.I’m a little suspicious that satellite, being cheaper, may end up used in more and more places as time and money run out. I may end up with wireless where I live, but they aren’t telling me yet. Maybe even cable, but I doubt it.

The idea that satellite NBN would replace the copper wire telephone network was a major concern (who wants a half-second delay on every telephone conversation?) but as I mentioned earlier they quietly promised to not switch off the copper for 20 years, perhaps in the hope the problem can be solved in other ways by then (like Oz-wide terrestrial mobile phone coverage).

Retention of the copper network also means that ADSL2, ADSL and even dial-up may remain available if retailers will still provide them (not sure why we would want them, but maybe if someone starts shooting our satellites out of the sky? or can bad weather block satellites?)

IP

c_c™ said :

IrishPete said :

The specialist telling the doctor not to cut that bit, but the doctor not hearing it for 0.3 seconds, literally makes it useless.

Sure thing, whatever you say.

I am glad you now accept the facts. Feel free to continue to support the NBN but make sure you do so based on fact, not fiction.

Have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemedicine and try to work out which services will be viable by satellite NBN and which won’t.

IP

k007 said :

c_c™ said :

The naysayers sounds like a bunch of uninformed, three word loons frankly.

And the NBN cheer squad obviously don’t care about getting value for money. So far all I’ve seen put up as the benefits is faster media downloads, teleconferencing, some intangible bullshit about unknown future inventions, and bragging rights – my connection is faster than yours…

Poppycock. I’ve already pointed out that my NBN connection represents far better value for money. Faster by a country mile, hughely lifted limits, and cheaper to boot.

You seem to disregard teleconferencing. Yet this is already slashing time and taxpayer dollars spent on travel for the public service, and for the many peak bodies that regularly have to meet with the governments of our country. Yet it has only just begun and will become ubiquitous as the NBN spreads. The same applies for telecommuting, which in time will tangibly reduce costs going into office accommodation and transport construction.

As for “my speed is faster than yours” – my speed is exactly the same as every one elses on NBN fibre. And that’s the point. None of this how far are you from the exchange/node/trunk line, oh you’re on the *Crace exchange*, of course it’s slow this is the peak time of night, rubbish. Fibre to the premises will give equitable access to everyone.

If I or you want to move out of town but run a business from home, then we’ll be assured of at the minimum having 25/5 for fixed wireless or 12/1 for satellite. Both far faster than we were able to get in Gungahlin on ADSL. Meaning you can choose to live anywhere. Meaning less pressure on cities for infrastructure development.

I could go on, but your comment reads like someone who doesn’t want to know anyway, because the mantra is fixed in your head and ain’t going anywhere.

The whole spending money issue is more of a political ideology argument than an NBN argument. Personally, I don’t think cutting corporate taxes now or trying to fund a different paternity scheme that really benefits women on higher incomes are high priorities. In fact a decent NBN would allow women to work from home while raising their child. Yes the coalition FTTN plan is probably adequate for many people, but there are so many unknowns in their plan, that its hard to know what we are actually getting. Also while they complain the labor FTTP plan is uncosted, they ignore the facts about how much a FTTP will cost in maintenance and upgrades and have also failed to provide any costings or parameters for doing so.

Oh and the last election all the polls and surveys and even the coalition admit the reason they didn’t win the election was because of the NBN. Its also been the most popular Labor policy among coalition voters, with often 40-50% of coalition voters supporting it, vs the 80% of labor and greens voters. Its a good policy, that is only been ruined by politics, the coalitions policy while better than their last one is still not great. As usual though politics gets in the way of good policies, just to further the individual desire to gain more power.

I’m not confident either party is going to do well the next 3 years, because both have shown they are more worried about playing politics and gaining themselves individual glory and power than actually doing anything of worth for Australia.

JC said :

k007 said :

rosscoact said :

😀 yeah, you can post a speedtest graphic up any time. I’m happy to post an NBN one, just of a comparison

Screenie posted above. Difference is my connection costs the taxpayer zero dollars, the NBN who knows what the final cost will be with these muppets running the show – 40 billion? 80 billion?

I would bet that your connection DID cost the taxpayer money. Afterall who do you think put in the copper supporting your connection? It would have either been Telstra or Transact.

And that is the key NBN isn’t really about ‘providing the internet’, it is all about replacing the underlying infrastructure (the copper wires) which are well and truley past end of life and cannot be upgraded any more to support what ever comes in the future.

There is a building in Canberra which used to be called the Academy of Science. It was built about 50 years ago. It think it is now called the “Shine Dome”. I believe it’s roof is made out of fibre optics. Anyone there who can confirm that?

k007 said :

c_c™ said :

The naysayers sounds like a bunch of uninformed, three word loons frankly.

And the NBN cheer squad obviously don’t care about getting value for money. So far all I’ve seen put up as the benefits is faster media downloads, teleconferencing, some intangible bullshit about unknown future inventions, and bragging rights – my connection is faster than yours…

Gee, that’s harsh. But I support it 100mps.
I noted Rudd fantasising about the NBN revolutionising aged care at home in the debate last night.

k007 said :

rosscoact said :

😀 yeah, you can post a speedtest graphic up any time. I’m happy to post an NBN one, just of a comparison

Screenie posted above. Difference is my connection costs the taxpayer zero dollars, the NBN who knows what the final cost will be with these muppets running the show – 40 billion? 80 billion?

I would bet that your connection DID cost the taxpayer money. Afterall who do you think put in the copper supporting your connection? It would have either been Telstra or Transact.

And that is the key NBN isn’t really about ‘providing the internet’, it is all about replacing the underlying infrastructure (the copper wires) which are well and truley past end of life and cannot be upgraded any more to support what ever comes in the future.

c_c™ said :

The naysayers sounds like a bunch of uninformed, three word loons frankly.

And the NBN cheer squad obviously don’t care about getting value for money. So far all I’ve seen put up as the benefits is faster media downloads, teleconferencing, some intangible bullshit about unknown future inventions, and bragging rights – my connection is faster than yours…

rosscoact said :

😀 yeah, you can post a speedtest graphic up any time. I’m happy to post an NBN one, just of a comparison

Screenie posted above. Difference is my connection costs the taxpayer zero dollars, the NBN who knows what the final cost will be with these muppets running the show – 40 billion? 80 billion?

IrishPete said :

The specialist telling the doctor not to cut that bit, but the doctor not hearing it for 0.3 seconds, literally makes it useless.

Sure thing, whatever you say.

k007 said :

I agree with dungfungus, why are we bankrupting the nation for non-essential services?

Bankrupting? Dude you in Greece and on the wrong forum?

The naysayers sounds like a bunch of uninformed, three word loons frankly.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/2893985072.png

Lyneham

IrishPete said :

Not so sure about this. Initially we were told that satellite NBN would mean our copper wire was disabled, although I understand that with little fanfare they changed their minds and we’ll be keeping the copper wire network for 20 years (did I say we? yes, not far from Canberra, I think it is likely I will be on Satellite NBN). So I don’t know if it’s satellite up and down, or telephone up satellite down.

I don’t know what “TCP windowing adjusted to suit the delay would minimise the effects” means, but unless it is time travel, it won’t work. The worst case scenario is where in regional/remote areas one might want to have a doctor operate with NBN supervision from a specialist in a city. The specialist telling the doctor not to cut that bit, but the doctor not hearing it for 0.3 seconds, literally makes it useless.

Realistically, videoconferencing will also be clumsy with satellite. So it’s great for the cities and big regional centres, not quite so great for the regional/remote areas that end up on satellite NBN.

IP

It looks like the NBN version of satellite broadband is both ways. In which case you can double the time delay to 500-600ms round trip of course.

As for windowing basically when you make a connection to a server to download a webpage (for example), what happens is the web server will send a few packets and wait for a response from the web browser. If the time between responses gets too great the web server will slow down the number of packets it sends before each response. This is to cater for high latency links in particular and is called windowing. What it does is gives a more reliable, though slower connection.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

k007 said :

I agree with dungfungus, why are we bankrupting the nation for non-essential services?

And the NBN cheer squad have got their facts wrong with FTTN. I’ve been using FTTN (VDSL2) for the past two years and get 60Mb/s down and 17Mb/s up (which means I get my 2gb tv show in 6 minutes, for the mathematically challenged). Speed is constant too, so don’t try that crap re congestion / peak hours (which you’re still going to see with NBN ISPs, depending on their backhaul).

Screenshot?

And what suburb?

😀 yeah, you can post a speedtest graphic up any time. I’m happy to post an NBN one, just of a comparison

k007 said :

I agree with dungfungus, why are we bankrupting the nation for non-essential services?

And the NBN cheer squad have got their facts wrong with FTTN. I’ve been using FTTN (VDSL2) for the past two years and get 60Mb/s down and 17Mb/s up (which means I get my 2gb tv show in 6 minutes, for the mathematically challenged). Speed is constant too, so don’t try that crap re congestion / peak hours (which you’re still going to see with NBN ISPs, depending on their backhaul).

Screenshot?

And what suburb?

I agree with dungfungus, why are we bankrupting the nation for non-essential services?

And the NBN cheer squad have got their facts wrong with FTTN. I’ve been using FTTN (VDSL2) for the past two years and get 60Mb/s down and 17Mb/s up (which means I get my 2gb tv show in 6 minutes, for the mathematically challenged). Speed is constant too, so don’t try that crap re congestion / peak hours (which you’re still going to see with NBN ISPs, depending on their backhaul).

JC said :

c_c™ said :

And that half a second latency argument is total bullshit. Living in the 90s still old man.

Agree with most of what you wrote, though the comment above, the poster was referring to internet provided by Satellite, where latency could be an issue. As I understand it satellite broadband is satellite down, phone up, so there will be a one way latency of between 270-300ms, due to the time it takes for the signal to travel to the satellite and back to earth. If both up and down is satellite then double this figure for the round trip delay.

What effect this has is debatable. I would have though with TCP windowing adjusted to suit the delay would minimise the effects.

Not so sure about this. Initially we were told that satellite NBN would mean our copper wire was disabled, although I understand that with little fanfare they changed their minds and we’ll be keeping the copper wire network for 20 years (did I say we? yes, not far from Canberra, I think it is likely I will be on Satellite NBN). So I don’t know if it’s satellite up and down, or telephone up satellite down.

I don’t know what “TCP windowing adjusted to suit the delay would minimise the effects” means, but unless it is time travel, it won’t work. The worst case scenario is where in regional/remote areas one might want to have a doctor operate with NBN supervision from a specialist in a city. The specialist telling the doctor not to cut that bit, but the doctor not hearing it for 0.3 seconds, literally makes it useless.

Realistically, videoconferencing will also be clumsy with satellite. So it’s great for the cities and big regional centres, not quite so great for the regional/remote areas that end up on satellite NBN.

IP

c_c™ said :

You know full well they did a Cost/Benefit on the NBN back when it was announced.

Oops, another porky. See for example here http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/cornered/60832-eagerly-awaiting-a-coalition-nbn-cost-benefit-study

But why let the truth get in the way of an opinion, eh?

IP

c_c™ said :

And that half a second latency argument is total bullshit. Living in the 90s still old man.

err no, it is absolute fact, and the fact that you deny it means I have to treat everything else you have said as likely to be untrue.

IP

NBN kicks ass. Rudd and Abbott are both unpleasant turds in the punchbowl, but seeing as how both parties want to shit on the rights of asylum seekers, it’s the party that will finish the NBN that’s going to get my vote.

dungfungus said :

gungsuperstar said :

dungfungus said :

The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

Oh my God… You continue to be RA’s worst poster with your incessant lies and made up “information”.

My curiosity has gotten the better of me dungfungus. Are you a troll? Are you just extremely committed to your parody? Or are you just a pathological liar? Maybe just an idiot?

I’m sure those who bought the Government bonds that paid for the NBN would be curious to know what they actually bought if the NBN project is unfunded.

Whichever of the above questions is correct, I still don’t think you understand new technology. Saying that FTTN will achieve the same as FTTH for most people is just not right. The maximum speed of “up to” 25mbps will be for a tiny minority of the population whose copper wires are not buggered, and who are fortunate enough to live closest to the ugly green box on every street corner. They haven’t provided anything in terms of upload speeds, which is the biggest reason that the Coalitions plan is a dog.

You must really want to support the coalition to support this dog of a plan. The copper network is buggered. (I live in a 25 year old suburb, and my internet drops whenever it rains). The copper network will cost a fortune to buy back when they are the pinheads that sold it in the first place. And within 10 years, the maintenance costs on copper and nodes will result in FTTH being a FAR superior option.

All the while providing me 100mbps download and 25mpbs upload.

There is no argument that FTTH is better if high speeds are necessary. This doesn’t make it a superior option in the aggregate or in laymens’ terms, “best value for money”.
One thing all you NBN fanatics are overlooking is that at least half of Australia DIDN’T vote for the NBN in the 2007 election. By the 2010 election the Labor government had gone too far in committing future spending on the NBN and the coalition sees the need to rein in the spending and deliver a service that will suit all. Delivering this service will happen a lot quicker under the coalition that it will under Labor and this accelerates cash flow.
As for me being RA’s worst poster, you should be aware that the moderator doesn’t post all my offerings and if I didn’t challenge you all with my intellect who would you bitch about then?
I haven’t seen HenryBG’s name lately. You may have bullied him into submission but am not planning to give it a rest just yet.
A little respect would not go astray either – I don’t call your opinions lies so don’t refer to mine as such.

Thing is, you mostly do post lies. Fact beats opinions. This is undebateable. Peeps give you facts and you ignore them.

FTTN will cost far more in the long run. To upgrade it requires significant works(dig out the copper at a later date), while FTTH will from now on into the foreseeable future need nothing more than a switch of hardware at either end or even something as simple as a firmware update.
FTTN is the best it can be. It can’t be upgraded without doing what the NBN is doing. Why do you support doing a half assed job when you seem so concerned with cost savings?

gungsuperstar said :

dungfungus said :

The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

Oh my God… You continue to be RA’s worst poster with your incessant lies and made up “information”.

My curiosity has gotten the better of me dungfungus. Are you a troll? Are you just extremely committed to your parody? Or are you just a pathological liar? Maybe just an idiot?

I’m sure those who bought the Government bonds that paid for the NBN would be curious to know what they actually bought if the NBN project is unfunded.

Whichever of the above questions is correct, I still don’t think you understand new technology. Saying that FTTN will achieve the same as FTTH for most people is just not right. The maximum speed of “up to” 25mbps will be for a tiny minority of the population whose copper wires are not buggered, and who are fortunate enough to live closest to the ugly green box on every street corner. They haven’t provided anything in terms of upload speeds, which is the biggest reason that the Coalitions plan is a dog.

You must really want to support the coalition to support this dog of a plan. The copper network is buggered. (I live in a 25 year old suburb, and my internet drops whenever it rains). The copper network will cost a fortune to buy back when they are the pinheads that sold it in the first place. And within 10 years, the maintenance costs on copper and nodes will result in FTTH being a FAR superior option.

All the while providing me 100mbps download and 25mpbs upload.

There is no argument that FTTH is better if high speeds are necessary. This doesn’t make it a superior option in the aggregate or in laymens’ terms, “best value for money”.
One thing all you NBN fanatics are overlooking is that at least half of Australia DIDN’T vote for the NBN in the 2007 election. By the 2010 election the Labor government had gone too far in committing future spending on the NBN and the coalition sees the need to rein in the spending and deliver a service that will suit all. Delivering this service will happen a lot quicker under the coalition that it will under Labor and this accelerates cash flow.
As for me being RA’s worst poster, you should be aware that the moderator doesn’t post all my offerings and if I didn’t challenge you all with my intellect who would you bitch about then?
I haven’t seen HenryBG’s name lately. You may have bullied him into submission but am not planning to give it a rest just yet.
A little respect would not go astray either – I don’t call your opinions lies so don’t refer to mine as such.

c_c™ said :

And that half a second latency argument is total bullshit. Living in the 90s still old man.

Agree with most of what you wrote, though the comment above, the poster was referring to internet provided by Satellite, where latency could be an issue. As I understand it satellite broadband is satellite down, phone up, so there will be a one way latency of between 270-300ms, due to the time it takes for the signal to travel to the satellite and back to earth. If both up and down is satellite then double this figure for the round trip delay.

What effect this has is debatable. I would have though with TCP windowing adjusted to suit the delay would minimise the effects.

dungfungus said :

As long as China is willing to lend money to Australia your Labor Government can fund anything. Imagine if the NBN wasn’t kept “off balance sheet”? For the Labor Governmnet to justify this by calling the NBN “an investment” really insults Australian’s intelligence.
By the time the NBN is completed half the core customer base will have moved on to mobile; I mean just look how many have abandoned their fixed line home phones already. These people will not be receptive to being connected up again especially when they discover the cost and the ongoing cost of powering it themselves as fibre optic does not carry electricty as copper does. What about the need to have a back-up battery? This is real last century stuff and the cost to the environment will be enourmous when millions of batteries have to be replaced. I live in an area where only ADSL2 is available. All my neighbours are totally happy with the level of service it provides and their are quite a few home businesses here to. Remember that not everyone in Canberra has a home based internet based business either.
The coalition’s plan as I understand it is to bring the fibre optic to the node and then provide either wireless from the node at a higher speed than ADSL2 or connect fibre to the houses that think they need it (at their cost). I am not really interested in the technical aspects but I am concerned about the cost.

Fark me you must be Alan Jones, though must admit I thought he was too stupid to even use the internet.

I find it amusing that you are saying that the Labor NBN is so last century but are still pushing the Libs fibre to the node model and also saying that people are going wireless anyway. Common put your foot in one camp, having a bet each way just isn’t right. Never mind of course that fibre to the house is putting in infrastructure that will last for years and can be upgraded. Copper of course has come to the end of it’s useful life and no company is investing in making equipment to improve it any.

Oh as for your comments about power with the fibre to the home model, you are most correct it does need power and yes there is a battery back-up, which might I add only powers the fibre and the phone port. But you may also want to know that even with ADSL (and the Libs Fraudband) you still need to provide power for your modem. The only thing driven off the copper is the phone signal. So pretty piss poor argument against the current NBN model I am afraid.

dungfungus said :

rosscoact said :

Geebers, it’s not hard. Here’s a hypothetical.

Just imagine that you Dungers are sitting in your little bedsit. You cannot get out the door because of your lifestyle issues, enough said.

You need constant monitoring because of your complex medical needs.

Pre-NBN the answer is to put you in a nursing home or hospital at enormous expense to the taxpayer. Post NBN your health and compliance issues ie you are taking your meds, are monitored, thus saving the taxpayer thousands of dollars, and making your life much more comfortable.

Better still, you don’t have to leave your hovel and put others at risk because of your agoraphobia and frequent violent tourettes episodes. Even when your scrotal ulcers start suppurating, you can use the ipad as the most disgusting camera in the history of medical film and show the festering cankers to a remote GP who can prescribe medication without needing to make a house visit.

A team of medical specialists can consult via video conferencing with real time visuals of your chancroids again, giving you and the taxpayer better outcomes. They may of course upload it to youtube but in your condition thats the least of your worries.

When you become a university required course on incurable degenerative skin diseases that too can be delivered to campus world wide.

All of this is not possible without the NBN.

Is that clearer now?

The only thing that is clearer is that you have no knowledge of the requirements of high dependency aged care people. You are in for a future shock my friend.

In the hypothetical you are a pox-ridden, chronically, obese shut-in – I didn’t say you were old. Do try to keep up.

IrishPete said :

c_c™ said :

Rail network?

A rail network will only go to major centres, so doesn’t help regional people. It has massive capital and ongoing costs, but will be continually undermined by online technologies making the need for business travel decrease.

One day no doubt it will happen, but gosh these arguments go no where.

err, wrong. a rail network can’t get to major centres without passing through regional centres (unlike airplanes which fly over them).

Videoconferencing has been available for decades. and there’s a reason why it hasn’t been taken up. People don’t like it.

In some regional and most/all remote areas, NBN will be via satellite, with a fraction of a second delay (latency), which will make it useless for many purposes (e.g. some telehealth, gaming), and almost useless for others (including videoconferencing, unless people get a whole lot better at compensating for the delay, and that could a generation or two ).

There are many good arguments for the NBN, but you are spouting ALP propaganda if you think that the regions will be equal to the major cities. There will be places within spitting distance of Canberra which will probably end up on satellite NBN because of topography.

Of course if your idea of a regional centre is Newcastle or Wollongong, then you may be right.

But the VFT has had cost-benefit anaylses done, which if memory serves me correct the NBN hasn’t, so I can confidently say the VFT would pay for itself, whereas I don’t know if the NBN ever will.

IP

Stop making stuff up.

You know full well they did a Cost/Benefit on the NBN back when it was announced.

And you know full well that high speed rail as envisaged in Australia is an inter-capital service.

Will it go to Batemans Bay, to Dubbo, to Broken Hill, Parkes, Young, Wagga. Nope. And those are just the regional centres I can think of with airports.

If you live in those areas, and want to benefit from high speed rail, it’s on a traditional CountryLink train or bus to your nearest capital or intermediate stop.

On the other hand, the NBN goes right to where they live.

And that half a second latency argument is total bullshit. Living in the 90s still old man.

c_c™ said :

Rail network?

A rail network will only go to major centres, so doesn’t help regional people. It has massive capital and ongoing costs, but will be continually undermined by online technologies making the need for business travel decrease.

One day no doubt it will happen, but gosh these arguments go no where.

err, wrong. a rail network can’t get to major centres without passing through regional centres (unlike airplanes which fly over them).

Videoconferencing has been available for decades. and there’s a reason why it hasn’t been taken up. People don’t like it.

In some regional and most/all remote areas, NBN will be via satellite, with a fraction of a second delay (latency), which will make it useless for many purposes (e.g. some telehealth, gaming), and almost useless for others (including videoconferencing, unless people get a whole lot better at compensating for the delay, and that could a generation or two ).

There are many good arguments for the NBN, but you are spouting ALP propaganda if you think that the regions will be equal to the major cities. There will be places within spitting distance of Canberra which will probably end up on satellite NBN because of topography.

Of course if your idea of a regional centre is Newcastle or Wollongong, then you may be right.

But the VFT has had cost-benefit anaylses done, which if memory serves me correct the NBN hasn’t, so I can confidently say the VFT would pay for itself, whereas I don’t know if the NBN ever will.

IP

IrishPete said :

First I will confess I haven;t read the first 67 posts on this issue.

But surely no-one is arguing that the NBN is unnecessary, or won’t be a valuable resource once finished in either ALP or Liberal/National form?

Just that there is a reasonable argument to be had that the money might have been better spent in other ways?

A national high speed train network might have been an alternative. Every billion of taxpayer funds spent on one project is funds that are not available for something else.

NBN could perhaps have been left to the market to provide, but a train network never will be provided by the private sector – never has been in any country I can think of, whereas TransACT installed a fibre network, and Google is rolling out faster than NBN speeds in some USA cities.

IP

Rail network?

A rail network will only go to major centres, so doesn’t help regional people. It has massive capital and ongoing costs, but will be continually undermined by online technologies making the need for business travel decrease.

One day no doubt it will happen, but gosh these arguments go no where.

dungfungus said :

The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

Oh my God… You continue to be RA’s worst poster with your incessant lies and made up “information”.

My curiosity has gotten the better of me dungfungus. Are you a troll? Are you just extremely committed to your parody? Or are you just a pathological liar? Maybe just an idiot?

I’m sure those who bought the Government bonds that paid for the NBN would be curious to know what they actually bought if the NBN project is unfunded.

Whichever of the above questions is correct, I still don’t think you understand new technology. Saying that FTTN will achieve the same as FTTH for most people is just not right. The maximum speed of “up to” 25mbps will be for a tiny minority of the population whose copper wires are not buggered, and who are fortunate enough to live closest to the ugly green box on every street corner. They haven’t provided anything in terms of upload speeds, which is the biggest reason that the Coalitions plan is a dog.

You must really want to support the coalition to support this dog of a plan. The copper network is buggered. (I live in a 25 year old suburb, and my internet drops whenever it rains). The copper network will cost a fortune to buy back when they are the pinheads that sold it in the first place. And within 10 years, the maintenance costs on copper and nodes will result in FTTH being a FAR superior option.

All the while providing me 100mbps download and 25mpbs upload.

JC said :

dungfungus said :

The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

Pure lie. The NBN has been costed and is funded, I suggest you look up the funding model.

Now as for your argument that if one wants FTTH they should pay for the privilege, surely using the same reasoning people should be paying for their individual connection upfront to FTTN as well. I mean to say listening to you, you are saying that the copper ADSL network is more than suitable, so why should we have to pay to upgrade to FTTN?

Also can you explain why the coalition did a back flip in regards to broadband? Originally they were going around saying any wired solution was a waste of money and last century and that wireless was the way to go, now they are saying FTTN is needed. Personally I wouldn’t trust that any of them have a bloody clue in this regards.

PS the only person that FTTN suits is Ruper Murdoch. FTTN more or less removes any threat of competition to his Foxtel empire. (something I have been saying since the day fraudband was annouced).

As long as China is willing to lend money to Australia your Labor Government can fund anything. Imagine if the NBN wasn’t kept “off balance sheet”? For the Labor Governmnet to justify this by calling the NBN “an investment” really insults Australian’s intelligence.
By the time the NBN is completed half the core customer base will have moved on to mobile; I mean just look how many have abandoned their fixed line home phones already. These people will not be receptive to being connected up again especially when they discover the cost and the ongoing cost of powering it themselves as fibre optic does not carry electricty as copper does. What about the need to have a back-up battery? This is real last century stuff and the cost to the environment will be enourmous when millions of batteries have to be replaced. I live in an area where only ADSL2 is available. All my neighbours are totally happy with the level of service it provides and their are quite a few home businesses here to. Remember that not everyone in Canberra has a home based internet based business either.
The coalition’s plan as I understand it is to bring the fibre optic to the node and then provide either wireless from the node at a higher speed than ADSL2 or connect fibre to the houses that think they need it (at their cost). I am not really interested in the technical aspects but I am concerned about the cost.

dungfungus said :

The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

Pure lie. The NBN has been costed and is funded, I suggest you look up the funding model.

Now as for your argument that if one wants FTTH they should pay for the privilege, surely using the same reasoning people should be paying for their individual connection upfront to FTTN as well. I mean to say listening to you, you are saying that the copper ADSL network is more than suitable, so why should we have to pay to upgrade to FTTN?

Also can you explain why the coalition did a back flip in regards to broadband? Originally they were going around saying any wired solution was a waste of money and last century and that wireless was the way to go, now they are saying FTTN is needed. Personally I wouldn’t trust that any of them have a bloody clue in this regards.

PS the only person that FTTN suits is Ruper Murdoch. FTTN more or less removes any threat of competition to his Foxtel empire. (something I have been saying since the day fraudband was annouced).

dungfungus said :

A lot of railroad networks were privately owned last century,especially in the UK and USA.
When they started to go broke the governments acquired them (like they did with General Motors during the recent GFC) because they were essential services. Rail used for public transport will only make money when operated privately if the government subsidises it (same as the wind farms).
TransACT indeed installed a fibre network but they lost over $250 million in the process.
The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

You should see my connection to the node – outside my house it is literally exposed wires covered by what looks like an upturned small plastic bucket, taped to a power pole with electrical tape. Telstra must be so proud of themselves.

I think the most recent VFT study shows it as being commercially viable, and frankly I think it was written to bury the idea – inflated cost estimates, deflated income estimates. Pitching the rail fares at current levels isn’t necessary – $40 each way for Economy, under $60 for First Class – people will pay more for a better service.

IP

IrishPete said :

First I will confess I haven;t read the first 67 posts on this issue.

But surely no-one is arguing that the NBN is unnecessary, or won’t be a valuable resource once finished in either ALP or Liberal/National form?

Just that there is a reasonable argument to be had that the money might have been better spent in other ways?

A national high speed train network might have been an alternative. Every billion of taxpayer funds spent on one project is funds that are not available for something else.

NBN could perhaps have been left to the market to provide, but a train network never will be provided by the private sector – never has been in any country I can think of, whereas TransACT installed a fibre network, and Google is rolling out faster than NBN speeds in some USA cities.

IP

A lot of railroad networks were privately owned last century,especially in the UK and USA.
When they started to go broke the governments acquired them (like they did with General Motors during the recent GFC) because they were essential services. Rail used for public transport will only make money when operated privately if the government subsidises it (same as the wind farms).
TransACT indeed installed a fibre network but they lost over $250 million in the process.
The NBN is still uncosted and unfunded. It will never make money. The people who support it in its current form should learn to compromise and accept that the FTTN option suits most of the people. If any individual insists on FTTH well they can still get it connected on a user pays basis. That way, everyone will be happy.

First I will confess I haven;t read the first 67 posts on this issue.

But surely no-one is arguing that the NBN is unnecessary, or won’t be a valuable resource once finished in either ALP or Liberal/National form?

Just that there is a reasonable argument to be had that the money might have been better spent in other ways?

A national high speed train network might have been an alternative. Every billion of taxpayer funds spent on one project is funds that are not available for something else.

NBN could perhaps have been left to the market to provide, but a train network never will be provided by the private sector – never has been in any country I can think of, whereas TransACT installed a fibre network, and Google is rolling out faster than NBN speeds in some USA cities.

IP

rosscoact said :

Geebers, it’s not hard. Here’s a hypothetical.

Just imagine that you Dungers are sitting in your little bedsit. You cannot get out the door because of your lifestyle issues, enough said.

You need constant monitoring because of your complex medical needs.

Pre-NBN the answer is to put you in a nursing home or hospital at enormous expense to the taxpayer. Post NBN your health and compliance issues ie you are taking your meds, are monitored, thus saving the taxpayer thousands of dollars, and making your life much more comfortable.

Better still, you don’t have to leave your hovel and put others at risk because of your agoraphobia and frequent violent tourettes episodes. Even when your scrotal ulcers start suppurating, you can use the ipad as the most disgusting camera in the history of medical film and show the festering cankers to a remote GP who can prescribe medication without needing to make a house visit.

A team of medical specialists can consult via video conferencing with real time visuals of your chancroids again, giving you and the taxpayer better outcomes. They may of course upload it to youtube but in your condition thats the least of your worries.

When you become a university required course on incurable degenerative skin diseases that too can be delivered to campus world wide.

All of this is not possible without the NBN.

Is that clearer now?

The only thing that is clearer is that you have no knowledge of the requirements of high dependency aged care people. You are in for a future shock my friend.

dungfungus said :

The private sector have been using video conferencing (where it is cost effective) for at least 20 years. I am not surprised that the public service have only recently discovered it. After the novelty wears off what insignificant tasks will they then use their NBN for?

Yes, and that video-conferengin has up until relatively recently relied on expensive point-to-point telecomms links.

One of the many things you seem to be missing is the fact that our population caontinues to grow and the copper that’s already in the ground has already been re-purposed many times, using new technologies to make it spread further. This just can’t go on anymore – we need more cables in the ground, and installing more copper cables would be completely retarded. Adding fibre piece-meal would also be retarded.

The NBN is the answer to the problem of the obsolete medium that is copper just as it is the answer to the insufficient performance and capacity of copper, just as it is the answer to the growing data consumption demands of individuals, just as it is the answer to the growing data consumption demands of a growing population.

If *you* think the NBN is unnecessary, or if *you* think there is any merit in the utterly idiotic Liberal policy in this area, it can only mean that you have no experience of either the reality of telecommunications industry or the reality of information technology.

Let’s not mince words here: the Alan Jones/IPA/Liberal policies concerning the NBN can only appeal to the ignorant. You absolutely cannot be at once informed on these issues, and also see any merit whatsoever in the anti-NBN gibberish put out by the Libs and their retarded cranky pensioner cheersquad.

gungsuperstar said :

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Win 😀

This is your best conservative parody so far!

Are you actually Alan Jones, or do you just listen to him a lot? Cos no one else is so confident espousing “facts” that reveal that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

dungfungus said :

I’ve already asked for examples too. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a response.

Seriously though…

I suspect the reason no one has provided you examples is because you’re an idiot who ignores fact, ignores the explanations that people (including myself) have given you before on this topic, and because you’ll merely make something up in an attempt to get the last word, or piss everyone off by espousing lies… or something.

Nearly 20% of University students relocate from rural or regional areas for study – note that this isn’t kids moving from Melbourne or Sydney to go to ANU. This stat is kids that move from Wilcannia or from the middle of Tasmania to go to uni.

Now, I know that you’ve said in the past on The Riot Act that regional Australia is completely insignificant because of your assertion (which again, was made up, and completely wrong) that regional and rural Australia only contributes to a fraction of Australia’s wealth – but perhaps stop for a moment and consider the implications for those that don’t live in the same city as a university. The NBN is education made easier for everyone.

I’m only going to provide this one example because as I said, you only ignore reason anyway – but maybe stop and consider the implications on health (particularly in regional Australia).

Perhaps also consider that, while the Federal Coalition seems to just define productivity as people doing more work for less money, there is huge potential for massive, genuine gains in productivity. I used to work in the public service. Once a year we flew 40 key stake holders in from across the country for a one-day forum. That was flights, food, accommodation, as well as contractor rates from the time they left home until they time they returned home.

A mate who still works there told me that they’ve cut the cost significantly this year, because about 10 of those 40 stakeholders have access to NBN and will be video-conferencing.

That’s a saving of about $6000 for a one day forum. In one tiny little section in one tiny little branch in one insignificant group within a larger Agency. Imagine the potential if both public service and private industry embrace the technology.

The private sector have been using video conferencing (where it is cost effective) for at least 20 years. I am not surprised that the public service have only recently discovered it. After the novelty wears off what insignificant tasks will they then use their NBN for?

gungsuperstar said :

Once a year we flew 40 key stake holders in from across the country for a one-day forum. That was flights, food, accommodation, as well as contractor rates from the time they left home until they time they returned home.

A mate who still works there told me that they’ve cut the cost significantly this year, because about 10 of those 40 stakeholders have access to NBN and will be video-conferencing.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what’s this all about? I was a total supporter of the NBN but I must admit I had not considered the unintended consequences. I’m not too sure that less junkets essential work related interstate travel is a good thing.

Hmm… maybe I may have to rethink my support.

gungsuperstar said :

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Win 😀

This is your best conservative parody so far!

Are you actually Alan Jones, or do you just listen to him a lot? Cos no one else is so confident espousing “facts” that reveal that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

dungfungus said :

I’ve already asked for examples too. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a response.

Seriously though…

I suspect the reason no one has provided you examples is because you’re an idiot who ignores fact, ignores the explanations that people (including myself) have given you before on this topic, and because you’ll merely make something up in an attempt to get the last word, or piss everyone off by espousing lies… or something.

Nearly 20% of University students relocate from rural or regional areas for study – note that this isn’t kids moving from Melbourne or Sydney to go to ANU. This stat is kids that move from Wilcannia or from the middle of Tasmania to go to uni.

Now, I know that you’ve said in the past on The Riot Act that regional Australia is completely insignificant because of your assertion (which again, was made up, and completely wrong) that regional and rural Australia only contributes to a fraction of Australia’s wealth – but perhaps stop for a moment and consider the implications for those that don’t live in the same city as a university. The NBN is education made easier for everyone.

I’m only going to provide this one example because as I said, you only ignore reason anyway – but maybe stop and consider the implications on health (particularly in regional Australia).

Perhaps also consider that, while the Federal Coalition seems to just define productivity as people doing more work for less money, there is huge potential for massive, genuine gains in productivity. I used to work in the public service. Once a year we flew 40 key stake holders in from across the country for a one-day forum. That was flights, food, accommodation, as well as contractor rates from the time they left home until they time they returned home.

A mate who still works there told me that they’ve cut the cost significantly this year, because about 10 of those 40 stakeholders have access to NBN and will be video-conferencing.

That’s a saving of about $6000 for a one day forum. In one tiny little section in one tiny little branch in one insignificant group within a larger Agency. Imagine the potential if both public service and private industry embrace the technology.

+ a squillion, gungsuperstar, I think I love you. Thank you, this response is perfect.

Geebers, it’s not hard. Here’s a hypothetical.

Just imagine that you Dungers are sitting in your little bedsit. You cannot get out the door because of your lifestyle issues, enough said.

You need constant monitoring because of your complex medical needs.

Pre-NBN the answer is to put you in a nursing home or hospital at enormous expense to the taxpayer. Post NBN your health and compliance issues ie you are taking your meds, are monitored, thus saving the taxpayer thousands of dollars, and making your life much more comfortable.

Better still, you don’t have to leave your hovel and put others at risk because of your agoraphobia and frequent violent tourettes episodes. Even when your scrotal ulcers start suppurating, you can use the ipad as the most disgusting camera in the history of medical film and show the festering cankers to a remote GP who can prescribe medication without needing to make a house visit.

A team of medical specialists can consult via video conferencing with real time visuals of your chancroids again, giving you and the taxpayer better outcomes. They may of course upload it to youtube but in your condition thats the least of your worries.

When you become a university required course on incurable degenerative skin diseases that too can be delivered to campus world wide.

All of this is not possible without the NBN.

Is that clearer now?

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Win 😀

This is your best conservative parody so far!

Are you actually Alan Jones, or do you just listen to him a lot? Cos no one else is so confident espousing “facts” that reveal that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

dungfungus said :

I’ve already asked for examples too. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a response.

Seriously though…

I suspect the reason no one has provided you examples is because you’re an idiot who ignores fact, ignores the explanations that people (including myself) have given you before on this topic, and because you’ll merely make something up in an attempt to get the last word, or piss everyone off by espousing lies… or something.

Nearly 20% of University students relocate from rural or regional areas for study – note that this isn’t kids moving from Melbourne or Sydney to go to ANU. This stat is kids that move from Wilcannia or from the middle of Tasmania to go to uni.

Now, I know that you’ve said in the past on The Riot Act that regional Australia is completely insignificant because of your assertion (which again, was made up, and completely wrong) that regional and rural Australia only contributes to a fraction of Australia’s wealth – but perhaps stop for a moment and consider the implications for those that don’t live in the same city as a university. The NBN is education made easier for everyone.

I’m only going to provide this one example because as I said, you only ignore reason anyway – but maybe stop and consider the implications on health (particularly in regional Australia).

Perhaps also consider that, while the Federal Coalition seems to just define productivity as people doing more work for less money, there is huge potential for massive, genuine gains in productivity. I used to work in the public service. Once a year we flew 40 key stake holders in from across the country for a one-day forum. That was flights, food, accommodation, as well as contractor rates from the time they left home until they time they returned home.

A mate who still works there told me that they’ve cut the cost significantly this year, because about 10 of those 40 stakeholders have access to NBN and will be video-conferencing.

That’s a saving of about $6000 for a one day forum. In one tiny little section in one tiny little branch in one insignificant group within a larger Agency. Imagine the potential if both public service and private industry embrace the technology.

OpenYourMind said :

Can you give some concrete examples of where the nation benefits from this massive infrastructure investment in FTTH? Other than delivering video content (in one form or another) what can FTTH do that copper or wireless can’t? As soon as you stop talking about video content, the reasons get very thin on the ground – giving home users better TV is not a business model. Business and Govt Offices and Education already invest in massive fibre pipes; I’m talking about the home user, even the home business user.

The ability to stream near to real-time video is actually quite a good one actually, in the future (provided Murdoch doesn’t get his way) we may well not have to receive TV from radio transmitters or from satellite thus freeing up radio spectrum for other uses.

Asides from that one clear advantage of FTTH over ADSL is the ability to run a web bases business from home, something that is a tad hard to do with 8meg in 256/512up.

And as I mentioned above the ability to have multiple services from multiple providers.

And finally the copper network is at the end of its useful life and no one is developing enhancements to make it more useful.

So there are 4 good reasons to go fibre to the home.

OpenYourMind said :

pierce said :

Are we really still having these inane discussions along the lines of “the nbn is just for people to download movies and porn faster” in 2013?

It’s like people at the introduction of the phone system saying “well there are only 2 phones in town and I don’t want to speak to either of those jerks”.

The point of comprehensive national infrastructure like this is to set ourselves up for the future. To support the kind of industries and enterprises (not to mention a host of other services) that may not even exist yet and can’t be established without a ready market.

Australia will need to be connected fibre to the premises at some point – doing the half the job to save money in the short term is only going to cost far more down the track.

Short term, opportunistic and petty thinking.

Can you give some concrete examples of where the nation benefits from this massive infrastructure investment in FTTH? Other than delivering video content (in one form or another) what can FTTH do that copper or wireless can’t? As soon as you stop talking about video content, the reasons get very thin on the ground – giving home users better TV is not a business model. Business and Govt Offices and Education already invest in massive fibre pipes; I’m talking about the home user, even the home business user.

I’ve already asked for examples too. I won’t be holding my breath waiting for a response.

Thanks for that information Al and JC.

I am happy to say that according to the maps there is no easement in my back yard.

As for the NBN work, well I am still waiting (three weeks now) for the full work order from NBNCo which will fully detail what needs to be done.

I’m hoping it won’t require full-on demolition work however the initial Mr NBN who came out to inspect tended to think that there would be a lot of work required. Apparently it has to do with the way the builder connected the phone line to the house.

The same builder did every property on my block so Mr NBN said that he thinks the whole block will need similar work.

harvyk1 said :

dungfungus said :

johnboy said :

I already download movies instantly on my adsl2 connection. (yes streaming, but I say play and the movie plays)

Exactly my point – why do we need these blistering speeds that the NBN offers?

The NBN is designed to cope with future developments of the internet. Had you back in 1991 (the birth of the web as we know it) told people that in 2013 you could via your mobile phone send a message to virtually any person on the planet and have them give an instant response, listen to music from radio stations on the other side of the world / listen to virtually any song seconds after thinking about it and watch any movie you could think within minutes of thinking about that movie, they would tell you that’s crazy talk, and yet that’s something we do every day without thinking about it.

Dick Tracy had a 2-way wrist radio in the 1950’s.

harvyk1 said :

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

and what make you think that’s the purpose behind the NBN?

Because that is what most media commentators use as an example when they are talking about it.
Are you trying to tell me that the NBN also does household chores and bakes cakes?

pierce said :

Are we really still having these inane discussions along the lines of “the nbn is just for people to download movies and porn faster” in 2013?

It’s like people at the introduction of the phone system saying “well there are only 2 phones in town and I don’t want to speak to either of those jerks”.

The point of comprehensive national infrastructure like this is to set ourselves up for the future. To support the kind of industries and enterprises (not to mention a host of other services) that may not even exist yet and can’t be established without a ready market.

Australia will need to be connected fibre to the premises at some point – doing the half the job to save money in the short term is only going to cost far more down the track.

Short term, opportunistic and petty thinking.

Can you give some concrete examples of where the nation benefits from this massive infrastructure investment in FTTH? Other than delivering video content (in one form or another) what can FTTH do that copper or wireless can’t? As soon as you stop talking about video content, the reasons get very thin on the ground – giving home users better TV is not a business model. Business and Govt Offices and Education already invest in massive fibre pipes; I’m talking about the home user, even the home business user.

What a lot of people don’t get with NBN is the box they provide has multiple ports for multiple services from multiple providers. So whilst of course you may be able to stream TV on ADSL, it of course (generally) comes at the expense of doing anything else on the internet whilst it happens, and also depending upon the plan it will eat your data allowance.

So NBN may well allow you to get Internet on port 1 from company X, Pay TV on port 2 from a different company, and of course you normal telephone service is on a separate port from another company again.

The Coalitions fraudband on the other hand is a souped up ADSL connection, without scope to add multiple separate services.

bigfeet said :

It’s the back yard, but both the front and rear of my property have street frontage.

I have no idea if the concrete is over an easement. To tell you the truth I don’t even know what an easement is. That is why I employed professionals to lay the slabs and build the pergola. I assume they know what an easement is and whether the work they are doing is interfering with whatever the function of an easement is.

How can I tell? Is there a sign or symbol marked somewhere? What should I be looking for? (This is a serious question by the way)

Oh well there is one mistake, employing so called professionals, most of whom don’t check shit like easements. They will build what ever you want where ever you want without any consideration. Now if you have street frontage back and front you must be in a Radburn block, so makes sense why phones etc are running at the back, but still odd that you would appear to have built on the easement and they are going to ‘fix’ any damage they do.

PS an easement if you haven’t worked it out or goggled it is a bit of land that is reserved for services like phone, power, water sewerage and even shared walls. Under law you must not block access to an easement, and whilst you can put temporary structures over easements you are not meant to put anything permanent without the approval of the easement owner and any damage done to temporary structures in access easements for work is normally yours not the utility provider.

Easements appear on land maps such as this one the ACT government provides free of charge to its citizens.

http://www.actmapi.act.gov.au/home.html

Click on aerial photography and find your block and it will show any easement. Though should point out the run from the road to your house is not part of the easement.

bigfeet said :

Grrrr said :

Leaving aside what your contractor claimed, have you concreted over an easement or not? If you have, NBNCo really shouldn’t be paying for removing the concrete.

Is this in the front of your property, or out the back?.

It’s the back yard, but both the front and rear of my property have street frontage.

I have no idea if the concrete is over an easement. To tell you the truth I don’t even know what an easement is. That is why I employed professionals to lay the slabs and build the pergola. I assume they know what an easement is and whether the work they are doing is interfering with whatever the function of an easement is.

How can I tell? Is there a sign or symbol marked somewhere? What should I be looking for? (This is a serious question by the way)

If you find your property on ACTMAPi you will see whether there are any easements: http://www.actmapi.act.gov.au/home.html

An easement is a strip of your block that you are prohibited from building any permanent structure over. You can plant a garden over one or pave it, but you have to accept that if a pipe ruptures or something, it may all get dug up. And any “illegal” structures would not attract the usual “make good” requirements of the utility.

Typically it is for stormwater and sewerage piping, but the older suburbs have their power and telecoms cabling on poles in their back yards, which I presume involve easements too.

Easements are clearly shown on the property plans when you buy and it is very surprising that this isn’t something that was drawn to your attention on purchase – by your solicitor at least.

dungfungus said :

johnboy said :

I already download movies instantly on my adsl2 connection. (yes streaming, but I say play and the movie plays)

Exactly my point – why do we need these blistering speeds that the NBN offers?

The NBN is designed to cope with future developments of the internet. Had you back in 1991 (the birth of the web as we know it) told people that in 2013 you could via your mobile phone send a message to virtually any person on the planet and have them give an instant response, listen to music from radio stations on the other side of the world / listen to virtually any song seconds after thinking about it and watch any movie you could think within minutes of thinking about that movie, they would tell you that’s crazy talk, and yet that’s something we do every day without thinking about it.

dungfungus said :

johnboy said :

I already download movies instantly on my adsl2 connection. (yes streaming, but I say play and the movie plays)

Exactly my point – why do we need these blistering speeds that the NBN offers?

Because the majority of people on ADSL/2 don’t get speeds fast enough. It’s a a good technology considering the limitations it was to work with, but in terms of usefulness/reliability for the consumer it’s not very good. If you happen to live close to an exchange (and if Telstra didn’t rip you off by only supplying you with a single copper pair or putting your street on a RIM) then ADSL2 is great. But the fact that the speed is directly related to the amount of cable between you and the exchange is a huge disadvantage. Then there’s the issue of equity – two people can pay the same price for a service provided by the same ISP, but one person benefits from huge speed increases, while the other gets speed that are barely usable. And there’s no way of knowing what kind of service you’ll receive when you sign up.

Guaranteed speed is one benefit of the fibre upgrade. You’ll get what you pay for, and you’ll know what you’re getting before you get it. Another benefit is being able to tell Telstra to get lost. The sooner we move away from reliance on them, the better off we’ll all be.

johnboy said :

I already download movies instantly on my adsl2 connection. (yes streaming, but I say play and the movie plays)

Surely you jest.

I have to do editorial and strategy meetings online with people interstate. It’s fine if it’s 1 on 1, but try having a video conference between 5 or 6 people and you end up with out of sync slush. You can barely recognise people, just a faint resemblance in the pixels.

And that’s when the weather is fine. If it’s raining, even good ol phone calls can become a pain over copper.

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

and what make you think that’s the purpose behind the NBN?

johnboy said :

I already download movies instantly on my adsl2 connection. (yes streaming, but I say play and the movie plays)

Exactly my point – why do we need these blistering speeds that the NBN offers?

Are we really still having these inane discussions along the lines of “the nbn is just for people to download movies and porn faster” in 2013?

It’s like people at the introduction of the phone system saying “well there are only 2 phones in town and I don’t want to speak to either of those jerks”.

The point of comprehensive national infrastructure like this is to set ourselves up for the future. To support the kind of industries and enterprises (not to mention a host of other services) that may not even exist yet and can’t be established without a ready market.

Australia will need to be connected fibre to the premises at some point – doing the half the job to save money in the short term is only going to cost far more down the track.

Short term, opportunistic and petty thinking.

DrKoresh said :

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

It’s sad that you’re so out of touch that you can’t comprehend the almost limitless benefits of having a fast internet connection. The crap movies are just a bonus. But seriously, the majority of media will soon be purchased and downloaded online in the next few years, if it’s not the case already. Having the NBN will mean the difference between waiting 7-8 hours for a 2 gigabyte download, and waiting <60mins. If you honestly can't see the benefits for that it's a sad indictment of your position as a curmudgeonly old man.

Name me two benefits then (you young whippersnapper). What would someone possibly need to get through the internet to necessitate a 2 gigabyte download?

dungfungus said :

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

It’s sad that you’re so out of touch that you can’t comprehend the almost limitless benefits of having a fast internet connection. The crap movies are just a bonus. But seriously, the majority of media will soon be purchased and downloaded online in the next few years, if it’s not the case already. Having the NBN will mean the difference between waiting 7-8 hours for a 2 gigabyte download, and waiting <60mins. If you honestly can't see the benefits for that it's a sad indictment of your position as a curmudgeonly old man.

watto23 said :

MrMagoo said :

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Lol did Alan jones mention this to you?

+1 – Tony Abbott’s media man

Look the Coalition are making strides. At one point it was wireless for everyone, who needs fixed line broadband? The answer of course will be everyone, when everyone is trying to use the fixed broadband wireless and realise its shortcomings and the fact its one thing to surf on it with a phone, another for a PC or 2.

Actually i think Alkan Jones still trotts that line out. Maybe he is feeling threatened by broadband because people might stop listening to his biased scare campaigns that he runs.

“Alkan” Jones? Oh, yes!

Grrrr said :

Leaving aside what your contractor claimed, have you concreted over an easement or not? If you have, NBNCo really shouldn’t be paying for removing the concrete.

Is this in the front of your property, or out the back?.

It’s the back yard, but both the front and rear of my property have street frontage.

I have no idea if the concrete is over an easement. To tell you the truth I don’t even know what an easement is. That is why I employed professionals to lay the slabs and build the pergola. I assume they know what an easement is and whether the work they are doing is interfering with whatever the function of an easement is.

How can I tell? Is there a sign or symbol marked somewhere? What should I be looking for? (This is a serious question by the way)

enrique said :

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

Yeah, I was also very pi$$ed off when I wasn’t able to use my buggy whips anymore. Friggin progress!

🙁

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

If you still have buggy whips, are you interested in a bit of S & M?

It is a sad indictment on our society when the benchmark for the best national broadband options has come down to the one that downloads the latest Hollywood crap movie at the fastest speed.

bigfeet said :

Anyway, I actually want fibre broadband and support the idea of the NBN, so of course I will get it done, its not costing me anything monetarily.

But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about my yard being dug up.

Leaving aside what your contractor claimed, have you concreted over an easement or not? If you have, NBNCo really shouldn’t be paying for removing the concrete.

Is this in the front of your property, or out the back?

Anyway, have you asked NBNCo about getting it aerially to your house? Unless the trench you’re referring to is to sideways across your property (from one neighbour to the other) I would think they’d happily consider stringing the lead-in to your house up in the air given how much work you claim needs doing.

pepmeup – NBNCo have also suggested that some older ACT suburbs (with phonelines over the back fences) may get fibre aerially. That statement was made about 3 years ago though, so with the rollout of 9CVI (Inner North) imminent, hopefully they’ll have more details soon.

MrMagoo said :

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Lol did Alan jones mention this to you?

+1 – Tony Abbott’s media man

Look the Coalition are making strides. At one point it was wireless for everyone, who needs fixed line broadband? The answer of course will be everyone, when everyone is trying to use the fixed broadband wireless and realise its shortcomings and the fact its one thing to surf on it with a phone, another for a PC or 2.

Actually i think Alkan Jones still trotts that line out. Maybe he is feeling threatened by broadband because people might stop listening to his biased scare campaigns that he runs.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Lol did Alan jones mention this to you?

+1 – Tony Abbott’s media man

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

So they’ll just go and join all the other unused tech junk at the back of the cupboard. Or have you found a use for 20 megabyte external hard drives/macplusses/wireless handsets/dot matrix printers/crt tvs/popcorn makers…

Under Telstra’s ADSL I had 6.83/0.31Mbps with a 50GB limit for $80/mth. Under NBN with iinet I now have 94.3/32.5Mbps 500/500GB on/off peak for $100/mth, with ping as low as 9ms.

My blog article about the installation continues to get a stack of views – well over 6000 so far.

So there is a lot of interest in the NBN. I hope people think about it when they go to vote…

We thought about changing our voice over to VOIP, cutting the landline cost from $35/mth down to $10/mth. But decided an old dumb phone with a $30 6mth prepaid card was a better and more flexible option for contact to/from the kids. So way in front on several fronts, and a joy to dice the all old landline phones, twisted pair cables, ADSL splitters and modems lying around the place.

Now hankering for one those new $35 Google Chromecast dongles for simple webstreaming to the tele and we’ll start really taking advantage of those 500GB and thumbing the nose to the free-to-air channels with their constant timetable screwing around.

Pepmeup: in almost all cases they will simply slip the very thin new cable through the existing conduit that your copper wire is in. It’s only where dodgy work has happened that you’ll run into issues – like our friend here who seems to have built on an easement.

BBQNinja said :

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

Unless they’re pulse dial phones you can still use them. Why do you think you can’t?

decadic = pulse dial

CraigT said :

bigfeet said :

My issue is that since moving in, I have put down a couple of concrete slabs, one for a BBQ and one for a pergola. Apparantly they are right where they need to access, so they will need to remove them. I also planted three citrus which he believes are right in the line the trench will need to go.
.

So you have built stuff on an easement?

That just makes you an idiot. A whingeing idiot.
The easements exist for a reason, and they are clearly identified to every home buyer.

All concrete and building work was done by a licensed contractor who told me that they had the necessary approval and it was all legal.

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

Yeah, I was also very pi$$ed off when I wasn’t able to use my buggy whips anymore. Friggin progress!

🙁

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

Unless they’re pulse dial phones you can still use them. Why do you think you can’t?

damien haas said :

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

Fear not; technology to the rescue*.

*The NBN box may not have enough kick to ring the bell–but they can call you on your mobile.

All this debate about copper or fibre is minor stuff… imagine how fast our internets would be if everything ran on BULLET TRAINS!!!

Just drop those packets off at the station and they’ll zoom across the country in no time!

😉

Another NBN downside is that my perfectly serviceable decadic phones will be rendered unusable.

pepmeup said :

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

Can I ask what old pipes you are talking about? In most cases there should be no pipes if it is all overhead.

bigfeet said :

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

If what you are saying is true then quite clearly you built and planted all this on an easement. So no sympathy for you at all, easements are there for a reason.

PS never heard of a telecoms easement being in the back yard though, except of course where it is delivered using overhead wires, but this cannot be the case with you are you are in a new area. Normally easements in the back are for things like storm water and the sewer. I have a sewerage easement in my back yard and an access easement down the side of the house neither of which am I technically meant to build on or block access to.

bigfeet said :

My issue is that since moving in, I have put down a couple of concrete slabs, one for a BBQ and one for a pergola. Apparantly they are right where they need to access, so they will need to remove them. I also planted three citrus which he believes are right in the line the trench will need to go.
.

So you have built stuff on an easement?

That just makes you an idiot. A whingeing idiot.
The easements exist for a reason, and they are clearly identified to every home buyer.

bigfeet said :

watto23 said :

bigfeet said :

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Really? Sounds like talk-back radio/News corp spin.
If you are not happy don’t have it installed then. I find it difficult to believe they’d dig up as much stuff as possible. I’m almost certain they’d do it the easiest way possible to save time and money to them. If thats the easiest way possible, then you do have a choice, don’t get it connected, but don’t complain if in the future you change your mind because you realise your property is valued less due to the lack of fibre connection and the fact they wants $10k+ to connect it due to the complexity.

I’m only going with what the initial guy who came out told me. So far they have not actually given me what they call the ‘work order’ which will indicate what they have to do. I am apparently the first person on my block to be getting NBN and he did a quick look over the neighbours fence on both sides as well saying they will need trenches dug as well.

My issue is that since moving in, I have put down a couple of concrete slabs, one for a BBQ and one for a pergola. Apparantly they are right where they need to access, so they will need to remove them. I also planted three citrus which he believes are right in the line the trench will need to go.

Also, ‘not getting it connected’ is not actually an option. If you are in an area switching to NBN you have to get it done, otherwise you have no phone or internet at all (unless you use mobile only). All other services will be turned off, (I think for my area it is in Aug next year).

Anyway, I actually want fibre broadband and support the idea of the NBN, so of course I will get it done, its not costing me anything monetarily.

But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about my yard being dug up.

Bigfeet, something is not correct here. What is wrong with your existing conduit used for your existing Telstra line?
How may times has someone come out to attempt installation?
You say a new suburb, this has to be Franklin, as all other new suburbs have Transact, or not yet available for NBN connection. Also these new suburbs (alone with the new parts of Watson and Macgregor) have service infrastructure roadside, not separating back yards.

If I were you, Id be submitting a dial-before-you-dig application to find exactly where your underground services are, and matching that with what this installer is claiming.

bigfeet said :

watto23 said :

bigfeet said :

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Really? Sounds like talk-back radio/News corp spin.
If you are not happy don’t have it installed then. I find it difficult to believe they’d dig up as much stuff as possible. I’m almost certain they’d do it the easiest way possible to save time and money to them. If thats the easiest way possible, then you do have a choice, don’t get it connected, but don’t complain if in the future you change your mind because you realise your property is valued less due to the lack of fibre connection and the fact they wants $10k+ to connect it due to the complexity.

I’m only going with what the initial guy who came out told me. So far they have not actually given me what they call the ‘work order’ which will indicate what they have to do. I am apparently the first person on my block to be getting NBN and he did a quick look over the neighbours fence on both sides as well saying they will need trenches dug as well.

My issue is that since moving in, I have put down a couple of concrete slabs, one for a BBQ and one for a pergola. Apparantly they are right where they need to access, so they will need to remove them. I also planted three citrus which he believes are right in the line the trench will need to go.

Also, ‘not getting it connected’ is not actually an option. If you are in an area switching to NBN you have to get it done, otherwise you have no phone or internet at all (unless you use mobile only). All other services will be turned off, (I think for my area it is in Aug next year).

Anyway, I actually want fibre broadband and support the idea of the NBN, so of course I will get it done, its not costing me anything monetarily.

But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about my yard being dug up.

It all just sounds weird to me. I’m not doubting that you’ve been told that, but I’m struggling to understand why?

Do you have an existing phone service? My understanding is that they’d be using the existing conduit that has your old phone line, to pull through the fibre for your new NBN service. The whole point of the deal between NBN Co and Telstra was that NBN Co could use the pits and pipes that Telstra already had in place, so they wouldn’t have to do the type of work you’re describing. Situations where civil works needed to be done were things like the existing conduit being blocked – but even then, the NBN contractors should only need dig in the area where a blockage exists to fix it, not dig a whole new trench.

It sounds like you do have an existing service, seeing as you’ve talked about being stranded if it’s turned off, so I can’t understand why the infrastructure that’s in place to supply that service already wouldn’t be reused to supply your NBN service?

watto23 said :

bigfeet said :

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Really? Sounds like talk-back radio/News corp spin.
If you are not happy don’t have it installed then. I find it difficult to believe they’d dig up as much stuff as possible. I’m almost certain they’d do it the easiest way possible to save time and money to them. If thats the easiest way possible, then you do have a choice, don’t get it connected, but don’t complain if in the future you change your mind because you realise your property is valued less due to the lack of fibre connection and the fact they wants $10k+ to connect it due to the complexity.

I’m only going with what the initial guy who came out told me. So far they have not actually given me what they call the ‘work order’ which will indicate what they have to do. I am apparently the first person on my block to be getting NBN and he did a quick look over the neighbours fence on both sides as well saying they will need trenches dug as well.

My issue is that since moving in, I have put down a couple of concrete slabs, one for a BBQ and one for a pergola. Apparantly they are right where they need to access, so they will need to remove them. I also planted three citrus which he believes are right in the line the trench will need to go.

Also, ‘not getting it connected’ is not actually an option. If you are in an area switching to NBN you have to get it done, otherwise you have no phone or internet at all (unless you use mobile only). All other services will be turned off, (I think for my area it is in Aug next year).

Anyway, I actually want fibre broadband and support the idea of the NBN, so of course I will get it done, its not costing me anything monetarily.

But that doesn’t mean I have to be happy about my yard being dug up.

switch said :

bigfeet said :

pepmeup said :

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Transact ran their cable duct for the whole street up to the easement along the back fence with a boring machine under my place. You SIMPLY CANNOT TELL either then or now where it is. So I doubt they’ll turn backyards into the Somme for a simple cable run. Go and look at some of the photos available on the net of the NBN installation in Kiama.

To all the doubters about the need for the NBN and FTTH: just like Moore’s Law for computers, the need for speed is doubling every two years. Try imagining what your life would be like now if you were still stuck on dialup. That’ll be the effect of just building more FTTN in ten years time.

Its not only about downloading stuff off the net as well. Home monitoring and security for example, the obvious health applications. Also i hear the coalition spin say that FTTN can transmit HD video. Yes it can but in a family, what happens when 3 or 4 are using the NBN for different tasks, watch it slow down. also there are a lot of technical details that have not been revealed by the coalition, like upload speeds.

bigfeet said :

pepmeup said :

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Really? Sounds like talk-back radio/News corp spin.
If you are not happy don’t have it installed then. I find it difficult to believe they’d dig up as much stuff as possible. I’m almost certain they’d do it the easiest way possible to save time and money to them. If thats the easiest way possible, then you do have a choice, don’t get it connected, but don’t complain if in the future you change your mind because you realise your property is valued less due to the lack of fibre connection and the fact they wants $10k+ to connect it due to the complexity.

bigfeet said :

pepmeup said :

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

Transact ran their cable duct for the whole street up to the easement along the back fence with a boring machine under my place. You SIMPLY CANNOT TELL either then or now where it is. So I doubt they’ll turn backyards into the Somme for a simple cable run. Go and look at some of the photos available on the net of the NBN installation in Kiama.

To all the doubters about the need for the NBN and FTTH: just like Moore’s Law for computers, the need for speed is doubling every two years. Try imagining what your life would be like now if you were still stuck on dialup. That’ll be the effect of just building more FTTN in ten years time.

pepmeup said :

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

Well I’m in a new suburb and looking like having to get half of my back yard dug up, my fruit trees pulled out and two concrete slabs demolished to get fibre to my house. One slab holds my pergola up, so I guess thats going to.

NBN have told me that they will ‘restore’ everything afterwards.

Not happy.

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

This is the problem today: the Liberals’ desperate lack of a viable handle on what’s going on has meant that they have had to re-progranm all their sad dupes into believing a big bunch of non-facts about science and technology.

There is absolutely no valid argument against the NBN: it is a brilliant infrastructure project, delivering exactly what we need, doing it in a very sound finanical way, and it’s running well ahead of schedule.
The Liberals’ alternate-reality plan is massively inferior as well as being less effective and more costly.

If there is a single issue that has me motivated to not vote for them this time around, it is their absolutely non-sensical so-called policy on the NBN.

And that’s saying something – Labor’s absolutely catastrophic failure on illegal immigration has cost thousands of lives and many billions of dollars and is likely to be the deciding factor in this election.

A quick question on Fibre to the home vs Fibre to the node. In established suburbs the phone lines and underground services are located in the easement at the back of most blocks. So when we roll out fibre and have problems with the old pipes is it likely they will have to fig up back yards? Also if I want it connected to my house will they have up dig up my back yard to get it to the house?

watto23 said :

And this is the big problem with the broadband debate in this country. Labors plan is the best, however it will take time and cost more money now. FTTN, can be done quicker, can save money now, but will cost more in the long run with maintenance and a higher cost of upgrade. But hey who lets facts get in the way of winning an election. Between Boat People and the NBN I’m pretty disgusted by the politics being used.

Especially as with the current rate of increase in copper mining it looks like deposits may run out in aound 25 years, which would make the price of copper rather expensive (current prices are apparently rising)… We also need to add in the fact that a fair bit of the copper infrastructure is aging and needs to be replaced.

Personally I think that longer term Labor’s broadband plan will have a cheaper cost to Australians’ in the long run unlike the LIberal’s plan due to the maintenance and upgrades that will be required in the future. The Liberals are touting that their plan is cheaper but I wonder how they have factored in maintenance etc.

Interestingly some African countries have fibre optic cables instead of copper because a number of people would steal the copper wires so it was cheaper to put in fibre optic as its kind of useless except as its intended purpose.

One fibre manufacturer’s report on the lifespan of their product:
http://www.sterlitetechnologies.com/pdf/KnowledgeCenter/AN0001%20-%20Optical%20Fiber%20Lifetime.pdf

rosscoact said :

NBN currently running at 97/38 mbs at my house so as described and saving money over previous plans. Happy as

Hot damn!! Bring it on!

KT67, you are confusing a bunch of stuff. FttN is conventionally VDSL (specifically, VDSL2 now.)

Not sure what is being referred to – perhaps your ADSL is supplied by a RIM that just got Tophat’d? That might offer you 2 improvements: ADSL2+ sync instead of ADSL, and faster backhaul to the exchange – courtesy of new fibre, perhaps.

FttN has not “just been laid out in the inner north” .. TransACT VDSL was rolled out 10 years ago, around 2/3rd of Canberra. They claim to be upgrading the whole network to VDSL2 by the end of the year (it’s only taken them 4 years to do the first 10%.)\

dungfungus – fibre lifespan is more like 60 years, which is longer than any plans for the NBN. If fibre lifespan was 20 years, everyone would be busy replacing all the fibre they installed in the 90s. Or 80s. Which they’re not.

NBN currently running at 97/38 mbs at my house so as described and saving money over previous plans. Happy as

watto23 said :

And this is the big problem with the broadband debate in this country. Labors plan is the best, however it will take time and cost more money now. FTTN, can be done quicker, can save money now, but will cost more in the long run with maintenance and a higher cost of upgrade. But hey who lets facts get in the way of winning an election. Between Boat People and the NBN I’m pretty disgusted by the politics being used.

I’m wondering though whether an ACT liberal candidate or current member Gary Humphries can confirm Canberra will get FTTP, because it already has contracts signed for the whole of the ACT, from what I’ve read.

I get an OK ADSL speed, but i’m in a suburb, that Transact decided to not touch and that only telstra has DSLAMs in the exchange. I’d love to have decent upload speed personally.

Wow,

Please Garry, say it is so

And this is the big problem with the broadband debate in this country. Labors plan is the best, however it will take time and cost more money now. FTTN, can be done quicker, can save money now, but will cost more in the long run with maintenance and a higher cost of upgrade. But hey who lets facts get in the way of winning an election. Between Boat People and the NBN I’m pretty disgusted by the politics being used.

I’m wondering though whether an ACT liberal candidate or current member Gary Humphries can confirm Canberra will get FTTP, because it already has contracts signed for the whole of the ACT, from what I’ve read.

I get an OK ADSL speed, but i’m in a suburb, that Transact decided to not touch and that only telstra has DSLAMs in the exchange. I’d love to have decent upload speed personally.

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

You’ve got to be [bleeping] me.

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Lol did Alan jones mention this to you?

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

…and the copper will remain intact in the ground, unsullied, forevermore?

dungfungus said :

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

Why do you think optical fibre will breakdown in 20 years time? It doesn’t corrode like copper if it gets wet. There are plenty of submarine fibre cables that are twenty years old still going strong.

How to do figure it is FTTN? What “node” are you connected to? Sounds like regular old ADSL2 to the exchange to me!

I’m curious to know what kind of speed increases KT67 is talking about. Less than a megabit per second sync speed? Or more like a doubling of the previous speed?

Removing the copper cables is a massive mistake. What happens when the optic fibre starts to breakdown in 20 years time?

The reason that you are getting faster connectivity may be that the NBN takeup is decreasing the congestion. It could also be one of many other reasons. If they rip up the “poor mans gold”, before the NBN is available to you, it won’t make your connection faster. In fact, you might not have the internet at all. After all, ADSL2 runs on copper.