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How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

nytimes.com

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Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#121

Post by nl »

ccakes wrote: post #48
pserwylo wrote: post #36

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but o…

FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with. I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.

private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.

Hu? You mean how they used copper put in place by telco incumbent Telstra, most of which were built when it was government owned? And how they relied on government mandated access to the copper lines to enable that?

Or are you talking about the small private fibre rollouts? Because they don't cover "huge swaths of the population".

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#122

Post by boyter »

i336_ wrote: post #115
boyter wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a technology choice program to upgrade to FTTP which was promised to cost less than $5000. A quote costs a non refundable $600 and the estimates I have seen have all been in the tens of thousands of dollars. About 20 people have taken the option so far.

Aaand now I'm even more depressed and kind of infuriated. I'm just looking for personal-use Internet, and I wanted to join all the cool people with their 1Gbps for $40/mo or whatever they have. I don't even need a guaranteed SLA, I'm fine with consumer-grade "fair share" bandwidth QoS and stuff. Seems to me that the NBN Co is merely a sort of centralized rebranding that doesn't really create a competitive advantage.…

Politics is the answer with regards to communications. I suspect that may also be the case for other technology in Australia.

The only reason Australia needed a NBN was because of the sale of Telstra as a vertically integrated monopoly. It should have been split from the start into wholesale and retail as happened in New Zealand. Apparently they were starting to roll out fibre when the sale was announced. It was politically good to sell it as a single unit at the time.

Then when the NBN was announced the opposition and specifically Tony Abbot lacked the vision to see the value and believed that it was just an advanced video game system. Given the power I believe he would have stopped the build entirely. Instead he handed it over to Malcom to "fix". Malcom in order to remain on the cabinet and hopefully push to become prime minister did as ordered and "destroyed" the NBN. The result is what we currently have. The present government cannot fix it because Malcom hung his entire political career on the NBN and to admit that it isn't working would be political suicide for the present government.

This issue seems to occur all over the world where you have fixed terms in politics and politicians who lack the guts to do what is right because they only need to do enough to get re-elected and long term plans are off the table.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#123

Post by grizzles »

nl wrote: post #118
grizzles wrote: post #79

I have a personal perspective on this. Around 2014 or so, I + some of Australia's top physicists designed and quickly prototyped some tech to lower the cost of the NBN rollout bigtime. Our approach revolved around self install fibre + a far greater use of wireless. I contacted 15+ people in senior leadership at NBNco, all of whom are still on my LinkedIn. No matter how hard I tried, we couldn't get a meeting with NBN…

I'm sure your technology is great, but I suspect you aren't seeing it through your (potential) customer's eyes. If you seriously don't understand why that solution could never have been politically feasible then to be honest it isn't surprising you were ignored. Additionally, did you really suggest that people should be able to dig their own trenches and plug fibre in themselves? You do realize that does nothing to m…

We suggested and could show that the tech can be completely plug and play, and support any logical network topology. There is no installer risk because power doesn't run over optical fiber. It's a big misconception that you need specialized installers. You don't. And it's the labor cost that is responsible for biggest chunk of the expense in building a country wide broadband network.

As I said in the linked tweet, you could hire the handyman down the street to do it, or you could pay the major contractor Ericsson 100X as much per property to do it. If they somehow screw up plugging something into something else, it just doesn't work - it doesn't affect the integrity of the network at all.

In my opinion, it's the existing approach that lacks credibility. It's corporate welfare. That's why Australia's broadband lags behind Turkey, Poland, Mexico, and many others even though it's a much richer country per capita than all of those.

The funny thing was when we came onto the scene the most interest we got was from Ericsson, with some email discussions and heaps of their people showing up on my profiles, etc. That was flattering but apparently they needn't have worried about us spoiling their cash cow. I can understand their paranoia. Life must be sweet when you own 100% of the purported supply.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#124

Post by flukus »

strken wrote: post #75
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not Australian, but I went back and looked at it again and I can't see any possible way to interpret it that isn't racist. Perhaps you could fill me in?

I read it as a statement that the problems faced by remote aboriginal communities are structural and obey institutional inertia; that they are hard problems. We have a history of well-intentioned reformers coming in and making everything much worse: the stolen generation, the NTER, laws against alcohol consumption that cause even more destructive patterns of behaviour, etc. I've known men and women who trained as pol…

The worst thing is that if they were Anglo children, the stolen generation is exactly what we'd be doing. We have to bridge that gap somehow.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#125

Post by cyphar »

tray5 wrote: post #82
pserwylo wrote: post #36

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but o…

>The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. There is no Australian political party with any momentum that is pro-small government. The Liberals just like making themselves and their friends rich, but they don't have any strong ideological backing. Especially considering 90% of Aussies are pretty content with the level of government involveme…

It's a shame since the Pirate Party does have somewhat of a presence here (they even had a representative in my electorate). :/

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#126

Post by dibbsonline »

It's about $5000 in tax per household to fund a $38B rollout, and you don't get a choice. That's the unfunded half-ass costed guesstimate which was largely skewed by politicians to make it look better. Why not let people choose to spend $5k on fibre if they want?

The majority of connections opt for 12 or 25mbit anyway, sorry couldn't find url for nbnco statistic.

Technically, dropping billions on fibre in this day and age is stupid given that so much (vast majority) of the population is already in areas that can get faster IP (over 100mbit) from LTE, wireless technology is the future, imagine if it was spent on LTE sites.

Many people use the argument only fibre can do it, when that's just intellectual dishonesty about different types of layer 1.

4 million of Australia's households (roughly half) already have HFC that when upgraded will do gigabit.

It is illegal to compete with NBN.

The NBN was unfunded in its commitment. The same party implemented a $20b/year national disability insurance scheme which was also not funded. All these arguments saying it was bungled, but only the hollow commitments of the unionist/socialist party that implemented this were bungled. A lot of the angry people also don't pay a lot of net tax either which is the usual narrative of the ALP.

So it wasn't properly costed or funded, all these great things that party promised in power, but they still lost the next election anyway, so the people spoke.

Also NYT is fake news. :)

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#127

Post by decryption »

grizzles wrote: post #79

I have a personal perspective on this. Around 2014 or so, I + some of Australia's top physicists designed and quickly prototyped some tech to lower the cost of the NBN rollout bigtime. Our approach revolved around self install fibre + a far greater use of wireless. I contacted 15+ people in senior leadership at NBNco, all of whom are still on my LinkedIn. No matter how hard I tried, we couldn't get a meeting with NBN…

Do you have any promo/marketing material you can share? I find the concept of self-install fibre (trench and all!) pretty wild and to be honest, practically ridiculous. I'd love to know more about what you had in mind.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#128

Post by tray5 »

pjc50 wrote: post #95
tray5 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots. Couldn't agree more. I've yet to meet a single fellow Aussie that has anything but disdain for politicians from any party. Labor, Liberal, Greens, One Nation doesn't seem to matter, they're all a pack of self serving con artists, and unless the major political parties take a serious look at themselves over the next fe…

Can I suggest that if all the politicians seem to be bad, the problem might be located somewhere else? Namely the Murdoch-dominated media? He's been bad enough in the UK, but it seems like he has even more control in Australia.

Nope, haven't watched Murdoch's media since the absolute rubbish involving their absolutely disgustingly biased election coverage a few years ago. According to Murdoch, the Liberals and co can do no wrong and everyone else is the problem! Haven't let that trash into my house in a long, long time. But it's a culture of disrespect and arrogance across the board from nearly every politician. Bunch of bastards the lot of them, especially since Trump has come up in America and we have spastic chumps like Hanson try and ride the wave of populism (thank god they're way waaaay too incompetent and divisive to truly capitalise on the anger at the system, their ugly policies will die out)

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#129

Post by boyter »

shard972 wrote: post #93
imron wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now the budget is still blowing out, only we have shitty infrastructure that's going to be obsolete almost as soon as it's installed. The Liberals messed this one up (note to Americans, in Australia the 'Liberals' are the conservatives).

> And now the budget is still blowing out, only we have shitty infrastructure that's going to be obsolete almost as soon as it's installed. How will to be obsolete? Everything upto the node is fiber so if it was made obsolete it also would have been obsolete under the original plan. If your talking about the copper, we aren't digging it up and replacing it with copper. It's just going to stay there a bit longer until…

There is no upgrade path from the node with the way they are rolling it out. Doubt me? Ask NBN yourself and see if you get a reply.

They are rolling it out as cheaply as possible with no thought about upgrade. They are not running additional fibre to the node only what the node requires. That's why the quotes for the technology choice program are so high, it's not fibre back to the node but all the way to the exchange.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#130

Post by boyter »

robryan wrote: post #112
jpatokal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no, you don't? Most of central Sydney is on ADSL, NBN has been rolled out primarily in new housing developments way out in the boonies.

Yeah very strange how they have done the rollout. Surely they would have been better off rolling out to densely populated inner suburbs first. Cover the most people and get those most likely to take up the service initially.

It was part of the deal Julia Gillard made to form a minority government. The NBN had to prioritise regional areas first.
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