In the end, this is not about the merits or technical limits of one technology vs another.
It's about economics and politics, and in particular the economics and politics of "the last mile" of telecommunications connectivity to "the Australian bush" (a very hazily defined concept).
Roughly 80% of the Australian population lives in areas which are, for private-sector telecommunications operator purposes, densely populated enough to justify world-class service provision, both wireless and wireline. Another 15% live in areas which are marginal propositions, breakeven at best. (The exact composition of that 15% varies somewhat between wireless and wireline provision, but not enough to be politically important.) The final 5% is uneconomic to service: telecoms to the bush only happens as a result of "universal service obligations" (and mining projects--mines get great wireless telecoms service, at least from Telstra).
In the absence of government carrot (e.g. $11B to Telstra), FTTH or even FTTN deployments would have proceed slowly and selectively, and exclusively within the 80% zone. The $36B NBN project is supposed to take FTTH-equivalent coverage to the high 90s (I defy you to find a firm promised coverage standard, however...).
It won't.
Even if that accomplishment might ever have been possible under the initial plan, internal performance in NBN-world has been dramatically short of it. Even if Labor wins the next election, there is going to be a dramatic curtailment of NBN ambitions, or a dramatic NBN budget blowout, or both.
nevergonnahappen.com.au
And just when I thought Australian politicians couldn't possibly get any worse, dumb and dumber show up out of nowhere and blow the competition out of the water by announcing a plan to spend $29B on infrastructure that would have been obsolete 5 years ago.
I dont understand why this is even debated. Are Aussies really this stupid? I know this is a country that strives for mediocracy, but this is just mind blowing.
Abbots 25MBPS plan is so retarded its not even worth discussing. Seriously. WTF are they thinking. Its like spending a huge amount of money building a highway with ONE lane. Damnit, now I have to vote for the witch.....
I would have preferred they had just said we are scrapping the NBN and doing nothing.
At least then I wouldn't feel like they were throwing 30bn down the toilet.
I think these two idiots may actually be capable of pulling of the impossible; Loosing to Julia Gillard.
No Aussie in the right mind would agree to this. It will literally throw the country back to the middle ages. In the US, they are discussing installing 1GB/Sec now, thats 40 times faster than what these geniuses are proposing we have in 5 years or so. Australia will have zero chance....
It's about economics and politics, and in particular the economics and politics of "the last mile" of telecommunications connectivity to "the Australian bush" (a very hazily defined concept).
Agreed it is about the economics and politics of the last mile, but it's not about the bush. As far as I can tell the coalition and the ALP are proposing the same solution for the 7% outside the "fast" coverage zone.
The difference seems to be entirely in the non-new-build metropolitan areas.
ALP says ditch all the copper and install fbre everywhere.
Coalition says keep the last little bit of the copper where it exists today, pay for the maintenance of said Jurassic copper, and build a shitload of nodes to get the length of the copper down to "viable" levels. These nodes will inevitably be abandoned when those areas are eventually upgraded to full FTTC or FTTH when it is found that:
a) The copper is failing, Telstra "misplaced" the frame records and nobody knows where the copper pairs actually go,
b) the value of existing housing tanks because it can only get some fraction of 25Mbps depending on quality of said copper and new estates are all getting 100Mbps.
The coalition plan will cost a shitload more than the ALP plan over the long term and take longer to build.
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. --Gloria Steinem AREPS™
I don't assume anything of the sort. The unpalatable truth is that the current NBN "standard" of near-universal fibre-to-the-curb, mixed with high-end satellite-to-the-bush, is a ridiculously expensive set of goal criteria for internet provision in Australia, a boondoggle that will swamp all previous standards of federal government waste if it is ever fully implemented.
The Coalition will tie itself in knots by failing to acknowledge that they will back away from that "standard". But ultimately they will, and they'll save billions in the process.
And no doubt, they'll lose hundreds, or even thousands of votes in the bush in the process, most of them avid devotees of BitTorrent.
Based on - you're personal bullshit anecdotes ?
Yup - thanks - Royal Commission - fuck you're full of shit.
The Opposition Leader promised today that every Australian household would receive a free floppy disk drive and monochrome monitor under an Abbott-led government. Launching the Coalition’s long awaited response to the government’s National Broadband Network program, Mr Abbott denied that providing a floppy drive and monitor without the computing box to plug them into would leave Australian households with a second best solution. “If people want that extra functionality,” he said, “they can spend a few thousand dollars to upgrade to a very fast 386 or even 486 computing box.” When asked by Leigh Sales what a ‘386 computing box’ was, he admitted he wasn’t "across the brief" but, “Here’s everyone’s favorite! The interweb’s Malcolm Turnbull!”
Mr Turnbull immediately deflected criticism of the lack of a computing box, by pointing out that the monochrome monitor was not some old fashioned TRS 80 green screen, but rather a much cooler-looking mandarin-hued model, which was more than adequate for most people’s needs. When asked how much input he'd had into the final policy he smiled impishly and insisted it was all Mr Abbott's work, "All of it. Nothing to do with me, right? Make sure you write that down."
Telstra is a crucial player in the construction of a national broadband network in this country, and that is the case regardless of the type of network that is built: the group's ownership of the existing copper wire communications backbone means that it can exact a toll if the copper wire is replaced by Labor's fibre-to-the-home project or piggybacked, as the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node network plan envisages.
That explains why the Coalition says it intends Telstra no harm if it wins power and switches from Labor's high-speed, high-price and labour-intensive fibre-to-the-home project to one that is slower but not fatally so, capable of being upgraded on a ''user pays'' basis, cheaper at the front-end, and easier to build because 71 per cent of the network will run to neighbourhood nodes. It also explains why Telstra isn't whingeing.
After years of brawling and arm-wrestling Telstra last year finalised an $11 billion NBN deal that would see it structurally separated from its copper wire network. That was a huge step and it will not be reversed, regardless of who is in power.
The pros and cons of the two NBN plans will be debated every which way in the lead-up to the election, but Telstra is basically committed. What it most needs to know is how its existing deal would be modified for a Coalition rollout - and the early signs are that it would not need to be modified very much: the Coalition's plan does not seem likely to deconstruct or seriously undermine the main financial elements of Telstra's compact with Labor and NBN Co, and might actually be more valuable to the telco.
Telstra's existing NBN deal leaves Telstra with ownership of a copper network, but it is an asset that is progressively shut down as the fibre-to-the-home broadband network rolls out. Telstra is paid progressively as that occurs, and is also paid over the life of the broadband network for allowing its copper wire ducts and conduits to be used by NBN fibre. Last year it put a net present value (NPV) of $9 billion on those arrangements, and side deals with the Labor government added another $2 billion of NPV.
The Coalition's NBN would stop seven times out of 10 at neighbourhood nodes: about 22 per cent of it would extend all the way to premises, but more than half of that would be in new housing developments where connections are new.
The Coalition would also focus on areas where broadband service upgrades are most needed and leave intact the existing urban hybrid fibre broadband cable networks that are owned by Telstra and Optus. In practice, that would mean that the Coalition's network would be developed ''inside-out'', from regions and outer suburbs built when dial-up connections were state-of-the-art in towards cities and urban areas where cable networks already offer relatively high broadband speeds.
Telstra would, however, still exact payments for either selling the ''last mile'' of its existing network to the NBN or allowing it to be used. And while delays in Labor's rollout are pushing the timing of payments out and reducing the net present value of Telstra's deal, a quicker Coalition NBN rollout would accelerate payments to the telco, boost the NPV of the deal and perhaps also accelerate ''NBN bonus'' cash returns to shareholders.
Citigroup estimates that Telstra would still generate value of $6.2 billion from making its infrastructure including the ''last mile'' of its copper network available to a Coalition NBN, and generate $4.5 billion of NPV from disconnection payments as its copper wire customers switch onto the NBN, most often via neighbourhood nodes.
''Intrusive paraphernalia'': the nodes are needed to house electrical equipment.
About 60,000 cabinets that look like stretched refrigerators will be installed on footpaths under the Coalition's national broadband network, bringing criticism from urban designers.
But opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull said he had learned from the "British experience" where Londoners complained about bulky green cabinets blighting their neighbourhoods.
The telecommunications company BT, which built a fibre-to-the-node network similar to the one Mr Turnbull is proposing, has faced strong criticism over its ''street furniture''.
"Every generation of nodes is getting smaller," Mr Turnbull said.
Such nodes, which are needed to house electrical equipment and change the fibre to copper telephone lines, are still too bulky for some leading Australian architects and urban designers.
"Let me choose my words fairly carefully," said Alec Tzannes dean for the faculty of built environment at the University of NSW, reviewing a cabinet designed by BT. "I think it's hideous.''
Labor's NBN also requires 60,000 street cabinets, but they are shorter and about half the width of the cabinets required under the Coalition plan. Unlike the Coalition's cabinets, Labor's do not require power.
Philip Thalis, an Australian architect and urban designer, said the streets were "already littered with such intrusive paraphernalia".
"Do we really want an extra 60,000 blights across urban Australia?" Mr Thalis said.
''Would Malcolm Turnbull or anyone else want one in front of their home?"
Australia continues to fall in technology-ready global rankings because it is too risk-averse and conservative with IT spending.
The 2013 Global Information Technology rankings, produced by the World Economic Forum and released Thursday, put Australia at 18th, out of 144 nations, for business and government readiness to benefit from technology. It is down from 9th in 2004 and from 17th last year.
The nation’s ranking for individual technology use rose one spot to 15th, but dropped three places to 25th for business use and down 11 positions to 19th for government.
"This reinforces both the need for high-speed ubiquitous broadband but importantly, the critical need to invest in lifting the skills needed to gain the greatest benefit from this infrastructure," Australian Industry (Ai) Group chief executive Innes Willox said of Australia's ranking.
Mr Willox said businesses required confidence and knowledge to invest, and governments needed policies in areas such as skills, innovation, cutting red tape, cybersecurity and buying technology goods.
The great irony of Malcolm Turnbull’s attempt yesterday to salvage a remnant of credibility following the disastrous release of his party’s broadband-lite manifesto is that he is guilty of the very crime he has levelled at every critic (and they are numerous): apparently, said critics have rusted themselves on to old arguments supporting the benefits of a national, ubiquitous and scalable open access network to reverse decades of entrenched inequity in broadband accessibility.
In contrast, the ‘Coalition’s Plan for Fast Broadband’ (as opposed to ‘slow’ broadband? At least they realised they can’t pass it off as ‘high-speed’) is represented as a piece of nimble thinking reflecting technological and economic evidence – so startling, yet so obvious – that one struggles to comprehend how economies such as Singapore and South Korea got it so wrong.
As a humble backbencher with a policy interest in this area who has faced off against the Shadow Minister on the floor of the House of Representatives at every step of this debate, let me tell you – I’ve heard it all before. And because it’s the same old arguments, it’s no wonder they are met with the same response. Wireless technologies will render a fibre backbone obsolete in five years? Cue the physics lesson on spectrum properties. I don’t need fixed infrastructure to use my iPad? Cue the reality check regarding fixed wireless and how short-range routers work. And so it goes.
Hence, yesterday’s contribution from Turnbull (Good riddance to bad broadband memories, April 12). With an original remit from his boss to demolish the NBN, we have more scratching around for arguments to disprove everything from copper being about to hit its use-by date; to FTTP being nothing more than an extravagance for which the same outcomes can be achieved for a quarter of the cost, using other means. The flaw in this approach, however, is the assumption that these arguments have not even been considered in this debate. This is not the case, as can be seen by examining some of them in turn.
Firstly, the fundamental notion that FTTN will do just as good a job for nowhere near the cost. There is a good reason why even the Tory Lord Inglewood, Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications, has advocated a fundamental rethink of the approach in the United Kingdom, where a FTTN-equivalent solution is not achieving its objectives, and where gaps in broadband access require piecemeal supplementing by regional broadband initiatives. Sound familiar, regional Australia?
Then there’s the argument that vectoring offers a complete solution to the extension of copper’s utility. Vendors have an inherent interest in promoting their wares and the technologies that go with them, copper acceleration being one of them. The evidence also shows that many operators are looking to vectoring as an interim solution on a path to FTTP. The problem is, the path from FTTN to FTTP is not the traditional ‘ladder of investment’ as is commonly understood in the telco world, where competitive carriers graduate from resellers to facilities-based competitors. It is essentially a choice about whether to roll out for the future, now; or roll out for the present, now. It is not even clear whether the cost of vectoring has been factored into the estimates, assuming there are any costings on this policy at all. And from a purely technological point of view, sure, vectoring will work, but you have to surrender sub-loop unbundling in the process. So much for competition.
Of particular note is no mention of the operation and maintenance costs associated with the proposal. I can buy a printer for a few bucks at a supermarket these days, but how much will it cost me to replace the cartridges? Similarly, will it be quicker to reach a new deal with Telstra? In this question, there are options for Telstra for which neither I nor Mr Turnbull cannot claim insight. But we can presume that Telstra would be considering the O&M options very keenly. It could even give the copper to the new network, provided it retains a nice O&M deal with it over, say, 20 years. Or, a potentially more commercially viable option for Telstra would be to give up its copper network, provided that the Commonwealth takes on its O&M responsibilities. Either way, the costs are massive, they are ongoing, and they are not factored into this so-called fraction-of-a-cost proposal.
And indeed, Mr Turnbull can have his tiny cabinets as he asserts – so long as they don’t need batteries, are not subject to flooding rain, and appropriate line lengths are available for each. And with 60,000 of them, don’t forget to add the O&M costs onto each of them as well.
So even taking into account some of the key points by Shadow Minister Turnbull in yesterday’s piece, one can see how his protests raise even more questions than problems solved.
The Coalition will argue the fundamental difference in its approach is that it’s doing the same as Labor only cheaper and faster, but I suggest otherwise. The differentiator, for me, is values-based. I want a solution that doesn’t discriminate on broadband accessibility and affordability based on postcode and wealth. I want uniform pricing to end the digital divide between cities, outer metro areas and the regions once and for all. I don’t want a policy that claims to know better than me how much speed and quality I need in my broadband. So I guess Malcolm and I will continue to disagree. See you on the floor next month.
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