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The ABC program "Inside Business" gave a neat summary of the differences between the Labor and Liberal plans: http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7

by MarkMc 14y ago

The ABC program "Inside Business" gave a neat summary of the differences between the Labor and Liberal plans: http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 It's worth noting that the Liberals plan has 'Fibre To The Premises' going to 22% of households, while Labour's plan goes to 93%. So we're spending an extra $17 billion to give 71% of households a boost from 100Mb to 1Gb per second? That's about $2,500 per household. That doesn't seem like good value to me. Shouldn't we delay the massive cost of installing fibre to existing homes until most households need more than 100Mb per second?

mctx 14y ago
Can the current copper network handle 100Mbps? I think anything broken down into a per household cost is going to be large - health, transport, and Internet infrastructure.
justsee 14y ago
There is a very significant difference between 93% coverage and 22% coverage with this issue. The value goes well beyond the percentage difference because of network effects[1]. Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. It's hard to estimate how valuable that is to Australia's social, economic, and technological future. The Coalition are expected to romp it in, so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. Their system design around a broken and aging copper network has few tech industry commentators impressed. I can't see how maintaining the copper network and delaying the inevitable FTTP rollout makes any sense. Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  > Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. Let's not kid ourselves. The Australian market is tiny. > so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. There's also the possibility that Malcolm Turnbull, a former barrister, investment banker and venture investor in and director of Australia's first major ISP (Ozemail) has his own thoughts about balancing costs and benefits. > They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that paying someone to dig up every street in the country is more expensive than deciding not to dig up every street in the country. > Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. Japan and South Korea have shown that it's really not that big a deal. Really nice, and enables some new businesses. But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. The same money could build about 20 new hospitals, a new Sydney airport and a clutch of cross-city tunnels. It's possible these might have been more valuable in the long run. Or maybe not. We don't know because no cost-benefit analysis was ever done.
  - hartror 14y ago
    > But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. It is an investment on borrowed money using our AAA rating, we expect to get a return on the invested funds higher than the interest rate paid. The alternative isn't hospitals or schools, it is not doing it.
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      It's possible to borrow for other purposes. Plus there's the little thing where borrowing by governments is simply deferred taxes or deferred budget cuts. We don't know what the rate of return is because no proper CBA has been published. We're merely told that there was one and that the companies paid by NBN -- with instructions we haven't seen -- said it was just swell.
oohmeplums 14y ago
How much extra would it cost to upgrade the FTTN to FTTH afterwards? Surely it's more efficient to do it once and do it right with fibre? And I have my doubts about the copper reaching 100Mbps.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years. There's no doubt that FTTP is the ultimate long term solution. But that doesn't mean it has to happen first.
  - elithrar 14y ago
    > My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years. Much of it is wearing out. Users who already have issues with noise, interference and/or slow speeds on ADSL will be similarly disadvantaged by VDSL under the Coalition's FTTN plan. You also still need to worry about flooded pits, leaking conduit and so on. Having worked at a number of ISPs and watched all the faults roll in after even moderate storms, I know that these are real problems. Further, how does the Government decide when your copper is "worn out", and what incentive do they have to spend more money (over their original plan) to upgrade you? How many people in your area need to suffer the same problem before they need to both a) completely replace your FTTN VDSL equipment with GPON gear, and b) pull fibre, replace conduit and wire small groups of homes on an ad-hoc basis?
    - jacques_chester 14y ago
      I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis. The main difference between the coalition plan and the business-as-usual plan is that old copper will be replaced with fibre, not with new copper. It's easy to forget that waaaay back when, this is what Telstra and the government were negotiating to do anyhow. In Turnbull's position I wouldn't have promised anything except to review once in government. For one thing, a lot of work will already be contracted and it's not plausible to renege on the contracts. So there'll be an uneven distribution of fibre/copper which will lead to some distortion in the housing market. Not huge, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there.

by MarkMc 14y ago

mctx 14y ago

Can the current copper network handle 100Mbps? I think anything broken down into a per household cost is going to be large - health, transport, and Internet infrastructure.

justsee 14y ago

There is a very significant difference between 93% coverage and 22% coverage with this issue. The value goes well beyond the percentage difference because of network effects[1]. Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. It's hard to estimate how valuable that is to Australia's social, economic, and technological future. The Coalition are expected to romp it in, so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. Their system design around a broken and aging copper network has few tech industry commentators impressed. I can't see how maintaining the copper network and delaying the inevitable FTTP rollout makes any sense. Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

jacques_chester 14y ago
> Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. Let's not kid ourselves. The Australian market is tiny. > so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. There's also the possibility that Malcolm Turnbull, a former barrister, investment banker and venture investor in and director of Australia's first major ISP (Ozemail) has his own thoughts about balancing costs and benefits. > They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that paying someone to dig up every street in the country is more expensive than deciding not to dig up every street in the country. > Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. Japan and South Korea have shown that it's really not that big a deal. Really nice, and enables some new businesses. But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. The same money could build about 20 new hospitals, a new Sydney airport and a clutch of cross-city tunnels. It's possible these might have been more valuable in the long run. Or maybe not. We don't know because no cost-benefit analysis was ever done.
- hartror 14y ago
  > But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. It is an investment on borrowed money using our AAA rating, we expect to get a return on the invested funds higher than the interest rate paid. The alternative isn't hospitals or schools, it is not doing it.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    It's possible to borrow for other purposes. Plus there's the little thing where borrowing by governments is simply deferred taxes or deferred budget cuts. We don't know what the rate of return is because no proper CBA has been published. We're merely told that there was one and that the companies paid by NBN -- with instructions we haven't seen -- said it was just swell.

oohmeplums 14y ago

How much extra would it cost to upgrade the FTTN to FTTH afterwards? Surely it's more efficient to do it once and do it right with fibre? And I have my doubts about the copper reaching 100Mbps.

jacques_chester 14y ago
My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years. There's no doubt that FTTP is the ultimate long term solution. But that doesn't mean it has to happen first.
- elithrar 14y ago
  > My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years. Much of it is wearing out. Users who already have issues with noise, interference and/or slow speeds on ADSL will be similarly disadvantaged by VDSL under the Coalition's FTTN plan. You also still need to worry about flooded pits, leaking conduit and so on. Having worked at a number of ISPs and watched all the faults roll in after even moderate storms, I know that these are real problems. Further, how does the Government decide when your copper is "worn out", and what incentive do they have to spend more money (over their original plan) to upgrade you? How many people in your area need to suffer the same problem before they need to both a) completely replace your FTTN VDSL equipment with GPON gear, and b) pull fibre, replace conduit and wire small groups of homes on an ad-hoc basis?
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis. The main difference between the coalition plan and the business-as-usual plan is that old copper will be replaced with fibre, not with new copper. It's easy to forget that waaaay back when, this is what Telstra and the government were negotiating to do anyhow. In Turnbull's position I wouldn't have promised anything except to review once in government. For one thing, a lot of work will already be contracted and it's not plausible to renege on the contracts. So there'll be an uneven distribution of fibre/copper which will lead to some distortion in the housing market. Not huge, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there.