

Australia's bad broadband punchline - samuellevy
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/12/13/comment-australias-bad-broadband-punchline

======
schappim
My take: Living in Australia, the best thing that we can do to increase the
perceived quality of web services in Australia is to subsidise the local
hosting of international web companies. It's latency that is killing our
experience right now.

The latency between Australia and the internet (hear AWS data centre in
Virginia where most startups live, or rely on an API that exists this region)
is crazy! It's especially so as companies are starting to push "regular
traffic" over to https (even HN is https now). The 4+ requests required to
establish an encrypted connection adds up.

 _Whenever I 'm in the Bay Area it feels like the internet is on localhost!_

The cost of hosting in Australia is 5-10x that of the states[1].

Whilst it's fun to bash the Coalition’s NBN policy, the Labour party's plan
topped out at only 100Mbps (which I'm already getting on Telstra Cable). What
really annoys me is that

Australia's cable network is Fibre to the node already[2], and it is already
capable of 1Gbps speeds. I hear that Telstra is not offering 1Gbps per second
as part of an agreement with NBN Co.

[1] My friends over at orionvm.com gave me a lesson in hosting economics when
I wanted to white label their service.

[2] My next door neighbour designed and sold the underlying hardware used on
Telstra's coaxial network.

~~~
Schwolop
Markus (assuming that's you given the username and proximity to OrionVM) -
Labour's plan didn't "top out" at 100Mbps. They merely offered that as the
practical maximum when first talking about what hardware they would place in
the points of interconnect. About two years ago NBNCo made another
announcement that 1Gbps hardware was now cost-effective and they switched to
that almost immediately.

I also have not heard the same rumours as you, and would be interested to know
more about Telstra's artificial limiting of fibre speeds.

------
nikcub
> The results of the strategic review announced that not only will the
> Coalition’s plan cost almost as much as the originally announced NBN plan

That isn't because it is more expensive, it is because the estimate on the
original plan was wrong.

The old peak funding requirement on the original plan was $43.6 Billion with
3.5 million households passed by June 2016. There was supposed to be an update
of those figures published this July but they sat on the report until after
the election. We now know that those figures are now $73 billion peak funding
and 1.7 million residences passed [0].

> The Coalition’s NBN is a joke. It will not arrive faster, cheaper, or
> better.

It will be faster (as in, rolled out faster) and cheaper. Despite the
political vitriol surrounding this topic in Australia, you can't bend the
technical and economic reality that rolling out a fiber to the node solution
(FTTN) is both cheaper and faster than rolling out fiber to the premises
(FTTP) with existing households:

[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=638167...](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6381672&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6381672)

You rollout fiber to the home where it is more economical (dense areas, new
developments) you roll fiber to the curb where it is more economical and
faster (apartment buildings) and you roll the fiber to a cabinet where it is
more economical and faster (existing suburban areas).

Attaching each plan to a rollout strategy was a mistake in the first place, as
a national network requires a mix of technology (this isn't FTTN v FTTH, its
about where to apply each).

[0] Here is a nice table the lays out the old/new estimates:
[http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-strategic-review-by-the-
numbers-...](http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-strategic-review-by-the-
numbers-7000024217/)

~~~
elithrar
My concern is how they are calculating maintenance costs of the copper tail.
Telstra's linesmen are some of the few equipped/trained to maintain these
lines, and in areas > 30 years old much of the copper is in poor condition or
direct buried (read: $$$ to replace). Flooded pits causing comms connectivity
issues, radio interference, etc all impact copper performance too.

Speed is often the argument for FTTN vs FTTH, when reliability should be.

~~~
sanswork
The flooded lines is a funny one. When I lived in Bondi my DSL would drop out
or start seeing massive slow downs every time it rained. It took me half a
year before I realized the correlation too.

------
shadowmint
Everyone already knows the NBN is now going to 1) take forever to build (~10
years), and 2) deliver terribly retarded service that will be obsolete once it
exists.

I can't wait for them to pull a Telstra as well, and try to sell it off to the
public in shares to 'mum and dad investors'.

Its embarrassing to watch the farce unfold.

(and will, I predict, continue to be, for years to come...)

(the irony is, there is NBN fiber _in the ground_ outside my apartment _right
now_ , up and down all over. ...but we're still on the '2-3 years' waiting
list, and so is everyone else here, because maybe 40% of the homes in this
area are apartments. Stupid doesn't even begin to cover it.)

~~~
Intermernet
Yep, it's disgraceful. The fibre was laid outside my house about 6 months ago
and I'm still told that "construction is yet to commence" in my area.

They might want to tell that to the friendly workers who were digging the road
up and running fibre reels into it for almost a week.

I'm sure they'd be happy to know that the job they just finished hasn't
actually started yet.

------
serfdomroad
I just got the NBN installed the other day(insane speeds, at a very high
monthly price). The technician was at my house several times and his opinion
as a contractor on the ground level is that no one at the top is aware of the
impracticality of scaling the home installation in the time frame they are
proposing. Furthermore, many people do not yet require such high speeds but
are having it installed just because they are not required to pay for the
installation, especially older folk who don’t understand what they are being
ask to sign up for. There is a massive disconnect between who need such
services (and what type of services at what cost) and what sounds good on a
policy paper and in a press briefing.

------
lucaspiller
It sounds almost as bad as what's going on in the UK. The current "superfast
broadband" contracts have been offered to BT (former state run telecoms
monopoly) across England and Wales and local projects for innovation have been
turned away. [0]

[0]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24919148](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24919148)

~~~
alan_cx
No, not really. Its certain areas where there are broad band black spots. Your
post implies is a UK thing.

On top of that, the idea is to get it done, as opposed to mucking around
waiting for "innovation", which _was_ happening to fill the gap. That gap is
being closed. People in BB black spots want a decent connection at a
reasonable price, not innovation. And frankly they want and need it ASAP.

As for the innovators, they can still innovate if they like. Just not off the
premium backs of people in black spots.

