
I want the NBN - collypops
http://iwantthenbn.com/
======
jschuur
The top of the page tells me nothing about what they're campaigning for. FTTN?
NBN? FTTH?

English people. English! I'm not even sure if this is a parody.

 _The Liberal Party of Australia: Reconsider your plan for a 'FTTN' NBN in
favour of a superior 'FTTH' NBN_

 _Australia needs the right NBN._

 _Vote at change.org if you agree!_

~~~
jschuur
And yes, I realize the change.org site has more details. But once again, the
whole top of that page has no actual info in the title except a bunch of
acronyms.

~~~
kaliblack
In Australia, where this petition is relevant, these acronyms are well
understood by the public and don't need further explanation.

~~~
devnetfx
I am in Australia and these acronyms are not well understood by the public.
Luckily jdaley explained these well in his comments above.

~~~
chewxy
This is exactly the problem. Also, the vox populi interviews in newspaper from
older people saying "25 mbps is fast enough" makes me rage so hard.

Oh, 25 Mbps is fast enough? So if I were to offer you $25 or $1000 which would
you take?

Ugh. The NBN is a good idea, but poorly sold to the older generation who
cannot seem to grasp the idea of its importance,

~~~
dbaupp
_> 25 mbps is fast enough_

Of course it's fast enough! You can fill your entire 640 kB of RAM (who needs
that much anyway?) in 200ms with that raw speed.

~~~
mcauser
What's a kB? :p

~~~
stephengillie
[http://xkcd.com/394/](http://xkcd.com/394/)

------
jpau
I _do_ really want the NBN to be the best it can be, but I really _really
really_ want a proper debate about the issue.

Arguments should not be as one-sided as either "the Coalition's plan is crap,
because it's slower" or "Labor's plan is crap, because it costs more".
Instead, the debate needs to be about whether or not the extra speed is worth
the cost.

We aren't currently seeing this sort of debate. The Coalition says "give us
some benefits to quantify". Labor says "giving all of the benefits would be
impossible". I believe Labor should at least _try_. If they fail, they can
fall back to their current position; no ground lost. At this point, Labor need
only give benefits from the speed difference to support the cost difference -
not the entire project cost.

P.s., the change.org petition is full of flaws. For example: "Broadband
internet is an ‘infrastructure’ and should be considered in the same light as
highways, water management, electricity and so forth; it should be a ‘right’
available ‘equally’ to all Australians."

But surely, better roads exist where they are needed more- where the cost
justifies such? My parent's farm runs off of tank water and a self-sufficient
sewerage system, not town water. The cost to provide the same service I
receive at my apartment building as to their farm would be ludicrous.

Why are we not seeing a proper debate on this issue?

~~~
crazytony
"Instead, the debate needs to be about whether or not the extra speed is worth
the cost."

How about this: the coalitions plan is crap because it provides less service
and less future adaptability at almost three times the unit cost.

$44.1b/100mbps estimated FTTH = $0.441b/mbps $29.5b/25mbps estimated FTTN =
$1.18b/mbps

The numbers get even worse for the coalition when you factor in an additional
$2B to the NBN plan to move everyone from 100mbps to 1000mbps.

Your analogy of town water vs tank water is not relevant as the plan is not to
provide the same service (ie fibre) to all areas. That debate happened 3-4
years ago and has been NBN policy for almost as long. Fibre in dense areas,
Wimax in less dense areas and satellite in rural settings. Wider roads exist
for more capacity but I guarantee your parents farm has at least one road
around it. That is what the change.org petition is talking about.

The problem we're running in to is our physical plant (the copper) is
antiquated in standard and age. The coalition has loved talking up how bad the
plant is as a negative for the NBN plan (asbestos boxes and viaducts, tree
roots, electrical shorts, flooding, etc).

The NBN has planned and has budgeted to replace this plant with newer, modern
equipment and techniques.

The coalition plan attempts to bend reality and ignore the dilapidated state
of most of the inner city/suburban Telstra equipment. Instead they are going
to buy 60,000+ new DSLAMs and just magically integrate them without having to
deal with 50 years of bad maintenance.

~~~
mikelward
Those numbers seem wrong.

The Coalition plan likely involves VDSL2+, which is supposed to do 250 Mbps at
the node, and 50 Mbps 1 km from the node, so likely 90%+ of the population
would get 50-100 Mbps by 2016. 25 Mbps is the minimum, not the average.

And the NBN was supposed to do 1 Gbps within a few years. But the rollout
might be slower.

Add to that that once FTTN is rolled out, it could be upgraded to FTTH/FTTP,
for a lot less money, these numbers are really not as easy to compare.

Interesting point about the state of the existing exchanges, copper, etc..

The plan did make a brief comparison to other FTTN roll outs worldwide, e.g.
AT&T uVerse. Wonder what problems they faced.

------
samuellevy
Good to see this one up on HN.

I've been running [http://www.weneedthenbn.com/](http://www.weneedthenbn.com/)
since Saturday night, and it's been getting a bit of traction, too.

My phone call to my local MP wasn't exactly promising - while I couldn't talk
directly to the MP (although I didn't expect to), the person who answered
seemed generally uninterested in anything that I had to say, and was unaware
of the technical differences (other than "the LNP plan is cheaper").

I hope we can make a difference here, and there seems to be a lot of support
for it. Even if 1% of the people who signed the petition called/emailed/wrote
to their local member, we might have a chance of making a difference.

~~~
dbaupp
_> the LNP plan is cheaper_

I've _heard_ that it's cheaper to build, but significantly more complicated
and expensive to run because of the maintenance of the copper network and the
fact that the nodes require power under the LNP NBN, but not the ALP NBN.

(I'd like confirmation/anti-confirmation of this if anyone happens to know
more.)

------
tezza
I am an expat Australian living in London.

Here in Belsize Park I have access to Virgin Media, which is fibre to a
closeby yet remote center nearby (FTTN).

This is easily good enough for me on the 120Mbit plan. I often get 12 MB/s
with suitably fast peers.

So I reckon that FTTN would be just fine.

~~~
XorNot
What is the physical wiring coming into your house made of?

Because there is _no way_ you are getting 120 mbit's through telephone copper.
If it's not fiber then you're on HFC which means shared coax. In which case,
well, that's not happening here because you'd _still_ have to run coax to
millions of premises. The type of wiring is not the expensive part.

------
jwilliams
I guess this means well and I hate to say it -- but this is largely pointless.
Even this were as persuasive as hell, the Liberals just gained government by
bashing the NBN plans (amongst other things). They're not going to change.

------
peterkelly
Step 1 (now): Fibre to the node

Step 2 (later, on an incremental basis): Fibre to the home

Why do we need to do both steps at the same time? The last mile is incredibly
expensive and difficult (as the slow rollout of Labour's scheme has
demonstrated). Doing fibre to the node now doesn't stop us from having it to
the home at a later point in time, as demands increase.

~~~
3825
Please do not be misinformed. The last mile is a very contentious issue. What
incentive does Telstra have to share the infrastructure to the last mile with
some scrappy upstart?

~~~
nikcub
Telstra won't be sharing it, NBN Co. will be purchasing the copper network.

One of the benefits of having an NBN Co. is you don't have the
retailer/wholesaler conflict of interest as we did with Telstra and as the UK
did with BT

The solution in the UK was to mandate open access in regulation with BT
OpenReach. The solution in Australia is NBN Co.

------
nikcub
The petition grossly oversimplifies the difference in approach between the
major parties. The NBN will still be built under the new government, NBN Co.
will still exist, the debate isn't so much about FTTN vs FTTH (terms that most
Australian's aren't familiar with) nor about copper vs fiber.

It is about the tradeoff between delivering higher speeds and the time taken
to implement. The coalition plan is prominently technology agnostic[0]. The
reason why Australia ranks 40th[1] globally with an average broadband speed of
4.1Mbit is not because we haven't rolled out fiber to every home, but rather
because of mistakes made during deregulation and the delays in implementing a
new plan have meant that large sections of the population have fallen behind
international standards and are unable to access even a decent ADSL service,
let alone a better VDSL or fiber based service.

This has left the country in a situation where because of a lack of basic
service, 47% of the country currently access the internet using mobile
broadband[2]. This is beyond unacceptable.

The two approaches to solving this problems are 1) build a nation wide network
that delivers a satellite and wireless service to 7% of the population and a
fiber to the home service to the other 93% of the population. ETA 2021. or 2)
set a bandwidth target of delivering _at least_ 25Mbit and up to 100Mbit to
all households by 2016 and then upgrade to 100Mbit by 2019 using a mix of
technologies

The 25-100Mbit by 2016 plan would bring Australia into the top 3 or 4 nations
worldwide for internet access speeds, where we belong (neither plan would
solve high bandwidth prices - the NBN only reaches from your home to your
nearest point of interconnect, it does nothing to resolve the current poor
state of internet bandwidth/backhaul access in Aus which has a lot of existing
broadband connections struggling with international speeds).

The new approach is about applying the best technology to fit the situation
and to get more bandwidth out sooner. This means that in new housing areas
(known as greenfields) where new trenches have to be dug fiber to the home
will be deployed (this doesn't change). In remote areas it will be a mix of
satellite and wireless service (this doesn't change). In existing suburbs
(brownfields) there will be a mix of fiber to the home, fiber to the basement,
and fiber to the node with VDSL (and later GFast) delivering the last hundreds
of meters.

There is yet another rollout case that is the most complicated and that is
multi-dwelling unit's (or MDU's) - apartments, town houses, retirement
villages, office buildings etc. The old plan was that in these instances the
existing copper within a building would be pulled out and replaced with fiber.
The problem is that co-ordinated the millions of residents, strata bodies,
building co-ops, owners, etc. is a bureaucratic nightmare. When Optus and
Telstra rolled out their HFC networks in the 90s they bypassed many of these
residences because of the problems it involves. I think even the most strident
Labor NBN supporter would concede that MDU's require a new plan and a
different approach (not coincidently a report by NBN Co. on the MDU problem
was due out a couple of months ago but its release was delayed until after the
election).

This is why technological decisions should not be dictated by online petitions
that at best oversimplify the situation and at worse misrepresent it. I was
hoping that with the election now behind us that the toxic partizan debate
surrounding the NBN would be over and that people that are best suited to
finding a solution - engineers, network architects etc. could set about
working out how to achieve the aim of delivering 25-100Mbit to Australian by
the end of the first term of this new government.

The solution is using a mix of technologies - FTTH in new areas, FTTN in
existing areas, an option to upgrade to fiber for businesses, fiber to the
basement in MDU's, satellite and wireless in remote areas, etc. Whatever
works, just get more bandwidth out there sooner.

As a technologist I can only support using a practical approach to finding the
best solutions to hitting targets.

Off course we all want fiber to the home, off course we all want gigabit
speeds, but there is a much more immediate problem of solving the blackspots
in existing services. It is about taking smaller steps and delivering more
bandwidth to more people sooner rather than a clean slate approach of an
entirely new network, and all the risks that involves.

I personally know many people who are stuck using 3G modems to access the web
and who not only have terrible data speeds but also have usage caps that are a
few gigabytes a month. I struggle to explain to them why my area, where I
already have an ADSL2+ service at 16Mbit+, is on the roadmap to receive an NBN
service this year while their area, closer to the city than I live, is
scheduled to start construction of the NBN in 3 years time.

I think it is much more important to get at least 25Mbit to those 47% of
households before I get my connection upgraded from 16Mbit to 50 or 100Mbit.

There are no doubt still a lot of problems with the new plan. I wouldn't count
myself as an ardent supporter of the coalition plan (I don't think I even like
the very idea of there being an NBN and an NBN Co., but I digress), but I do
believe that taking immediate small steps to solve the most critical problem
is much more important than rolling out fiber to every home. What is certainly
the case is that many, many people are overreacting to the change in
government and the new broadband plan. The sky definitely isn't falling and we
aren't tearing out what was built and dissolving NBN co. I wish more and more
Australians would take a more pragmatic and less partizan approach to the
problem.

As an aside, the coalition policy document [3], at 37 pages, is definitely
worth a read. It goes into all of the background into how they made their
decision, their research, etc. It is articulated, thought out, thoroughly
referenced and well researched - I recommend everybody with an interest in the
NBN read it and contrast to how this petition is presenting the 'problem'.

see also: "Will FTTN advances delay FTTH?":
[http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/print/volume-30/issu...](http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/print/volume-30/issue-4/cover-
story/will-fttn-advances-delay-ftth.html)

on how advances in squeezing more bandwidth out of copper (a technology that
is far from dead or antiquated) is causing more telco's to forgoe ambitious
FTTH plans in favor of FTTN.

[0]
[http://www.afr.com/p/technology/turnbull_cut_price_broadband...](http://www.afr.com/p/technology/turnbull_cut_price_broadband_plan_cyno2UoMeEYk6G1E5KrCDM)

[1] [http://www.news.com.au/technology/state-of-the-internet-
aust...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/state-of-the-internet-australia-
web-speeds-ranking-dwindles-to-40th-place-
globally/story-e6frfro0-1226560992748)

[2] [http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/03/aussies-nuts-for-mobile-
br...](http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/03/aussies-nuts-for-mobile-broadband-
also-downloading-more-data-every-year/)

[3]
[http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/assets/Coalition_NBN_polic...](http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/assets/Coalition_NBN_policy_-
_Background_Paper.pdf)

~~~
another-one-off
Hurrah, someone who cares about the actual policies. Nikcub has provided an
excellent summary of the technical detail of the situation (which I will be
relaying to many of my friends).

There is a huge amount of ignorance in Australia regarding broadband policy. I
enjoy talking to people about the NBN, and I came to suspect that no-one in my
sample payed any tax. Or they are just really bad at accounting.

Very, very few Australians would/should actually trade the cost of connecting
their premise for the speed upgrade from ADSL2+ to fiber (edit: which is in
the range of about $2k/person or $8k for a 4 person family unit according to
the back of my nearest envelope). There aren't enough uses for speeds >=1MBps.
A typical household is YouTube, Skype, gaming (and I don't think a fibre has
any special implications on gaming that ADSL2+ doesn't have) and downloading
stuff illegally.

There are more important research/infrastructure projects than a broadband
network. Basically anything transit related for a country like Australia - the
money could easily have gone into public transport.

I was stuck in a situation where I could only get dial-up speeds in a rental
property. My theory was that Telstra (the local owner of all the network
infrastructure) weren't going to invest in any upgrades that would be wiped
out by federal spending - but the upgrade wasn't going to be for years. 12
months on mobile broadband is very, very unpleasant if you are a heavy
Internet user. Speed of rollout is much more important, and the new policy can
be enacted very, very quickly.

I live in a MDU now, as it happens, so the liberal policy is great news for
me.

~~~
XorNot
Here's the problem: That $2000 is per house. But its not about the people
living in the house, it's about the physical premises being connected to the
wider network, just divided up on a "per house" level.

That's a piece of infrastructure which will exist 50 years from now. In fact,
if technology is any guide, even with upgrades it'll likely exist 200 years
from now even if the light going through it is used for very different
purposes.

So take that $2k, divide by, let's say the life of the cable until some idiot
hacks it with a backhoe, which is about 20 years: so it's a $100, per house,
for 20 years - transferring seamlessly to future occupants from old occupants.

"typical" always fails to describe the point of things like this. Typical is
the broadest conceivable average of use cases, and ignores the fact that it's
typical because across a country everyone does different specific things in
smaller conceivable groups.

And then of course there's the other important issue: if you spend $20-40
billion rather then $60 billion, and at the end wind up with just ADSL2+ but
no RIMs or other bollocks, have we really gotten ourselves a good deal?

~~~
another-one-off
(edits: clarity) I divided $43 billion [1] by a population of 22 million,
although now I see now that $1,500 would have been better (I read the wrong
cost :[). Anyway, it was meant to be a per person, not per house, figure.

The NBN would be a good piece of long-term infrastructure, no argument there.
It is better than a cash handout.

I don't think it is sensible to divide up-front cost by years of service.
$100/year for 20 years is much cheaper than $2k up front (as a Net Present
Value).

If we save the taxpayer $20 billion? Yes, that is a much better deal. Everyone
gets 25 Mbps ADSL2+, and people who want fibre (happens to include me, but not
the rest of my family) can pay for the last bit of cable work themselves if it
makes sense.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network#Expe...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network#Expected_cost)

~~~
XorNot
Except the project is deployed over a span of 10 years anyway, so the upfront
cost is already divided by that. You mention "you want fiber, but not your
family" \- but again, you're ignoring the fact that you and your family likely
won't live in that house, with what opinion, for the next 40 years.

It's saving $20 billion, but still spending $20 billion and possibly more.
Spending 2/3rd's the cost, with no upgrade path (FTTN does not upgrade to FTTP
easily) is a _terrible_ deal. We're keeping power and maintenance costs of the
old copper network, you're splitting the type of plant you need to keep (since
you have fiber, copper and coax all over the place), and you still haven't
escaped the need to trench cable (since a huge amount of that copper needs to
come out of the ducts to ever support 25mbit ADSL2, or needs to be completely
rerouted to get the distance to the exchange to under 1.5km).

One huge benefit of fiber is that we don't need to worry about distances from
exchange to premise - as long as it's under about 60km it'll work.

------
chris_wot
Too late!

~~~
korynunn
Read the message at the top of the site, it is a petition to the libs.

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, I know. I even signed it. They won't ever do it. That would involve
logic and a basic grasp of technology.

~~~
shelf
Given they mostly have business / law / academic backgrounds, I am not sure
that anybody has ever put the case for fibre speeds to the Libs in terms other
than 'this is what people want, and it is good.' The use cases used in Labor
promotions were patronising to the extreme. Don't be surprised that they've
concluded it is simply a 'nice thing' that people want but will loathe paying
for.

To be honest with you, the things I am planning to do when I get a gigabit
line are not exactly in the 'nation-building' category, either. I'm not sure
how to fix that PR problem.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Given they mostly have business / law / academic backgrounds_

Lawyers or former law students are the most numerous profession in Parliament.
Gillard was a lawyer. Abbott studied Law as an undergraduate, as did Howard
and Hawke.

The professional training of a lawyer equips them to vigorously argue a case
they may not themselves agree with, and to do so in forensic detail. The
skillset and subject matter has a strong overlap with the work of politics.

That doesn't mean we couldn't do with some more professional diversity in
Parliament and the Cabinet. It'd be nice to see some more scientists,
engineers and the like on both sides of the chamber.

~~~
kef
I'm thinking the Mad Scientists Party might stand a chance of a seat in the
senate next time around.

------
dan15
I'll just leave Shaun Micallef's segment on Tony Abbott's NBN here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-6E5yX1E0U](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-6E5yX1E0U)

