6 ms·

Why the NBN needs to go the full way

54 points by callumjones 13y ago

damian2000 13y ago
Everyone in tech I know wants it, but the problem is also the speed of rollout - it would be several years on their current schedule before most people would get it. Probably a moot point too, given the likely outcome of the election.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  That's what's doubly ridiculous -- if you didn't do fiber on the last leg (to the residence) then it will be obsolete before it's even finished being built! Besides, the asbestos in the pits* would have to have been cleaned up some time anyway. * (was NOT unforseen, my mistake)
  - sien 13y ago
    Asbestos problems were mentioned in 2011 in the Senate: http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-raised-in-the-australian-senate-two-years-ago-may-2011/ http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-rais... Beyond that anyone who had looked at plans from the 1940s to 1970s would have known it was there: http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-known-from-the-start/ http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-know... Either the NBN people were completely incompetent, which is highly unlikely, or the Asbestos problem was raised much earlier internally, probably as soon as people became serious about the project.
    - cam_l 13y ago
      much earlier.. http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-distances-himself-from-rejection-of-telstra-asbestos-compo-plan-20130603-2nm9y.html http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abb...
- schappim 13y ago
  Yeah I live on the North Shore in Sydney and there are currently "no plans" for the NBN in my area.
  - shirro 13y ago
    I was a couple of years away here but I was really looking forward to the NBN. Telstra has the only ADSL ports in town and pricing for what by world standards is a reasonably shit service is crazy. If I have to munge a lot of data I just do it on a VPS and shuffle data back and forth to different cloud storage. I try and avoid downloading anything I might have to send back. I created a pipeline to process some video for work from the home/office it was way too painful on ADSL. I can't imagine what it is like if you are a content producer. Just syncing my mobile camera images when I get home takes forever. And if my wife and I try to do Coursera and both kids wanted to watch ABC iView on their iPads everything just stops. With everything moving to HD and pretty much all services (including education) moving online my kids future is looking bleak unless something radical happens. We have substandard services for lots of things in rural areas including health and education but being withheld a quality Internet service by Telstra/Murdoch/Abbott might be the last straw for us.
  - adamconroy 13y ago
    Yes but on the north shore you can already get 100mb cable internet.
  - 40 13y ago
    I just visited http://www.nbnco.com.au/when-do-i-get-it/rollout-map.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/when-do-i-get-it/rollout-map.html and saw that construction will start in one year. :) I have absolutely no problems paying 2K or 5K for FTTH.
Wingman4l7 13y ago
It's maddening to see a such a shortsighted attempt to cut costs by essentially un-future-proofing brand new infrastructure. Heck, why not replace the last leg with a couple of cans and a piece of string? It'd be even cheaper then! >.< It's such a false economy!
- sien 13y ago
  Apparently you will be able to pay for fibre all the way yourself. Turnbull says about 2K, the ALP 5K. Delimeter seems to indicate toward the lower value. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/08/23/open-deception-albanese-continually-misleading-public-coalition-nbn-policy/ http://delimiter.com.au/2013/08/23/open-deception-albanese-c...
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    You can always pay for it yourself -- the questions are of course: a) is it affordable b) how many people will actually do so c) would it be cheaper to do all at once?
  - gd1 13y ago
    Seems fair. Some quick maths says that 200 billion dollars (just you watch it blow out) / 30 million people = roughly $6600 per man, woman and child living in Australia. Probably $12k per taxpayer. Seems fair to make the user pay for a bit of that rather than dump the debt on the next generation. I know people don't like to let little things like numbers intrude on their socialist utopia, but this is real money I'm afraid...
    - 40 13y ago
      2K is not much either if you amortize if over a few of years.
    - pugz 13y ago
      If the FTTP network will blow out to $200B, why won't the FTTN network blow out to $150B?
cpayne 13y ago
I always thought it was a silly argument until I was using my laptop in London. Getting 20 meg downloads just blew my mind away. For me, it changed everything. (Non technical) friends just didn't bother with torrents anymore. It was easier for them to download a movie legitimately instead of all the mucking around...
- shirro 13y ago
  Keep in mind that Rupert Murdoch owns half of Foxtel which is the main cable tv network in Australia as well as owning most of the newspapers (he has a monopoly in several states). The argument that you can watch tv from companies like Netflix under an NBN is one of the main reasons the opposition is getting an easy run from the media here. Every year Rupert is spared that is millions more in the bank. The ALP were a bit disorganised and people might not like some of their policies but Australia's economic record under them is solid. Good enough for the Economist to give them the nod anyway.
  - thejosh 13y ago
    It's funny when people say RT is a propaganda machine, when all major news here is from one source. :)
    - shirro 13y ago
      Rupie's dad was briefly the Australian Director General for Information during WWII but apparently nobody could stand him. Our answer to Goebbels. They don't fall far from the tree.
  - jsmeaton 13y ago
    I'm surprised Labor didn't go on the attack against Murdoch a lot more.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    Foxtel is so ubiquitous in Australia that the name has become a genericised trademark for "cable TV".
zmmmmm 13y ago
I'm not sure that is all accurate (umm, light and electricity travel at the same speed ...), but I agree with the central idea: fibre is the next generation of technology, copper is the last. We can fully expect that just as massive speed increases were achieved on copper, so too will they be on fibre. Gen 1 of fibre is already 10x better than the last generation of copper - how much better will generation 2, 3, 4 be? And fibre is potentially even more upgradeable than copper - it's just a channel for light, the throughput is limited by the boxes at either end which can be incrementally upgraded at low cost. The scary thing is that you only get to do something like this once every 20 - 50 years. So whatever you install needs to well and truly anticipate the future. Spending billions of dollars to install technology that is already at the end of its generation is insane. If people are voting thinking "well the time just isn't right for it", they have to realize - there is not going to be another NBN. It just isn't going to happen, (effectively) ever. Not least because every up and coming politician is watching and learning from this that you don't get rewarded for having any vision about infrastructure. All it does is open up opportunity for your opponents to propose something cheaper and accuse you of waste. It will be very sad if that is the take away lesson from this election.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
  umm, light and electricity travel at the same speed ... ? Light travels at ~299m/s. This will slow down in a medium like fibre, but it's still faster than anything else. At best, in a particle accelerator you can accelerate electrons to maybe 0.8, 0.9 c?
  - ekianjo 13y ago
    Surely you mean 299 000 000 meters/ second ?
    - 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
      Yes!
  - retrogradeorbit 13y ago
schappim 13y ago
The most cost effective thing the Australian government can do to better the experience of Australians is to subsidise hosting in Australia. The cost of hosting a server in a data centre is 2-3x the US. If you've ever been in San Francisco you'd have experienced how all the web services feel like they're running on localhost!
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  Last I checked, Australia only has a few international pipes operated by a cost duopoly. All traffic is charged at high rates because it can go over those very expensive lines to the US, Guam or Singapore. All it means is that the NBN will be expensive unless and until a third player enters the market ... and doesn't get immediately bought out.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    Duopoly? Who, besides Telstra, owns pipes? Optus?
    - pugz 13y ago
      There's PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1), independent of Telstra[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Pacific_Cable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Pacific_Cable
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Looks like I've misread the current state of supply: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/net-capacity-down-to-wire-20130416-2hvvi.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/net-capacity-down... Looks more like an oligopoly of 5 companies. Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks.
      - Wingman4l7 13y ago
        > Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks. Along with costs of mobile phone service, housing, electronics, appliances, beer, and damn near everything else.
smutticus 13y ago
Australia has a chance to do something really amazing here. Shame it looks like they'll miss the chance. It's really only partly about fibre vs DSL. It's also about the new incentive structure that FTTH would create in the Australian broadband market. An FTTH NBN would be an economic game changer in AU.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Yes, god forbid that Telstra would actually have to work a bit for its bread.
40 13y ago
The difference between the two policies is ideology. ALP wants everyone to have same speeds regional/city, rich/poor, home/business. ALP wants fairness - this is their guiding ideology as a party in general. This obviously comes at an additional cost, scope and risk (lack of competition, cost-blowouts, etc.). NLP is just less concerned with fairness and more concerned with cost/benefit even if that means that some people will not have access to the fastest possible internet. Life is not fair. Look at private/public with respect to schools, uni, health insurance, taxation, etc. Top 25% earners pay 60% of tax. Some children will never be able to attend a private school. Some will never have access to certain treatments or medication. Some will never be able to afford the things they want. Some people are okay with this, others are not. Both parties will work towards measurable outcomes but in the large areas of grey they fall back to their ideologies. Yes, the benefits of FTTH are fantastic, but its important not to get swept up in thinking we must do something at all costs. There are very sensitive assumptions that underpin the cost of the NBN which would change the cost of it substantially such as how many people sign up, how much they will be prepared to pay, etc. There are plenty of risks to the project and even more so considering the involvement of the government. These are just some reasons to be very considerate about the cost. The ALP worries less about wasteful spending than the LNP. This is easy to do because its only in the long-term where we have to make tough spending decisions because of past wasteful spending. In the same way you can't fathom the opportunities brought about by the NBN, you also can't fathom the future challenges to the country - ageing population, world population growth, climate change, war, etc. The frustration the author feels about having a focus on cost/benefit and risk will only become apparent with time. I could argue for anything too if I didn't have to address how much it costs.
- pugz 13y ago
  To be fair, the LNP has a reputation for concern re: cost/benefit analyses, but that has not carried over to their VDSL proposition. The ARPU (average revenue per user) possible on a VDSL network is far less than on a FTTP network (no multiplay, a cap on higher speeds, etc) and this lesser ARPU is not commensurate with the marginally cheaper LNP proposal. If the ratio of ARPU to rollout costs were equal, it would be an issue. The issue is that a VDSL network would not be able to recoup the construction cost proposed by the LNP.
NamTaf 13y ago
The problem with the NBN is that Labor has, like so many other of their policies, sold it beyond terribly. It's about 2 things, and neither are raw download speed. 1) It's about upload speed. That's the major upgrade that we don't see right now. As the net moves towards more and more user-generated content (youtube, dropbox file relocation, etc.) it's going to be upload speeds that are the Achilles heel of these technologies working. 2) Related to #1 and perhaps even more importantly, it's about leveling the playing field. Right now, if you design an online service you have to assume someone has DSL at 1.5Mb/sec down, as that's the minimum guaranteed DSL connection. You can't assume people can stream HD. You can't assume people can move multiple GB of data down in a reasonable time, or even hundreds of MB up in a reasonable time. All of these assumptions play a crucial role in what online services can deliver in this country. It would be as if some new technology came along for our road network that allowed people to drive safely at 500km/hr but there's also a cheaper alternative that allowed travelling at 200km/hr, then focusing on whether we need to be able to drive at 500km/hr or 200km/hr over our existing road network to get to work or not. That's completely missing the point. The thing that a 500km/hr road network allows you to do is completely change how and where towns are constructed. Suddenly, traveling from Sydney to Melbourne by road is trivial, rather than a plane trip as it currently is. People can live in Newcastle (for non-AU people, a small industrial satellite town of Sydney) but work quite conveniently in Sydney, changing the game for the real estate pricing problems Sydney presently faces. The problem is that people are extrapolating present-day experiences to this new tech and that is completely missing the point. Doing what we currently do, only faster, is about 1% of the puzzle. The overwhelming majority of the advantage comes about from completely changing the landscape on what online services can do, what they can assume, and how they will go on to affect what will undoubtedly be a huge array of facets of our day-to-day life. When we upgraded from 56k dial-up to DSL, it wasn't about loading animated spinning wireframe skull gifs from Geocities faster. It was about being able to stream audio and (eventually) video. The landscape changed and suddenly Netflix/YouTube/etc. became possible.
- 40 13y ago
  You can already find plenty case studies on the NBN here: http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-studies/ http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-studies/ and here: http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html The problem I see is that most are already possible with current internet speeds. The ones like media production studios (http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies/increasing-international-competitiveness.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies/increa...) do offer new opportunities which aren't possible with ADSL2. The only issue here is that they can easily afford to pay the 2K for FTTH under the Coalition policy.
jbarham 13y ago
As a relatively recent arrival to Australia I'm surprised that that there isn't more skepticism about the long term wisdom of granting wholesale internet access for the entire country to a single government funded monopoly. It's absurd to hear politicians argue about how networks should be built. IMO that is the role of a competitive market.
- elithrar 13y ago
  The issue there is that it is extremely difficult for a private organisation without existing cable assets to deploy a new fibre network. Land access, easement issues, pit access/location/sharing and so on are very difficult problems with no single solution. Private industry wouldn't be able to take the risk.
  - Wingman4l7 13y ago
    Not to mention that the second the big telcos (read: Telstra) got wind of someone trying to compete, they'd use regulatory capture and other dirty tricks to ensure that the newcomer had a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding.
- pugz 13y ago
  Your surprise is because you're a relatively recent arrival to Australia. :) The broadband market here has been stagnant for over a decade due to the failure of the competitive market to improve anything.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  When I went to pick out an ISP, I was astounded when I finally figured out that every single one of them is forced to rent the copper from the same company (Telstra), who takes its sweet time sending out technicians to the tune of 10-20 working days to get internet service up & running. Can you imagine the rioting if that were a utility like water or electricity? What's worse is that the ISP, who has zero control over it, gets the blame for the delay. To my understanding, it went something like this: AU Govt: "Let's privatize all of our telecoms infrastructure.... what's that? Give it all to a single company, creating a de-facto monopoly and ensuring mediocre service, lack of upgrades, and the stifling of competition for years hence? What a capital idea!" I would love to out the politicians whose pockets got lined by that move.
pauly007 13y ago
Let us start at the fact the fed gov originally put construction of the NBN out to tender. After considering proposals from the worlds leading broadband infrastructure experts they decided that NO proposal could satisfy the market saturation they needed nor come in at cost point that was reasonable (there was one or the other but not both). So despite having had no experience in the field, the Gov took on the responsibility as contractor and client as well. First red flag. Who owns this new infrastructure? The gov. What historically have federal and state governments done with valuable infrastructure assets? Sold them. Profiting? Don't make me laugh. Quick cash grabs have been at the heart of filling budget black holes in this country and the NBN won't be safe either. You're kidding yourself if you think it is. So that leaves us with Telecom to Telstra, phase 2. It will put us back at the same limitations the current DSL debacle has left us in but oh it promises soo much more. If only our ideals became reality. Is there a better way? Legislation currently restricts any company from building a competing network. Prior to the NBN, Telstra owned the infrastructure, period. After the NBN, even Telstra will be forced to use the NBN to provide broadband services to its residential customers. This sets a wholesale base price, creates an unnecessary retail layer on top, leaves little in the way of competition for the ISPs.. hold on. Haven't we just seen this with Electricity? That's working for us! Even if iiNet wanted to roll out FTTH before the NBN got there, they couldn't. Google want to come in and build a 1gbps network, sorry guys, we're not having that! But the NBN is fair, it's so reasonable, we won't ever need anything more because government dictates that innovation doesn't have to come at the infrastructure level, no just build services that run on it - that's all we're good for! There are few people in Australia that know fibre like Bevan Slattery, founder of Pipe Networks. He is most known for building PPC-1, the $200m link from Sydney to Guam, forcing wholesale data prices to fall dramatically overnight. After taking the company public, they were taken over by TPG (the ISP, not the private equity firm) for $375m in March 2010. The rumour is he won big by buying the Telecom dark fibre assets that Telstra didn't want, connecting East Coast data centres from Brisbane to Melbourne, via Sydney, and owning the market for interstate DC redundancy. He is a man that knows all the difficulties in building fibre infrastructure in this country and has been a staunch critic of the NBN from the beginning. Not because having FTTH wouldn't be fantastic but because the game the government is trying to play, is one they can't win. Here's how I think you build a better NBN. 1) Kill the idea the GOV needs to connect 93% of homes, schools and workplaces to fibre. 2) Prioritise GOVs efforts to invest solely in building a strong fibre backbone (think of our existing highway/motorway network). Allow inexpensive access to ISPs. Legislate a restriction on selling infrastructure for the next 99 years. 3) Legislate to allow competition in building new broadband infrastructure, particularly fibre. This involves allowing businesses to use existing underground conduit (even that built for other services - power, water, etc.) inexpensively or grant licence to put in new conduit and pits where suits. 4) Keep legislation that require new developments to be wired with fibre, not copper. 5) Cut the cost of accessing premium wireless spectrum and open limited ex-analog tv spectrum for free. Legislate against monopoly/duopoly leasing of spectrum, it must be opened to multiple providers. 6) Provide up to 100% tax deduction to investors who back broadband infrastructure projects, in exactly the same way they were offered to those people investing in Timber Plantation projects throughout the 1990s/2000s. 7) Target 'dark' areas that ISPs are unlikely to cover (regional and outback) and provide high-speed 4g access in either sole government or government-private partnership. This plan encourages competition. It will allow companies like Google to offer massive speeds/data for low costs. IT will encourage new businesses to build new technology, the 4G LTE Advanced of the future! Consumers will get a better deal, government will be able to focus on other much needed infrastructure spending (roads, hospitals, schools) and overall everyone will experience the best of what technology has to offer, because it will be able to be offered. That's my incredibly long two cents - now tell me I'm crazy. But before you cry out and say but I live in Macksville, NSW, its out of the way and no company will build there.. I'm talking about allowing an ISP, no matter how small, to connect to the (mythical) Macksville NBN pit off the Pacific Highway, very affordably, and sell high-speed services over fibre or wifi to the residents of Macksville at a reasonable price. Won't they price gauge the consumer? Unlikely given that a competitor can connect to the (mythical) Macksville NBN pit off the Pacific Highway, very affordably, and sell high-speed..... ahh you get the picture! Okay, now you can tell me I'm crazy.

54 points by callumjones 13y ago

damian2000 13y ago

Everyone in tech I know wants it, but the problem is also the speed of rollout - it would be several years on their current schedule before most people would get it. Probably a moot point too, given the likely outcome of the election.

Wingman4l7 13y ago
That's what's doubly ridiculous -- if you didn't do fiber on the last leg (to the residence) then it will be obsolete before it's even finished being built! Besides, the asbestos in the pits* would have to have been cleaned up some time anyway. * (was NOT unforseen, my mistake)
- sien 13y ago
  Asbestos problems were mentioned in 2011 in the Senate: http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-raised-in-the-australian-senate-two-years-ago-may-2011/ http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-rais... Beyond that anyone who had looked at plans from the 1940s to 1970s would have known it was there: http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-known-from-the-start/ http://safedesign.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/nbn-asbestos-know... Either the NBN people were completely incompetent, which is highly unlikely, or the Asbestos problem was raised much earlier internally, probably as soon as people became serious about the project.
  - cam_l 13y ago
    much earlier.. http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbott-distances-himself-from-rejection-of-telstra-asbestos-compo-plan-20130603-2nm9y.html http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abb...
schappim 13y ago
Yeah I live on the North Shore in Sydney and there are currently "no plans" for the NBN in my area.
- shirro 13y ago
  I was a couple of years away here but I was really looking forward to the NBN. Telstra has the only ADSL ports in town and pricing for what by world standards is a reasonably shit service is crazy. If I have to munge a lot of data I just do it on a VPS and shuffle data back and forth to different cloud storage. I try and avoid downloading anything I might have to send back. I created a pipeline to process some video for work from the home/office it was way too painful on ADSL. I can't imagine what it is like if you are a content producer. Just syncing my mobile camera images when I get home takes forever. And if my wife and I try to do Coursera and both kids wanted to watch ABC iView on their iPads everything just stops. With everything moving to HD and pretty much all services (including education) moving online my kids future is looking bleak unless something radical happens. We have substandard services for lots of things in rural areas including health and education but being withheld a quality Internet service by Telstra/Murdoch/Abbott might be the last straw for us.
- adamconroy 13y ago
  Yes but on the north shore you can already get 100mb cable internet.
- 40 13y ago
  I just visited http://www.nbnco.com.au/when-do-i-get-it/rollout-map.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/when-do-i-get-it/rollout-map.html and saw that construction will start in one year. :) I have absolutely no problems paying 2K or 5K for FTTH.

Wingman4l7 13y ago

It's maddening to see a such a shortsighted attempt to cut costs by essentially un-future-proofing brand new infrastructure. Heck, why not replace the last leg with a couple of cans and a piece of string? It'd be even cheaper then! >.< It's such a false economy!

sien 13y ago
Apparently you will be able to pay for fibre all the way yourself. Turnbull says about 2K, the ALP 5K. Delimeter seems to indicate toward the lower value. http://delimiter.com.au/2013/08/23/open-deception-albanese-continually-misleading-public-coalition-nbn-policy/ http://delimiter.com.au/2013/08/23/open-deception-albanese-c...
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  You can always pay for it yourself -- the questions are of course: a) is it affordable b) how many people will actually do so c) would it be cheaper to do all at once?
- gd1 13y ago
  Seems fair. Some quick maths says that 200 billion dollars (just you watch it blow out) / 30 million people = roughly $6600 per man, woman and child living in Australia. Probably $12k per taxpayer. Seems fair to make the user pay for a bit of that rather than dump the debt on the next generation. I know people don't like to let little things like numbers intrude on their socialist utopia, but this is real money I'm afraid...
  - 40 13y ago
    2K is not much either if you amortize if over a few of years.
  - pugz 13y ago
    If the FTTP network will blow out to $200B, why won't the FTTN network blow out to $150B?

cpayne 13y ago

I always thought it was a silly argument until I was using my laptop in London. Getting 20 meg downloads just blew my mind away. For me, it changed everything. (Non technical) friends just didn't bother with torrents anymore. It was easier for them to download a movie legitimately instead of all the mucking around...

shirro 13y ago
Keep in mind that Rupert Murdoch owns half of Foxtel which is the main cable tv network in Australia as well as owning most of the newspapers (he has a monopoly in several states). The argument that you can watch tv from companies like Netflix under an NBN is one of the main reasons the opposition is getting an easy run from the media here. Every year Rupert is spared that is millions more in the bank. The ALP were a bit disorganised and people might not like some of their policies but Australia's economic record under them is solid. Good enough for the Economist to give them the nod anyway.
- thejosh 13y ago
  It's funny when people say RT is a propaganda machine, when all major news here is from one source. :)
  - shirro 13y ago
    Rupie's dad was briefly the Australian Director General for Information during WWII but apparently nobody could stand him. Our answer to Goebbels. They don't fall far from the tree.
- jsmeaton 13y ago
  I'm surprised Labor didn't go on the attack against Murdoch a lot more.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Foxtel is so ubiquitous in Australia that the name has become a genericised trademark for "cable TV".

zmmmmm 13y ago

I'm not sure that is all accurate (umm, light and electricity travel at the same speed ...), but I agree with the central idea: fibre is the next generation of technology, copper is the last. We can fully expect that just as massive speed increases were achieved on copper, so too will they be on fibre. Gen 1 of fibre is already 10x better than the last generation of copper - how much better will generation 2, 3, 4 be? And fibre is potentially even more upgradeable than copper - it's just a channel for light, the throughput is limited by the boxes at either end which can be incrementally upgraded at low cost. The scary thing is that you only get to do something like this once every 20 - 50 years. So whatever you install needs to well and truly anticipate the future. Spending billions of dollars to install technology that is already at the end of its generation is insane. If people are voting thinking "well the time just isn't right for it", they have to realize - there is not going to be another NBN. It just isn't going to happen, (effectively) ever. Not least because every up and coming politician is watching and learning from this that you don't get rewarded for having any vision about infrastructure. All it does is open up opportunity for your opponents to propose something cheaper and accuse you of waste. It will be very sad if that is the take away lesson from this election.

2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
umm, light and electricity travel at the same speed ... ? Light travels at ~299m/s. This will slow down in a medium like fibre, but it's still faster than anything else. At best, in a particle accelerator you can accelerate electrons to maybe 0.8, 0.9 c?
- ekianjo 13y ago
  Surely you mean 299 000 000 meters/ second ?
  - 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
    Yes!
- retrogradeorbit 13y ago

schappim 13y ago

The most cost effective thing the Australian government can do to better the experience of Australians is to subsidise hosting in Australia. The cost of hosting a server in a data centre is 2-3x the US. If you've ever been in San Francisco you'd have experienced how all the web services feel like they're running on localhost!

jacques_chester 13y ago
Last I checked, Australia only has a few international pipes operated by a cost duopoly. All traffic is charged at high rates because it can go over those very expensive lines to the US, Guam or Singapore. All it means is that the NBN will be expensive unless and until a third player enters the market ... and doesn't get immediately bought out.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Duopoly? Who, besides Telstra, owns pipes? Optus?
  - pugz 13y ago
    There's PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1), independent of Telstra[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Pacific_Cable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Pacific_Cable
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Looks like I've misread the current state of supply: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/net-capacity-down-to-wire-20130416-2hvvi.html http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/net-capacity-down... Looks more like an oligopoly of 5 companies. Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks.
    - Wingman4l7 13y ago
      > Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks. Along with costs of mobile phone service, housing, electronics, appliances, beer, and damn near everything else.

smutticus 13y ago

Australia has a chance to do something really amazing here. Shame it looks like they'll miss the chance. It's really only partly about fibre vs DSL. It's also about the new incentive structure that FTTH would create in the Australian broadband market. An FTTH NBN would be an economic game changer in AU.

Wingman4l7 13y ago
Yes, god forbid that Telstra would actually have to work a bit for its bread.

40 13y ago

The difference between the two policies is ideology. ALP wants everyone to have same speeds regional/city, rich/poor, home/business. ALP wants fairness - this is their guiding ideology as a party in general. This obviously comes at an additional cost, scope and risk (lack of competition, cost-blowouts, etc.). NLP is just less concerned with fairness and more concerned with cost/benefit even if that means that some people will not have access to the fastest possible internet. Life is not fair. Look at private/public with respect to schools, uni, health insurance, taxation, etc. Top 25% earners pay 60% of tax. Some children will never be able to attend a private school. Some will never have access to certain treatments or medication. Some will never be able to afford the things they want. Some people are okay with this, others are not. Both parties will work towards measurable outcomes but in the large areas of grey they fall back to their ideologies. Yes, the benefits of FTTH are fantastic, but its important not to get swept up in thinking we must do something at all costs. There are very sensitive assumptions that underpin the cost of the NBN which would change the cost of it substantially such as how many people sign up, how much they will be prepared to pay, etc. There are plenty of risks to the project and even more so considering the involvement of the government. These are just some reasons to be very considerate about the cost. The ALP worries less about wasteful spending than the LNP. This is easy to do because its only in the long-term where we have to make tough spending decisions because of past wasteful spending. In the same way you can't fathom the opportunities brought about by the NBN, you also can't fathom the future challenges to the country - ageing population, world population growth, climate change, war, etc. The frustration the author feels about having a focus on cost/benefit and risk will only become apparent with time. I could argue for anything too if I didn't have to address how much it costs.

pugz 13y ago
To be fair, the LNP has a reputation for concern re: cost/benefit analyses, but that has not carried over to their VDSL proposition. The ARPU (average revenue per user) possible on a VDSL network is far less than on a FTTP network (no multiplay, a cap on higher speeds, etc) and this lesser ARPU is not commensurate with the marginally cheaper LNP proposal. If the ratio of ARPU to rollout costs were equal, it would be an issue. The issue is that a VDSL network would not be able to recoup the construction cost proposed by the LNP.

NamTaf 13y ago

The problem with the NBN is that Labor has, like so many other of their policies, sold it beyond terribly. It's about 2 things, and neither are raw download speed. 1) It's about upload speed. That's the major upgrade that we don't see right now. As the net moves towards more and more user-generated content (youtube, dropbox file relocation, etc.) it's going to be upload speeds that are the Achilles heel of these technologies working. 2) Related to #1 and perhaps even more importantly, it's about leveling the playing field. Right now, if you design an online service you have to assume someone has DSL at 1.5Mb/sec down, as that's the minimum guaranteed DSL connection. You can't assume people can stream HD. You can't assume people can move multiple GB of data down in a reasonable time, or even hundreds of MB up in a reasonable time. All of these assumptions play a crucial role in what online services can deliver in this country. It would be as if some new technology came along for our road network that allowed people to drive safely at 500km/hr but there's also a cheaper alternative that allowed travelling at 200km/hr, then focusing on whether we need to be able to drive at 500km/hr or 200km/hr over our existing road network to get to work or not. That's completely missing the point. The thing that a 500km/hr road network allows you to do is completely change how and where towns are constructed. Suddenly, traveling from Sydney to Melbourne by road is trivial, rather than a plane trip as it currently is. People can live in Newcastle (for non-AU people, a small industrial satellite town of Sydney) but work quite conveniently in Sydney, changing the game for the real estate pricing problems Sydney presently faces. The problem is that people are extrapolating present-day experiences to this new tech and that is completely missing the point. Doing what we currently do, only faster, is about 1% of the puzzle. The overwhelming majority of the advantage comes about from completely changing the landscape on what online services can do, what they can assume, and how they will go on to affect what will undoubtedly be a huge array of facets of our day-to-day life. When we upgraded from 56k dial-up to DSL, it wasn't about loading animated spinning wireframe skull gifs from Geocities faster. It was about being able to stream audio and (eventually) video. The landscape changed and suddenly Netflix/YouTube/etc. became possible.

40 13y ago
You can already find plenty case studies on the NBN here: http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-studies/ http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-studies/ and here: http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html The problem I see is that most are already possible with current internet speeds. The ones like media production studios (http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies/increasing-international-competitiveness.html http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies/increa...) do offer new opportunities which aren't possible with ADSL2. The only issue here is that they can easily afford to pay the 2K for FTTH under the Coalition policy.

jbarham 13y ago

As a relatively recent arrival to Australia I'm surprised that that there isn't more skepticism about the long term wisdom of granting wholesale internet access for the entire country to a single government funded monopoly. It's absurd to hear politicians argue about how networks should be built. IMO that is the role of a competitive market.

elithrar 13y ago
The issue there is that it is extremely difficult for a private organisation without existing cable assets to deploy a new fibre network. Land access, easement issues, pit access/location/sharing and so on are very difficult problems with no single solution. Private industry wouldn't be able to take the risk.
- Wingman4l7 13y ago
  Not to mention that the second the big telcos (read: Telstra) got wind of someone trying to compete, they'd use regulatory capture and other dirty tricks to ensure that the newcomer had a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding.
pugz 13y ago
Your surprise is because you're a relatively recent arrival to Australia. :) The broadband market here has been stagnant for over a decade due to the failure of the competitive market to improve anything.
Wingman4l7 13y ago
When I went to pick out an ISP, I was astounded when I finally figured out that every single one of them is forced to rent the copper from the same company (Telstra), who takes its sweet time sending out technicians to the tune of 10-20 working days to get internet service up & running. Can you imagine the rioting if that were a utility like water or electricity? What's worse is that the ISP, who has zero control over it, gets the blame for the delay. To my understanding, it went something like this: AU Govt: "Let's privatize all of our telecoms infrastructure.... what's that? Give it all to a single company, creating a de-facto monopoly and ensuring mediocre service, lack of upgrades, and the stifling of competition for years hence? What a capital idea!" I would love to out the politicians whose pockets got lined by that move.

pauly007 13y ago

Let us start at the fact the fed gov originally put construction of the NBN out to tender. After considering proposals from the worlds leading broadband infrastructure experts they decided that NO proposal could satisfy the market saturation they needed nor come in at cost point that was reasonable (there was one or the other but not both). So despite having had no experience in the field, the Gov took on the responsibility as contractor and client as well. First red flag. Who owns this new infrastructure? The gov. What historically have federal and state governments done with valuable infrastructure assets? Sold them. Profiting? Don't make me laugh. Quick cash grabs have been at the heart of filling budget black holes in this country and the NBN won't be safe either. You're kidding yourself if you think it is. So that leaves us with Telecom to Telstra, phase 2. It will put us back at the same limitations the current DSL debacle has left us in but oh it promises soo much more. If only our ideals became reality. Is there a better way? Legislation currently restricts any company from building a competing network. Prior to the NBN, Telstra owned the infrastructure, period. After the NBN, even Telstra will be forced to use the NBN to provide broadband services to its residential customers. This sets a wholesale base price, creates an unnecessary retail layer on top, leaves little in the way of competition for the ISPs.. hold on. Haven't we just seen this with Electricity? That's working for us! Even if iiNet wanted to roll out FTTH before the NBN got there, they couldn't. Google want to come in and build a 1gbps network, sorry guys, we're not having that! But the NBN is fair, it's so reasonable, we won't ever need anything more because government dictates that innovation doesn't have to come at the infrastructure level, no just build services that run on it - that's all we're good for! There are few people in Australia that know fibre like Bevan Slattery, founder of Pipe Networks. He is most known for building PPC-1, the $200m link from Sydney to Guam, forcing wholesale data prices to fall dramatically overnight. After taking the company public, they were taken over by TPG (the ISP, not the private equity firm) for $375m in March 2010. The rumour is he won big by buying the Telecom dark fibre assets that Telstra didn't want, connecting East Coast data centres from Brisbane to Melbourne, via Sydney, and owning the market for interstate DC redundancy. He is a man that knows all the difficulties in building fibre infrastructure in this country and has been a staunch critic of the NBN from the beginning. Not because having FTTH wouldn't be fantastic but because the game the government is trying to play, is one they can't win. Here's how I think you build a better NBN. 1) Kill the idea the GOV needs to connect 93% of homes, schools and workplaces to fibre. 2) Prioritise GOVs efforts to invest solely in building a strong fibre backbone (think of our existing highway/motorway network). Allow inexpensive access to ISPs. Legislate a restriction on selling infrastructure for the next 99 years. 3) Legislate to allow competition in building new broadband infrastructure, particularly fibre. This involves allowing businesses to use existing underground conduit (even that built for other services - power, water, etc.) inexpensively or grant licence to put in new conduit and pits where suits. 4) Keep legislation that require new developments to be wired with fibre, not copper. 5) Cut the cost of accessing premium wireless spectrum and open limited ex-analog tv spectrum for free. Legislate against monopoly/duopoly leasing of spectrum, it must be opened to multiple providers. 6) Provide up to 100% tax deduction to investors who back broadband infrastructure projects, in exactly the same way they were offered to those people investing in Timber Plantation projects throughout the 1990s/2000s. 7) Target 'dark' areas that ISPs are unlikely to cover (regional and outback) and provide high-speed 4g access in either sole government or government-private partnership. This plan encourages competition. It will allow companies like Google to offer massive speeds/data for low costs. IT will encourage new businesses to build new technology, the 4G LTE Advanced of the future! Consumers will get a better deal, government will be able to focus on other much needed infrastructure spending (roads, hospitals, schools) and overall everyone will experience the best of what technology has to offer, because it will be able to be offered. That's my incredibly long two cents - now tell me I'm crazy. But before you cry out and say but I live in Macksville, NSW, its out of the way and no company will build there.. I'm talking about allowing an ISP, no matter how small, to connect to the (mythical) Macksville NBN pit off the Pacific Highway, very affordably, and sell high-speed services over fibre or wifi to the residents of Macksville at a reasonable price. Won't they price gauge the consumer? Unlikely given that a competitor can connect to the (mythical) Macksville NBN pit off the Pacific Highway, very affordably, and sell high-speed..... ahh you get the picture! Okay, now you can tell me I'm crazy.