Fibre vs HFC: Understanding the NBN technology debate

by Nathan Taylor | Thursday 15 December 2011

With the NBN debate continuing to make headlines, arm yourself with this breakdown of Fibre, HFC, wireless and ADSL.

This week Communications Minister Stephen Conroy attacked the Coalition at the National Press Club, saying that the Coalition’s criticisms of the NBN were flawed. In particular, he argued that relying on HFC cable networks as part of the National Broadband Network (NBN) was a "dead-end solution". [Ed: read Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband Malcolm Turnbull's rebuttal here]

One issue the comments have raised is that of shared broadband. It's a big honking asterisk that hangs over any discussion about HFC or 3G/4G as an alternative to fibre.

Okay, so what are our options?

To get a clearer idea of how these different technologies stack up, here’s a breakdown of the different speeds available with each:

ADSL 2+: 24Mbps maximum, degenerating at range. Dedicated.
VDSL2 (for fibre to the node): Most likely in the 60-80Mbps range, although technically it has a 250Mbps maximum. Dedicated.
3G HSPA+: 42Mbps. Shared.
3GPP LTE (sometimes called 4G or 3.9G): Telstra’s recently launched services works at around 100mbps with practical speeds (according to Telstra) of between 2Mbps and 40mbps. Theoretically, LTE can go to 326Mbps in the future. Shared.
LTE-Advanced (true 4G): the specification isn’t finalised, and rollout is quite a ways away, but it’s expected to support more than 1Gbps per tower. Shared.
Hybrid fibre/coaxial (“cable Internet”): 100Mbps currently; the DOCSIS 3.0 specification supports speeds up to (and beyond) 300Mbps and even the NBN corporate plan acknowledges that 240Mbps is possible on the current network with HFC node-splitting. Shared.
Fibre to the premises: 1Gbps now; unknown upper limit (terabit speeds are certainly possible). Dedicated.

What’s that dedicated/shared thing about?

Wireless and coaxial networks are shared mediums. That means that the bandwidth is shared between every user connected to the same cell or node. You only get the listed speed if you’re the only person using the connection. If other people nearby are also using the same network, then you only get a share of the total. If, for example, you have 100 people on the same node using 100Mbps HFC, then a user’s average connection speed is only 1Mbps.

It’s even worse with wireless, as a good chunk of the bandwidth will be lost to noise and signal degradation. A 100Mbps 3G service might only deliver, say, a total of 50Mbps to its collective user base. That’s why Telstra claims a speed of between 2 and 40Mbps for its new LTE services, rather than the theoretical throughput.

This is not entirely unsolvable. One can reduce the number of users per node or cell by installing more nodes and cells. However, with HFC cable, subdividing loops is not a trivial thing, and that’s on a network that was pretty much stopped at 30% population coverage. With wireless, you could potentially have a cell tower on every corner (which isn’t going to be popular), and even then you run into diminishing returns as the mobile signals overlap.

Why does the local loop matter? Isn’t it all just shared deeper in the network anyway?

To a certain extent this is true. Eventually, somewhere on the network, you’re going to be contending with other users for limited bandwidth. The connection from your local exchange or aggregation point to your ISP won’t have enough bandwidth to support everybody running their connection at full speed; your ISP’s connection to the Internet will not be fast enough to support all its subscribers accessing the Internet at once; the Internet itself has a huge number of potential bottlenecks.

But the big difference is that this is fixable. If the link between the ISP and aggregation points or the ISP and the Internet is insufficient, then the ISP can provision extra bandwidth to improve their contention ratios. As a user you can switch to another ISP. You can’t just switch local access technologies.

To put it another way, a fast local connection removes one of the potential bottlenecks to Internet performance. Yes, it’s not the only bottleneck, but it’s the hardest to correct.

Tell me about FTTN

The Coalition strategy has largely crystalised around fibre to the node (FTTN) for the majority of the population. FTTN stretches fibre to street-side cabinets, with the last few hundred meters to be handled by the existing copper networks. It’s designed to solve the range problem of DSL (which gets slower the further away you are from the exchange).

The Coalition’s plan is to “incentivise” private companies to build such a network. According to the Coalition, that will provide practical user speeds in the range of 60 to 80mbps using VDSL technology.

What are the technical merits? Conroy said that 60 to 80Mbps was unfeasible with Australia’s current copper network and would require bonded pair copper wires (basically using two copper wires instead of one to carry the signal).

However several countries, including the UK, have plans to increase VDSL speeds to 80 and even 100Mbps using a technique called vectoring, which mitigates crosstalk on the wire. Tests by Alcatel have shown that 100Mbps at 400m from the node is possible.

The downside of FTTN is that it has very little headroom. In this writer's opinion, it’s really another stopgap measure to keep us ticking over for another decade or so. Maybe new technologies and techniques will be found to squeeze even more bandwidth out of copper, but in the long run it just can’t compare to fibre to the premises.

The great thing about fibre is that it has so much headroom - we’ve yet to find the upper limits of its capacity. Although it’s being rolled out in Australia with service offerings of 25Mbps, 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 1000Mbps, fibre can actually surpass 1,000,000Mbps (that’s one terabit) on a single cable. As reported here here and here and here, for example. Obviously those are backbone applications right now - but it shows that fibre is indeed capable of terabit (and a good deal more). For practical purposes, terabit has been demonstrated in the field as early as 2005. Right now, we already have 10Gbps fibre products commercially available.

With fibre, the current limitation is really in the signal processing electronics, not the cable itself. Better processors can add extra wavelengths and increase the carrying capacity of a fibre cable. If we want to upgrade fibre in the future, we just need to replace the electronics; the cable itself can stay.

[UPDATE] Hey wait, I heard fibre is also shared with that GPON technology!

A couple of commenters have mentioned that the PON (passive optical network) system that the NBN is using for consumer connections is also shared. That’s a fair comment, but it’s not shared the same way that wireless is.

With the NBN rollout, fibre connections are being split between multiple homes using a technique not entirely dissimilar to passive network hubs (remember those, from before we all moved to switches?). All the downstream data is actually broadcast to each of those homes, with data separation using encryption, while upstream data from those homes is multiplexed onto a single link.

In effect, a group of (probably) 32 homes are going to share a single optical connection back to the telco, and in theory they won’t all be able to max out their 100Mbps connections at once.

The thing is, though, that the contention ratio on that line is ridiculously good. Although the subscriber service is limited to 100Mbps, the total line capacity is 2.488Gbps downstream and 1.244Gbps upstream. So it’s not 100Mbps shared, it’s 2.488Gbps shared, which works out to around 78Mbps per home if 32 homes are connected. So if every one of your neighbours was trying to max out their 100Mbps connection at once, you’d still get 78Mbps. In practice, that’s never going to happen: you’ll always get 100Mbps locally.

What that might do is cause some future problems, as we want to move beyond 100Mbps. Even then, NBN co can just migrate to 10G-PON (a.k.a G.987), which provides 10Gbps between the premises.

Businesses (and very rich people, we suppose) will have access to direct fibre, so there will be no splitting or sharing for them.

Also read:

Understanding the NBN: You only get so much beer from the tap

Connecting to the NBN: this is the network boundary point

What an NBN connection looks like

Photos: here's what an NBN-install might look like in your street

The NBN wheel of fortune spins again

See more about: nbn | fibre | hfc | conroy | shared

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turbodewd 16 December 2011	I think the NBN is a good idea. But Id rather a cheaper version. Id rather see some of that money spent on infrastructure or real hospital beds. Real roads! Sydney badly needs a 2nd airport but there is no place to put it. The only option is to upgrade Canberra airport and build a very fast train between Canberra and Sydney. With an NBN all I will do is download movies or TV shows faster. Kids can still learn maths and English without an overpriced NBN. Comment made about the PC & Tech Authority article: Fibre vs HFC: Understanding the NBN technology debate? With the NBN debate continuing to make headlines, arm yourself with this breakdown of Fibre, HFC, wireless and ADSL. What do you think? Join the discussion.
smadge1 16 December 2011	Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't GPON a shared medium too? it uses a Passive Splitter that serves up to 128 endpoints, all modems on the splitter receive the same signal, and encryption is required to prevent snooping. Obviously, the overhead is a lot smaller than with solely copper networks. HFC networks also operate on several channels as well, and the modem negotiates the best channel to use given the conditions.
photohounds 16 December 2011	FTTN sounds like a stop-gap measure, but promises good speed at minimal cost. People seem to forget that the speed is ALSO limited by the server at the other end and the users in your pipe (as described above). 50 simultaneous downloads from one server or 500 on your 'pipe' and it doesn't really matter HOW fast 'your' network is. I KNOW when everyone's 'on the net' around where I live. That won't change as much as the raw numbers seem to have conned some users into believing. So how fast is 'fast enough'? NBN 'fast' tech is only in a few thousand homes after four years of waffle - THAT's DEFINITELY NOT FAST ENOUGH - regardless of its advertised 'best-case speed'!!!! It seems that FTTN could be deployed at LEAST ten times as fast and THAT might be worth considering when you're arguing theoreticals ...
shamaka 16 December 2011	The take up rate of high speed fibre services is pretty pathetic. On that basis a far more cost effective solution is the Hybrid mode, and let those people drooling for extreme speeds pay for the privelege. There are a lot of people (even at PC&TA) suggesting dropping the phone line - many people are using their phone as their primary internet device. Do you think they will suddenly reconnect via fibre or copper? ISP's charge a pretty fee to connect to broadband (or have exit fees) so for a mobile population its still a costly option. Photohound is also spot on regarding "servers" affecting downloads. I've downloaded material from some sites and got a measely <10kb/s.
rundllexe 16 December 2011	photohounds, this is technically correct for exchanges on the existing copper network, where the exchange is oversold and over saturated during peak times. With a completely fibre based network this should eliminate pretty much all congestion.
Guspauza 16 December 2011	I find the whole debate over the NBN to be somewhat frustrating. I went to a briefing on the NBN last Tuesday as we are in that part of Canberra where we will be linked in over the next 12 months or so. While all the discussion about speed is academic in the real world, what I found interesting is that we were told that the fibre in our homes was also a shared medium. While technically we could have 100mbps, this would be shared with whatever else you had connected (eg; Foxtell, Return to base alarms and phones etc. This does not accord to the article above. In addition there are still people who are not aware that NBN is about communications and not broadband. The majority of people do not understand that this will replace your current telephone, and if you do not connect up then in future you will lose your phone capability. This is a poor communications effort by the Government and the NBN
photohounds 16 December 2011	Servers at 'the other end' will limit throughput when there's more than a few connections even if you have a terabit line. Alas! You can only get so much beer out of the tap. There's a certain amount of political pork barrelling in this NBN exercise, nice numbers until reality sets in. And then there's the gov's record of delivering ... sigh. NBN will be better in real terms, but only a huge difference if you have REALLY slow service now.
DJ... 16 December 2011	I wish they'd provide NBN full fibre down my street, I'd have it. It's fine for you people with alternatives because you live in a city 2 paces from the nearest exchange and HFC going past the door. But the future is fibre so why not put it in now? Look at the cost and disruption to our roads now as they constantly get upgraded "to meet our needs" and then upgraded again within a decade at even more cost. The NBN is the most forward thinking piece of infrastructure in Australia since the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme, and will out last any of the alternatives people are talking about now. As for server speed or the fact that your NBN fibre will be shared with telephony services - read a book and just see what sort of bandwidth will be taken up by telephony or return to base alarms. So insignificant as to be ignored. They've been shovelling 30 phone calls through 2Mbps for decades, and what's 2Mbps when you've got 1 Gbps. Just think of all the new services that will come from having such infrastructure. Many people won't have to travel to cities for expensive medical assessments, etc - goes a long way to solving our hospital bed shortage or the need to upgrade an airport. Time to get out of the old way of thinking and join the 21st Century.
Gregmond 17 December 2011	Guspauza - Shared in this case relates to sharing with your neighbours, The sharing you are talking about is splitting it within your house if you want to use it for Internet, foxtel, alarms (should not use much bandwidth), phone (voice is also a relatively small component I think) etc. It is still dedicated to your house and will be a lot faster. I live ~4 KM from the exchange and the bast ADSL2+ speeds I have seen is about 3.9 Mbs, I will happily pay extra for fast reliable Fibre with in reason. Good article btw, with the posibilty of adding what other funtions would use the connection. What does the Coallition think will happen with the existing copper ? Will it need to be maintained as well as their new infrastructure ? I think their plan is a fail myself.
photohounds 17 December 2011	The roll-out is still at a snail's pace. We had optical here and they rolled it out to a dozen or two suburbs. I'm told that pollies stopped it as they had something 'better' in mind. Yep - better to wait three years than 3 months to satisfy a political agenda ... Where's the transparency?
gnome 17 December 2011	@photohounds, once again, you appear to have been misinformed, or to have misunderstood what you heard. You refer to 'optical', but it sounds like you mean HFCC, which is a very different thing. And, once more, it wasn't 'pollies' who stopped it, but the ol' monopolist who decided to use some of its vast cashflow to make it unviable for anybody to roll out the hybrid cable, so as to preserve its network near-monopoly. So for many years regulatory and corporate gaming has produced an unhappy outcome for end-users. While it will take a while to build NBN, it will be viable with upgrades for probably the rest of this century. FTTN will not meet our needs for long, so a switch to that would be a shocking waste of money because it would soon have to be replaced with FTTP NBN.
rubaiyat 17 December 2011	turbodewd wrote: I think the NBN is a good idea. But Id rather a cheaper version. How? What everyone is ignoring is that the EXISTING telecommunications network is expensive AND a dud. I can see how the NBN could be better designed and implemented but the current negativity is adding to the disruption, not creating better outcomes. Quote: Id rather see some of that money spent on infrastructure or real hospital beds. Real roads! Nice sentiment. Why not spend the money we waste on truly useless products eg bottled water, Macdonalds, gross 4WD gas guzzlers etc to pay for the consequences of our own stupidity. Quote: Sydney badly needs a 2nd airport but there is no place to put it. There is. Badgery's Creek is still there but corrupt lizards like Mr Jones and the fools who listen to him have scotched that. Time to put him in his place. Quote: The only option is to upgrade Canberra airport and build a very fast train between Canberra and Sydney. Canberra Airport is surrounded by hills which make the runways too short for todays large jets, has only one main runway with no room for others, the approaches overfly parts of Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra, and it is so remote from Sydney as to be a joke. But then who is looking at any of this when they make these absurd suggestions. Quote: With an NBN all I will do is download movies or TV shows faster. Kids can still learn maths and English without an overpriced NBN. Just off the top of my head, surgeons will be able to operate remotely, consult with patients for pre and post operative care so they won't have to make the long journey to Sydney or the capital cities. Business people won't have to make ridiculous and wasteful long commutes in polluting jets and cars. Tutorials can be streamed on demand. Universities currently sit many of their students in front of screens already. Why force them to commute to do it? The jobs will come when the possibilities exist. Edited by rubaiyat: 17/12/2011 07:19:35 PM
photohounds 18 December 2011	Largely agree Ruby, Especially the "consequences of our own stupidity ..." Your last para effectively repeats the mantra they are using to SELL the NBN to the public. Some of that listed, can already be done with a smartphone using the video calling tech that I can see on my Android phone. Apart for a few benefits, it's just the new Colosseum - keep the public entertained so they do not SEE what is happening in other arenas of life. Other than the marketing, it IS being managed poorly - surprised? Any bets as to what percentage of bandwidth will be used for pure entertainment?
willtell 18 December 2011	The idea that surgeons will consult remotely seems unrealistic to me. I don't know how many would risk ending their careers by consulting incorrectly due to not physically seeing the patient. It sounds nice, but a single stuff up would kill any progress in this area. I can see this working for telecommuting in business, however the performance difference between ADSL2+ and 100mbit fibre is really negligible for this. I can see it making a big difference to the "head quarters" of the business were you will have lots of data moving. However someone operating from home I doubt it will offer much improvement at all. What about those working remotely, on the road? We have reps out in the field that connect in using 3G. How will the NBN improve this? This is our biggest headache when it comes to communications as 3G just isn't reliable enough. Tutorials are already being streamed on demand and run just fine using ADSL2+. There's more than enough bandwidth available for that as most universities are already running fibre and have been so for a long time. While I agree that there's a LOT more uses that we haven't thought of yet and won't do until the technology is in place, it just seems a bit wasteful to spend on fix line technology when the growth of wireless seems destined to overtake that for the majority of users. Businesses will benefit from fibre, but very few households have a need and would probably prefer faster and more reliable wireless services.
rubaiyat 18 December 2011	willtell wrote: The idea that surgeons will consult remotely seems unrealistic to me. I don't know how many would risk ending their careers by consulting incorrectly due to not physically seeing the patient. It sounds nice, but a single stuff up would kill any progress in this area. 80% of the surgeon's/specialist's time with patients is not the direct examination which would still have to be done in person. The rest however will take a big strain off the system. Remote surgery is happening already and will be a life saver when time is of the essence and excessive movement will harm the patient. For this to happen you need high speed, high resolution, possibly stereoscopic vision, using high bandwidth. Quote: I can see this working for telecommuting in business, however the performance difference between ADSL2+ and 100mbit fibre is really negligible for this. I can see it making a big difference to the "head quarters" of the business were you will have lots of data moving. However someone operating from home I doubt it will offer much improvement at all. What about those working remotely, on the road? We have reps out in the field that connect in using 3G. How will the NBN improve this? This is our biggest headache when it comes to communications as 3G just isn't reliable enough. Remind me again the radius for ADSL+ from the server? I am in a built up area in a major city and I can't get it. It also pales into insignificance against the top NBN bandwidth. Wireless networking has to come off the backbone somewhere and this is what the Coalition really misses when they think that NBN can be replaced by wireless. The wireless towers themselves need to be cabled. NBN should provide that everywhere as well as optical to the home. Nothing beats ubiquity and raising the lowest common denominator. I have used Macs for decades and the only drawback is that most other people don't. When others don't have the same facilities as yourself it really crunches the possibilities. Quote: Tutorials are already being streamed on demand and run just fine using ADSL2+. There's more than enough bandwidth available for that as most universities are already running fibre and have been so for a long time. This is not about fibre within the universities, it is about fibre for the students, who won't have to attend the university to get it. They can reserve the face to face time for when it is really used. The university can save on having to build the unneeded accommodation. It also allows more resources to be applied to better tutorials. The Teaching Company in the USA already does this, ironically using a lot of Australian tutors. It's failure is on the video side, there being no point to their shooting lecturers sitting behind desks. Australia, as English speaking, highly educated society with excellent media skills will be in a prime position to make this their market if we have the local market and means to distribute it here already. Quote: While I agree that there's a LOT more uses that we haven't thought of yet and won't do until the technology is in place, it just seems a bit wasteful to spend on fix line technology when the growth of wireless seems destined to overtake that for the majority of users. Businesses will benefit from fibre, but very few households have a need and would probably prefer faster and more reliable wireless services. As I have pointed out above the wireless relies on the wired network. Wireless is just so slow and expensive. I foresee a market for in house wireless technology coming off the domestic optical connection. Wireless will very rapidly become saturated unless it can be sectioned into extremely local networks. The fact that people are already paying through the nose for trivial applications on wireless devices shows that cost is not the barrier, it is what it can do that counts. Edited by rubaiyat: 18/12/2011 01:19:06 PM
avoidz 18 December 2011	Like turbodewd, I'd rather that RIDICULOUS amount of money be spent on infrastructure, roads, public transport, essential utilities, etc. than frittered away on something that puts delivering faster TV and movie downloads over people's health and wellbeing.
rubaiyat 18 December 2011	So avoidz how much do you think we "save" on the existing telecommunications? Hint, I've already checked. The point is that the NBN may actually make health, education, finance and jobs available in remote areas. Currently they are being withdrawn at a frightening pace and nothing is being done about alternatives. Don't make the silly kneejerk reactions to infrastructure spending that some would like you to have, purely out of ignorance. Hard to find anything the current government has "wasted" to match the billions in capital destroyed by the Liberal's float of Telstra. That tab was been picked up by the many Mum and Dad investors and super funds that were conned into buying what the Liberals then turned into a white elephant. A white elephant that has largely kept the Australian telecommunications in a backward near monopoly.
Ajax9000 19 December 2011	Quick dumb question: Is there any inherent hurdle preventing FTTN being converted to FTTP? If not FTTN sounds like a reasonable stopgap ...
GordonD 19 December 2011	Yet another article from the silly point of view that the only thing that matters is performance. If this was the car industry and the government decided that it was going to build V8 Mercedes, and everyone had a choice of one of them or nothing, everyone who wasn't rich would be up in arms, because they know they'd be catching the bus. Well, for broadband, the bus is wireless. And that's what a Labor government should be building. A good bus service that's cheap and easy enough for everyone, and leaving private enterprise to build the Mercedes, not the other way around.
GordonD 19 December 2011	An answer to Ajax9000's "quick dumb question". FTTN is cheaper, but if you're going to end up with FTTP its cheaper to build that than to build FTTN then convert it to FTTP later. So comes down to whether you think you need, and there is customer demand for, and so you think you're going to end up with FTTP.
turbodewd 19 December 2011	rubaiyat, youre overly idealistic. I put it to you that you could spent billions flying surgeons directly to people's houses for less money that this NBN. All I will use the NBN for is faster downloading of movies, TV shows and YouTube. My grandma doesnt even own a computer! The idea that the NBN will provide miracles is absurd. Im happy to have an NBN...just not for the price we are about to pay. The NBN will not raise our student's IQs nor HSC results.
rubaiyat 19 December 2011	GordonD wrote: Yet another article from the silly point of view that the only thing that matters is performance. If this was the car industry and the government decided that it was going to build V8 Mercedes, and everyone had a choice of one of them or nothing, everyone who wasn't rich would be up in arms, because they know they'd be catching the bus. Well, for broadband, the bus is wireless. And that's what a Labor government should be building. A good bus service that's cheap and easy enough for everyone, and leaving private enterprise to build the Mercedes, not the other way around. …and water, just the village pump… with bottled water for those with cash. …and roads just a dirt track with, paved toll roads for the wealthy. All of which ignores that the cost of the NBN over the time period announced is less than what is spent on telecommunications every year anyway. And about what the Liberals burnt in capital by privatising Telstra to create the current mess in the first place. The analogy with Mercedes and bus is falacious because the government is not building vehicles but the roads (network) that citizens can then run their Mercedes, Toyotas, Bicycles or buses on. I'd love to hear the kind of protests against the NBN be raised against the much more wasteful, pointless and massively more expensive freeways* that the average fool demands their governments build so they can fill them with slow moving vehicles after wiping their small children off the tyres. * $17.3 billion per year on roads and roads related subsidies 2008-9. Projected to be currently close to $20 billion. Edited by rubaiyat: 19/12/2011 12:56:35 PM
Ajax9000 19 December 2011	Thanks GordonD, that's what I expected. Of course, there are plenty of examples of thisgs that are more expensive overall if done in two stages, but single stage is too expensive up-front. So, there may well be a viable economic argument to do FTTN now and convert it to FTTP later ...
stunz 19 December 2011	Look, The current system has to be replaced. No out is doubting this at all as the copper is degraded, costing hundreds of thousands per month to repair and the quality of service is shocking. The question is, you either go FTTN/HFC or go FTTP. FTTN/HFC is cheap, provides decent speeds, but requires a cabinent on every street and cant be upgraded unless you demolish and start again. It has terrible speeds in the upstream direction, and MAY need to be upgraded in 10-20yrs time when bandwidth higher then 100Mbps Down or 20Mbps Up is required. FTTP/FTTH is fast, easily upgradable, future-proof (Only due to the fact we havent come across a theoretical limit yet) but is expensive, requires the old copper to be removed, and time consuming due to the digging of trenches. It doesnt matter if we are talking about the internet, or a car, or building a new home. You need to look into the future before making decisions that have a large cost. FTTN is great for the short term, but following historical data trends it will be short lived before an upgrade is required. An FTTN solution means that you think upgrades in technology, and progress in networking, computing, and server/client applications will cease. That the current level they are at, will stay for the forseeable future.
rubaiyat 19 December 2011	turbodewd wrote: rubaiyat, youre overly idealistic. I put it to you that you could spent billions flying surgeons directly to people's houses for less money that this NBN. No just not a muddle headed short term thinker. Flying surgeons is nonsense as it presumes the real cost of a surgeon is the airfare. Ot that they will actually leave the major cities/hospitals/eastern suburbs where they like to live, which is causing the problem and travel time is a huge cost in a country as large as Australia even when it is wasted purely within built up large urban areas. I wouldn't be too surprised that the lost cost of highly paid doctors, lawyers, business people etc sitting in airplanes is currently much greater than any proposed NBN. As if that was all the NBN would do! Quote: All I will use the NBN for is faster downloading of movies, TV shows and YouTube. My grandma doesnt even own a computer So it is all about you and your granny? She doesn't own ports, dams, mines, power stations, airports, gaslines etc, only the results of those other not cheap infrastructure projects. Her doctor, bank, pension etc etc all use them on her behalf. Quote: The idea that the NBN will provide miracles is absurd. Im happy to have an NBN...just not for the price we are about to pay. The NBN will not provide miracles, it will provide opportunities. What do you think the existing stuffed up system costs? Quote: The NBN will not raise our student's IQs nor HSC results. Maybe it can improve on the level of this stupid debate. You already have the means to research the real costs of what you are discussing and stop making absurd assertions about "too expensive" when this is matter of the status quo being horrendously expensive but you are not questioning that. The NBN is projected to cost less than $2 billion per year to construct and will be an assett that will increase in usefulness over a very long period. The direct value of Information and Communication Technology was $154 billion in 2007. The NBN is a drop in the ocean compared with this. Sheesh, how DO you get people to actually think things through instead of guess, emote, and "s'pose". Edited by rubaiyat: 19/12/2011 01:41:39 PM
Doc Harry 19 December 2011	I read with interest all the comments posted here and wonder how much is a real argument and how much is politically colored or driven. Putting all that to one side there is one aspect of the NBN that everyone has overlooked. "Its simplicity" You have one technology from end to end. Compare that to many homes today where you have copper for the phone service and HFC for intenet and pay TV. Then when you break that down further, over these pipes (Cables and wires)you have ISDN, ADSL etc etc etc. By fiddling with the fiber network you are just adding unnecessary complexity and delaying the final outcome FTTP while increasing the cost. Its time to leave this to the technocrats to sort out in stead of a bunch of politicians whom are mainly second rate Lawyers or Bean counters, who use these arguments to increase their self importance and score a few poits which may turn into votes at election time.
Doc Harry 19 December 2011	Sorry for the second post but I was cut off while proof reading and editing my earlier post. Why do you ask, do I refer to most politicians as second rate Lawyers and Bean counters. Simply because that is the background most of them come from and if they were any good at their profession they would have a real job in the real world. As the old saying goes. "DO IT ONCE AND DO IT PROPERLY."
DVDGuy 19 December 2011	turbodewd wrote: Id rather see some of that money spent on infrastructure or real hospital beds. Real roads!. The latest federal budget says we'll be spending $59 billion on health (source), in just one year. And so the $4-5 billion per year that building the NBN will cost cannot make any significant contributions, especially considering that the NBN is supposed to be profitable (ie. make the government money in the long run). Roads are mostly a state and local government spending item. For fast rail, the estimated cost for one on the eastern seaboard, linking the major cities, would be over $100 billion (source). Again, the $4-5 billion spent on the NBN (most of which will be recouped) is such an insignificant amount that it's unlikely to make any real difference elsewhere. In other words, compared to the government's other spendings (eg. $121 billion on social security, $96 billion on government services), the NBN is quite cheap. photohounds wrote: It seems that FTTN could be deployed at LEAST ten times as fast and THAT might be worth considering when you're arguing theoreticals ... According to the Coalition's broadband plan, construction would not even begin until 2016, and while the actual construction process will be quicker, it still won't be completed until 2018. And it could still end up costing around half of the price of the NBN, according to analysis performed by Citigroup (source). I'd much rather wait 3 more years and have FTTH to 93% of the population. New Zealand invested in a FTTN network (source), it took 4 years to build, but the government there is already investing in a new FTTH network. Note that there's no easy upgrade path from FTTN to FTTH, so money spent on any FTTN build ($17 billion, according to Citigroup) will be wasted if, at any point in Australia's future, we ever decide to build a FTTH network.
rubaiyat 19 December 2011	Hear Hear Doc Harry! Frankly this debate is due to the idiots on both sides of the debate both the Conservatives and the Union/Party hacks in the Labor Party. Here is the debate in a nutshell. = Cheap = Expensive Edited by rubaiyat: 19/12/2011 02:31:03 PM
TimH 19 December 2011	I see many people commenting on this article making inappropriate assumptions that need to be considered. 1. People assume that by spending money on building the NBN we are shortchanging critically important areas of the budget. I think this is a very alarming view to take, Firstly who says if this money was not being spent on the NBN it would necessarily be spent on these other areas, if at all. Quite often the liberal government enjoys running up a surplus which is nice to look at but doesn't allow our tax to work for us. Another thing to note with say the health argument is say you invest another $1 billion dollars into procuring more health services, who says that money can be effectively used either? Sure you may be able to get more beds, but what about doctors and nurses to tend to those patients, who says the extra money will improve the quality of the health care industry, throwing money at things does not always work. Pursuant to this people also assume that in budgeting the NBN these other areas have not been fully considered. I think people claiming this are irrational and the argument is incredibly presumptuous. In order to create a budget a government must consider as many sectors as possible and apportion funds to the best of their ability, they seem content with the extremely large budget (compared to the NBN) that they have set aside. Wil lyou tell me you know better without having detailed knowledge of the financial situation of this country? A few facts to show that other sectors of Australia are not being forgotten. $36 billion in investment in roads, rail and ports, including $1 billion in funding for the duplication of the Pacific Highway. Delivers at least $16.4 billion in additional hospital growth funding guaranteed to the states from 2014‑15 to 2019‑20. $2.2 billion over five years for national mental health reform. $717 million to expand access to diagnostic imaging services and make medicines more affordable. Ambitious reform of vocational education and training, with $1.75 billion on offer to partner with the states and territories. 2. On the technical side, people keep asserting that wireless will fulfill the needs of most if not all broadband users. This is a fallacy of immeasurable proportion. Firstly wireless has significantly higher bottlenecks associated with it over fibre optics resulting in significantly higher congestion. Secondly Wireless depends heavily on environmental conditions, I should know I currently use Vivid Wireless's version of 4G. I normally get a strong signal however when electrical storms happen the internet becomes very sluggish and almost impossible to even just browse the web. Furthermore the gaming internet including the online gaming industry is a rapidly expanding area, you may dislike people who play games but it is responsible for a significant source of expenditure for Australian's. Gaming over wireless especially with servers hosted overseas would almost certainly damage this industry profusely. Also Wireless is limited by the amount of frequencies you can dedicate to it so eventually (and perhaps quite soon) y ou will run into a situation where you are unable to squeeze out any more speed out of wireless leading to your only option of using another frequency (of which there are few left). 3. On the regulatory side Australia has had decades of problems with Telstra being the sole wholesaler of ADSL technology. This has created severe regulatory impediments that need fixing, simply having a private company being able to dicate prices to competitors without fear of regulatory intervention and ACCC oversight (as was previously the case) is a recipe for disaster. 4. The speeds quoted in the article for FTTN are misleading, while it is true using vectoring you can get 60 - 80 Mbps download speed this assumes perfect line quality (something all of Australia does certainly not have) this is only effective to 400m. Let me tell you this now most people in Australia do not live even close to 400m to their exchange. Many people like 1km, 2km and further away, furthermore after 400m their is massive drop offs in the speed you can get, just like ADSL. How many of you can truly tell me you can get 24Mbps from your house on your copper lines?
Vulch 19 December 2011	What 'debate'?? The NBN is being built with fibre to the home, the coalition's second-rate option is not being built. Get over it!
rubaiyat 19 December 2011	The only debate I want to see is HOW the FTTH is being built and how efficiently.
DVDGuy 19 December 2011	TimH wrote: 4. The speeds quoted in the article for FTTN are misleading, while it is true using vectoring you can get 60 - 80 Mbps download speed this assumes perfect line quality (something all of Australia does certainly not have) this is only effective to 400m. Let me tell you this now most people in Australia do not live even close to 400m to their exchange. Many people like 1km, 2km and further away, furthermore after 400m their is massive drop offs in the speed you can get, just like ADSL. How many of you can truly tell me you can get 24Mbps from your house on your copper lines? I would also like to expand upon this point. You see the opposition quoting high speeds and the low cost of FTTN, but in reality, they're talking about two very different types of FTTN builds. The one that NZ did, at low cost, only commits to providing 10-20 Mbps connections to 80% of the population (and as I posted above, it's already been determined as obsolete by the government there, as they're going with FTTH as well). Whereas the high speed FTTN network often quoted by Malcolm Turnbull would requires an expensive build requiring lots of new copper to be put in. Given the current degraded condition of our copper network, thanks in part to Telstra neglect, most of the quoted speeds are just not possible without investing a lot of money (to almost NBN levels) in new copper, to build a network that will be obsolete in 10 years time, probably a lot sooner. As for arguments against HFC, this excellent post on the WP forums by catv covers most of them. The wireless arguments have already been pointed out in the original article, but it's also important to note that mobile 4G wireless is complementary to FTTH. Just today, we had the story of Vodafone using the NBN to drive its femtocell product (source). Femtocells allows mobile operators to improve their network coverage without having to rollout expensive infrastructure or unsightly (and unwanted) towers, as these smaller cells rely on home user's fixed line connection as "backhaul". While possible on ADSL connections, the extra headroom afforded by a NBN connection makes the integration seamless.
GordonD 19 December 2011	The proof is in the pudding. The number of ADSL customers hasn't increased much in the last couple of years. The price of mobile is falling rapidly and the number of people signing up to it is increasing rapidly, and is now substantially more than fixed line. And only 11% of the houses that NBN has gone past have signed up to it. It has to get something like 70% to be able to sell its product at the equal-to-ADSL prices it has promised. Sure fibre is the fastest, but there are lot of other things about internet connection that people want, like low price and ease of connection and mobility, and different people consider different ones of them important. The numbers tell us which ones how many people want. Unless those numbers change very very very very radically the NBN is a white elephant.
Vulch 19 December 2011	Nope, the low take-up rate is because people have to see out their existing contracts. in time the take-up rate will be close to 100%. Built it and they will come...its a no-brainer.
rubaiyat 19 December 2011	I'd like to know where those "required" take up rates are from? Also I'd like for opponents to inform us what it costs to roll out the POTS, ADSL2+, Optus cables etc and to continuously repair what's broke.
DVDGuy 19 December 2011	GordonD wrote: And only 11% of the houses that NBN has gone past have signed up to it. It has to get something like 70% to be able to sell its product at the equal-to-ADSL prices it has promised. And the current take-up rate is actually exceeding the NBNCo's corporate forecast, at this stage of the development. With copper in an area being decommissioned within 18 months of that area getting the NBN, people will have to sign up to the NBN if they want any fixed line services, including voice only phone services, and will eventually include services like Foxtel as well. What's also exceeding the NBNCo's expectations is the number of people signing up for the fastest speed plans (100/50), and that has implications on revenue as well (ie. it should be higher than forecast). For wireless broadband uptake, you can't compare what is essentially a new technology (wireless) with an existing technology that most homes already have (ADSL). Especially as wireless plans often are device based (in that you have separate plans for your iPad and your iPhone), while each residence is unlikely to have more than one fixed line service. And if you look closely at the ABS released stats, it actually points to a future where fixed line services will be more important (source). Namely: * Fixed broadband bandwidth usage actually grew from 91.4% of all downloads in 2010 to 93% as at the end of June 2011 * Mobile broadband bandwidth usage actually dropped from 8.4% to 7%, of all downloads, in the same period * Total fixed and mobile broadband bandwidth both grew significantly year-on-year, 64% for fixed, 58% for mobile. * On average, fixed broadband users download 19GB per month, compared to only 1.3GB for mobile users (according to Register UK's calculations) * 30% more users shifting from 1.5 Mbps to 8 Mbps, and users switching from 8 Mbps (ADSL1) to 24 Mbps (ADSL2+) is up by more than 51% * And most importantly, the number of fixed line services actually grew year on year, suggesting people are not dropping their fixed line services in exchange for wireless, rather, wireless is being used complementary to fixed. And as I mentioned in a post above, it's very likely 4G networks will be feeding off NBN's infrastructure for backhaul and also extending coverage via femtocells (which also feeds off the NBN), so the NBN will benefit, albeit not as much as directly via fixed line services, from increasing 4G uptake as well. There's also data today (source) that suggest when people use wireless devices, such as their iPad or iPhone, 31% of the data they download from these wireless devices are offloaded to fixed line networks (via Wi-Fi or femtocells) - this number is actually expected to grow to 39% by 2015, further suggesting that despite faster wireless broadband via 4G in the future, a fixed line service then is going to be more important, not less. Edited by DVDGuy: 19/12/2011 09:41:32 PM Edited by DVDGuy: 20/12/2011 02:16:53 PM
DVDGuy 19 December 2011	rubaiyat wrote: Also I'd like for opponents to inform us what it costs to roll out the POTS, ADSL2+, Optus cables etc and to continuously repair what's broke. I've been trying to find this information (Telstra's copper maintenance costs) for quite a while, but it's not actually easy to find (all can be found is Telstra's general expenditures). Even the join committee on the NBN found it hard to get a straight answer out of Telstra on copper expenditure (source). Telstra's annual report lists "Lifecycle maintenance" costs at $545 million for FY 2011. Whatever the case, maintenance costs for fibre will be lower than that of copper (source), especially as time goes by and the copper deterioration further. Even Malcolm Turnbull lists on his website that "Maintenance costs for Telstra's copper networks are also rising each year" .
rubaiyat 20 December 2011	I tried to find out who gets the redundant copper in the POTS. Since NBN will have paid for it, one hopes that it gets the copper, currently US$7328.75 per ton. Worth mining. Now to determine exactly how much there is.
gnome 20 December 2011	@TimH, a realistic and accurate look at the Budget implications of NBN may be even simpler than you suggest. Quite simply, it is complete nonsense to assert that NBN will take funding from schools, roads and hospitals. These things are in the Budget because they are social benefits which do not recoup their cost through user fees. NBN on the other hand will repay the capital funding cost in full from user payments over the life of the network. People who do not understand this probably went to rubaiyat's special school for the gifted, as shown above. ;-)
photohounds 21 December 2011	Is this a government-run monopoly? Is the business given to "approved" suppliers? Are there parallels with other labor run businesses - recently and over the last few decades. Are we forgetting PINK BATTS, SET TOP BOXES and ACTU-SOLO so called discount petrol? Is there a visibly transparent supplier selection process? By all means make it happen, but in view of the history, there are 40 billion reasons WHY we need corporate governance and real transparency. I see none.
DVDGuy 30 December 2011	photohounds wrote: Is this a government-run monopoly? Is the business given to "approved" suppliers? Are there parallels with other labor run businesses - recently and over the last few decades. Are we forgetting PINK BATTS, SET TOP BOXES and ACTU-SOLO so called discount petrol? Is there a visibly transparent supplier selection process? By all means make it happen, but in view of the history, there are 40 billion reasons WHY we need corporate governance and real transparency. I see none. Forgetting the fact that the NBN will never be built by a completely private entity, as the aim of the network, which is to provide a price equitable, ubiquitous network for all Australians, goes against the goal of private entities (that is, to make as much money as possible, ie. cherry picking). There's also the argument that the most efficient and most beneficial type of network, for end users, should be a wholesale monopoly, as the Telstra/Optus HFC debacle shows that private companies often can't even be trusted to act in their own interest, let alone that of the entire country (both companies admit to losing billions in the botched HFC rollout - "In July 1997 Telstra wrote off $961 million of its investment in the Telstra Broadband Network. In 2002, Optus wrote down the value of its HFC network by almost $1.4 billion.", source). As for the NBN being "government-run monopoly", this is simply not true. The NBN is being run by NBN Co, and its board of directors. The government is merely a shareholder, and does not even have a seat on the board. And the NBN Co board of directors are all from the private sector (http://www.nbnco.com.au/about-us/our-people/board.html). Even the government's role as financial backer is limited, as it is actually only providing $662 million in equity funding, with $26 billion in equity funding required for the entire project to be funded via "NBN Co's own revenues and, at an appropriate time, the private debt markets." (source). In other words, NBN Co is not just another government department, it is, for all intents and purposes, a private entity, with the government setting a general aim ( "build me the NBN" ), and mainly playing the role of a guarantor in the project. You say "we need ... real transparency" - has there been any evidence to the contrary? If anything, the NBN has had to disclose much more than your typical corporation (refer to my earlier post about Telstra unwilling to even provide the cost of copper maintenance on their network). And does "corporate governance" guarantee "real transparency", the kind of transparency that didn't just put all of us in the middle of a huge, global financial crisis, right? FYI, NBN Co has adopted the ASX Corporate Governance Recommendations. What I actually hope for is that the NBN will stay a government-owned monopoly ( note the difference between "owned" and "run" ). Run by a private corporation like NBN Co, the NBN should remain government owned to ensure we, the tax payers (and the stake holders of the NBN), get the best deal out of the NBN. However, there are plans to sell the NBN once it is completed, making it an entirely private owned and run entity, and I hope it doesn't happen, even if there will be rules to prevent another Telstra (ACCC oversight, for example). Edited by DVDGuy: 30/12/2011 03:14:55 PM
photohounds 3 January 2012	We can see the management of this governemnt's other enterprises since wriggling into power, so it is reasonable to be skeptical. Optic fibre will be nice and fast and harder to hack than copper it, too. I still worry about the current lot given their 'hands-off' management of pink batts and other projects. We will see in the fullness of time, but it IS extremely slow so far and our city, by vitue of always voting the labor candidate in, will see NOTHING for years. It will probably be SOLD before it is 'finished', in any case and based on recent history, the windfall won't be used to pay off the government deficit. I will however, be VERY pleased to be proven wrong.
goresh 23 February 2012	"One can reduce the number of users per node or cell by installing more nodes and cells." But, because wireless follows the inverse square law, to double the signal on the ground (theoretical best case) you will need 4 times the tower in exactly the right places. As a side benefit, you get much more capacity, but not 4 times as each tower is an interferer to every other one.