Thread: NBN who's happy with theirs?

Fibre is the only way to go for the future. The Copper Age was 3000 years ago.

An interesting story, long on hyperbole but short on fact. Certainly good to see a group of disenfranchised community members forming a co op to provide a service they would otherwise not be able to have (assuming the claims of no service now or in the foreseeable future is to be believed). Bendigo Bank Community Banking was a similar and successful community response here in Victoria (and Qld) when the big banks were withdrawing services and closing branches back in the 90's. Having professional and other services provided at no cost and free 'easement provision' would certainly affect the 'cost effective' bottom line and make an otherwise non profitable venture viable, so good on them.

What the report fails to mention especially in a comparison to Australia analogy is population density, though the closeness of towns/villages was mentioned but in the context of problems with fences and hedgerows which was a bit strange. Population density is the name of the game in service provision. It costs basically the same to provide a service to a highly populated area as it does to sparsely populated one and given the relatively small size of Lancashire (less than 4000 sq km) and a population of about 1.5 million so about twice the size of Cairns with 10 times the population it should be a service providers dream.
Looking at Nth Qld as a whole with less than 1/4 million people spread over 80,000 sq km it has an overall population density of about 3 people per sq km compared to Lancashire with a population density of around 400 people per sq km or less than 1% of that of Lancashire. As I said, from an Australian perspective, a service providers dream.

IMO this Lancashire/Australia comparison is about as relevant as comparing apples with pineapples

As for the 4000 km of cable laid, my bull **** meter is red lining, this would mean the cable layers have crossed the whole County of Lancashire (approx 50km X 60km) about 80 times. As I said

What is more likely is that the total length of fibres in the ground is 4000 km. A bit like me laying 1Km of 100 pair copper cable and saying I've laid 200Km of cable/wires. A misleading irrelevancy.

Whilst I applaud the Lancashire startup/co op venture its relevance to Australia IMO is nil.

Deano

Have been getting a couple of letters a month for the last 6 months from the NBNtelling me time is running to connect . I have untill 11th May to connect . I went to my provider this morning to talk to them about getting the NBN connected . I was told to come back in mid January , that suits me I didn't want to do it untill the new year any way. At least our phone & internet will be working over Christmas , New Year

A mate is on FTTH with Telstra. Last Thursday, his internet and phones went down.
He spent a couple of hours on the mobile to Telstra Friday morning who determined it was a NBN problem and organised for a NBN tech to fix the problem Saturday morning sometime between 8am and 12 midday.
I called in for a cuppa Saturday morning to find the NBN tech had been and gone. The phones and internet were back on line.
The problem was a bit of dirt in the connection in the pit in the street. They suspect it got in there when the house next door was connected to the NBN.
I reckon that's pretty good service.

Received a letter from Telstra today, apologising for the poor NBN speeds and offering me a full refund. ...an admission of NBN failure and ot even Telstra is able to do anything about it. Good service in one way from Telstra, however they still say 30Mbps should be possible, when I'm lucky to get 15Mbps. What choice do I have? ...Even a slow connection is necessary in this day and age.

You want faster internet?
Move to Adelaide CBD.

Ten Gigabit Adelaide fibre network promises CBD businesses internet speeds up to 100 times the NBN - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A little bit late to the thread (I've just read the whole lot), and I'm surprised no one has mentioned the NBN cost structure.

Mick is right in saying that by and large it's not the technology at fault for slow connections, but the ISP/RSP's fault for not buying enough bandwidth for the customers. Look up the food chain a bit, and the reason they don't buy enough bandwidth is because of the huge price that NBN charges RSPs for access to bandwidth - the CVC connection fee. Basically, for an RSP to buy enough bandwidth to actually deliver what they advertise, it costs them more than what they are allowed to charge their customers. The whole system was rooted in the initial design, not technically, but economically. Fibre, nodes, fixed wireless, all will have the same issue. Some people will also have issues with degraded copper, but many won't. Fix the copper, the CVC problem remains.

This blog is a little out of date with pricing, but explains it well.

The high CVC prices were built in to ensure the NBN made a 7% return on investment to keep the project off the budget books (also to subsidise really expensive rural services). Current government has reduced the 7% return to 4.x% return so NBN doesn't need to make as much profit, but it won't ultimately become feasible until some future PM reduces that to 0% and places the whole thing back on the books as part of the budget. Brave politician that will be.

Basically, it's the economics of the whole thing, not the technology. In trying to 'future proof' the NBN, the government at the time was totally blindsided by Netflix. It killed the model.

If anyone thinks that going back to fibre is going to be what saves Australian internet, then I'm more than happy to tell you a few stories from when my brother managed a construction team putting in fibre as contractors for the NBN. Short story, I wouldn't trust it (not my brother's fault!). For me, I'm on fixed wireless, with a non-NBN provider, and it's the most reliable, fastest connection I've every had. It's a 25/5 service that actually provides up to 40/30, and rarely below 25/5. Because they provide adequate bandwidth in the backhaul, which they don't buy from the NBN.

Daughter got connected to NBN 9 months ago but it constantly dropped out , after trying to get it fixed through her provider decided to change providers . The 1st provider had them disconnected & now new provider tells them there is no room left in the exchange to reconnect & could be march before they get reconnected . They have been 2 months now with out a phone or internet .
My brother built a new house & when they went to get the phone connected they were told there are no connections left in the exchange so have been over 6 months with out a home phone & have to buy a Dongle to use the internet . They can not give him a time frame for when he may get connected He was originally told it would happen once the NBN was available in his area , all the cables have been laid but now they have stopped working in the area & have moved on .
We have had the NBN available in our area for almost 12 months & they are still digging up the cables & laying new ones . Just in the street that ours runs off they have replaced the cables a number of times over the last 12 months.
So much for Australia's High Speed Network.