NBN "Broadband" in Australia

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#1693587 21-Dec-2016 23:47

I must say NBNco came out with a great idea - after purchasing telstra's copper network.

They are trialing reverse powered VDSL ethernet bridges.

In NZ we have a huge problem with the quality of UFB installs, and the waiting times in hawkes bay are at least 60 days and sometimes exceed 12 months for an SDU.

The NBNco trial means fiber is run down the street, but rather than running the fiber into the home, they use the old telstra copper lead in and put a media converter in the roadside. It gets low voltage power down the copper pair from inside the house (approx 8 watts) and the fiber is converted to VDSL for 100mbit speeds into the house.

This means no digging up gardens, and installs can be done much, much faster and for about 25% of the cost.

In NZ the govt specified that chorus must run fiber to the house and install an ONT where as in australia, NBN is able to play with different technologies to achieve the outcome.

Overall UFB is a better network than NBN, but with ideas such as this one, chorus probably wouldnt be having such big problems with the rollout. If I could choose a 100mbit max speed with a install next week, I would go with that rather than a fiber install and wait of 6 months for a 1gbit max speed.

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#1693594 22-Dec-2016 01:16

raytaylor: This means no digging up gardens, and installs can be done much, much faster and for about 25% of the cost.

Can't find the source but think the latest costs I saw were (per premesis) $1500 for FTTdp, $2300 for FTTN and $2100 for FTTP. But even now with FTTP being cheaper than FTTN, the govt refuse to pursue it for ideological reasons because they made such a fuss about how expensive FTTP was and how their "Multi Technology Mix" was going to be so much cheaper, faster etc. The copper here is in pretty bad shape, and I have heard FTTdp trials have been having huge issues with that, even just for lead ins. There are also lots of upset people who are currently on HFC who are now being told they are being kicked off to either FTTN or FTTdp VDSL and know they have bad copper that will likely mean issues. None of the copper maintenance or replacement costs have been factored into the business case for VDSL based solutions.

If I could choose a 100mbit max speed with a install next week, I would go with that rather than a fiber install and wait of 6 months for a 1gbit max speed.

Any many people here would probably opt for that too, but lots of people still wont get even that until 2018, 2019 or 2020. Very few will get FTTdp in 2017 . The rollout stalled when they actually found out it's currently illegal as by law the reverse power model means that every customer is legally is then a supplier of power (or something like that) and would requires a licence. They have said they will amend the law if necessary, but can't proceed until they have.

So by the time people will actually be able to get this, if their copper is good enough to support a decent connection, the world will have moved on either further from copper based broadband.

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michaelmurfy

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#1693595 22-Dec-2016 02:02

Bad shape is an understatement. The network is held together with plastic bags and zip ties (see this article) and what is worse is the comments with Telstra employees all defending Telstra basically saying it works totally fine (true) but it is a mess.

Here in NZ I've seen some rubbish done by Chorus but honestly I have to applaud Chorus on keeping the network tidy. Just around the corner from my house there was a copper piller that looked like it was vandeled however 2 days later it was like new again. I've seen cabinets that have had cars hit them or tagging that have been fixed up like new very quickly. This doesn't reflect Chorus as a whole but in the parts of NZ I've lived in and have had exposure of Chorus's network it does seem they're attempting to take good care of it (and the network is rather massive too). I've personally done installs in the most rural parts of NZ where Chorus were involved and normally they're quite good to deal with.

Yes there are people who have problems with Chorus however they're normally pretty good at resolving it - even shoddy UFB installs normally get resolved if the customer speaks up pretty quickly.

I'm rather happy being on this side of the ditch where the internet is quick and not everything wants to kill you. Also my parents who live in the middle of rural nowhere have a "NBN Simulator" (sorry @ajobbins):

====================================================================================
 VDSL Training Status: Showtime
 Mode: VDSL2 Annex B
 VDSL Profile: Profile 8b
 G.Vector: Disable
 Traffic Type: PTM Mode
 Link Uptime: 10 days: 2 hours: 4 minutes
====================================================================================
 VDSL Port Details Upstream Downstream
 Line Rate: 13.594 Mbps 78.796 Mbps
 Actual Net Data Rate: 13.570 Mbps 78.682 Mbps
 Trellis Coding: ON ON
 SNR Margin: 8.8 dB 9.4 dB
 Actual Delay: 0 ms 0 ms
 Transmit Power: -12.0 dBm 16.9 dBm
 Receive Power: 0.0 dBm 9.6 dBm
 Actual INP: 0.0 symbols 0.0 symbols
 Total Attenuation: 0.0 dB 11.6 dB
Attainable Net Data Rate: 13.471 Mbps 78.682 Mbps

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darylblake

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#1693609 22-Dec-2016 07:16

Considering my work has a few circuits in Australia, I know the state of NBN. The best you can hope for is G.Fast, but HFC sounds like its going to improve it a lot. I have found that going from 11mbit ADSL to 25mbit VDSL/30Mbit UFB has had a great improvement in my online experience. So if you can get about 25mbit on HFC then you should be fine for a while.

I am not one to complain about UFB but my house in torbay wont be ready for UFB until 2020 :(

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#1693624 22-Dec-2016 07:46

raytaylor:

nickb800:

And not just the rollout, I continue to hear throwaway comments about how slow internet in NZ is - yet we have FTTH and good 4G coverage. Even our speeds after FTTN were probably better than what most people get in Australia or USA

This is true

But the consumer who only requires an ADSL2+ connection or at most a VDSL connection are complaining about how they can only get 700Mb/s on their "1GB" fibre.

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#1693638 22-Dec-2016 08:24

SaltyNZ:

ajobbins:

While many of you kiwis are or have moved well on from an old ADSL connection to at least VDSL and in many cases FTTP, this kiwi happens to live in Australia where the idea of a next generation broadband network is a little different.

At home, I am currently stuck on a lovely ADSL2+ connection.

Wow, you're lucky. My parents, in Emu Heights, only get ADSL1 at ~4Mb/0.2Mb as long as it's not any time of the day you'd want to use the internet, in which case it drops down to < 1Mb.

I've got several friends in Melbourne, one is stuck on ADSL1 with constantly congested backhaul (if we voice on steam and his wife loads FB on her phone he starts breaking up) hes <100m to the cabinet but NBN has no plan for his area. One cannot get xDSL because the cabinet he's connected to is full, he's on a waiting list but I expect NBN to be in his area before he gets to the top (I think maybe next year), so he's forced to use 4g (Telstra have best coverage where he is so he pays handsomely for it).

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#1693698 22-Dec-2016 10:25

DarthKermit:

Some people like to bitch and moan about the UFB rollout here in NZ. Sounds like we have got a pretty good technology rollout compared to you guys however.

(We got UFB at our house back in Feb 2016.)

I like to because according to Chorus' map, our address is not included in the roll out. So, despite being a mere 2 km from the centre of the village and only 80km from the nation's capital, we will never get fibre. Nor are we included in the Rural Broadband roll out...

Indeed, according to Chorus' map address system, my house is actually in Ponatahi, a completely different place some 20km away from where my house actually is!

linw

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#1693715 22-Dec-2016 10:58

But you are still faster than 63% of NZ!!

ajobbins

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#1693736 22-Dec-2016 11:11

Amosnz:

hes <100m to the cabinet but NBN has no plan for his area. One cannot get xDSL because the cabinet he's connected to is full

Australia/Telstra never did cabnetisation, so not sure what that cabinet would be, but all the ADSL is back to the exchange still in AU. (Some exceptions - I think TransACT rolled out some VDSL from cabinets in Canberra). The people who are getting NBN "FTTN" are effectively getting what most of NZ got from 2008-2012 when Chorus did their cabnetisation project.

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Amosnz

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#1693745 22-Dec-2016 11:37

ajobbins:

Amosnz:

hes <100m to the cabinet but NBN has no plan for his area. One cannot get xDSL because the cabinet he's connected to is full

Australia/Telstra never did cabnetisation, so not sure what that cabinet would be, but all the ADSL is back to the exchange still in AU. (Some exceptions - I think TransACT rolled out some VDSL from cabinets in Canberra). The people who are getting NBN "FTTN" are effectively getting what most of NZ got from 2008-2012 when Chorus did their cabnetisation project.

They did do cabinets, and at one stage Telstra was doing a 'top-hat' program that added extra space to the top of the cabinet to add extra infrastructure. The problem with his cabinet is its copper fed from the exchange and limited in bandwidth.

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#1693755 22-Dec-2016 12:05

Amosnz: cabinets, and at one stage Telstra was doing a 'top-hat' program that added extra space to the top of the cabinet to add extra infrastructure. The problem with his cabinet is its copper fed from the exchange and limited in bandwidth.

Appears you are right - but a pretty small and specifically targeted rollout. The media comms talk about potentially up to 200,000 households, which is about 2% of the number of households in Australia. Appears this was targeted specifically to those who were suck on ADSL1 ports, and they only rolled out about 90% of the proposed cabinets in the end.

There was no widespread cabnetisation/FTTN project in AU until the NBN redesign under the Liberal government.

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#1693969 22-Dec-2016 18:27

linw:

But you are still faster than 63% of NZ!!

probably out of date as I forgot how to put the new info in!

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#1693986 22-Dec-2016 18:58

Geektastic:
DarthKermit:

Some people like to bitch and moan about the UFB rollout here in NZ. Sounds like we have got a pretty good technology rollout compared to you guys however.

(We got UFB at our house back in Feb 2016.)

I like to because according to Chorus' map, our address is not included in the roll out. So, despite being a mere 2 km from the centre of the village and only 80km from the nation's capital, we will never get fibre. Nor are we included in the Rural Broadband roll out...

Indeed, according to Chorus' map address system, my house is actually in Ponatahi, a completely different place some 20km away from where my house actually is!

You might get it in the next phase if the changes to allow fibre on overhead powerlines goes through. I'm hoping I will at some point: there's fibre feeding the cabinet I'm on so it would be completely doable.

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#1693998 22-Dec-2016 19:38

Didnt Malcolm Turnbull setup NBN?

Here it seems UFB is a hit, going from no one wanting to connect 2 years ago to massive delays. Its also impressive that all our schools now have access to UFB.

We just need better connections to the rest of the world now as that is where most of our usage goes.

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#1694005 22-Dec-2016 20:02

Pumpedd: Didnt Malcolm Turnbull setup NBN?

The previous Labor government set it up as a FTTP project much like UFB, however Malcolm Turnbull as Communications Minister under Tony Abbott threw away the original plan because they deemed it too slow and expensive, and decided that the "Multi Technology Mix" was a better idea.

But they are still working out what that mix actually looks like, and having thrown away the old plan and started anew, they have run up far more cost than they said they would, and it's now taking longer for many than it likley would have if they just stuck with the original plan that had already started rollout.

The FTTdp direction (where possible) was only announced in the last few months, as they have realised how unsuitable and expensive FTTN is in many cases.

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