The results of the strategic review announced that not only will the Coalition’s plan cost almost as much as the originally announced NBN plan
That isn't because it is more expensive, it is because the estimate on the original plan was wrong.
The old peak funding requirement on the original plan was $43.6 Billion with 3.5 million households passed by June 2016. There was supposed to be an update of those figures published this July but they sat on the report until after the election. We now know that those figures are now $73 billion peak funding and 1.7 million residences passed [0].
The Coalition’s NBN is a joke. It will not arrive faster, cheaper, or better.
It will be faster (as in, rolled out faster) and cheaper. Despite the political vitriol surrounding this topic in Australia, you can't bend the technical and economic reality that rolling out a fiber to the node solution (FTTN) is both cheaper and faster than rolling out fiber to the premises (FTTP) with existing households:
You rollout fiber to the home where it is more economical (dense areas, new developments) you roll fiber to the curb where it is more economical and faster (apartment buildings) and you roll the fiber to a cabinet where it is more economical and faster (existing suburban areas).
Attaching each plan to a rollout strategy was a mistake in the first place, as a national network requires a mix of technology (this isn't FTTN v FTTH, its about where to apply each).
My concern is how they are calculating maintenance costs of the copper tail. Telstra's linesmen are some of the few equipped/trained to maintain these lines, and in areas > 30 years old much of the copper is in poor condition or direct buried (read: $$$ to replace). Flooded pits causing comms connectivity issues, radio interference, etc all impact copper performance too.
Speed is often the argument for FTTN vs FTTH, when reliability should be.
The flooded lines is a funny one. When I lived in Bondi my DSL would drop out or start seeing massive slow downs every time it rained. It took me half a year before I realized the correlation too.
You rollout fiber to the home where it is more economical (dense areas, new developments) you roll fiber to the curb where it is more economical and faster (apartment buildings) and you roll the fiber to a cabinet where it is more economical and faster (existing suburban areas).
This new reports says that if you have HFC available (or near you) that's your only option. FTTP is being offered for new developments, or already areas where construction has already started. What this essentially means is dense, dense suburban areas will be on HFC cable.
What the report does not elaborate on is how the government will get access to the HFC cable, as it's privately owned by (predominantly) Telstra and Optus, or how much it will cost.
Additionally the report has some wonderful wording regarding previously guaranteed 25Mb/s speed:
NBN Co will be designing the new-look NBN to provide these speeds to NBN Co's wholesale customers (internet service providers). End-user experience, including the speeds actually achieved over the NBN, will continue to depend on a number of factors outside our control including end-user equipment quality, software, broadband plans and how each service provider designs its network.
I think a big issue that some Australian's have is that after we spend $44b on this NBN, to upgrade the remaining 69% premises on HFC/FTTN we need to start this all over again and deploy FTTP.
FTTN will always be cheaper, and I've always looked at it as part of a 2 stage deployment, it gets fiber into residential neighborhoods where there is often no fiber, providing a jumping off point to hook it to the premises.
So you have to send all the techs and teams out twice to dig up the road? The end-of-the-line has always been the most expensive part, that's why it made more economic and technical sense to do it all at the same time rather than double your work to save 25% cost. And with a projected finish date of 2020 (which is highly unlikely), you'll only begin to start rolling out the second stage at 2022, to replace technology that would be outdated if it were finished today.
And the second stage will never ever happen anyway, because it took us 30 years to replace the crappy copper network and even that could very well have been the straw the broke the camel's back for the government. In 2022 when everything is "finished" (shifted goalposts included) it will take another thirty years for the government to finally admit that 25 mbps in a 2gbps world isn't enough. And Australia will still stagnate as the anti-investment, anti-intellectual, FYGM backwater that it is today.
e: I'd love to see where those figures in the earlier link came from.
Revenue at completion date
AU$21.7 billion AU$10 billion AU$18 billion
That's, side by side, the FTTH, FTTH (revised), and the coalition's estimates.
Either the coalition is flat out lying through its teeth (and it could be lying about the whole thing to absolve itself of its responsibilities or to foreward any criticism -- its standard LNP/government policy to take over and make out that things were way worse than you could ever have dreamed)... or they're planning to sell a much worse service at a far higher cost, which means it doesn't even benefit the people who paid for it in the first place, the taxpayer.
Ideally you can deploy FTTN/VDSL without replacing anything, you'd have to get fiber out to these places otherwise, and often enough here (the US) its aerial cable.
Like I'd said in my original post, most of the places that would get fiber as part of an FTTN deployment have no fiber at all right now, so even getting the fiber into those areas is important to the later deployment of FTTP.
With pair bonding VDSL has the potential of more than 25 mbps - plus the speeds they can pull out of copper over less that 1000m loops is quite promising, and continues to improve.
Comments
That isn't because it is more expensive, it is because the estimate on the original plan was wrong.
The old peak funding requirement on the original plan was $43.6 Billion with 3.5 million households passed by June 2016. There was supposed to be an update of those figures published this July but they sat on the report until after the election. We now know that those figures are now $73 billion peak funding and 1.7 million residences passed [0].
It will be faster (as in, rolled out faster) and cheaper. Despite the political vitriol surrounding this topic in Australia, you can't bend the technical and economic reality that rolling out a fiber to the node solution (FTTN) is both cheaper and faster than rolling out fiber to the premises (FTTP) with existing households:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=638167...
You rollout fiber to the home where it is more economical (dense areas, new developments) you roll fiber to the curb where it is more economical and faster (apartment buildings) and you roll the fiber to a cabinet where it is more economical and faster (existing suburban areas).
Attaching each plan to a rollout strategy was a mistake in the first place, as a national network requires a mix of technology (this isn't FTTN v FTTH, its about where to apply each).
[0] Here is a nice table the lays out the old/new estimates: http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-strategic-review-by-the-numbers-...
My concern is how they are calculating maintenance costs of the copper tail. Telstra's linesmen are some of the few equipped/trained to maintain these lines, and in areas > 30 years old much of the copper is in poor condition or direct buried (read: $$$ to replace). Flooded pits causing comms connectivity issues, radio interference, etc all impact copper performance too.
Speed is often the argument for FTTN vs FTTH, when reliability should be.
The flooded lines is a funny one. When I lived in Bondi my DSL would drop out or start seeing massive slow downs every time it rained. It took me half a year before I realized the correlation too.
This new reports says that if you have HFC available (or near you) that's your only option. FTTP is being offered for new developments, or already areas where construction has already started. What this essentially means is dense, dense suburban areas will be on HFC cable.
What the report does not elaborate on is how the government will get access to the HFC cable, as it's privately owned by (predominantly) Telstra and Optus, or how much it will cost.
Additionally the report has some wonderful wording regarding previously guaranteed 25Mb/s speed:
I think a big issue that some Australian's have is that after we spend $44b on this NBN, to upgrade the remaining 69% premises on HFC/FTTN we need to start this all over again and deploy FTTP.
FTTN will always be cheaper, and I've always looked at it as part of a 2 stage deployment, it gets fiber into residential neighborhoods where there is often no fiber, providing a jumping off point to hook it to the premises.
So you have to send all the techs and teams out twice to dig up the road? The end-of-the-line has always been the most expensive part, that's why it made more economic and technical sense to do it all at the same time rather than double your work to save 25% cost. And with a projected finish date of 2020 (which is highly unlikely), you'll only begin to start rolling out the second stage at 2022, to replace technology that would be outdated if it were finished today.
And the second stage will never ever happen anyway, because it took us 30 years to replace the crappy copper network and even that could very well have been the straw the broke the camel's back for the government. In 2022 when everything is "finished" (shifted goalposts included) it will take another thirty years for the government to finally admit that 25 mbps in a 2gbps world isn't enough. And Australia will still stagnate as the anti-investment, anti-intellectual, FYGM backwater that it is today.
e: I'd love to see where those figures in the earlier link came from.
Revenue at completion date AU$21.7 billion AU$10 billion AU$18 billion
That's, side by side, the FTTH, FTTH (revised), and the coalition's estimates.
Either the coalition is flat out lying through its teeth (and it could be lying about the whole thing to absolve itself of its responsibilities or to foreward any criticism -- its standard LNP/government policy to take over and make out that things were way worse than you could ever have dreamed)... or they're planning to sell a much worse service at a far higher cost, which means it doesn't even benefit the people who paid for it in the first place, the taxpayer.
Ideally you can deploy FTTN/VDSL without replacing anything, you'd have to get fiber out to these places otherwise, and often enough here (the US) its aerial cable.
Like I'd said in my original post, most of the places that would get fiber as part of an FTTN deployment have no fiber at all right now, so even getting the fiber into those areas is important to the later deployment of FTTP.
With pair bonding VDSL has the potential of more than 25 mbps - plus the speeds they can pull out of copper over less that 1000m loops is quite promising, and continues to improve.