4 ms·

Copper needs to die. The Australian NBN is a mess because of it. Sigh, what could've been...

by girvo 5y ago

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Well, copper at least has the very nice property of only requiring electricity at the central phone node, and still have working communications. This makes it the best option by far for communication in hour-long blackouts when, for instance, cell phones and cellphone towers would have ran down their batteries.
- girvo 5y ago
  Tell that to how my NBN seems to be setup. With a blackout, our internet is gone too even though my modem (and home server) are on a UPS. Wonder what causes that. And regardless, while that might be a useful property in certain circumstances, the copper-based NBN we've ended up with is so woeful, that they're basically declaring technical bankruptcy and moving to FTTP after all that in the end anyway. Just a decade late and with billions down the drain for sub-par expensive flaky internet.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  Actually the big ILECs like Verizon started deprecating copper loops, at least when I was in that industry 10 years ago. They would install a box in a neighborhood with fiber backhaul to the Central Office and a mini DSLAM, and then deliver shitty DSL from said box. The great thing about this was they could circumvent telecommunications law that requires them to rent out circuits at a competitive rate to small carriers, basically putting the nail in the coffin of small, independent DSL ISPs, since the copper loops are gone. And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month.
  - legalcorrection 5y ago
    >And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month. Almost everywhere in the US you can get at least 25mbps for less than $80 a month. And within almost all cities and their suburbs, you can easily get 100mbps+ for less than that. Unbundled network elements was a stupid utopian idea to begin with. No one who knows a lick about broadband policy actually wants to go back to anything like that. The current model is essentially that you're responsible for building your own infrastructure if you want to be an ISP. That has actually spurred an incredible amount of investment in infrastructure across the country, since you know that if you spend a ton of money laying a thousand miles of fiber, you'll be able to reap the rewards of it, not have to rent it out at cost to your competitors. American internet service is the best or one of the best in the world for a large, populous country. Certainly, the major European powers don't come close (remember when Europe had to beg Netflix and others to reduce video quality to 720p early in the pandemic? US internet service held up perfectly without any throttling.). Only Japan and large parts of China are comparable (again, not counting small or lightly populated countries).
    - darkwater 5y ago
      Maybe there are some details I'm missing but I live in a small town in Southern Europe (population 2500) and I have symmetrical 600Mbps FFTH for 50€/month with one cell line included. And they are almost real, I peak at ~550Mbps
      - legalcorrection 5y ago
        https://www.nme.com/news/tv/eu-netflix-other-platforms-slow-down-streaming-prevent-internet-breaking-2630501 https://www.nme.com/news/tv/eu-netflix-other-platforms-slow-... There's a lot more to robust internet service than what you get on speedtest.net or in optimal conditions. Further, the internet speed statistics show that European internet service is on average slower than American service. It's great that you good service, but the point I'm making is that American service is on average faster and more robust, and we got there by abandoning the unbundled network elements nonsense.
        tovej 5y ago
        I'm suspicious of this statement, what you count as Europe, and also of how you've focused on the mean (average), which is heavily affected by large outliers. The median feels more useful in cases like these. Also you haven't even cited your data source. But even if speeds were equivalent or better in the US, prices in the US are still multiples of European prices for the same service.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        I'm equally suspicious, made even worse by stating completely factless things like "more robust". Also what's available and what I'm purchasing is different. I'd pay about 35$ for uncapped 100/100 and that's enough for me. But everywhere where you can get 100 you can also get 1000 for maybe 90$ a month. I don't want 1000 because it's useless for my use case, and I don't have anything to prove so instead of wasting money I'm staying on 100, I think most people are because it's just enough. There's also 250 and 500 inbetween which some might get too. This is Sweden, which is supposedly 50 Mbit behind the US (x for doubt)
- HenrikB 5y ago
  This is true also for fiber. Depending on the ISP fiber setup, the fiber can run for many 10's of km without a power relay. I can run 1 Gbps symmetric for ~48h without power by running my optical network terminal (ONT) and a teeny travel router on battery packs. (Used this set up through several long power outages.)
bayindirh 5y ago
FTTx systems make copper almost non-existent. All copper in my city is replaced by fiber, and only copper is from the FTTx box in front of my apartment to my flat. Eeerything (landline, internet, IPTV, etc.) runs from a single, dark fiber. With cabling already in place and VDSL can reliably provide 5 units of bandwidth (where 4 units is used for download and 1 unit is used for upload, e.g. 32/8 mbps), with a theoretical ceiling of 350mbps, I'm pretty happy with what I have. While I'd love to have fiber at home, I definitely don't want to rerun cabling.
- girvo 5y ago
  Yeah at my previous home, we had VDSL, Fibre to the Building, on a non-NBN fibre network. Was amazing, excellent performance, actually good upload bandwidth, and cheap. I can't wait until my HFC NBN service here goes the way of the dodo. While I have 1000mbps down, the 50mbps upload is just miserable. And the cost is painful, $130 AUD a month.
  - BrandoElFollito 5y ago
    Oh, that's expensive. I pay 40 EUR/month (~60 AUD) and I find it really high (planning to look for something cheaper). It is 1000/400 FFTH (the fiber terminates at my box). For the price I pay I should be able to have a shared 10000/1000 (in reality it will probably be 2500/1000). All of this for the swag, I am ,ot likely to use the bandwidth anytime soon (despite serving a few things from home)
    - girvo 5y ago
      I pay it, because for my use-cases it was the only way to get more than 100mbps (which was more like 75mbps at any regular time of day) download without giving up my 50mbps upload. Now at least I can play my video games while my partner watches 4K shows on our TV. Interestingly, moving from 100mbps to 1000mbps has given me a 5ms lower ping: 31ms to 24-25ms with a decrease in jitter of 5ms too, in Valorant -- this is to the exact same server from the physical same PC. I'm guessing even on the same damned cable, the 1000mbps customers get some kind of routing priority or something.

Copper needs to die. The Australian NBN is a mess because of it. Sigh, what could've been...

by girvo 5y ago

Copper needs to die. The Australian NBN is a mess because of it. Sigh, what could've been...

Well, copper at least has the very nice property of only requiring electricity at the central phone node, and still have working communications. This makes it the best option by far for communication in hour-long blackouts when, for instance, cell phones and cellphone towers would have ran down their batteries.

girvo 5y ago
Tell that to how my NBN seems to be setup. With a blackout, our internet is gone too even though my modem (and home server) are on a UPS. Wonder what causes that. And regardless, while that might be a useful property in certain circumstances, the copper-based NBN we've ended up with is so woeful, that they're basically declaring technical bankruptcy and moving to FTTP after all that in the end anyway. Just a decade late and with billions down the drain for sub-par expensive flaky internet.
oceanplexian 5y ago
Actually the big ILECs like Verizon started deprecating copper loops, at least when I was in that industry 10 years ago. They would install a box in a neighborhood with fiber backhaul to the Central Office and a mini DSLAM, and then deliver shitty DSL from said box. The great thing about this was they could circumvent telecommunications law that requires them to rent out circuits at a competitive rate to small carriers, basically putting the nail in the coffin of small, independent DSL ISPs, since the copper loops are gone. And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month.
- legalcorrection 5y ago
  >And you, the customer, are now stuck with 6Mbps DSL from a single provider for $80 a month. Almost everywhere in the US you can get at least 25mbps for less than $80 a month. And within almost all cities and their suburbs, you can easily get 100mbps+ for less than that. Unbundled network elements was a stupid utopian idea to begin with. No one who knows a lick about broadband policy actually wants to go back to anything like that. The current model is essentially that you're responsible for building your own infrastructure if you want to be an ISP. That has actually spurred an incredible amount of investment in infrastructure across the country, since you know that if you spend a ton of money laying a thousand miles of fiber, you'll be able to reap the rewards of it, not have to rent it out at cost to your competitors. American internet service is the best or one of the best in the world for a large, populous country. Certainly, the major European powers don't come close (remember when Europe had to beg Netflix and others to reduce video quality to 720p early in the pandemic? US internet service held up perfectly without any throttling.). Only Japan and large parts of China are comparable (again, not counting small or lightly populated countries).
  - darkwater 5y ago
    Maybe there are some details I'm missing but I live in a small town in Southern Europe (population 2500) and I have symmetrical 600Mbps FFTH for 50€/month with one cell line included. And they are almost real, I peak at ~550Mbps
    - legalcorrection 5y ago
      https://www.nme.com/news/tv/eu-netflix-other-platforms-slow-down-streaming-prevent-internet-breaking-2630501 https://www.nme.com/news/tv/eu-netflix-other-platforms-slow-... There's a lot more to robust internet service than what you get on speedtest.net or in optimal conditions. Further, the internet speed statistics show that European internet service is on average slower than American service. It's great that you good service, but the point I'm making is that American service is on average faster and more robust, and we got there by abandoning the unbundled network elements nonsense.
      - tovej 5y ago
        I'm suspicious of this statement, what you count as Europe, and also of how you've focused on the mean (average), which is heavily affected by large outliers. The median feels more useful in cases like these. Also you haven't even cited your data source. But even if speeds were equivalent or better in the US, prices in the US are still multiples of European prices for the same service.
        lillecarl 5y ago
        I'm equally suspicious, made even worse by stating completely factless things like "more robust". Also what's available and what I'm purchasing is different. I'd pay about 35$ for uncapped 100/100 and that's enough for me. But everywhere where you can get 100 you can also get 1000 for maybe 90$ a month. I don't want 1000 because it's useless for my use case, and I don't have anything to prove so instead of wasting money I'm staying on 100, I think most people are because it's just enough. There's also 250 and 500 inbetween which some might get too. This is Sweden, which is supposedly 50 Mbit behind the US (x for doubt)
HenrikB 5y ago
This is true also for fiber. Depending on the ISP fiber setup, the fiber can run for many 10's of km without a power relay. I can run 1 Gbps symmetric for ~48h without power by running my optical network terminal (ONT) and a teeny travel router on battery packs. (Used this set up through several long power outages.)

bayindirh 5y ago

FTTx systems make copper almost non-existent. All copper in my city is replaced by fiber, and only copper is from the FTTx box in front of my apartment to my flat. Eeerything (landline, internet, IPTV, etc.) runs from a single, dark fiber. With cabling already in place and VDSL can reliably provide 5 units of bandwidth (where 4 units is used for download and 1 unit is used for upload, e.g. 32/8 mbps), with a theoretical ceiling of 350mbps, I'm pretty happy with what I have. While I'd love to have fiber at home, I definitely don't want to rerun cabling.

girvo 5y ago
Yeah at my previous home, we had VDSL, Fibre to the Building, on a non-NBN fibre network. Was amazing, excellent performance, actually good upload bandwidth, and cheap. I can't wait until my HFC NBN service here goes the way of the dodo. While I have 1000mbps down, the 50mbps upload is just miserable. And the cost is painful, $130 AUD a month.
- BrandoElFollito 5y ago
  Oh, that's expensive. I pay 40 EUR/month (~60 AUD) and I find it really high (planning to look for something cheaper). It is 1000/400 FFTH (the fiber terminates at my box). For the price I pay I should be able to have a shared 10000/1000 (in reality it will probably be 2500/1000). All of this for the swag, I am ,ot likely to use the bandwidth anytime soon (despite serving a few things from home)
  - girvo 5y ago
    I pay it, because for my use-cases it was the only way to get more than 100mbps (which was more like 75mbps at any regular time of day) download without giving up my 50mbps upload. Now at least I can play my video games while my partner watches 4K shows on our TV. Interestingly, moving from 100mbps to 1000mbps has given me a 5ms lower ping: 31ms to 24-25ms with a decrease in jitter of 5ms too, in Valorant -- this is to the exact same server from the physical same PC. I'm guessing even on the same damned cable, the 1000mbps customers get some kind of routing priority or something.