NBN debate full of 'erroneous' information

[freakiness]

I found this article today.

It addresses some of the issues I see repeated frequently, often by people who know better.

As I trial user I am totally sold on the NBN as an FTTP project.

In my lifetime I've seen the expansion of the copper network until it's limits have been reached.  And I've seen the emergence of optical fibre connectivity from the trunk lines and big business to the NBN.  There's been private rollouts to specific estates and other estates with Telstra. TransACT tried a variety of technologies before settling on FTTP, much the same as the NBN.

It's a great investment for us all. And about the furthest thing from short term election cycle investment in decades.

I'm happy to post the rest of the article if anyone doesn't like links but would like to read it.

It is only going to get worse. Ever since it was first announced more than  four years ago, the national broadband network has polarised people, including  those whose official public comments add considerably to the debate. Some of it  is erroneous and misleading, according to the experts. And even then, experts'  opinions vary.

IT Pro asked about a dozen Australian academic institutions to  compile a list of statements they believe are inaccurate. Three of them  responded with the following comments. You might like to add your own in the  comments below.

"Alternative technology" not really an alternative now

Mark Gregory, senior lecturer at RMIT's school of electrical and computer  engineering, said the public is being misled on how alternative technologies  including hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) and fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) could be used  to replace fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) and speed up the NBN rollout.

"To change direction now requires major, multi-billion dollar contracts be  renegotiated with Telstra, Optus and Vodafone – and there is no reason why any  of these companies would agree to proceed."

He said there was also a multitude of construction contracts that would need  to be changed or exited, placing a burden on taxpayers.

"Evidence is emerging as the NBN rollout proceeds that the copper network is  beyond saving, network plant and infrastructure requires substantial maintenance  and upgrades, and there are more network black-spots than previously  identified.

"The Australian public is being hoodwinked by false statements that have been  substantively disproved," Gregory said.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nbn-debate-full-of-erroneous-information-20130404-2h8m...

Are you in favour if the NBN as it stands?

[donnashuggy]

The NBN maybe should have gone first to the more populated areas do you think freaki?

Like where I live 😄 

[freakiness]

The NBN maybe should have gone first to the more populated areas do you think freaki?

Like where I live 😄 

It's going to all sorts of areas first.

The backbones were built first to improve severe back haul issues and some black spots.

Most of the roll out is determines by POIs. The ACCC demands re the POIs are one of the contributing factors for early delays. There is no other way to efficiently roll it out. The network fans out from the POIs.

The suggestion that HFC is a good substitute in those areas is misleading as not all premises in those areas are covered by HFC and HFC does not have the upload capacity of FTTP.

Upload capability is a key difference, and an important one.

[polksaladallie]

I wonder if Turnbull believes what he is spieling, or if he is saying what he is told to say because of his ambitions.

[donnashuggy]

He can probably tell the bull better than Tony Abbott but to me he isn't doing a very good job of it. Surely the average person isn't going to buy it?

[lakeland27]

turnbull is waiting for Abbott's inevitable fall from popularity (well a kind of popularity) so he can assume his rightful position as he sees it. abbott is likely to go the way of Ted when he is unable to deliver. Mal knows this

[freakiness]

ABS has new stats out

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/8153.0~December+2012~Chapter~Type+of+access+connect...

TYPE OF ACCESS CONNECTION
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) were asked to report subscriber numbers by type of access connection as at 31 December 2012.
There were 12.2 million internet subscribers in Australia at the end of December 2012. This represents an increase of 1% since the end of June 2012 and an annual growth of 5%.
The proportion of internet connections that were dial-up continued to decline, with over 98% of internet connections at 31 December 2012 being broadband.

.......................................

At 31 December 2012, there were 6.0 million mobile wireless broadband connections in Australia, an increase of 2% since the end of June 2012. Mobile wireless broadband was again the most prevalent internet technology in Australia, accounting for 49% of all connections.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) connections increased by 2% over the same period, to 4.7 million connections.

Fibre was the fastest growing type of internet access connection, in percentage terms, increasing by 75% since the end of June 2012, to 91,000 connections at 31 December 2012.

[freakiness]

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/turnbulls-nbn-plan-inadequate-futurists-2013041...

Just two decades ago  a dial-up internet connection  would have taken more  than a lifetime to download a single movie, while today's  broadband connections  can pull down  several HD movie streams simultaneously.

The debate raging over whether the Coalition's 25 megabits-per-second minimum  broadband plan is adequate compared  with Labor's  plan offering 100 megabits to  1 gigabit a second (100Mbps-1Gbps) raises the question: how much speed do we  actually need?

The business development manager for CSIRO's Digital Productivity and  Services Flagship, Geof Heydon, has spent decades  considering this question. In  2002, he predicted that by 2020 high-end home users would require 1Gbps  connections.

For video alone, a 4KTV stream, four times the quality of HD, would require about 28Mbps for a single stream, he said. Products supporting the standard are already on the market, and 8KTV, requiring four times more bandwidth again, is in development.

''If you start to introduce the idea of holographic or 3D image projection,  and I expect within five years we'll see early low-quality holographic  entertainment systems - they will require even more bandwidth,''  Mr Heydon  said.

Many households now have  several large screens and portable devices  connected to the web,  so bandwidth requirements are rapidly multiplying. Fibre  to the home, which is Labor's proposal, is technically infinitely  upgradeable.

According to the  Bureau of Statistics, in the quarter to December 31, 2010,  Australians downloaded 174,665 terabytes of data over fixed-line broadband  connections. This jumped to 254,947 in the quarter ending June 30, 2011, then to  322,290 in the December 2011 quarter and again to 389,130 by June last year.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/turnbulls-nbn-plan-inadequate-futurists-2013041...

[freakiness]

The articles I have been posting and linking to are most often not written by anyone with anything to do with Labor. Many are from people who 3 years ago were very much against Labor but they're in the know with technology.

I have swiped the middle section out of the following article to post.

http://sortius-is-a-geek.com/?p=2883

..........

V DSL Isn’t Cheaper

Looking at the Coalition’s policy & background documents, you’d think V DSL is a panacea for all Australia’s troubles. The problem is, that most of the gripes from users of current technologies, mostly ADSL & HFC, are gripes that will not disappear by deploying V DSL.

Most problems people have, myself included, are due to the degraded state the copper network is already in. It’s hard to find a good “clean” pair to install an ADSL service on, expecting V DSL to run any better is folly. V DSL is far more susceptible to faults & interference, degrading a potentially 40Mbps service into a 4Mbps service, even though the line appears to be functioning correctly. Trying to chase down faults to get xDSL services working is a gruelling task, the last fault I had required 4 weeks & 3 technician visits to resolve, even though it was merely that one leg of the service had broken free of the joint out the front. Yep, my service was hobbled because of vibrations from trucks going past (at least that’s what the technician suspected, it could have just been dodgy work from a previous technician installing a service).

Investing in any technology that’s as flaky as VDSL shows a severe lack of knowledge amongst Liberal party strategists. Even a cursory search of the Internet shows that most, if not all, providers of FTTN services are moving to FTTP to reduce costs & keep up with customer demand. V DSL has proven to be a waste of money, delivering substandard services & having a very short lifespan. To suggest that building a V DSL based network is “good enough” betrays how little the Liberal party respects communication networks.

The biggest problems with V DSL are the costs involved, as I keep reiterating: $1b more per year to maintain the network & $300m per year to power cabinets. These costs will only go up, especially when attempting to keep the copper at “V DSL grade”. US providers of FTTP have seen, on average, a 20% reduction in maintenance costs after moving from copper to fibre.

[freakiness]

here's another new blog post

http://ashghebranious.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/you-cannot-change-the-laws-of-physics-jim/

with video and graph ( I think it's the Simon Hacket one).

[poddster]

The internet, whatever medium is used, is only as fast as the slowest link from source to destination. This is not a comparison of Optic Fibre, copper, wireless, or wet string for that matter.

Most of users' content originates off shore worldwide.

The average or the world's dataflow speed is around 14Mbps including the United States, the home of Google.

High speed internet Australia wide is not going to solve that problem and we are locked in to the speed of the rest of the world.

Your data flow speed potential has no advantage if the source and the link are limited to a slower speed.