I’m not a member of a political party, and both the current government and opposition are complete disappointments to me, however from where I sit the NBN certainly fills the criteria of investing some of our boom’s dividends in the future, a project that would not, and possibly could not, have been contemplated in tougher times.

In upping my family’s broadband to 200GB, at the highest current speed, the increased access it provided was dramatic. ABC’s IView as an example is brilliant for fitting programs into busy family lives. With two at high school the wealth of online video content on their various subjects is a boon.

We live in a small rural township yet when I was doing a job earlier last week in a 10 year old suburb of one of Australia’s largest towns I found the house owner bemoaning the fact they still had to rely on wireless broadband as they were “too far away from Telstra's exchange”. The service was expensive, intermittent, and frustrating the hell out of him this is despite the fact the provider’s tower was just up the hill. I didn’t ask his political preference (being the secretary of the local gun club gave me some inkling), yet I had a very strong sense that his vote could well be influenced by decent internet provision.

The position of the opposition is this ‘yesterday’s technology’ is cheaper and able to connect just as many homes. It appears short sighted and makes me pity Malcolm Turnbull for having to prosecute this stance for them. This type of infrastructure spending should have been right up the Liberal's tree.

By the next election over a million homes will be connected, all to some degree experiencing what we did and providing a sense of envy in those yet to be linked, it is an issue that will decide votes.

I certainly have some reservations about the process but I see the NBN as a positive, future proofing measure that will serve this nation well. Many others I speak to are voicing the same thoughts

I'm undecided really.

The thing that stands out for me is the attempt to eliminate competition by forcing the decommission of the copper network. If it's so good, why are they so scared of competition. If people are happy to pay much less for the copper connection they should be able to. What are they scared of? Huh?

And I am unhappy with the scope of the project, and think the user should pay for connection from the street IF it is so desired. To the home is a step too far.

Providing infrastructure for free to many people who don't even want it, while eliminating the competition?

I wonder what 40 billion dollars could be better spent on, and it seems to me the government are being a tad totalitarian about the whole thing. And they argue the case like they are inventing the internet and claim you will now be able to do things with the NBN that any fool knows you can already do now.

I don't believe rolling it out in the country areas first makes any financial sense

Still, my porn will be faster, cant argue with that.

Most people currently use the internet for entertainment, or the majority of bandwidth is used for entertainment. Do we need $40 billion better entertainment.

Oh, but we are planning for the future. Well, I'd rather spend money on rail lines to nowhere, because one day people will want to use them huh.

Thanks for thread, and nice to see one of the very many we have had start out pro.
Without doubt the Snowy river project would have had its opponents as you are about to find out this subject has too.
It has been used as a weapon against this government rolled up and thrown at them often.
We will again see some uninformed tell us it is about playing games or sending e mails faster.
Lets look at the facts, just as you find no good in both party's some will with good reason, continue to ignore some facts.
Those around me,who did not ask for government help get no better than 25kbs, often, half the time, reduced to 12.
My Satellite gives art best 56kbs.
It can and often does drop to near nil or gone completely.
You and major city folk can get your speed I would love it go without other things for it.
Our country needs high speeds in the bush and not just for play, I never play games .
Like most things time will come this in place ,,and most will forget their negativity.
It will pay for it self in just regional development.
Watch the stones fly, understand however those behind them are not interested in out comes other than standing in the way of progress for political gain
You by the way support them by voting other than mainstream.

Csteele,

Good for you, I'm glad that you enjoy it and have what you and your family want,
never mind even that I had to pay for your pleasure with my tax-money,
but why would you want to take away my (copper) phone line, which I want to retain
(and which for personal reasons that I cannot disclose here, is my only option for having a phone at all)?

I hear you Houellebecq, but I can’t help but think it speaks to an Australian ethic, one that I hope still informs our decisions, about the provision of services to all Australians and it is something we should be proud of.

For instance I am happy to spend 60 rather than let’s say 50 cents on a stamp if it means that people all over this country can post a letter at a flat rate. I understand I am subsidising this service to the more remote of our citizens but most Australians would see this as an acceptable cost even if it is for something as trivial as a postcard from holidaying family (not as important as your porn Houellebecq).

There have been some pretty serious attempts to break up the more lucrative parts of Australia Post which would ultimately see the government provide the subsidies required but what we have works on a number of levels.

Perhaps we need to accept it as part of being Australians, we have looked after our common wealth differently to other countries. I for one would like that to continue.

Dear Belly,

56kbs? Ouch. Sorry mate, I’m on 20Mbs promised, 12Mbs actual. Feeling guilty.

Dear Yuyutsu,

Your taxes have not contributed to one red cent of my connection. Perhaps you may after we get the NBN connection but right certainly not right now.

Investing in the future?

The latest statistics show that nearly half new broadband connections are mobile wireless. While fibre is better a connection the lack of mobility is an issue. While fibre is technically better, it is becoming functionally obsolete.

This mirrors the comparison between the mobile phone vs fixed line. There are about twice as many mobile phones as landlines, and telstra has long recognised that the land line business is dying. The sale of these to NBN Co is a godsend.

Perhaps the motto for the NBN should be:

"Yesterday's technology today, whether you want it or not."

i...got a in ground copper line
that i dont use..because im not intrested
in paying over 30$ per month..just to let telstra ignore updating it

far as im concerned i payed acces fes for over 40 years
my fees helped pay for it to be built

yet im stuck on quater of a gig download per month
on a stick..from dodo..that dont work most times..
and cant even download an abc film-clip...
[when this was nothing when i had copper]

its much the same annoyance's with tv/radio
that are going digetal next year

its buy a new tv..or a set top box
and buy a digetal radio

and pay 30 dollars access
and pay a service provider

i will stick with my dodo stick..for 50 a year
rather than giveup to govt gone insane

they will soon 'freup'..the tv aspecrum
for what?..cause we all going to get fibre

not fibre to the node
but fibre to my door...lol

and i will still be on dodo
/%50 for 50$

and i still wont be paying
to conect to the darnn nbn/thing
cause im over paying EXTRA infastructure fees
on top of EVERYTHING*

let the big gig greedy..gig AB_USERS
PAY FOR THEIR huge/SPECTRUM abUSE

fee free...and 5 gig basic for free
anymore than that is simply playing mind/games
that others are paying for...

next year my tv wont work
nor my radio...[this is what govts do]
then tax ya till ya complain..then to court..and lock you in jail

where its all free
yipee

Dear Csteele,

You missed the main point:
Whether you already did, or whether you will in the future, use my tax-money for your personal and family enjoyment, I do forgive you - money comes, money goes.

My point was, why on earth, while you and your family are getting all your dreams fulfilled, would you want to deprive me of my only phone line and leave me almost totally disconnected from the rest of the world - no phone, no internet, no job, life practically coming to a halt.

I really need my copper connection and at present there's a company or two that are happy to provide it to me. I am happy to pay them even 10 times to keep my line and they would be happy to take my money and give me the service, but... Julia and her government would not allow it: Once the NBN takes away my line, I would need to find a payphone to make necessary calls and go to a public library to use the internet. I will not be able to receive calls from family and friends or even dial 000 in emergency. Is that fair?

'While fibre is technically better, it is becoming functionally obsolete'

You must concede though SM, that after the data gets to the tower, it then quite often travels along fibre optic cable. And there aren't many towers in Gulgong.

csteele,

I agree with the helping of rural areas to an extent, though I always argue nobody forces someone to be a farmer. You must take the good and the bad of city life as well as country life. Which is why I also like to admonish people who buy a house next to a pub (Or a home of partying backpackers) and then complain about the noise. This is part of the deal with inner city living. Deal with it. Slow internet could be said to be part of living in the country. As could nice clean air, no traffic to get to work. Swings, roundabouts.

The city people, in their greater numbers, could pay off more of the NBN investment via exorbitant monopoly broadband fees if it was rolled out first, and saving loan interest and making the whole project much cheaper by the time it is rolled out to the country. But I believe the country people need it more. I suppose it depends on how committed one is to finishing the project, not to mention what electorates independent MPs are from.

I think there is tremendous potential to decentralise the workplace and alleviate road traffic, but bosses don't trust workers, and never will. Remote desktop needs FA bandwidth, but is rarely utilised in the eternally suspicious boss world we live in. So that kills that argument for it.

So we're back to faster entertainment, and the supposed 'remote medical consultations' which I see as equivalent in likelihood to the 'paperless orifice', and 'leisure society' future-predictions. Crystal ball stuff.

I await a study in 2050 showing the pitfalls of online diagnosis affecting rural people and talk about their human rights.

Closing hospitals... like banks close branches.

Dear Shadow Minister,

You say; “The latest statistics show that nearly half new broadband connections are mobile wireless. While fibre is better a connection the lack of mobility is an issue. While fibre is technically better, it is becoming functionally obsolete.”

Before I got my IPhone I might have had some sympathy for your comment. But here is the reality of my situation. We have four mobile phones in our house. All with a 3G wireless broadband connection to their respective providers. We have only one broadband connection to our house but it services four computers, four mobiles and one T-Hub (yes I was stupid and weak). My phone has a 1GB data limit but I would gobble that up pretty quickly if I had to rely on that alone. All my heavy downloads like pod and vod casts, and applications I leave until I get home. I hardly ever watch any of my news apps on 3G nor upload pictures to cloud, it is mostly all done when connected to our home unit.

I am not claiming my reality is the same as others but it is becoming more of the norm. To get the level of service and download speeds I am currently enjoying from my home internet via wireless would be totally cost prohibitive, and this is without fibre to the home. 3G is not bad but it is a fraction of the speed and dropouts are frequent depending on the number of users on the network, interference and signal strangth

csteele, you may be getting your duvalakkies mixed up with your thingimawhatsits? You say you’re upgrading to 200GB? Does that make it faster?

Houellebecq,

Towers generally don't need to be mobile, and for this application fibre is far better suited.

90% of the cost of the NBN is the fibre to the homes.

CS, the cost of Mobile wireless is a fraction of what it was 5yrs ago, and is far more accessible. $40/m gets you 8G (heaps for basic access), at 3Mb/s which is cheaper and better than ASDL 5 years ago. With new 4G technology and upgrades, both the price and quality will improve dramatically over the next decade.

Fibre has been around for decades, whilst wireless is just beginning.

Dear Houellebecq,

I agree that the country probably needs the infrastructure more. I also think that many of the problems we are facing within urban areas are because of lack of planning, particularly of infrastructure. It seems the governments both State and Federal adopt the approach that the loudest protests over lack of public transport, telecommunications, schools and hospitals should tell them where the greatest need is.

The NBN seems to be one of the few times we are seeing real investment into future needs, many of which probably have not been invented yet. Access to the data superhighway is going to matter as much to most businesses as access the telephone did in its time again in ways we likely cannot envisage right now.

It is difficult not to conclude that if we leave this until the pressures become too great many parts of the world will have left us behind. I understand the proof will be in the pudding but it seems the time is right for this kind of infrastructure building. I will even concede I probably would have preferred the Lib’s having the control over the rollout just in terms of governance. Something like this should have been their baby but their attitude at the moment is deplorable.

Dear spindoc,

I should have been clearer. The 200GB is my download data quota at “20Mbs promised, 12Mbs actual.”, dialled back to 256kbs speed if I go over.

Dear Yuyutsu,

As I’m a little lost with your regard to your particular situation all I can offer is sympathy. As the signal from your copper line is converted to fibre at the exchange perhaps the opportunity will be available to have a purely copper connection to the fibre outside your house.

@Houellebecq: The thing that stands out for me is the attempt to eliminate competition by forcing the decommission of the copper network.

Among the reasons I can think of for buying the copper:

1. To get at the ducts, otherwise they would have to rent space off Telstra.

2. To fix the mistake made by the Libs, when they privatised a monopoly.

3. Eliminate the competition.

I think that's roughly the right order, with the 1st being by far the most important reason. As I understand it, the costs would have exploded if they didn't have access to the ducts. Besides, if the NBN gets off the ground I think Telstra will be glad to have gotten rid of the copper network at price they did. It will be worthless. So will optus's and telstra's cable network for that matter.

@Shadow Minister: While fibre is technically better, it is becoming functionally obsolete.

Even liberal party shill's should not write rubbish like that. Your mate Turnbull can't stomach that line any more. His preferred story is Fibre To The Node is the right strategy. I don't know whether that is right or wrong, but I suspect that if Labour were rolling out FTTN, he would be saying they should be going for Fibre To The House. Back to your "functionally obsolete" claim. We added 1.6 million services with speeds between 8 Mbps and 24 Mbps last year.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/04/open_letter_turnbull/

We have what, 10 million homes. And we added 1.6 million services. Not bad for something that's functionally obsolete.

Yuyutsu: I really need my copper connection

Really? Can you tell me what you can do with your copper connection that you won't get able to do with the fibre connection that replaces it? The current proposal is the fibre with provide a voice channel, for free.

Dear spindoc,

Wireless is certainly are getting cheaper but so are telecommunications across the board. With or latest switch we managed to get unlimited calls to mobiles, unlimited national calls, 20 times the data allowance, over 20 times the download speeds along with $10 off the mobiles and line rental per month all for 2/3rds what we had been paying.

I see the physics of bandwidth being the future bottleneck for wireless but as you say new technologies may change the landscape. From all I can gather fibre seems the best option with what we know now and I’m happy the government has at least found something they are prepared to get on with.

I did warn you csteel, some confusion about your speed upgrade,well just 40ks away it is available too.
I understood seems spindoc did not.
Towers can not always help base or mobile, not even in my hobby ham radio.
SM the mobile is because most use it at work or play portable.
My tower stands and taunts me, built after my installation it is atop a W shaped hill.
I can see it, theory says it should be full strength, it is not.
A side to cable is a contract to upgrade these towers, to get service to those who like me can not get cable or radio.
Many wrongly think radio is easy or cheaper .
No, it can never give me hard line speeds and in the east coast of NSW the great dividing range even sees police and Ambos have blackspots, no communication.
Last no one paid for csteels it comes via land line and the costs are not funded.
Sorry Pensioners get free home phone incoming calls only.
This will not stop in NBN maybe more free service and a set top box.

Dear Rstuart,

"Really? Can you tell me what you can do with your copper connection that you won't get able to do with the fibre connection that replaces it? The current proposal is the fibre with provide a voice channel, for free."

(sigh) How can the fact that it's free help me if I cannot use it?

The one thing that I cannot do with fibre, which is an absolute must for me, is to physically separate the phone's voice/analog signal from the internet traffic.

At the moment, on copper, these two services (phone and ADSL) come at completely different frequencies, so I installed a simple, passive switch that splits the low-frequency and high-frequency signals into two separate cables before they reach my house. There is no equivalent in fibre, where all transactions are encapsulated into the same low-level digital protocol.

(just for completeness of answer, though it's not my biggest problem, fibre also cannot supply 40V power to the phones as the copper does)

'I’m happy the government has at least found something they are prepared to get on with.'

This is an important point. Everyone bitches and moans constantly that governments only think 3 years ahead, and when they finally do something 'for the future', it gets caned.

Hmmm. Wonder why they only think 3 years ahead.

I still think on balance, if it wasn't to the home, I'd be in favour. I think it's a slight overkill at the moment.

rstuart,

'I think that's roughly the right order'
Maybe you're right, but the cynic in me thinks it's political suicide if people don't take it up and prefer their copper 12MB lines based on cost. It all smacks of desperation to me.

I think there's a big market of people who only really need email and online banking speeds and are happy with a 1MB line at $20 a month. But they cant offer fibre at that price as it will blow out their costs too much. So, better to force people to have it, and take away the $20 option. I always look to the political motivations first when it comes to politicians.

Sure, the ISPs can loss-lead and wait for people to upgrade and work on market share, but if there was a company still using the wire they would blow them away really. And the stats for connected homes would be an embarrassment for the governmnet. I think I've just worked out the reason for 'to the home' right there.

csteele, thanks for the clarification. I was being a bit of a “toady” and having a bit of fun.

As a 45 year veteran of Computers and Communications I do understand (contrary to Belly’s assertion). I have absolutely no problem with the NBN technology; in fact I was present in southern California in 1976 when the first FO “big bundle” was laid. But this was a very long time ago and more modern technologies will inevitably be much more cost effective.

I would be more comfortable seeing a much broader mix of available technologies being used and the copper left in the ground.(copper can run with power at only one end, FO must have both ends powered).we can also put more down a copper wire with today's technology. (tell you a secret, we can put more in the copper than the FO but don't tell anyone, promise)

The main issue for me is one of cost. The Australian taxpayer will pay roughly five times more for our NBN than the nearest cost per user equivalent. Add to this the interest on capital borrowings and the cost will be enough to make your ears bleed, well not yours, but your children’s.

Marketing is also pretty evil. Most users will be completely oversold on capacity needs on the basis of “just in case you wish to download the contents of the entire planet”. In practice there are very few non professionals that will get value for money, organic capacity growth is much fairer and cheaper.

We used to say in our marketing departments every Monday morning. OK what “bunnies” are we looking for this week? It’s just a monumental rip off but hey, its buyer beware.

@Yuyutsu: physically separate the phone's voice/analog signal from the internet traffic

They aren't physically separated now on DSL. By that I mean they are carried on the same wire, just different using frequencies. If you want to physically separate them you have two incoming lines. The NBN is no different. I presume you could have 2 incoming lines, if you wished.

@Houellebecq: So, better to force people to have it, and take away the $20 option.

Cost wise it isn't much different. The line rental on the fibre connection will remain roughly what you pay for a single copper line now - $24/month. So if you just use voice, you pay $24/month plus whatever phone calls you make.

The twist is, bundled in that minimum $24/month is a 12Mb/sec data allowance. That isn't the case with the copper network. If you want to use your copper line for ADSL your telco will charge your ISP a monthly rental for the equipment that has to be connected at the other end. That is why minimum ADSL plan is $30 or so - they have to pay the fixed rental price on that equipment.

What is really happening is they are giving you a 12Mb/sec data connection, and throwing the voice channel in for free. Like the voice connection if you want to use the data connection you have to pay an ISP to send you the bytes, just as you do now. But they won't be hit with that extra charge for equipment rental.

This becomes clearer when you see the NBN box. It has 6 connectors, which look just like computer network ports. 6 different service providers can connect to those 6 ports. So you can have a different service provider for voice, internet, "cable tv", and so on, just as you do now. You plug internet into one hole and that gets handled by iiNet or whoever, your phone into the phone hole and that gets handled by Optus or whoever, your digital TV line into yet another and that is Foxtel ... and so on.

(con't)

(cont'd)

To look at it another way, whereas before your copper line could be split into 2 connections - voice and ADSL, that were handled by different companies, your NBN line can be split into 6 connections in a similar way. Using more than the basic phone + 12Mb/s is going to cost money. You can for example pay the NBN an extra $14/month to up that 12Mb/sec to 100Mb/sec. If you add a digital TV channel the NBN is going to charge you some amount to move that extra 6Mb/sec, and the TV company (Foxtel or whoever) is going to want to charge you money to send you the TV shows.

The NBN won't charge you the $24 directly, BTW. If will be levied by one of those service providers, who may add a profit margin. But then that is the same as now. If you use a Naked DSL service, you are in effecting opting to pay your line rental via your ISP, not via your voice provider.

@Yuyutsu: fibre also cannot supply 40V power to the phones as the copper does

True. But they give you (for free) a backup battery for the NBN box which does the same thing. In effect all that has happened is the battery has been moved from the exchange to your premises. The only downside is: you are responsible for the battery from then on, so you have to replace the battery when the time comes.

Dear Rstuart,

"They aren't physically separated now on DSL. By that I mean they are carried on the same wire, just different using frequencies. If you want to physically separate them you have two incoming lines. The NBN is no different. I presume you could have 2 incoming lines, if you wished."

Indeed they don't normally come physically-separated, but I added that extra switch that does it: I do have just one line, but a splitter-switch cuts that line into two cables before it reaches my house, so no internet-access is possible whatsoever from my phone sockets.

Csteele,
if this NBN takes say 8 years to fully impliment, assuming it is done right, that means todays 10 year olds will be tomorrows up and comming workers.

Having been acustomed to life with mobiles, do you honestly think they will use a 'land line' based internet, in favour of their mobile simply because it's faster.

Secondly, given the strong hold mobile players are gaining in this market, do you really think they are simply going to 'play dead' once the NBN gets close to a full scale roll out.

In my view the NBN is only really beneficial to a very seletced few, the other useres simply want faster speeds so they can download games, movies etc.

This is one gamble we simply can't afford to take. And, if one lives the the bush and wants faster, better everything, then move!

rstuart,

I'm sure I heard the wholesale line rental would be around $50 for the NBN, but it appears it's to be $24 plus GST.

If some ISP was still around using the copper network, they could offer $30 at a $10 profit.

But, what if a larger percentage than expected only pays this low cost, not the $50+ type plans? Surely that would put a hole in NBN's viability. I wonder what percentage of subscribers they think will pay more than $30 in their plan. Optimistically estimated I'm sure!

I cant see how they can be viable when they are selling a better product for cheaper, with all the new infrastructure costs. Oh, wait, they have our tax dollars.

And if they aren't making a good profit, our tax dollars will pay again. Nice little earner. Then they can sell it like they plan to in 6 years apparently, and create a whole new private monopoly to replace Telstra, and wash their hands of the whole extortion gig. Maybe they can sell it to Macquarie bank and we can pay airport parking type charges.

As to your 6 different ISPs on the one box, I cant believe people would want 6 bills, and I cant believe ISPs wouldn't give discounts for many services.

BTW: DO you have to let the governmnet have control over your modem technology, and can they block ports without your permission? See, they own your modem, and you are just using it. I don't like that idea, I set my on security and choose my own technology currently.

@Yuyutsu: Indeed they don't normally come physically-separated, but I added that extra switch that does it: I do have just one line, but a splitter-switch cuts that line into two cables before it reaches my house, so no internet-access is possible whatsoever from my phone sockets.

So you have an ADSL splitter, and only bring the voice side into the house. I don't know why you bother doing that - if the ADSL side isn't connected to an ISP it's pretty useless. It the same with the NBN actually. If you haven't arranged connected a service provider to one of its ports, the port is pretty useless.

But is any case you can achieve the same thing with the NBN box. When you think about it, it is really just a souped up ADSL splitter that has 6 outputs instead of 2. They even say in some areas they will be external. I don't know how that would work - they must be in a locked box. The first thing I'd try is putting some epoxy into each of the unused ports. Failing that, ripping out the RJ45 pins in the socket is bound to slow down whoever you are trying to stop.

@rehctub: Having been acustomed to life with mobiles, do you honestly think they will use a 'land line' based internet, in favour of their mobile simply because it's faster.

Have you ever seen a teenager use the internet?

Look, this just has to stop.

We have people on OLO that are well informed, technically savvy and utterly immune to marketing bull dust. Stop destroying the illusions of the vulnerable.

We also have people who have read the promo material, listened to, and believed the politicians. In addition, they are actually reflecting back their version of the “sales message”. This is called the “educated customer”. (He he he.)

Sorry, I just had to call marketing to let them know we still have thousands of “bunnies” out there. I couldn’t actually talk to them because I was in tears, cracking up with laughter as I listened to the ill informed pseudo-techie-babble permeating this thread.

God, I wish I had never retired from marketing; it always gave me such a BUZZ.

The Australian public deserves everything they get. It is fortunate that such Australians don’t live in the USA, you would all be bankrupt in a week. My god you are so freekin’naïve.

@Houellebecq: But, what if a larger percentage than expected only pays this low cost, not the $50+ type plans? Surely that would put a hole in NBN's viability.

Some back of the envelope costs using figures I pulled out of my bum:

Cost of NBN: $43,000M
Households in Australia: 10M * $24/month
Ergo, time to pay off that $43,000 = 179 months, or 15 years.

I haven't added interest, so they will be in the hole if every man + business only takes the $24 package. But I'm guessing they will find a way to move all those cable customers onto their service. A stunt like that shouldn't be too hard for a government monopoly to pull off.

If you are into right wing conspiracy theories, then what they are doing is nationalising the countries telecommunications infrastructure, removing all that duplication create by rampant competition (two cable companies + adsl in the same street - what were we thinking?) then using the combined pool of money to re-wire the country. But hey, it worked out pretty well when we did it last time.

@Houellebecq: I cant believe people would want 6 bills

Your absolutely right. I hate it those bills. But the number of bill's won't change. If I have a phone, ISP, and foxtel bill now, I will have exactly the same bills after the NBN. I'll let you in on a little secret: I ditched the foxtel bill, and combined the phone, mobile and ISP bill. So bill nirvana is possible. That won't change under the NBN either.

@Houellebecq: See, they own your modem, and you are just using it.

How old are you? I'm going to embarrass myself here, but I remember it was like that with your phone once. I don't recall it being a problem.

@Houellebecq: I don't like that idea, I set my on security and choose my own technology currently.

Then put a router between it and your computers. Can I make a suggestion? Use one of those newfangled Wireless 802.11N ones, so you don't need to run cat5 through the house.

Dear rehctub,

You said; “do you honestly think they will use a 'land line' based internet, in favour of their mobile simply because it's faster.”?

I do because land line internet serves a slightly different but significant purpose, access to large amounts of data which needs to be downloaded speedily to be of timely use.

Think of our drinking habits. When mobile we are prepared to pay exorbitantly for bottled water for the convenience but few of us would be willing to only have access to non-potable water through our mains.

Dear spindoc,

I now download more in a month than I would have possibly envisioned using in an entire year just five years ago. I don’t think either of us knows what our requirements will be in 5 years’ time. I do see the NBN as future proofing rather than just serving current needs.

As to the US if we can in any way avoid the fragmentation of their telecommunications sector and its now entrenched problems we should be making every attempt to do so.

I do wonder how our postal system might look if cost was the primary driver of its implementation. Some policies should be considered as nation building exercises and I think the NBN is one of those instances. By all means do it as cost prudently as possible but giving close to all individuals and communities throughout Australia access to the digital superhighway should have the support of us all.

It does make me pine a little for the Telecom days where the vision was on building and maintaining a world class telecommunications system for the nation. So successful were we that our technical expertise was exported to many countries. Suddenly we were importing CEOs and management teams.

My father-in-law is a staunch Liberal voter but if there is one thing that will get his blood boiling it is the selloff of Telstra.
Perhaps there is a little nostalgia in my support for the NBN, it shows we do things a little differently to the US and I for one am thankful for it.

RS>>Have you ever seen a teenager use the internet?

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but my adult kids and their mates use it all the time. They are costantly in touch with each other on the face book site, from their mobiles.

Are you suggesting they will not go clubing so they can keep in touch via the office bound computer?

CS>>I now download more in a month than I would have possibly envisioned using in an entire year just five years ago. I don’t think either of us knows what our requirements will be in 5 years’ time. I do see the NBN as future proofing rather than just serving current needs.

So what do we do in another five years.

Are you brave enough to say NBN is here for ever, or at least 50 years so we can get a return on our investment.

csteele,

You should be made an honorary member of the “bunnies club”. I offered you a whole list of reasons why you are targeted, vulnerable and categorized by communications marketing as one of their prime bunnies. In response you came back with another load of reasons to confirm your qualifications. What a sucker you are.

I particularly liked the “future proofing”, the USA’s “entrenched problems” (what?), fragmentation of the (USA’s) telecommunications sector (what?), Australia avoiding the same (what?) Your vision of “world class communications” and “exporting our technical expertise”, (really?) and finally doing things a little differently to the USA” (what?).

It is one thing to clearly demonstrate that you know sod all about this industry, it is quite another to fabricate issues so that you can then solve them with the NBN. Yep!This oversold and costly Dinosaur will do all that (not).

Sold to the “bunny” in the corner!

Next!

I repeat, “My god you are so freekin’ naïve.”

The gist of the Government's spin is that NBN is for the future. How far into this future is what I'd like to hear. What if some college kid invents a gadget next year which would do away with NBN ? Invest by all means but 50 Billion for unproven technology ? We all know how quickly digital technology changes now yet we're still made to believe that NBN will be for the long term.

@individual: How far into this future is what I'd like to hear.

They signed contracts for land line rollout in the ACT, NSW and QLD last week. The period of the contract is 4 years, with an optional 2 year extension.

The also signed contracts for the wireless rollout, the period being 10 years.

So if the labour government gets in for another term, it will be all over bar the shouting by the end of that term. If the Liberals get in - well your guess as to what they would do is probably as good as mine.

@individual: We all know how quickly digital technology changes now yet we're still made to believe that NBN will be for the long term.

The silicon changes pretty rapidly. But don't confuse that with the wires that connect those silicon chips together - they change very slowly. This bodes well for the NBN, as the cost of the rollout is almost entirely in laying down the wires. They are in effect re-wiring the country.

To give a couple of illustrations of this, the cat5 networking cables popular now were standardised in 1991, back when networking speeds were 10Mbit/sec. Those same wires now carry 1000Mbit/second. Although there is a successor to cat5 (called oddly enough cat6), it only gives a small boost and is more cantankerous to boot. I have my doubts whether its use can ever be justified in a house, so it is entirely possible us plebs will still be using cat5 cabling in 20 years time.

The copper wire we laid in the ground 60 or so years ago is just coming to the end of its life now. When we laid down those copper wires there wasn't a better technology around. The same is true now with fibre. There is no hot new technology or material on the drawing boards in some backroom. We know of nothing that can carry information faster than mono mode glass fibre. We are discovering ways to pump information through those fibres faster, but the fibre remains the same.

nbn has bought back the inground copper line
that should never have been sold

so on condition
it wont ever be sold again
i say put in fibre to the node
this is what we voted for

you talk about download speed...thats like a racecar
but most of us are riding bikes...we wont be bying into nbn
[thus leave our copper lines alone..!..]

further my line is only ten years old
not as old as many are claiming falishishly[faulsly].

much of the main lines have ben updated..as we went
say up untill..hawke/howards neglect's

howard selling the 'pipes'
is insane..as revealed by telstra
NOT UPDATING THE LINE's..[long ago]

fibre to the node
all the extra is a scam
[odious debt*]..im refusing to buy into

i own morally a share in the copper
leave it the heck alone

if that needs more liberal excess..so be it
ditto the c02 carbon tax LIES
not to mention the 'other' taxes

the labrats gotta go
id rather xtian guilt..than athiestic free/marketeering

Rstuart,

Fibre to the node, or to the towers etc is exactly what I am talking about. For this function you need the terrabyte capability that fibre carries, as they service many customers.

This terrabyte capacity is essentially wasted on fibre to the home. Road trains are fantastic and efficient in delivering goods between cities, but are an overkill for the household car.

Existing copper cable can deliver 12Mb/s over a kilometre or two, and with upgrade technology at and between the nodes, can deliver vastly more than presently available for 1/10th of the $50bn price tag that the NBN will cost.

For the 5% that want this additional capacity this can be installed as required. The other 95% won't need it for decades.

PS. Glass fibre is useless if there is a power failure in the home, whereas existing copper can guarantee phone capacity in emergencies.

Dear spindoc,

Geez mate anyone would think you had Tourettes. But you’re right I’m probably a bit of a bunny when it comes to the technical side of telecommunications. I know the difference between things like cat5 and cat6 but I am missing the overall picture therefore to go to places like Whirlpool or Znet to soak in what I can and gather opinions of people imbedded in the industry like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Start quote;

Wozniak said that while the fibre-to-the-home project was good for Australia, he didn't think that the United States would ever see a similar project.

"It'd be a great model, but I don't think it will ever happen in the US. I'm sorry, I'm really, really negative about [its] prospects," he said.

Wozniak said that he is unable to get fixed-line broadband to his house due to carrier limitations, and now uses a Long Term Evolution wireless service from his local network. While he said that there's currently no requirement to run fixed broadband to his home, he still feels the lack of fixed infrastructure is an issue for the country.

"I've spoken right up to the chairman of the [Federal Communications Commission] about these complaints," he said.

In his most recent State of the Union address, US president Barack Obama announced a vision to provide 98 per cent of homes in North America with access to high-speed wireless broadband by 2016.
"Within the next five years, we'll make it possible for businesses to deploy the next generation of high-speed wireless coverage," he said at the time.

"This isn't just about faster internet or fewer dropped calls. It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age."
Wozniak however feels that Obama's pledge is just another in a long line of broken presidential promises.

"Every ... president since the start of the internet ... said you've got to have broadband, we've got to get broadband to everybody! They all say it, but nothing's ever happened to bring it to me!

"I find it very frustrating."

End quote.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/us-wont-copy-aussie-nbn-steve-wozniak-339316189.htm

@Shadow Minister: Fibre to the node, or to the towers etc is exactly what I am talking about.

Were you? I only saw word wireless in your response. How odd.

But then if I were part of the Liberal party flak machine and had just seen my claim wireless was the answer wither, I would change tack too. I gave you an opening with FTTH, why not take it and claim it was what you were talking about all along?

@Shadow Minister: This terrabyte capacity is essentially wasted on fibre to the home.

Indeed a terrabyte is overkill shadow. However 100 MB/sec isn't, and copper can't deliver that. In fact people are maxing out their copper connections now. Fibre can deliver it, and as you point out it has decades of headroom to spare. 100 MB/sec is roughly what you need to deliver all the services easily envisaged in the next 20 years or so - Internet, DBV, and telephony. That is why countries who decide to re-write their countries use fibre. If you are going to spend the billions of dollars to do it, rolling out a technology that will be obsolete by the time you finish doesn't make a whole pile of sense.

The NBN plan is to do this with tax payer playing the role of banker, ie without spending a cent of tax payers money in the long term. It looks to be they have a reasonable chance of pulling it off, mainly because as they have managed to capture all land line based revenue. Now the Liberal plan may be $4 billion instead of $40 billion, but don't I see how they plan to earn a cent of that back. You can hardly justify taking over all the copper if you don't plan to change it.

I did in fact read the Libs counter proposal to the NBN at the previous election. It boiled down to giving Telstra a few billion to upgrade the copper network. That wasn't a plan Shadow. That was insanity.

Dear Rstuart,

"So you have an ADSL splitter, and only bring the voice side into the house. I don't know why you bother doing that - if the ADSL side isn't connected to an ISP it's pretty useless. It the same with the NBN actually. If you haven't arranged connected a service provider to one of its ports, the port is pretty useless."

But I do use ADSL: the low-frequency phone-line goes to the house and the high-frequency ADSL line goes into my office at the back of the house. The important thing is that it is impossible to use the internet through the phone sockets (excluding dial-up, which would not pose a problem in my case), say by unplugging the phone and plugging an ADSL modem/router instead. Also, because of the splitter it is not even possible to use phone sockets to passively spy on the internet traffic from the office.

You are right that at the moment, if you do not arrange an ISP, then the Telstra line by default is physically incapable of ADSL. I therefore took care to install the splitter BEFORE contracting my ISP (before that I used two separate lines, one solely for ADSL, the other solely for phone, with no ADSL capability).

But how can this be accomplished with the NBN where all lines come ADSL-enabled with no exception? How can I be assured that it will be possible to have phone sockets where no access to high-frequency internet-traffic will be possible whatsoever, no matter what you plug into those sockets? I suppose that if the NBN allowed me to retain my existing copper-phone wirings at home, then I could install a similar splitter to isolate my phones from the internet. I wonder whether that would be possible?

"Glass fibre is useless if there is a power failure in the home, whereas existing copper can guarantee phone capacity in emergencies."

Not so. There is an option to have battery back-up for the NBN hardware. Many people already have cordless phones in to home now and they are useless during power outages.

Also the technology is not "old".

Speeds are dependent on changing the hardware at either end - the fibre stays the same and the current Terrabyte transfers being achieved are being done over (gasp) fibre. Wireless will never reach anything remotely near these speeds.

Rache,

Fibre optics were developed in the 70s, and I first worked with them in the 80s. In 2001 I installed a 10Gb/s industrial fibre network with 1Gb/s copper branch networks. The philosophy was that fibre was faster but far more expensive, and copper was simpler and far cheaper for the majority of connections.

I am busy building a large industrial plant at the moment where the exact same philosophy is being used. Terminating fibre is still far more expensive than copper, and needs far more protection.

Although our main network and phones coming in is fibre, we still are required by law to use copper for the emergency fire phones, and for the lifts, precisely because battery back up is not considered sufficiently reliable.

While wireless will probably never reach the speeds that fibre does, it will easily reach the speeds the home user needs.

Fibre on the other hand will never achieve the mobility that most people will demand in the future.

@Yuyutsu: But how can this be accomplished with the NBN where all lines come ADSL-enabled with no exception?

They aren't all enabled for ADSL. Two of the six ports are RJ-12's, meaning you can only plug analogue phones into them, not computer networks. Here is a picture:

http://j.mp/lcMML7

That aside, currently the back end connection to your ISP is usually authenticated, meaning you have to enter an account name and password into your router / modem before you can connect to the internet. This presents a significant hurdle to someone planning to take over your connection by replacing your networking plug with theirs. They can't do that without knowing the user name and password.

I don't know whether ISP's using the NBN will require you to do that. If they do I have trouble seeing any difference between your current ADSL connection and the NBN. Whether they do or don't really doesn't have much to do with the NBN though. There are ISP's (were? - GIL is the only one I remember, and their gone) out there didn't require you to authenticate for an ADSL connection.

By the by, even if everything was as you imagine, it is still possible isolate your house and office networks even though they eventually get combined by a router and go over the same wire. In larger enterprises it is very common thing to do. In fact that is all that is NBN box doing. The point is if it didn't do it, you could buy a box for under $200 dollars and do it yourself.

@Shadow Minister: we still are required by law to use copper for the emergency fire phones, and for the lifts, precisely because battery back up is not considered sufficiently reliable.

I heard a Telstra technician describe how the network failed during this years Queensland floods. It went like this:

1. People with wireless home phones needing 240v connected to a land line went out first, as the power failed.

2. The land lines died a few days later as the batteries in the exchanges discharged.

3. It turned out while mobile phone towers if anything went down faster than the exchanges, but multiple towers usually cover one spot and mobile phones could move around to find another one so they could remain connected. That ended when the batteries in the mobile phones went flat. A smartphone only last maybe a day, going offline faster than the exchange batteries. But a dumb phones did really well, lasting a week or so.

4. If you had a car charger for your mobile phone, plenty of petrol and a car on high ground, you were best off. In fact most people in this position outlasted the floods.

Those building regs you quote rank 2nd worst on that list. Perhaps they aren't ageing too gracefully.

@Shadow Minister: Fibre on the other hand will never achieve the mobility that most people will demand in the future.

Know something about the future the rest of us don't? Maybe those unbeknowns to the rest of us, those fire alarms of yours are going to grow legs and start moving, or our 55" TV's are going to become portable? Or maybe all those other services we use that require 30 minutes of our time to transfer to a new residence - electricity, water, gas, rubbish, schools are going to be victims of this new mobile future as well?

So Shadow, what next? Do we wait with bated breath for you to regurgitate a few more nonsensical Abbott sound bites? Abbott is a bright guy. If his public statements reflected that, he might attract a few more voters.

Thank you so much, Rstuart,

As long as there is an "ordinary" analogue port in the NBN, where I can connect my existing phones, I think I'll be OK. Although I wouldn't trust those people that high-frequency internet traffic will not be possible over the analogue connection (it is possible now, as ADSL, so why would they disable it?), I could simply, just in case, place a frequency-splitter just as I now do at the RJ-12 port of the NBN.

I suppose I'll still have to replace my existing ADSL router (and re-program the new one as it's also used as a firewall to block all advertising sites!), because it expects a copper ADSL connection, wouldn't I? Just wondered whether I could instead use the second RJ-12 port for ADSL? Now I suppose many others wouldn't like to replace their routers, so perhaps the government will provide an ADSL capability over the RJ-12's after all, and then the splitter on the first line will indeed be necessary!

Or would there perhaps be a small device that converts the Ethernet signal into ADSL on a short copper wire so that existing routers can still work?

@Yuyutsu: Although I wouldn't trust those people that high-frequency internet traffic will not be possible over the analogue connection (it is possible now, as ADSL, so why would they disable it?)

They don't disable it. They just don't provide it. In order for those high frequencies to be useful, there has to be a piece of equipment listening for them.

Look at it from the point of view of your end of the line. If you don't have a ADSL modem listening for those high frequencies then there is no way information can be sent using them. In other words it doesn't matter how much fancy equipment the telephone company installs in the exchange, you ordinary analogue telephone won't be paying attention to it. Well that works in reverse. The piece of equipment installed at the exchange end to listen to those high frequencies in the exchange is called a DSLAM, and if there is no DSLAM listening to your line then no amount of hokey pokery on your end is going to allow you to send information using those high frequencies.

With the advent the NBN, the voice signal doesn't go to the exchange. The wire ends at the NBN box. I guess would possible for your NBN box to include the equivalent of a DSLAM connected to its analogue phone ports. But there isn't. It's just listening for the 100..4kHz voice frequencies. Doing anything else would add additional cost - a lot of it.

@Yuyutsu: I suppose I'll still have to replace my existing ADSL router

Yep, unless it has a WAN port.

@Yuyutsu: Just wondered whether I could instead use the second RJ-12 port for ADSL?

Nope.

@Yuyutsu: Or would there perhaps be a small device that converts the Ethernet signal into ADSL on a short copper wire so that existing routers can still work?

Nope. I think your device, if it existed, would be more expensive than a new router. They are about $35.

Rstuart,

I will try and simple sentences:

Lift and fire systems need secure comms Not mobility. Copper is superior to fibre wrt security, thus copper is required.

Trends all around the world indicate that wireless is becoming far more popular than fixed lines including Australia. The NBN business case is based on no more than 15% mobile wireless. The stats this year is above 40%.

The trends are published so look them up. You don't need a crystal ball. Try research rather than smart arse comments.

What stops us from doing away with all this line bizo & go satellite instead ? No worries about a backhoe cutting lines.

@Shadow Minister: The trends are published so look them up.

I don't know where to look Shadow. Care to post a link? Not that it matters I guess, as I am prepared to believe you on the reliability of fixed copper lines verses fix fibre lines, even though it is counter intuitive. I look after both - the fibre to the premises has in my case been more reliable. But then I have never suffered a battery failure in the telecom cabinet, just water shorting and corroding the copper wires in the street. Maybe fibre isn't as susceptible to water damage, but then in our case it is newer so maybe not. And then there is also a telstra man who each site yearly and inspects the battery. Like I said, in the circumstances it is counter intuitive all this would end up adding up to copper being more reliable. But if you say there has been studies into the subject and it is, then I guess it is. Then again, it would not hurt to seeing the studies saying so.

@individual: satellite instead?

Satellite is one way. The other direction is provided via a land line. Usually it is a conventional modem running over copper because if you could get something else you would not be using satellite by choice. A conventional modem is dog slow. The term "broadband" is a cute term that has ended up meaning "anything faster than conventional modem".

Well that's one problem with it. Now that I think about it, it is possibly the least of the problems satellite would suffer from if you tried to use it to service a densely packed city.

Dear rstuart,

I know this is from the Fiber Optic Association but I found it useful.

The link is here.
http://www.thefoa.org/tech/fo-or-cu.htm

“Recently, a number of magazine articles and even a representative of AMP was quoted as saying that as much as 80-90% of all Cat 5 cabling was improperly installed and would not provide the rated performance. Contractors have told us that 40% of their Cat 6 installations pass certification tests.

The performance of the Cat 5 cable is dependent on close control of the physical characteristics of the cable and the materials used in the insulation. Untwist the wires too much at a connection or remove too much jacket and the cable may fail crosstalk testing. Pull it too hard (only 25 pounds tension allowed!) or kink it and loss the performance you paid for. “

“But most networks only run at Ethernet at 10 Mb/s to the desktop. Even if you use 10/100 Ethernet cards, they will fall back to 10 Mb/s if the cabling won't support the faster speeds. And I'm told quite a few networks do. It's hard to tell unless you have a sophisticated network management system.”

“So what about fiber ? Fiber is not that easy to install either. Pulling the cable is easy - in fact it can be pulled at 8 times the pulling tension of Cat 5 and the typical cables used include strength members and stiffeners that make it hard to kink and damage.”

“Terminating fiber optic cable is not as simple as copper. While manufacturers have developed crimp-on connectors, they are expensive, high loss and have not been very reliable. Fiber optic connectors need adhesives for reliability and low cost. And most installation involves stripping fibers, injecting adhesives and polishing the ends. No IDC (insulation displacement connectors) here. Any good installer can learn how to terminate fiber in less than 2 hours.”

Cheers.

Dear Rstuart,

I see you know a lot about the technical side of the NBN!

"They don't disable it. They just don't provide it. In order for those high frequencies to be useful, there has to be a piece of equipment listening for them."

I understand, but I rather play it safe, just in case they will add that equipment later without even telling me about it. Adding a safety splitter should not be such a big deal.

"Nope. I think your device, if it existed, would be more expensive than a new router. They are about $35"

I hardly see why such a convertor-device should cost more than $5, after all it would do so much less than a router does, just a WAN on one end and a copper wire on the other. I also believe that the $35 figure would be for the lowest-end router, not for a fully programmable one. No, I don't currently have a WAN socket. Anyway, it's not such a big deal to get a new router and it should only take me a few hours to program it, my current router had cost me $326 (in 2003), which I could afford again, but I do believe that it's the government's responsibility (since they are the ones making the damage) to ensure that all existing equipment should continue to work as is with no expense or effort to ordinary households. Such a device, in fact, should best be a standard feature of the NTU.

Shadow Minister,
If you're working on comms in lifts I presume you have an unrestricted cabling license. There's no reason that the final telephony leg can't be in remain as copper. The fibre only goes as far as the first point and internet, TV and phone all extend from there independently.

In any case, the vendors who have been supplying switching equipment to Telstra (Ericsson & Alcatel), Vodafone( Ericsson) and Optus (NorTel) are phasing out those technologies and they will soon be unsupported. Telstra are currently "mining" their own sites to redistribute cards that they can no longer obtain. The new generation are SoftSwitches are all IP based. Technology is changing rapidly.

"Too expensive, over-engineered and underutilised". That's what they once said about the Sydney Harbour Bridge too.

rstuart,
Most of the land lines went straight away too, because the RIMs they were connected to also lost power.

Rstuart,

This took me one attempt to find on google.

http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/broadband-news/broadband-news/wireless-internet-connections-in-australia-show-impressive-growth_773195

and

http://www.broadbandexpert.com.au/broadband-news/broadband-news/a-rise-in-wireless-subscriptions-of-51-percent-causes-opposition-to-hit-out-at-nbn_77685

These are backed by government studies and statistics from the ABS.

My point is that the business case for the NBN for which the government outlaws competition, and is only marginally profitable, is a sham.

Rache,

Your comment "There's no reason that the final telephony leg can't be in remain as copper." is the whole point of the Coalition's fibre to node, which costs only 10% of Labor's plan and delivers 90% of the benefits.

Dear Shadow Minister,

I'm sorry but they are really fraught statistics. While as a family we have 4 wireless connections 95% of our collective data downloads come from fixed line to our house.

As in my earlier example even those who are solely wireless for home use may well be doing it because it is the only way to access the Internet.

My brother-in- law is only 8kms out of a major town yet is forced to string an servant IPad up in the corner of a window to get a decent signal. They have tried 3 different carriers to little satisfaction. They have a lovely house but there are serious discussions about selling up to find a place with better access. He runs a decent sized export business and has four bright, data needy, children at school.

What would be good is to see data on the choices made by those who had the option between wireless and fixed for their home.

My feeling is it may throw up a potent vote shifting need that the Liberal party is ignoring to their peril.

@Yuyutsu: I hardly see why such a convertor-device should cost more than $5

Unfortunately Yuyutsu the differences between how ADSL and fibre sends information is larger than you imagine. It is more like the difference between analogue and digital TV. They ultimately carry the same information, but the way they do so is as different as a cassette tape and a mp3 player. And the outcome is the same as well - you need something a complex as a setup box to convert between ADSL and fibre. Such things do exist - they are the DSLAM's I mentioned earlier, which are found in telephone exchanges. They aren't cheap.

It just dawned on me (sorry for being slow), your concern is you will have to replace the telephone wire to your office with ethernet cable. Sorry, it's unavoidable. Your other option is to use wireless. The wireless equipment that can transmit 10km or so would set you back $400..$500, but you will need power at both ends. Mind you, will need power for the NBN box anyway, which you didn't for your ADSL splitter.

@rache: Shadow Minister, If you're working on comms in lifts I presume you have an unrestricted cabling license.

Probably not. I gather he is a power engineer. So he would do design, not installation.

@Shadow Minister: This took me one attempt to find on google.

I could find that on google too. I thought you were going to give me figures showing fire panels using copper to the exchange instead of fibre to the exchange were more reliable.

Just by the buy, no one disputes Apple is doing real well selling iPhones right now, and so smartphone sales are driving the demand for mobile phone plans with some data thrown through the roof. Do you have one, by the way? If so, made the mistake of watching some youtube video's on it yet? It can be a very expensive mistake to make.

@Shadow Minister: My point is that the business case for the NBN for which the government outlaws competition, and is only marginally profitable, is a sham.

Since you don't say, I'm going to take a guess here as to what makes it a sham. If they do manage to capture the revenue for the bulk of broadband traffic it looks like they have a good chance of pulling it off. So I presume you are implying they won't be able to do that, because wireless will end up carrying the bulk of it. To bolster your case, your quote Nick Minchin.

Ah yes, Nick Minchin, the Liberal party progressive known for his brilliant insights into science and technology. Wasn't he the guy saying in 1995 he didn't believe the case for smoking being addictive had been proved? So now he is saying fibre will fail because it will be replaced by wireless.

Look Shadow, I'll put it as plainly as I can:

IT. ISN'T. POSSIBLE.

I am not saying it isn't economically possible. I saying physics won't allow it. It's pretty simple stuff really - not much different to trying to shove 100 amps down a 4mm wire. Somehow I don't think you, being an engineer, would have much trouble grasping the concept if it agreed with your politics.

You don't have to believe me. A moments googling finds http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2011/02/17/3141215.htm I'll quote the relevant bit:

"Ziggy Switkowski, previous CEO of Telstra, weighs in on the debate on fixed line versus wireless with the opinion that the demand for bandwidth is growing faster than the capacity of the 3G wireless spectrum which will drive up wireless costs and keep bandwidth hungry applications on a fixed, wired network with wireless for when we are mobile."

As for the government outlawing competition, that would be of deep concern if there was any competition. But there isn't. The Liberals privatised a monopoly, and left it intact. It wasn't their finest moment.

csteele,

How do you feel about your fixed line connection. I get speeds between 12Mb/s and 18Mb/s, as can most of the 90% of Australians who live in Metropolitan areas. These are where the NBN intends to make its profit, and will offer the majority 12Mb/s with 25GB download at about $70pm.

As I already get far better for 1/2 the price, I am more than a little angry that I will have no option but to subsidize Labor's white elephant.

Can you honestly say you will be better off with the NBN?

@rstuart: A moments googling finds http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2011/02/17/3141215.htm

Bugger. I quoted from a different google hit: http://www.hsia.com.au/wireless-broadband-or-wired-the-experts-ponder-the-future-for-australia/

The original like isn't bad reading either, if you want to find out what the limitations of wireless feels like in real life.

I have a friend who is visiting the big smoke for a family medical reasons. He has been here for a week or so now, and is pining for his fixed line connection from home. Yes, he has a 3G connection, and yes he is using that 3G connection to telecommute to work. But every time a large enough gaggle of iPhones near him decide to check for new email, his connection drops out. It can happen several times an hour. It drives him nuts.

'The Liberals privatised a monopoly, and left it intact. It wasn't their finest moment.'

That's the plan with the NBN. To privatise it.

From you rlink rstuart...

'I agree that fibre will almost certainly be faster and have higher quotas than wireless.

What concerns me is that having read the NBNCo Corporate Plan, on page 118 there is a chart showing that 50% of customers will connect at 12/1Mbps for the foreseeable future (2028) and 1000/400Mbps plans only show on the chart in 2026!

13% of premises (page 116 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan) are wireless only. The diagram with this information states that people choose a wireless connection because of price sensitivity. Page 105 has a chart with estimated retail pricing. The cheapest plan is estimated at $53-58 for a 12/1Mbps plan with 50GB of quota. Wireless plans are already cheaper than this.

There is a real risk (page 132 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan) that if wireless operators can capture part of that 50% who are price sensitive that the NBNCo forecasts will not be met.

I don't understand why the NBNCo don't remove the speed tiers. This would make it much more difficult for wireless operators to compete. 12/1Mbps meets the optimal requirements for only one of the example applications on page 131 of the NBNCo Corporate Plan. Higher speeds are also likely to drive revenue as customers download more.'

Let alone if they kept the wires in the ground.

BTW: 'Page 105 has a chart with estimated retail pricing. The cheapest plan is estimated at $53-58 for a 12/1Mbps plan with 50GB of quota'

So it is assumed the ISPs are marking up from $24 to $58?

Just what is the price that is likely? You say $30, SM says 50, and the NBN doco says 55.

I can get a better price for 50Mb quota now at a good enough speed for me.

PS: Why are you selling the land line aspect when most people are ditching them for naked ADSL?

'Use one of those newfangled Wireless 802.11N ones, so you don't need to run cat5 through the house.'

I have cat 5 through the house because wireless doesn't make it through the cement. Though I have wireless in the lounge as I would like to fry my brain if at all possible.

Incidentally, Wireless N only goes to 300mbps, and CAT-5 is rated to 100M isn't it, so that 1000mbs bandwidth is wasted on your average broadband customer.

I think it's all about quotas over speed. You can offer people 100000000mbs lines, but if you limit them to 50MB they cant pirate all those hollywood movies and porn (What the internet is for, anything else is a sideshow) so it's a waste of time.

Rstuart,

Iphones use the mobile network not mobile wireless, which gives preference to calls. If he wanted mobile internet, then he would get a mobile wireless on his notebook.

I know of several people with no fixed line at all, using only mobile phones and wireless.

Dear Rstuart,

"It just dawned on me (sorry for being slow), your concern is you will have to replace the telephone wire to your office with ethernet cable. Sorry, it's unavoidable."

In that case, I should consider buying a DSLAM and placing it next to the NTU.

I understand that the government hates Telstra and wishes to punish them with a vengeance by taking away their copper network, but what I can't understand (or accept) is why should the government punish ordinary Australians who have done no wrong. If they have something against Telstra, they could simply legislate to outlaw it (say by declaring Telstra a terrorist organization), confiscate its assets and imprison all its executives, but then what prevents the government from continuing to provide the existing copper service to ordinary Australians, side-by-side with fiber-optics and even continuing to charge the same exorbitant prices for it towards general-revenue?

@Houellebecq: The cheapest plan is estimated at $53-58 for a 12/1Mbps plan with 50GB of quota. Wireless plans are already cheaper than this.

I haven't seen wireless near that cost. Here is a typical wireless plan, used for people who can't ADSL or cable:

http://www.internode.on.net/residential/wireless_broadband/wireless_dsl/plans/

It's dammed expensive in every way. But it does work and is reliable, unlike say Vodafone 3G wireless. I suspect if a private operator could so this cheaper than the NBN they would gladly hand it over. Every wireless connection looses money. They do it only to meet their Universal Service Obligation.

By the way, people in the comments rabbit on about 4G, aka LTE (Long Term Evolution). It doesn't exist. 2 years ago they said they had it working, they just had to shrink it down a little as it didn't fit through the door. This year they gave up waiting and decided to allow "enhanced 3G" to be called 4G. Work hasn't stopped on the original 1Gbit/sec 4G, but don't hold your breath. The other thing to remember about that 1Gbit/sec is it means 1Gbit/sec on a still electrically quiet day, when you are stationary and no one else is using the network. In other words if there are 100 houses in your cell all going hard at it, and someone is using a welder nearby, then be thankful if you have a connection at all.

@Houellebecq: Just what is the price that is likely? You say $30, SM says 50, and the NBN doco says 55.

It was never going to be $30, unless you included the $24 in the phone bill as is commonly done now. The problem is comparing like with like. Current naked plans are probably the easiest to compare to, as they have the equivalent of the $24 bundled in the plan price. Here is a typical set of naked plans:

http://www.internode.on.net/residential/adsl_broadband/easy_naked/

They start at $60/month. TPG which is the ISP equivalent of the $2 junk store has Australia's cheapest naked offering at $60/month for unlimited. Compared to that, $50..$60 seems in the ball park to me.

@Houellebecq: I can get a better price for 50Mb quota now at a good enough speed for me.

Yeah, well the grand plan here isn't to give Houellebecq a cheaper internet connection. You're just not worth that much to the Gillard government. No, the plan is to re-wire Australia with fibre at no cost to the tax payer. And as I mentioned the way they hope to pull that little stunt off is to give you almost no choice in coming on board at a price that is "in the ball park" of your current costs. No choice implies the price comparison you are doing above is a little meaningless, as you won't be able to buy your current 50Mb over copper at any price. It would not come as a huge surprise if "in the ball park" turned out to "a little bit more", using a politicians definition of little.

Now as Shadow is noisily pointing out, you don't really have absolutely no choice. When they turn off your copper line you can give the NBN the finger and go with 3G wireless instead. So on the most expensive Internode plan linked to above, you are paying $0.40/GB. On the cheapest Telstra Mobile Internet plan per byte, you are paying $5.75/Gb. Shadow seems to think everyone will jump at this offer, but I have my doubts.

@Houellebecq: PS: Why are you selling the land line aspect when most people are ditching them for naked ADSL?

I didn't mean to sell it. In the short term people will continue to drop their home phones - no argument. In the longer term I think most traffic will once again go over the land lines, much to Telstra's chagrin. I have programmed my mobile to do just that now when a friendly WiFi access point is around. It may happen faster than I had originally thought. I suspect the reason Microsoft bought Skype is to make just this happen, near invisibly, on a WinPhone 7 smartphone. It's about the only hope they have got of getting WinPhone 7 to sell.

@Houellebecq: CAT-5 is rated to 100M

Cat5 was designed to go to 1G, and will happily do so if installed properly.

@Houellebecq: wireless doesn't make it through the cement

802.11a/b/g didn't. 802.11n tries harder, sometimes with success. Don't expect 300Mbps though.

@Shadow Minister: Iphones use the mobile network not mobile wireless,

Nope. The chunk of bandwidth allocated to carriers 3G spectrum is divided up into a number of channels (ie narrow frequency bands). Some of those channels are allocated to voice, and your iPhone will use them if you make a voice call. Some are allocated to data. Both the iPhone and the 3G USB dongle you plug into your laptop use those data bands to make an internet connection. They do so in exactly the same way, meaning a modern tethered mobile phone will pump data at the same speed as a 3G dongle. In fact the 3G dongle you plug into a laptop usually is a fully fledged phone in a different case. It can send and receive SMS's, for instance.

@Yuyutsu: I understand that the government hates Telstra and wishes to punish them

This is Australia. Things don't work like that here. There is undoubtedly some dislike for some of the past executives of Telstra. I suspect that is why the Telstra board bid them adios as they were making it hard for Telstra to do business with the Australian Government. That, I suspect, was punishment enough.

@Yuyutsu: what prevents the government from continuing to provide the existing copper service

It costs money to maintain it.

Dear Rstuart,

"what prevents the government from continuing to provide the existing copper service: It costs money to maintain it."

But what if I'm happy to pay for the maintenance myself and (supposing the government itself is not interested) some company (say other than Telstra) is happy to provide it to me (at whatever cost), what right has the government to stop us?

On the subject of the high prices of the NBN, with no plan less than the outrageous 50GB, which very few need, perhaps the way to go is for neighbours to come together and share one NBN for 2-5 houses. Is the government going to prohibit copper wiring between houses? even so, it should be quite easy to dig and hide the cables in back-yards, going under the fences! Also, if prices are that high and local phone-calls are free, then dial-up may also find a new revival.

Rstuart,

Apologies I was misinformed. The frequencies are shared.

However, the new higher 4g and 5g frequencies are able to provide far higher bandwidths and connections per tower. A lot of the problem would appear to be the exponential growth in demand for bandwidth as well as connections. The growth in capacity per tower and number of towers has not been able to keep pace, and when a train load of users appear close to a already loaded tower, there will be problems.

@rstuart,

Cast your mind back to the original motivation for the NBN. It was all a dummy spit by KRudd at Telstra after their 1 page tender shenanigans. Do you think that policy should be developed in such a manner, or do you think this is just a lucky case of getting it right (in your mind) for the wrong reasons. There was no such thing as the NBN even on the horizon, and it wasn't as if that was the aim and Telecoms was any kind of focus for nation building. Or are you just happy with any nation building no matter where the money is spent. Are you not at all suspicious this is just some token bit of nation building for a politician to hang their hat on.

And you never answered my query about selling it off. You're very anti Telstra's monopoly, but I'm sure I heard Tanner say the plan is to sell it in 5 years. To Macquarie bank perhaps?

'And as I mentioned the way they hope to pull that little stunt off is to give you almost no choice in coming on board at a price that is "in the ball park" of your current costs. No choice implies the price comparison you are doing above is a little meaningless, as you won't be able to buy your current 50Mb over copper at any price. It would not come as a huge surprise if "in the ball park" turned out to "a little bit more", using a politicians definition of little.'

You sound happy about that. Do you also agree with closing tunnels so a private monopoly's motorway gets higher patronage?

@Yuyutsu: But what if I'm happy to pay for the maintenance myself

The entire telephone infrastructure is changing, not just the copper wire.

When this all started a few people started piggy backing what we now call the internet on top of the existing telephone infrastructure. They did that by connecting their computers using modems, trunk lines and so on. This tiny internet grew at an enormous pace, so much so that now, 20 years later, it is far far bigger (as in thousands of times bigger) than the telephone network that spawned it. In that period we furiously laid down new trunk lines, all of which carry internet data, not telephone data. The internet infrastructure now dwarfs the telephone infrastructure.

Two things are happening now. One is the NBN is replacing the final part of the telephone infrastructure the internet is based on - those copper lines, with something more suited to data. So now the internet can stand alone, not needing the telephone infrastructure at all. The other, not so visible, is the bit of equipment that copper wire is plugged to in the exchange is going. Telephone calls will now become internet data, and sent over the normal internet. With that the transition will be complete. Rather then the internet being bolted onto the telephone infrastructure, telephones will be bolted onto the internet infrastructure. They will become just way we use the internet, along with web browsing, email, internet chat, and watching videos.

So Yuyutsu, what you are asking for is something like this: you are sitting in a apartment in a large building. The entire suburb is scheduled to be bulldozed, and a new set of apartments erected there which you can move into at the same cost as your current one. And you are asking: please sir, if I maintain my room, can I keep it? It ain't going to happen, my friend. Either the new suburb isn't built at all, or you are changing apartments.

@Shadow Minister: However, the new higher 4g and 5g frequencies are able to provide far higher bandwidths and connections per tower.

Higher frequencies do carry more data, but once you raise the carrier frequency above 2.4 GHz it gets stopped by walls, leaves and even rain. Currently the Optus and Vodafone 3G networks use 2Ghz, and I suspect that is as high as they are likely to go.

The other thing we can do is carry more data at a given frequency. The limiting factors aren't antenna design, amplifier design, or anything like that. The radio signal is digitised, feed into a computer, reduced to base waveforms using a Fourier Transform, then analysed to within an inch of their life to extract the data from the noise. The limit to this is the amount of computing power we can throw at the problem. Computing power is in turn now limited how many watts we can devote to it. Those watts come from a phone battery.

A consequence is recent increases in speed have been driven by Moore's Law. Those increases are just about over. The absolute limit is determined by Shannon's Law, and as we get asymptotically closer to that limit the CPU power required to get further increases goes through the roof. Thus the 1G Ethernet cards ran cool, but when they 10Gb cousins were released they dissipated 45 watts, which is getting towards the limits of what todays silicon chip can dissipate in air without melting. This is why they could not fit 4G technology through the door. They needed the mains to power it, and if they shrank it, it would melt.

The bottom line is we are within a factor of 10 how much we are every likely to wring out of wireless. Given even with the 10 fold improvement a single wireless cell, which must be shared by at least 100's of homes, can't carry as much as a single fibre can deliver to 1 home. Nor can it do it as reliably. Once you understand that, the problem Ziggy was alluding to becomes obvious.

Rstuart,

I have a 10yr old Daihatsu that I use to commute to work. It is not pretty nor fast, but has aircon, a reasonable music system, most of the comforts, is efficient and reliable, and gets me to work, squash, and golf.

I would enjoy to sell it for peanuts and buy a porsche, but rationally I would get little additional real benefit, and I have far better things to spend my money on.

The NBN is like buying everyone a porsche to drive in the city at 60kmph. For 90% of the people the benefit is imaginary, and the extra $40bn or so that connecting homes via fibre could be well spend on hospitals, schools, police etc.

I have no problem with installing fibre to new homes, as the labour costs mean that this is only slightly more expensive than copper, but taking out copper lines that meet the requirements of 90% of users is extremely wasteful.

Dear Rstuart,

The analogy of a bulldozed suburb is inappropriate: what stops the copper cables from being laid side-by-side with the NBN fiber-optic cables other than an arbitrary politically-based government prohibition?

The internet is a volatile media. It's a fashion, it keeps changing, it is far from being defined, it is prone to faults, sabotage, viruses, censorship, spying; some of its components are not even in Australian control and many of its components are so complex that Australia cannot manufacture them on its own, should the supply of spare parts be blocked for whatever reason, including blackmail against Australian sovereignty. Phones on the other hand have existed for over a century, they are an essential service, their electronics is much simpler, and it would be a serious mistake to lay them on a sick bed.

Let the data-hungry get what they want, but there is nothing on the technical side to prevent an entrepreneur from providing an old-style analogue phone service to homes that will still work on a rainy day once the internet (and associated mobile services) collapses. The tunnels are already dug in the ground, so there should be no disturbance to traffic, but the current government would simply not allow it. I wonder whether the real reason is that they want to able to control our communications as in Syria...

Shadow Minister,
The copper leg I was referring to was the one from the Modem within the building itself, not from the Exchange.

We already effectively have FTTN now, with most CMUXs and RIMS connected to Exchanges via fibre. That's how you get those blistering ADSL2 speeds.

It's funny how people somehow think they are "entitled" to a telephone service and in whatever form they decide.

It's a privately owned asset now and it's take-it-or-leave it.
It's certainly not a "right".

This wouldn't have happened if Sol was still around. He would likely have just dumped all those low-profit rural customers by now and concentrated on the high profit areas.

Yes rache,

Installing fibre to the nodes is the correct way of doing, which no one denies. I get those high speeds on ASDL through copper lines from the exchange.

I can already watch HDTV over the net if I so chose, however, 99% of what I do does not even require 1Mb/s.

@Houellebecq: Do you think that policy should be developed in such a manner

It's the old fable of the sausage factory and the law, Houellebecq. I accepted a long time ago it wasn't just a fable. So no I don't think policy should be developed in such a manner. But I do accept it has been that way since time immemorial, and no matter who I vote for it ain't going to change.

@Houellebecq: do you think this is just a lucky case of getting it right

Yep. Howard sold Telstra at a valuation of $24 Billion, and 5 years later Gillard bought Telstra's primary asset for $9 Billion. If the federal government hadn't somehow managed to get those poor schmucks, the Telstra shareholders to wear that multi billion dollar depreciation, this would not be happening. And your right, I do not believe for a second either Howard or Gillard thought it would pan out this way. It's just dumb luck for those of us who didn't purchase those Telstra shares.

@Houellebecq: And you never answered my query about selling it off.

I'm trying to pretend it's not going to happen. You're not helping. More seriously, if they could cook up some way of making running the NBN a competitive affair I'd be all for selling it off. I just don't see how that is possible. Maybe we could so what my local council does with rubbish removal - ie they lease the running of that business out to the lowest bidder every few years.

I think it is not unreasonable to hope that when the time comes, the Labour party won't be able to bring itself to sell off the NBN. It will be entirely for the wrong reasons of course, but I'll take my sausage regardless of how it is made. The Liberals on the other hand have shown themselves to be up to selling off a monopoly, even their claim to fame is supposedly understanding how business operates.

@Houellebecq: You sound happy about that.

I am happy we still have it in us to go down government doing the nation building road when it makes sense. And it often does make sense. Off the top of my head this is how we built our road, rail, telephone and water systems.

@Houellebecq: Do you also agree with closing tunnels so a private monopoly's motorway gets higher patronage?

Are asking me if making the local neighbourhood to pay for a toll road built for them by forcing them to use it is worse than taxing the entire state? I guess my answer would depend on whether I was a local so was doing the paying, and whether I thought the toll road was worth the money.

I'd have more sympathy with your analogy if looked like it applied to you and the NBN, ie if the forced change over to the NBN meant you were going pay significantly more. As it stands the only people who will pay more look to be those who use their land line for phone only. It will be to the tune of $10/month by the looks of it. But as you say, they are an endangered species.

@Yuyutsu: arbitrary politically-based government prohibition?

It's not arbitrary. The NBN looked to be one of the reasons Labour is still in power. Getting this forced down your throat is one of the unpleasant side effects of being a minority in a democracy.

@Shadow Minister: 10yr old Daihatsu ... porsche .. the extra $40bn or so that connecting homes via fibre could be well spend on hospitals, schools, police etc.

Well then Shadow I guess you are just ecstatic with the $40 Billion being a loan, which will be paid back. So those hospitals are just delayed, not lost forever. Since you are having trouble accepting this might be possible, I'll explain it in simple terms. Lets say you have a shiny car, which you lease for 5 years. At the end of the 5 years it is old and daggy. Now here is the magic bit: now the lease is over you can sell your old daddy car for roughly the payout figure, and lease a shiny new car at no additional expense to you. You just keep paying that lease figure.

Now I can hear you say, "but oh rstuart, I wouldn't do that, I would just continue driving the old car and not pay any lease". For what its worth nor would I. But here is the thing: no one is giving you that choice. Either you pay your current lease to Telstra and reward those long suffering share holders, or you give the same money to the government and they will use it to build a shiny new network. It rude, I know, but I say screw the shareholders, I want my new porsche.

Rstuart,

Firstly, the $11bn purchase of the Telstra access is not included in the $0bn.

Secondly the heroic assumption is that the loan will be paid back. The assumption is that 75% of house holds will take up an NBN Internet connection. Given that 10% typically don't connect at all, the assumption is that no more than 15% use wireless only. Given that the trends today in other countries is approaching 25%, and given the mobile wireless take up figure I have shown, this is likely to be exceeded in Australia.

Given Labor's record on similar infrastructure projects such as the tunnels I would bet a lot of money that it falls on its face.

Thirdly, the cost of the lease is going to be far higher for the basic package than most of us presently pay for a faster, bigger download package. So many are going to be paying for the "porsche" but still only getting the daihatsu.

Finally, all of us are going to have no other choice as competition has been banned.

@Shadow Minister: Firstly, the $11bn purchase of the Telstra access is not included

My understanding is it was included. Originally they had budgeted on not using Teltsra's ducts. Once they got access to the duct the price dropped, as the $9 billion they paid for the copper (not sure what the other $2 billion is for) is cheaper than digging trenches. So, got a link for that?

@Shadow Minister: such as the tunnels

I am not sure what tunnels you are referring to. But if it is the those in Brisbane that have just gone broke, that was Campbell "Can Do" Newman's little project. His election platform has always been "build more roads for cars". For those of you wondering how a single city can be responsible for infrastructure projects worth billions, Brisbane City's budget is larger than Tasmania's.

Brisbane had 5 river crossing around the city, each within a few kilometers of each other. Newman for some inexpiable reason decided to add two more. Naturally, since they are toll roads and there are already 5 crossings, no one uses them. We have one more infrastructure bankruptcy to go. That would be his Go Between Bridge.

Newman is a civil engineer. I might have forgiven him as just being a dumb politician had he been a pastor like his labour predecessor. I am a bit harder on people who should know better.

In the next 12 months wells equal to the production capacity of the 2nd largest producer, Iran, will run dry. That will send a seismic shock thought the economy as we scramble to move our transport fuels over to things like LPG, a seismic shock that will make make the carbon tax look like popping a pimple on an elephants arse. And just prior to this, Newman wastes billions that could be used to build public transport on tunnels for cars? It makes me angry every time I think about it.

But to set the record straight Shadow - Newman, the man responsible for those public infrastructure spending disasters, is a Liberal.

Dear Rstuart,

"The NBN looked to be one of the reasons Labour is still in power. Getting this forced down your throat is one of the unpleasant side effects of being a minority in a democracy."

So on the ideological side, I understand that you believe that it is OK for 51% to tyrannize 49% in the name of democracy. There is not much I can say for such views, but I am still interested in your technical expertise:

"Telephone calls will now become internet data, and sent over the normal internet. With that the transition will be complete. Rather then the internet being bolted onto the telephone infrastructure, telephones will be bolted onto the internet infrastructure. They will become just way we use the internet, along with web browsing, email, internet chat, and watching videos."

This is a very crucial issue for me: while I can use the internet in the office, I will never bring it into my home, which means that I could lose my home-phone, so how does it actually work? is it:

1. Phone works over internet (as in VOIP), so each NTU has an IP (or IPV6) address and phone-calls are directed to a particular TCP (or UDP) port.

or

2. Side-by-side, so both the basic phone service and the internet traffic (and probably other services too) ride independently over some basic, new low-level, NBN protocol.

Very much appreciated.

The $11bn gift from the Labor government to the NBN is to help them reduce their costs, and any real accounting system would accrue this cost to the project. Instead it is just a hit to the tax payer.

As I live in Sydney, the tunnels I was referring to were the Lane Cove and Cross City tunnels which NSW provided traffic figures to the companies based on shutting down alternate routes. The Clem 7 would be similar except for the closing of alternate routes.

The traffic figures proved to be wildly optimistic and the companies instead of being profitable went bust. As I have tried to show, the figures upon which the NBN provides a very meagre profit are very optimistic, and any due diligence would lead any real company to steer clear.

As NBN co is not a real company, and is set up purely to hide the costs from the budget sheet, ENRON style, and its collapse will shaft the taxpayer.

@Yuyutsu: you believe that it is OK for 51% to tyrannize 49% in the name of democracy.

That's putting a bit strongly. Consider the alternatives to democracy. A tiny minority dominating the majority is another way of organising society, which was very popular in the feudal ages. Prior to that tiny nomadic hunter societies that killed each other on sight was the rage. So while I don't think having the 51% tyrannize the 49% is a wonderful situation, the sad reality is there aren't a lot of choices. As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

And really, it ain't so bad. If the worst for of tyranny you have to suffer here is having a free, upgrade of your copper line to fibre forced on you, it's no wonder 1000's of people try to illegally take up residence to the country each year.

@Yuyutsu: how does it actually work?

Your NBN box has an analogue port which you plug your analogue phone into. It takes it from there. So it may use IPv4, IPv6 or whatever - you don't know and nor should you care. When the time comes you will just move the RJ-12 plug that is currently connecting you home phones to your ADSL filter to the NBN box, and it should just work.

I don't know the answer to the technical side of your question, but if I was to have a guess, I would base it on the NBN saying they provide, for free, a 150 k bits/sec voice channel. 150 K bits / sec seems too close to an ISDN BRI channel (144 K bits/sec) to be a coincidence. It also neatly fits with the NBN box having 2 analogue ports.

@Shadow Minister: The traffic figures proved to be wildly optimistic

It is exactly the same story here in Brisbane. Word for word.

@Shadow Minister: the tunnels I was referring to were the Lane Cove and Cross City

I knew it. We Queenslanders contracted this bloody disease from NSW. Just typical. Having a Liberal mayor gave us no immunity, apparently.

@Shadow Minister: As NBN co is not a real company, and is set up purely to hide the costs from the budget sheet, ENRON style

Give it a break. It's a quango. They're so common my browser's spell checker recognises the word. What would you prefer - instead of splitting it off into a separate entity it all come from general revenue as an untraceable series of transactions, so we don't really know how much it really costs?

@Shadow Minister: The $11bn gift from the Labor government

I ask for a link and you repeat the assertion. So I went looking. Your mostly wrong. From http://www.nbnco.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/a69fc5804479c76aa31fabc72ea64545/NBNCo_AnnualReport_2010.pdf

"The agreement for these terms has been attributed an approximate net present value after tax of $9 billion by Telstra from the payments to
be made over time by NBN Co."

Both only mostly because of this:

"Separately, the Federal Government has agreed to progress public policy reforms with an attributed value by Telstra of approximately $2 billion."

That does smell like a bribe to me. But not one involving money as you are suggesting. It's just favours. I am not sure that makes it better.

@Shadow Minister: The assumption is that 75% of house holds will take up an NBN Internet connection

Also wrong. From http://www.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/132711/Review_of_NBN_Co_Limiteds_Corporate_Plan-Executive_Summary.pdf

"NBN Co is forecasting up take of 56.0% of homes passed by 2015 and 63.4% by the end of 2020".

Seriously Shadow, I suspect your figures came from the Liberal party kool aid. You are drinking far too much of it. Known side effects of swallowing too much crap from any political party without question is loosing your grip on reality.

Dear Rstuart,

There is no need or justification for anyone tyrannizing another, neither a majority nor a minority. Everyone should be able to do whatever they like so long as they do not hurt others. That includes installing and using copper cables.

"And really, it ain't so bad. If the worst for of tyranny you have to suffer here is having a free, upgrade of your copper line to fibre forced on you"

It has nothing to do with the physical media and everything to do with content. In my case it may amount to a loss of my line rather than an "upgrade". If this is an attempt to force the internet on people against their conscience, then I may end up without a phone. Sure it's not the worst, I should not complain when people in Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and North Korea suffer enormously harsher, yet this is not a trifling matter either.

"When the time comes you will just move the RJ-12 plug that is currently connecting you home phones to your ADSL filter to the NBN box, and it should just work."

That is, IF I find it acceptable to connect my phones to the NBN box, which depends on whether or not my phones would be exposed to the internet.

"if I was to have a guess, I would base it on the NBN saying they provide, for free, a 150 k bits/sec voice channel. 150 K bits / sec seems too close to an ISDN BRI channel (144 K bits/sec) to be a coincidence. It also neatly fits with the NBN box having 2 analogue ports."

Can you please explain how channels work? I do hope this is some sort of hardware-based multiplexing, so the need to encapsulate phone calls as IP packets (with IP addressing) does not arise.

Did you consider that if the basic phone service depends on the internet, with a standard IP (or IPv6) address, then internet hackers will be able to hack into my phone just as they currently hack into computers?

Rstuart,

"Telstra is poised to complete an $11 billion deal with the National Broadband Network in less than a week. Under the terms, Telstra will receive at least $9 billion from NBN Co. to use or rent its infrastructure while the network is being built. Another $2 billion will go towards meeting Telstra's service needs and delivery ."

So Telstra gets $9bn directly, and $2bn is paid on behalf of Telstra. Still makes up $11bn cost to the government, or is every newspaper wrong?

The 75% fixed line use comes from the business case partially presented to the senate.

http://media.gizmodo.com.au/wp//2010/12/NBN-Business-plan.pdf

"NBN Co has assumed that 70 percent of premises passed by the network will take up a service. This figure takes into account an estimated 12% of premises being unoccupied, 13% using wireless products and 5% using other existing fixed line networks"

Dear Shadow Minister,

You mentioned "5% using other existing fixed line networks":

I was not aware that other fixed line networks were available in Australia, or that they would remain legal once the NBN takes over. Do you have any information on how to connect to such a network? I may need it badly once the NBN comes. Thanks!

@Yuyutsu: That includes installing and using copper cables.

You are free to install copper cables and use them as you wish. The problem arises because you are using copper cables installed by others, owned by others, terminating and depending on equipment at premises owned by someone else (the exchange), and now they want to replace the entire caboodle with something better. And you are in effect saying you want to prevent them from doing that.

@Yuyutsu: IF I find it acceptable to connect my phones to the NBN box, which depends on whether or not my phones would be exposed to the internet.

Your phones will be exposed to the internet no less or more than they are now. Your current phone line carries IP packets, which stop at the ADSL splitter. The new NBN fibre line will carry IP packets, which will get separated from the IP packets at the NBN box.

@Yuyutsu: Can you please explain how channels work?

I don't know. I've heard on the grapevine the fibre is PON (Passive Optical Network) system, which is TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) based.

@Yuyutsu: if the basic phone service depends on the internet,

It will depend on IP packets. I don't know whether telco's commonly ship those packets over the public internet. The cheaper ones certainly do.

@Yuyutsu: internet hackers will be able to hack into my phone just as they currently hack into computers?

Nope. Your phone is an analogue device. It does not understand IP packets. The voice signals your phone understands will be turned into IP packets by your telco - Telstra, Optus or whoever, on their premises (or maybe in the NBN box, but that seems unlikely to me). You won't know whether this happens, nor should you care. Just because Telstra is using IP to transport your voice does not mean your phone sees the IP packets, it does not mean your phone will get an IP address, nor does it make it possible to hack your phone via IP packets.

@Shadow Minister: So Telstra gets $9bn directly, and $2bn is paid on behalf of Telstra. Still makes up $11bn cost to the government, or is every newspaper wrong

Your argument was this wasn't included in the $35 billion price of the NBN. I believe you called it a gift from the government to the NBN. It looks to me this assertion of yours was flat out wrong, meaning it _is_ included in the $35 billion. Since you didn't supply a link ended up reading quite a few newspaper articles to see if you were spouting crap. Nothing I read implied the $9 billion wasn't being paid for by NBN Co, so unless every newspaper you read was different to the ones I saw then no, they weren't wrong either.

@Shadow Minister: The 75% fixed line use comes from the business case partially presented to the senate. http://media.gizmodo.com.au/wp//2010/12/NBN-Business-plan.pdf

That's 70% Shadow, not 75%. But fair enough, at least you have a source. The 70% looks to be the 63.6% 2020 figure, adjusted to an allow for unoccupied homes. The 2015 figure of 56% equates to 65%, allowing for unoccupied.

Those figures look OK to me. Take this survey:

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006414

It says there are 6 million broadband connections now. The NBN is saying they will get 56% or 10.1 million, or 5.6 million, by 2015. Despite your claims, I very much doubt people who have existing broadband connections are going to switch to wireless. If there was some wholesale switch away from broadband going on, we would expect to see that 6 million dropping. Instead it appears to be growing by about 200,000 each year.

@Yuyutsu: I was not aware that other fixed line networks were available in Australia

My guess is it is the cable network. You can get a phone service over cable. It uses IP as it transport. I'd also guess that by 2020, the cable network will disappear.

Rstuart,

The link you wanted is here:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/dont-add-telstra-deal-to-nbn-cost-quigley-339307580.htm

"It is unreasonable to add the $13.8 billion payment to Telstra, which National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co) counts as an operating cost, to the $35.7 billion capital expenditure cost of the whole network, NBN Co chief Mike Quigley has said."

It looks as though all my arguments are solidly based, whereas you are "spouting crap".

As the new legislation being proposed would essentially make the provision of alternate networks illegal, the 5% existing was included.

However, the nub of the argument was that the business case assumed that 13% of houses had wireless only internet. As I have shown above, with the existing connection rates, this is extremely optimistic. I read recently that the figure already in the US is 25% and set to rise.

The second link you so conveniently supplied, showed that the requirements of 98% of broadband connections probably don't need more than 1/2 Mb/s and for whom the 3Mb/s mobile connection is more than adequate.

As I said the NBN is yesterdays technology tomorrow whether you want it or not.

@Shadow Minister: It looks as though all my arguments are solidly based

No Shadow it doesn't. It is just Malcolm Turnbull spinning it as hard as he can to create some negative publicity. Seriously: don't swallow the kool aid. Read it and understand what is being said.

The question boils does to this: does this $9 billion cost go on the NBN Co's books, or does it come from general revenue? Answer, which doesn't appear to be contradicted by that article is: it goes onto NBN Co's books. What the article is discussing is some arcane accounting principle on whether that $9 billion should be treated as capital expenditure or operating costs. I am inclined to agree calling that $9 billion an operating cost seems sus, but it is beside the point.

The only statement that actually matters is in the last paragraph:

"The government is expected to contribute $27.1 billion to NBN Co over several years, with the difference between that figure and the network's peak funding requirement to be sourced from debt."

If you can show the government is funding the NBN more than $27.1 billion by pushing gifts under the table, you have a point. Otherwise you don't.

The $27.1 billion dollar question for me is what happens at the end. It would appear the government will end up up owning 100% of a company with $35 billion in assets, generating about $3.5 billion in income each year. That is healthy for a government owned asset. The cost will be whatever interest they don't earn on the $27.1 billion while the NBN is building the network. Assuming their assumptions are correct that should not be more than a few billion.

The translates to the NBN proposal costing tax payers less than proposal the Libs took to the last election. As I said this because the NBN captures an income stream which the less radical proposal from the Liberals didn't. Thus the Liberals proposal ended up costing more even though they spent less.

@Shadow Minister: As I have shown above, with the existing connection rates, this is extremely optimistic. I read recently that the figure already in the US is 25% and set to rise.

Maybe, but this is Australia, not the US. And in Australia we already have more than the required number of people using broadband to fulfil the NBN assumptions, and that number is currently growing both numerically and percentage wise.

Maybe the explanation for the difference with the US is their huge income gap between rich and poor. The US 14% below the poverty line in 2009 (and rising) and some 40% falling below the poverty line in any 10 year period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States That 14% simply can't afford broadband.

@Shadow Minister: broadband connections probably don't need more than 1/2 Mb/s and for whom the 3Mb/s mobile connection is more than adequate.

That would be an issue is we were designing a network for today. I hope out pollies would not be that dumb. If it is like our copper network, it will be around for 60 years.

@Shadow Minister: NBN is yesterdays technology

Seriously Shadow. Have you run out of sensible things to say?

Dear Rstuart,

"Your phones will be exposed to the internet no less or more than they are now. Your current phone line carries IP packets, which stop at the ADSL splitter"

Do you mean that currently, a hacker from the internet, say they successfully compromize some main CISCO routers and DNS servers, can send their voice to my phone and/or listen to my phone conversations? Can a terrorist attack for example, or an alien state, jam and bring down our phone system, either now with copper or in the future with the NBN?

"Nope. Your phone is an analogue device. It does not understand IP packets. The voice signals your phone understands will be turned into IP packets by your telco - Telstra, Optus or whoever, on their premises (or maybe in the NBN box, but that seems unlikely to me)"

Now that's scary: telcos are not immune to hacking, so if there is any point of contact between the phone network and the internet, then hackers who break into the telco's computers could divert and manipulate our phone calls.

"I've heard on the grapevine the fibre is PON (Passive Optical Network) system, which is TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) based."

That would be very welcome news: if that's the case, then I presume that the phone will have its separate time-slots and the internet will have different time-slots: that will allow for perfect hardware-level isolation.

@Yuyutsu: Do you mean that currently, a hacker from the internet, say they successfully compromize some main CISCO routers

Maybe. As I said, I don't know whether the Australia telco's route their main voice channels through the public internet. Certainly other telco's do. Whether there are many systems left that are truely isolated from the internet (such as the cisco routers that handle the teco's phone calls now) is an interesting question.

Your phone is definitely not isolated from the internet. An internet phone can ring your land line now. Many of the firms offering cheap overseas phone calls do by routing those calls over the internet using high compression codecs.

@Yuyutsu: hackers who break into the telco's computers could divert and manipulate our phone calls.

This has happened already, on a grand scale. It didn't require access over IP:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair

The recent Israeli attack on Iran's uranium refineries using the Stuxnet virus also didn't happen using IP:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/world/middleeast/16stuxnet.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

The internet does add another way into computer systems. But there always have been lots of ways in, and believe it or not most companies are well aware of the risk the internet poses and take appropriate precautions.

Dear Rstuart,

"Your phone is definitely not isolated from the internet. An internet phone can ring your land line now. Many of the firms offering cheap overseas phone calls do by routing those calls over the internet using high compression codecs."

But the call itself is carried by my telco, isn't it?
I mean, someone from the internet could make a call to my phone, just like anybody else, but they will need to go via my telco at a high level, they wouldn't for example be able to intercept a phone call I'm on using IP packets and immitate the voice of my friend on the other line. Or can they?

The two examples you supplied are of breaking into a mobile network and into computers. While it can be alarming, it is still different than breaking into an ordinary, basic, cable-based, analogue phone network.

"I don't know whether the Australia telco's route their main voice channels through the public internet."

Does anyone else here happen to know?

Rstuart,

The balance of the funding is expected to come from capital markets. There is no plan to include the $11bn in the costs, and I have given you a link with the CEO of NBN directly says so. Perhaps you should provide some evidence that shows otherwise.

Mobile broadband is growing at an exponential rate, and I have shown that 40% of new broad band connections are mobile. The 4G system is now just being rolled out and will have a maximum rate of 100Mb/s, and 5G is on the horizon.

Some mobile plans are already cheaper than the base plan the NBN is offering and certainly existing ASDL is far cheaper. You have failed to explain why the Australian consumer will pay more for less.

Dear rstuart and Shadow Minister,

I just wanted to say a thank you to you both for being prepared to contribute like you have to this thread thus far. I have learnt far more than I could have imagined or what would have been possible through my own reading. It is a good example of the adversarial system at work and the spirted manner with which your have prosecuted your cases has certainly lifted my understanding of the NBN issue significantly.

It has been a pleasure to sit back and learn from two people who obviously know their stuff. 

Dear Yuyutsu,

I will admit to being a little uncertain about the reasonableness of any concern about loosing a copper connection but your posts have got me thinking about a lady I know who by choice lives without running water and electricity at the end of 3 kms of copper wire. I do wonder how her situation will be dealt with under the NBN.

@Shadow Minister: The balance of the funding is expected to come from capital markets.

If it is the $9 billion you are talking about I think the justification was they start earning money earlier because having access to Telstra's infrastructure will speed up the roll out. That means less borrowings from both the capital markets and the government. Actually, I think any additional borrowing's have to come from the government. They appear to have maxed out what private sources are willing to lend.

It looks to me this is effectively a loan from Telstra, in return for being allowed to do most of the work in the rollout. I have no doubt the arrangement makes great commercial sense to sides. Telstra after all gets $9 billion for an obsolete network, and NBN gets to reduce their borrowings because of the faster rollout. (Note this would not happen with FTTN, because under that scenario the copper would be kept.)

I guess I am not qualified to comment on whether that justifies shifting it from the balance sheet to the P&L. I am not an accountant. The bottom line is it reduces the amount I, the tax payer, has to put in, and that is great.

@Shadow Minister: Some mobile plans are already cheaper than the base plan the NBN is offering

That statement makes no sense - and you know it. I was going to launch into an explanation of why it makes no sense, but we've been over it before and you didn't challenge me on it then. A comparison of NBN and mobile pricing was given here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4494#115675

@Shadow Minister: certainly existing ASDL is far cheaper.

This statement is worse. It's just flat out wrong. But again we have been over it here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4494#115674 You didn't challenge the facts or reasoning I presented so I presume you accepted it.

@Shadow Minister: You have failed to explain why the Australian consumer will pay more for less.

Two unsound statements, followed by a deduction based on them. Nice Shadow. Something worth of Barnaby Joyce.

@Yuyutsu: But the call itself is carried by my telco, isn't it?

On your side yes. But obviously the call has to get to the other phone, and that will necessarily be carried by the telco they use. There are a myriad of VOIP providers in Australia, a lot of my friends use them. Even Telstra and Optus provide VOIP, over the internet.

@csteele: It has been a pleasure to sit back and learn from two people who obviously know their stuff.

I have an admission to make. For all the jibes I throw at Shadow, compared to most here it is a pleasure debating with him, and for that - thank you Shadow.

For me it is a learning exercise. Believe it or not I do it to learn, and enjoy the process. This little discussion is an excellent example of just how such learning happens. It all goes to pot though if people just spew opinions or "facts" without links, which is what often passes for debate here. The learning happens when you are forced to go digging for facts in support of your view. Real learning happens when you don't find any.

The reason I have to thank Shadow is he is one of the few here that have forced me to revise my opinions. He is does post the occasional relevant link given enough prodding, and usually he moves on from a point once we have come to some resolution, even if that is to agree to disagree.

Rstuart,

You could start by actually reading what I posted, not what your blinkered logic would like.

Considering that you yourself posted the link that itemised the usage of broadband by the majority of people, 90+% of which required comparatively low speeds and capacity. Using the proposed retail price of the lowest package of $60, there are many mobile packages far cheaper. Whilst they might not compare on a byte by byte costing, they are still up to half the price, and if they meet the requirements of the customer and give the benefit of mobility why should he pay more?

As for ASDL I get 200GB at 12-20Mb/s plus telephone (incl all national calls) now for $60pm. Which is cheaper and better value than what the NBN will offer in 7-8 years.

As I mentioned before the NBN business plan estimates that mobile wireless broadband take up will be 13%, whereas all information nationally and overseas would indicate a figure greater. As you have not provided any information to the contrary, I assume you have accepted this.

Dear Rstuart,

Of course anyone can make calls using VOIP, but as the call has to go through my telco, then I suppose that my telco would do everything it can to prevent low-level interference. With copper, I suppose there is some hardware that prevents anyone other than my telco itself from sending low-frequency analogue signals over my phone cable. In other words, you cannot talk directly to my receiver without making an eligible phone-call and you cannot listen to what I say to my mouth-piece unless you are on an eligible phone-call with me (or if you are the police with a legitimate warrant to access my telco's equipment).

How will this be handled by the NBN? I suppose that time-multiplexing in hardware could do the trick!

Dear Csteele,

"I will admit to being a little uncertain about the reasonableness of any concern about loosing a copper connection"

Nothing to do with the physical media, but rather with the "revolution" that comes with it: I want to keep my basic phone service without introducing the internet into my home.

I do believe that others too, even those who do use the internet at home, should be concerned that <if> xxxx WHEN the internet comes down, crashes or is severely compromized, possibly in a global cyber-war scenario which is likely do bring down the mobile network as well, they will still have a reliably working home-phone.

"your posts have got me thinking about a lady I know who by choice lives without running water and electricity at the end of 3 kms of copper wire."

That's admirable! I am not anywhere as pure as her. Do send her my warm congratulations.

@Shadow Minister: Considering that you yourself posted the link that itemised the usage of broadband by the majority of people, 90+% of which required comparatively low speeds and capacity.

Oh that. Those figures meaningless, as they aren't actual bandwidth measurements. If someone asks you "what does your household use the internet for" what are you going to say - so my son can play computer games? Or, me, playing Farmville? Or, exchanging pictures on facebook with my friends?

That aside, I am more familiar than most about what uses bandwidth, yet I could not tell you were most of my bandwidth usage actually goes. A survey of household mums has absolutely no hope of returning a meaningful statistics.

@Shadow Minister: I get 200GB at 12-20Mb/s plus telephone (incl all national calls) now for $60pm. Which is cheaper and better value than what the NBN will offer in 7-8 years.

I don't doubt your personal figures, but where on earth did you get the "Which is cheaper and better value than what the NBN will offer" from? Got a link?

@Shadow Minister: all information nationally and overseas would indicate a figure greater.

The information you gave didn't indicate that at all. Yes, you have shown wireless subscriptions are growing very strongly. But you did not show that land line broadband connections are dropping as a consequence! On the contrary even in the US where you say there is 25% wireless broadband, cable and ADSL continue to grow:

http://www.high-speed-internet-access-guide.com/articles/broadband-statistics-for-2010.html

According to that line they added some 3.3 million new subscribers in the US. In a country of 300 million, that would mean they would have to have added 2% of the countries households in 2010. If we have growth like the NBN will be a turn into a money tree for the government.

PS: I don't have the spare time time looking for quality (eg .gov) links. I just use the first page I find with easy to understand figures. If you put a little effort in Shadow, I am sure you can find something better.

@Yuyutsu: you cannot talk directly to my receiver without making an eligible phone-call and you cannot listen to what I say to my mouth-piece unless you are on an eligible phone-call with me

This has never been the case. Back in the old manual exchange days the operator listening in and overtalking on the conversation was all too common. Nowadays in the telecom pit on the roadside with two alligator clips and a $9 handset from Dick Smith can listen in, dial numbers and speak on your behalf. Australian telephone exchanges have been know to have lists "hot" numbers written on the walls, so a bored employee can occupy the time by doing just that. Decades ago an entire culture arose around telephone phreaking, doing what you are saying you are currently safe from.

And yes now, if you rang an office I administer (they use VOIP), I could listen to your call and say things on your behalf. Of course this should not be a surprise as just about every large company you ring warns you they are going to do just that. (My employer doesn't do this, as it happens.) Your telco can't do anything about it. And people who have the appropriate VOIP gear and telco links can make a call appear as if it is coming from you - regardless of where in the world it originates from. But then that isn't new either.

Things will improve very slightly with the NBN I suppose. The alligator clip trick won't work any more. In fact it is so hard to intercept fibre unnoticed a monitored fibre strand wound around valuable items is a very good security system.

Hundred up!

Try this:

"In the last 6 months of 2009, one of every four households (24.5%) did not have a landline telephone but did have at least one Wireless telephone. Approximately 22.9% of all adults (approximately 52 million adults) lived in households with only wireless telephones; 25.9% of all children (more than 19 million children) lived in households with only wireless telephones."

This is for 2009

For 2010

The number of American homes without a landline continues to grow, according to preliminary results from the January-June 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). More than one of every four USA households (26.6%) had only wireless telephones during the first half of 2010--an increase of 2.1 percentage points since the second half of 2009.

States leading with wireless-only households include Arkansas (35.2%), Mississippi (35.1%), Texas (32.5%), North Dakota (32.3%), Idaho (31.7%), and Kentucky (31.5%).

So how can anyone claim that 13% for Australia is credible in 10 years.

As for buying mobile wireless broadband:

http://broadbandguide.com.au/mobile-broadband

The capacity has increased massively over 5 years and will probably equal whatever the NBN offers in 2020

@Shadow Minister: More than one of every four USA households (26.6%) had only wireless telephones ...

You missed the actual link Shadow, but that's OK as a quick search on the keywords pulls it up: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhis/earlyrelease/wireless201012.htm Thanks for actually going to the trouble of digging it.

Nonetheless I don't understand the relevance. No one here disputes people are dropping their land line phones now they have mobiles. But we aren't discussing phone's. We are discussing broadband. Evidently people who don't bother getting a land line do continue to get a broadband connection.

Just to make it plain this is the case, consider this quote from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/landline-phone-obsolete.htm

"As of late 2007, 16 percent of U.S. households had no landline whatsoever, compared to just 5 percent in 2004"

Yet despite drop, broadband connections were still climbing at the same time. In fact according to this page they doubled during that period:

http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art030.htm

Worse for your argument is this quote from the first link:

"Even businesses are ditching their wires for more economical options, like WiFi and VoIP (voice over Internet protocol). Ford's Detroit headquarters, for example, recently purchased 8,000 wireless phones for the staff and ripped up its landlines."

So yes, businesses are also ditching their analogue phone lines. But there are replacing them with VOIP routed over broadband. Actually people do that to. Quite a few of my friends haven't bothered getting a "land line", but they do have a VOIP phone for the odd time it is convenient to hand out a home phone number rather than a mobile.

Rstuart,

Did you read the links you posted. The broadband connections incl wireless. The Voip phones don't require a landline connection whether it is a copper or fibre land line.

Our business has one fibre coming in with phones and network distributed by a series of wireless repeaters for 100+ people. Wireless voip phones are mobile like a mobile phone within the office area.

The 26.6% have no land lines, and fibre is a landline.

Wireless is tomorrow's technology. Fibre is the heavy lifting for internode connections. At 10Gb/s that fibre is capable, the download allowance could be delivered in 20 seconds.

@Shadow Minister: The broadband connections incl wireless

I'll concede I didn't do my homework very well. The figures in that link are ambiguous. Here is a better link, which the figures original link appear to be based on: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-296239A1.pdf from this page: http://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/iatd/comp.html

It is US government published data for up to 2002..2008. Take a look at the graph on the page numbered 9. It graphs total fixed line broadband installations over time. It is a steadily rising almost straight line, despite mobile wireless broadband reaching growing from 0% to 25% of all connections in the same period. Clearly if mobile broadband was replacing fixed it would not be rising unabated. So it appears contrary to what you are saying, in the US mobile broadband lines are being used in addition to the home broadband link, not instead of it. This is what csteele was telling you 80 posts or so ago.

You also claim people don't care about the speed of their connections. ADSL growth drops to zero in the period (chart page numbered 13). They don't say why, but the usual reason given is cable is much faster than ADSL. FTTP growth (ie what the NBN is using, and what you characterised as "old technology") accelerates during the same period, rising to 61% growth in 2008.

The chart on page numbered 14 illustrated the relative speed of the technologies, showing how much faster than ADSL cable is in real installations. Mobile broadband maxes out at around 2 M bits/sec, ADSL somewhere under 6. Fibre is starting to encroach on cable at 25. Compare that to the the NBN FTTP which starts at 12, is offering 100 at very reasonable price and 1000 if you are willing to pay much more than I am.

These are 2008 figures so you still have some wriggle room I guess. Sadly they are the latest figures the FCC has published. But if you were to base your assumptions on those figures it is done and dusted: it is very clear mobile broadband wasn't replacing fixed line back then.

@Shadow Minister: The Voip phones don't require a landline connection whether it is a copper or fibre land line.

Correct, it doesn't "require it". But no one in their right mind routes a VOIP call over mobile wireless data.

It is an outcome of the technical discussion I gave when describing iPhone data connections above. It boils down to this: when you make a voice call over 3G one of two things happen. Either you are granted a dedicated voice channel for the entire duration of your call (assuming you stay in the same cell), or you will get a busy signal if there are none available. What's more, the network will monitor the strength of the signal coming from your phone and if rain or something weakens it, it will adjust its transmit strength accordingly. In other words, it will hold onto that voice channel as hard as it can. Despite all this, mobile voice connections can be frustratingly unreliable.

None of this happens for data connections. They are optimised for different things. One is speed. The other is latency: that negotiation for reserved bandwidth for a voice channel takes time, and is pointless for a packet that may take only 0.1 sec to send. So they don't do it. As a consequence a rain squally can wipe out hundreds of packets, and 100 people checking their email doesn't mean 10 get through - it means the data channels in cell collapse entirely and no one gets through.

So your wrong Shadow. A fixed channel with reserved bandwidth is always used for voice when at all possible, and no, mobile broadband doesn't provide such a thing for data. This means VOIP over mobile broadband is a really bad idea, and you can be absolutely sure the large firms mentioned in the link, such as Ford, didn't do it.

Notice Shadow the NBN provides reserved bandwidth for two dedicated voice channels. even though we are hardly ever on the phone. Doesn't that seem like a waste? Now you know why it is done that way.

@Shadow Minister: As for ASDL I get 200GB at 12-20Mb/s plus telephone (incl all national calls) now for $60pm. Which is cheaper and better value than what the NBN will offer in 7-8 years.

It turns out some ISP's offer NBN pricing now. But not surprisingly, its only those who operate in Tasmania. iiNet is one example.

iiNet's pricing for ADSL+Phone is identical to NBN+Phone. You can look up their pricing for the NBN here:

http://www.iinet.net.au/nbn/

The only real difference between the two NBN gives you a guaranteed 25 M bit/sec, ADSL gives you something between 1.5-20 M bit/sec.

Obviously iiNet isn't an el-cheapo ISP like you are using Shadow, but if looks like your fears of the NBN being more expensive than ADSL are misplaced.

Internode also offers NBN. Internode is (as always) more expensive than iiNet, but their entry price point is interesting: $29.95 for 15 Gb (25 M bit/sec). That includes line rental, which means it is the equivalent of a naked service. It is cheaper than any Naked ADSL service I can remember.

http://www.internode.on.net/residential/fibre_to_the_home/nbn_plans/1

@rstuart: if I was to have a guess ... voice channel ... [is] a ISDN BRI channel

Turns out I guessed wrong. They are SIP end points: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/364013/updated_adsl_emulation_port_scrapped_from_nbn_plans/ SIP is the name of the protocol the internet uses to carry telephone calls.

@Yuyutsu: I do hope ... the need to encapsulate phone calls as IP packets (with IP addressing) does not arise

Sorry. This means voice will be carried using IP packets from the moment they leave the NBN box.

Rstuart, from your own link:

"Of the 86 million residential high-speed connections at year-end 2008, cable modem represented 46%, aDSL represented 31%, mobile wireless subscribers with data plans for full Internet access represented 18%, FTTP represented 3%, and all other technologies represented 1%."

Note that when talking about cable, they are not just talking about fibre. The vast majority would be copper cable such as CAT 5 etc.

FYI voice requires a peak data rate of 22kb/s and compressed, 1GB of download capacity will give about 200 hours of talk. So why would you be mad to use VOIP over wireless?

What iinet is recently offering would appear to match what is presently available guaranteeing 5Mb/s. Why are we spending $46bn to get the same?

@Shadow Minister: Rstuart, from your own link: "Of the 86 million residential high-speed connections at year-end 2008 ...

One more time, but I'll give up after this unless you present some new data. Your argument is: households will take up mobile wireless broadband INSTEAD OF fixed line.

The evidence you offered:

- There are lots of new mobile mobile broadband connections going in. (Everyone agrees this is correct.)
- Mobile phones are replacing fixed lines in households. (Again, everyone agrees this is correct.)
- This is what has supposedly happened in the US. (No one has said they agree with you on this one.)

The problem with your evidence is, as csteele was first to point out, rising mobile broadband connections doesn't mean they are replacing fixed connections. People could be getting both. To find out if they are, we looked how the growth in mobile has effected the growth of fixed.

- If the growth was negative then the evidence was strongly in your favour.
- If it tailed off and became flat it was ambiguous.
- If growth continued unabated then you are almost certainly wrong.

All the evidence presented shows fixed broadband growth has remained strong in both Australia and the US, despite the rise of mobile.

This is a puzzle, so people have put forward reasons (with evidence) why mobile broadband isn't replacing fixed broadband:

- Mobile broadband is roughly 10 times more expensive per byte than fixed.
- Mobile broadband is roughly 10 times slower than fixed.
- Mobile broadband is less reliable than fixed.
- Mobile broadband can not hope to scale to deliver the quantity of data _already_ being delivered by fixed.

A good reason was also given for the growth of mobile broadband "connections". They are low cap plans sold with smartphones, not fixed broadband replacements.

The thing I find odd about your refusal to accept mobile broadband won't replace fixed is that you have a 200Gb fixed plan. On the cheapest rate I could find would cost you $700/month using mobile broadband. Planning to give up your fixed line soon, Shadow?

@Shadow Minister: What iinet is recently offering would appear to match what is presently available guaranteeing 5Mb/s. Why are we spending $46bn to get the same?

Three reasons:

1. People are maxing out their 5 Mbit/sec links now.

2. Internet bandwidth usage is growing exponentially http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980405.html so it unlikely people would be will be happy with their 5 Mbit/sec connections for long.

3. What appears to be the base level NBN connection being sold now - 25 M bit/sec, is already faster than ADSL can deliver, ever. And the NBN as installed can deliver to 1000 Mbit/sec. To get beyond that 1000 Mbit/sec we don't have to through the hugely expensive effort of replacing the cable again. We can get another factor of 1000 by just replacing the bits at the end of the cable - just like we did for ADSL.

In other words, this is a one-off nation building effort, which is laying down the infrastructure we will be using for the foreseeable future. It is same sort of investment our governments have made in building water supplies, ports, roads, schools, hospitals, electricity grids and the old telephone system.

Or to put it another way, your question sounds like someone 10 years ago asking why the telco's were going to the expense of installing ADSL, given everyone was happily using 56K modems.

This is another question you have asked repeatedly in several guises in this tread. We are going around in circles. I hope this is the final time I have to answer it.

@Shadow Minister: FYI voice requires a peak data rate of 22kb/s and compressed, 1GB of download capacity will give about 200 hours of talk. So why would you be mad to use VOIP over wireless?

I did try to explain Shadow. Evidently I failed. Unfortunately the textbook explanation I would normally fall back to is assumes the listener has a good understanding of network engineering concepts like latency, speed, bandwidth, reliability, error rates and quality of service.

When stripped of all the jargon and mystique these concepts aren't complex, and nor is the idea that different types of traffic (eg data, voice), require designs that emphasise different combinations of those concepts. Normally I would relish the challenge of presenting this in simple terms a layman can understand.

But the only person I seem to be talking to here is you, Shadow, and my efforts to convince of things that now seem self-evident to me have been startlingly unsuccessful, so trying to explain something that is even more complex does not seem like a very fruitful row to hoe.

Rstuart,

The reason you can't convince me about using VOIP over wireless broadband is for 2 reasons. The first is because as an electrical engineer I did communications and am perfectly well versed, secondly I have a colleague who has mobile wireless broad band with a Voip phone, and has no problems communicating. What seems self evident to you is entirely in your imagination. Try telling this to Skype.

Next you claim that there are people maxing out their 5Mb/s connections. Given that you showed that most people needs don't approach 1Mb/s I would like you to give examples. as I have a speed counter on my system and only very seldom exceed 1Mb/s whilst downloading several large chunks of data simultaneously, via bitorrent.

With myself and 2 teenagers, I have yet to reach 100GB, but there is no intermediate package.

The figures coming out of the states are for people using mobile only access. And considering that I have seen this in various articles, please provide any link where it shows that these mobile only households also have land line Internet.

While most of your criticisms are true for mobile now, the services were 10x more expensive 5 years ago and slower and less reliable. In 2020, the comparison between fixed and mobile is projected to be much closer. Try using your arguments against mobile phones and landlines, and you will see that the same applies.

In my work I deal with many high level network engineers all of whom think that the NBN is a colossal waste of money. Only those who have no concept of how networks function think it is a good idea. RS seeing the above would put you firmly in the later category.

@rstuart: But I'm guessing they will find a way to move all those cable customers onto their service.

I was imagining this would happen in 5 or 10 years time. It seems my educated guesses were wrong, but then they often are. From http://www.afr.com/p/business/companies/optus_on_brink_of_nbn_customer_transfer_5A3cfqZ3iuCmFLGdmkg4RO :

"Optus is on the brink of a deal with NBN Co worth between $500 million and $1 billion after tax to shut down its cable network and transfer customers the national broadband network."

@Shadow Minister: What seems self evident to you is entirely in your imagination. Try telling this to Skype.

It's not just my imagination Shadow, it's a collective delusion shared by all network engineering people.

@Shadow Minister: Try telling this to Skype.

Skype is free, has video yet people continue to use existing telephony. Perhaps this link http://www.evdoinfo.com/content/view/3456/64/ will help you understand why. A quote from it:

"The latency or delay can be very frustrating, as you can end up talking over the person on the other end of the line. This issue can be particularly problematic for business users, who obviously need to sound professional over the phone!"

Have you considered the possibility that computer networking engineers know more about building networks than an electrical engineers?

@Shadow Minister: With myself and 2 teenagers, I have yet to reach 100GB, but there is no intermediate package

So lets see if I have this right. Instead of the $700/mo I guesstimated, your current $60/mo package would only cost you $300/mo, and you are happy to pay this?

@Shadow Minister: I deal with many high level network engineers all of whom think that the NBN is a colossal waste of money

How odd. I personally a lot of network engineers, and it is the exact reverse - all think the NBN is a far sighted idea.

But since you do know so many, you might like to get them to explain to you how the voice and data are handled differently on the mobile networks, and why it is done that way.

Rstuart,

I use Skype at least once a week to have video conferences with business colleagues overseas, and have never had trouble with picture or sound. The occasional user using mobile wireless has been restricted on picture quality, but not sound. My kids use Skype with their friends constantly even though we have free telephone calls nationally on our land line.

Saying that I would pay $300 per month is assuming that I use 100GB of download, which I have never reached. Our typical usage is about 30GB which would be $90p.m. in your terms.

As 4G comes on line, and 5G in a few years, the capacity and cost difference between fixed and mobile will drop significantly.

Tomorrow's technology will be mobile Wifi, yesterday's is fibre.

@Shadow Minister: Our typical usage is about 30GB which would be $90p.m. in your terms.

Well a little over $100/month at vodafone rates, both uploads and downloads are charged, plus $20/Gb if you exceed your cap. But even allowing for that we aren't comparing apples with apples as if I understand what you said as your current connection includes a fixed line and the calls made over it.

@Shadow Minister: As 4G comes on line, and 5G in a few years, the capacity and cost difference between fixed and mobile will drop significantly.

So you keep saying.

- Never mind the fact that I pointed out 4G LTE as envisaged is currently vapour ware.

- Never mind that 4G LTE was meant to be available now, but they have given up on that and renamed 3G plus a few additional channel bonding techniques 4G in what I could only call a cynical marketing exercise. What was to be 4G has been renamed to 5G.

- Never mind the fact that even if the grandest 5G plans of the wireless engineers come to fruition, a 802.16m wireless cell will only be capable of around 1G bit/sec in total, which they say can be shared by 200 users in a minimum envisaged cell size of 1Km radius. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution#Comparison

- Never mind the fact that 1Km radius will cover more than 2000 homes.

- Never mind the fact that optimistic 1G bit/sec is less than 10th of what existing ADSL at 5 M bit/sec can carry to those 2000 homes now, which is conservative given at 1 km ADSL can carry 20 M bit/sec.

So, as I said above of your vision for wireless: IT. IS. IMPOSSIBLE. Physics forbids it. Of course you didn't believe me. Which is why I gave link to Ziggy Switkowski making essentially the same point. You think he might know a thing or two about mobile networks as he oversaw the building of one. Apparently you don't agree.

If anyone is still following this, here are Graeme Samuel's (chairman of the ACCC) thoughts on Fibre To The Node (FTTN) versus Fibre To The Premises (FTTP, what we will get with the NBN):

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/16/samuel_on_fttn/

Conroy thoughts on the matter:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/11/overbuild_threat_drove_nbn/

Both say roughly the same thing. FTTN would have worked technically. But financially it would have meant the government paying the incumbent monopoly Telstra $15B..$25B to build it, and getting nothing back in return.

It's just repeating what was said earlier I guess, but it is nice the guess at what they were thinking confirmed.

Interestingly, if Telstra hadn't been privatised by the Lib's the FTTN node would have been the cheaper option for the tax payer, and presumably Shadow would be happier. It's odd how things turn out.

Dear Rstuart,

So if the problem is only financial and not technical, then can't money solve it all?

Those promoting FTTN always stated that if a household wished to have a fiber-optic connection, they could still pay for having a fiber-optic cable connected from the node to their premises.

Then what about the reverse - can't the same be done with the NBN? what possibly prevents households that wish to retain their copper from paying NBNCO for a new copper connection (assuming that for political reasons NBNCO doesn't want to use Telstra's existing cables)? Wouldn't it even be technically trivial for NBNCO to provide ADSL on that same copper line (for a fee of course)?

In the case of the lady whom Csteele described, who lives 3km away with no electricity, I believe that her best solution would be to have her NTU "hosted" in the exchange/node (and her existing 3km wire connected to the NTU inside the exchange).

I would be more than happy to pay for such a service.

@Yuyutsu: Then what about the reverse - can't the same be done with the NBN?

Technically, yes.

But technically it would be possible for you to drive a horse and cart down the freeway, and have the rest of us could just queue up behind you.

Realistically, I don't like your chances, regardless of how much you are prepared to pay for the privilege.

Dear Rstuart,

"But technically it would be possible for you to drive a horse and cart down the freeway, and have the rest of us could just queue up behind you."

Can you please explain why this is similar? How could this paid service, a copper connection from my nearest node, possibly slow down anyone else?

As far as other clients are concerned, I would still be using a standard NBN connection, it's only that my NTU will be located at the exchange instead of on my roof. Whatever other equipment is connected to my NTU's sockets should not affect anybody else.

BTW, as for that lady who lives 3km away, I suppose that if the government refuses, then one of her nearest neighbours could also provide her with a similar service using their spare phone socket and their own power-supply to charge the battery.

@@Yuyutsu: Can you please explain why this is similar?

Quite apart from anything else, I don't see the point of having an exchange any more - or at least not so many of them. What do you expect them to do - keep an expensive building around just for you?

@Yuyutsu: How could this paid service, a copper connection from my nearest node, possibly slow down anyone else?

Hey look - it ain't me you have to convince. It is Telstra or the NBN or whoever. Ask them the question. I am just making guesses and god knows I have been wrong many times before.

@Yuyutsu: BTW, as for that lady who lives 3km away, I suppose that if the government refuses, then one of her nearest neighbours could also provide her with a similar service using their spare phone socket and their own power-supply to charge the battery.

Indeed. Or she could get a mobile phone and charge it using a solar charger. As could you for that matter. As others have pointed out the traditional fixed line phone appears to be going the way of the dodo.

I can't resist adding new bits of information as I find them. Yesterday Malcolm Turnbull was doing his appointed job, producing negative articles about the NBN:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/NBN-broadband-Conroy-South-Korea-fibre-bandwidth-i-pd20110616-HUS7C

The gist of the article was that 100Mbit/sec subscriptions dropped by 10% last year in Korea. The relevance is Malcolm's currently touted alternative is Fibre To The Node can only do up to 50Mbit/sec or so.

It appears Malcolm made a mistake. Who knows, it might even be an honest one rather than an Abbott'esk attempt to spin pure crap. I sure hope so, as I have some time for Malcolm. Yes, Korea's largest carrier is shedding 100Mbit/sec connections, however unusually Korea's largest carrier isn't the largest fibre carrier. In fact there are two carriers that sell more of it, and they are growing. In a country with a lot of wireless the number of 100Mbit/sec Fibre connections grow by 14% last year. That's one hell of a growth rate.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/16/turnbull_nbn_calculations/

@Yuyutsu: Can you please explain why this is similar?
@rstuart: I don't see the point of having an exchange any more - or at least not so many of them.

Perhaps I should be clearer. Australia has around 1200 telephone exchanges currently. Telephone exchanges are were all the wires from the local houses come together so calls can be routed between them, or over trunk lines.

The NBN equivalent to an exchange is called a Point Of Interconnect, or POI. Thus the NBN's POI's are where the fibre from surrounding premises end up so the service providers (Telstra, Optus, iiNet, Foxtel ...) can connect to them.

The point is there are only going to be 120 POI's, and once they are up and running I don't think the current exchanges will be needed.

In other words Yuyutsu, there is at best a 9 in 10 chance the Telephone Exchange your copper wire runs to will vanish. At worst the NBN won't use the Telephone Exchanges at all. And unless you are a very rich man indeed, you are unlikely to be able to afford whatever it costs to prevent that from happening.