Mar 12, 2009 5:02 PM | 4 Comments

At 100mbps you could literally burn through Telstra's 25GB Bigpond Liberty cap in a little over half an hour. Nathan Taylor explains why he still won't touch Telstra Cable.

At first blush, Telstra’s announcement this week that it would be offering 100mbit downloads on its cable network in the near future sounds like something to get excited about – and if it were anybody other than Telstra in charge I might be.

But it is Telstra, which inevitably means I’m skeptical about the upgrade.

Clearly designed as a shot across the bow of the NBN, Telstra is planning to roll out DOCSIS 3.0 support across its cable network, starting in Melbourne late this year and then moving on to other metropolitan areas.

This upgrade with give users a theoretical 100mbps download speed, coupled with a slightly increased upload speed of 2mbps.

Like the current implementation of the hybrid fibre/coax (HFC) network, that 100mbps will still be shared among households connected a single optical node – so if two users were downloading at maximum speed at the same time, then theoretically each would be limited to 50mbps; if four users were on, 25mbps and so on.

Typically, several hundred households are connected to a node – though of course only a fraction of those are subscribers to BigPond Cable, and at any given time most of those will be idle.

Like every other ISP, Telstra never talks about its line contention ratios, so we don’t know exactly what the real-world outcomes will be for typical operation at peak and non-peak times – at least until some users get online and have a chance to try the network out.(ADSL, it should be noted, is not a shared medium, although of course there are likely to be bottlenecks deeper in the network).

As a practical matter, I would expect that Telstra Cable users connected to the service will get substantially faster access than most ADSL users, but for my part I still wouldn’t touch the service with a barge pole.

For a start, the speed upgrade is more or less pointless without a corresponding increase in monthly download quotas, and quite frankly I can’t see that happening.

At the moment, the BigPond Liberty plans – those that don’t charge excess for users that go over the download limit – are capped at 12GB or 25GB. At 100mbps, you could literally burn through 25GB in a little over half an hour.

Rather than increase quotas, Telstra's plan is more likely to incorporate a greater number of quota-free sources – mainly BigPond's own content services. So if you want to enjoy the extra speeds, you're going to have to use BigPond's services to do it.

The service is also not balanced for any kind of peer to peer operations. Setting aside Telstra’s policy of metering uploads, the upload rate is only 2Mbps, a tiny fraction of the potential download speed.

Most importantly, Telstra will have to resist the urge to charge extra for connections to the high-speed network. At the moment, it charges $10 per month extra if you want to move from its 8mbps cable service to the higher speed 17 or 30mbps service it offers.

I’d expect that split pricing to remain, though the distinction between pricing may well depend on what the NBN dishes up, and how well the HFC network can compare to that.

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JunkCrusader Mar 14, 2009 1:47 AM	Who does Nathan Taylor think he is? What a one sided article if ever I saw one? "that 100mbps will still be shared among households connected a single optical node" Yes, cable is shared, but do we know what the full bandwidth is going to be per group of bonded channels? Do we know how many bonded channels Telstra will be using? "Telstra never talks about its line contention ratios, so we don’t know exactly what the real-world outcomes will be for typical operation at peak and non-peak times" We do know in the current real world that existing BigPond cable users are achieving up to 38Mbps on the current 30Mbps plans and that Telstra has the best backhaul contention ratios of any ISP. " but for my part I still wouldn’t touch the service with a barge pole." That's your personal choice, but BigPond cable is already the most reliable broadband service in the country. Beats ADSL2 hands down. "the upload rate is only 2Mbps, a tiny fraction of the potential download speed." And still double the current max available on cable or ADSL2 anywhere in Australia. "ADSL, it should be noted, is not a shared medium, although of course there are likely to be bottlenecks deeper in the network" But ADSL2 IS a shared medium once it gets back to the exchange. The ADSL2 backhaul provided by some of the cheaper ISPs is appalling. "For a start, the speed upgrade is more or less pointless without a corresponding increase in monthly download quotas, and quite frankly I can’t see that happening." I think you might be in for a surprise. It has been quite a while since the highest plan went from 25GB to 60GB, so new higher plans might well be on the cards. That aside, a speed increase is NOT pointless. The internet is NOT just about how much you can download. Higher bandwidth would allow us to stream video, play PC online games, play Xbox Live and so on all at the same time without impacting performance. "Telstra's plan is more likely to incorporate a greater number of quota-free sources – mainly BigPond's own content services." I will agree that delivering content is a core part of Telstra's broadband strategy. "I’d expect that split pricing to remain, " I would also expect there to continue to be pricing differentials. However, it is also likely that the price of existing allowances will come down. The 25GB and 60GB plans are currently cheaper than when they were first introduced. I'm not a Telstra fanboi, I don't have particularly high expectations of Telstra. This announcement is absolutely politically motivated and targeted squarely at the NBN. Firstly, Telstra have a track record of not announcing this sort of thing so far in advance. They prefer to surprise the competition. In this case, they must have business reasons for teasing the competition. Secondly, they have been testing this technology in the field for at least 2 years. They probably already have a substantial amount of the CMTS upgrades rolled out. Still, at every opportunity, Nathan has assumed the worse, just to have a dig at Telstra. (Comment submitted from a BigPond cable connection.)
tezzat Mar 14, 2009 11:51 AM	literally? are you sure it will set my modem on fire? sounds like a hazard!
ski_nutta Mar 16, 2009 10:34 AM	Nathan Taylor may be presenting a slightly biased view of Telstra's proposal, but he does represent the views of a LOT of people out there. Telstra has a history of claiming to be at the forefront of broadband technology, but they squeeze it's customers for every cent they can, then provide us with services years behind the rest of the world. This article is asking if 100MBPS is all it's cracked up to be, and states why Nathan personally won't touch it. Don't knock the man for putting forward his opinion when it is so relevant. It's great that Telstra is being pushed to come up with better services, but it has such a free run on the Aus broadband community that we need to be critical of them. If we aren't, the government certainly won't be.
starsignleo Mar 16, 2009 12:34 PM	Nathan thanks for honest opinion on the matter. I for one agree 100% and I personally warn everyone I know to stay away from Telstras broadband products. They mislead the public that are less knowledgable in the technology behind broadband here in Australia. To be fair so do some of the cheaper broadband ISP but not even close to the extent that Telstra has and still does in my opinion. I don't claim to be an expert on the matter but I did work in building (Vision Stream) the cable network here in SA and I have had an internet connection since the late 80's and broadband here in SA since 2000. I currently work as Software Developer on internet based application and have run a home network since the early 90's. In my opinion I would strongly urge anyone who is looking for a broadband connection to avoid Telstra like the plague, I would strongly urge those who would have Telstra currently do some simple research on their usage and cost and compare whats out there. You may find that you can save yourself a lot of money. Ethicaly I personal wouldn't sign with Telsta even if they had a better package at the moment as I believe they are the very reason Australia has fallen behind the rest of the world with our broadband network. But don't take my word for it do the research yourself, talk to people that have the knowledge online read articles like Nathan's and commnets posted by JunkCrusader. To Junk: Please tell me where you get this information from We do know in the current real world that existing BigPond cable users are achieving up to 38Mbps on the current 30Mbps plans and that Telstra has the best backhaul contention ratios of any ISP. Also: "the upload rate is only 2Mbps, a tiny fraction of the potential download speed." And still double the current max available on cable or ADSL2 anywhere in Australia. AnnexM go look it up.