No More NBN

[Rorschach]

blah blah blah blah blah blah... you are a joke
regurgitate... regurgitate... he says in a dalek voice
You don't even remember things you've already posted

30 years in IT tells me this is a waste of time and money.

[Rorschach]

The Australian: Broadband Network Rollout a Costly Failure
Articles by Paul Tuesday, 04 December 2012
The Liberal Member for Bradfield.

IN April 2009, the Rudd-Gillard government announced its plans to build the National Broadband Network. The fibre optic network is supposed to pass 12.2 million premises around Australia by 2021. More than three years later, as at June 30, 2012, it had passed just 38,914 less than one third of 1 per cent towards the finish line.

Yet NBN Co's corporate plan, issued in December 2010, promised to pass 317,000 premises by June 30, 2012. Another comparison: in 1994, Telstra announced it would build a national hybrid fibre coax network. By June 1997, three years on, the network passed 2.1 million homes.

NBN is doing equally badly on the number of services being delivered. There were 3867 fibre services in operation as at June 30, 2012; the corporate plan promised 137,000. More recent disclosures at estimates hearings in October show little improvement. One component of the fibre rollout, brownfields, had risen from 29,000 in June to 32,295 and fibre services in operation were at 6400. Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy and NBN Co have tried every trick in the book to disguise the poor performance. They abandoned the original corporate plan and issued a new one in August this year. The goal of 317,000 premises passed by June this year was changed to 39,000. The goals for later years also dropped sharply. Originally the network was to pass 1.27 million premises by June 30 next year: that has fallen to 341,000. Next, they made comparisons as difficult as possible. The original corporate plan gave target numbers for five different categories of premises: three types of fibre, wireless and satellite. The new plan, and the 2011-12 annual report released recently, now gives numbers for two types of fibre and a merged number for wireless and satellite.

Third, they tried to shift attention away from hard numbers by introducing a new statistic: premises where there is construction commenced or completed. NBN Co's March 2012 media release promised that by 2015 "construction of the fibre optic component of the network will be under way or completed in areas containing 3.5 million premises". This statistic which is not used by private sector telecommunications companies such as Telstra and Optus is meaningless. They count a home as having construction commenced from the moment a contract instruction is issued to the contractor. But several further steps are required, including the Telstra commencement notice and the final contract instruction. On average, it will be 12 months before the work is completed. A fourth trick is to quote total subscriber numbers across fibre, wireless and satellite.

At the October estimates hearing, NBN Co said it had 24,000 customers. But of these, 17,000 were on satellite and more than half of them were customers of an existing government program, dating back to Howard government days, to subsidise satellite broadband in rural and remote areas. The rollout is chewing up taxpayers' money at an alarming rate. By June 30 this year, $2.832 billion of taxpayers' money had been put into NBN as equity; of that more than $900 million had vapourised in three years of accumulated losses. (In 2011-12 alone, NBN Co lost $520m.) Total equity contributions entirely taxpayer funded are projected to reach $30.4bn by 2021. This is almost $3bn more than the Rudd-Gillard government had previously disclosed. NBN Co is splashing around money with abandon. It pays extremely generous salaries. Average remuneration cost per head was $172,000 in 2011-12, more than 50 per cent higher than the comparable figure at Telstra.

Yet it has barely any customers and barely any revenue. It earned less than $2m from providing telecommunications services in 2011-12. As we have seen with the home insulation program, the school halls program and many others, the Rudd-Gillard government is hopeless at program delivery and financial management. We are seeing the same pattern with the NBN. Anyone who wants to see Australia's broadband infrastructure upgraded in an efficient, cost-effective manner should be very alarmed.

[Rorschach]

Broadband network will be $43bn white elephant
* by: Malcolm Colless
* From: The Australian
* March 16, 2010 12:00AM

THE present federal budget describes the Rudd government's $43 billion national broadband network as the single largest building infrastructure project in Australian history. And it is tipped to nudge $70 billion by the time they actually finish it.

But it could end up as one of Australia's biggest and costliest infrastructure debacles. And that's saying something when you look at the financial disaster that has engulfed the home insulation program and the amount of taxpayers' money wasted on the mismanagement of the primary school building revolution.

What has emerged from these multi-billion-dollar spending splurges is an absence of good governance. Political rhetoric and spin have taken precedence over economic common sense.

The NBN is no exception. It is just that the financial cost of failure is so much higher. The project's operating body, NBN Co, is flying by the seat of its pants on a mission from Kevin Rudd to deliver a national high-speed fibre-optic broadband network at the cutting-edge of world standards. Which in the future is likely to be less than standard.

That this project has not been the subject of any cost-benefit analysis has not stopped Communications Minister Stephen Conroy from tipping hundreds of millions of dollars into its initial rollout, particularly in Tasmania, which goes to the polls next weekend with Labor against the wall. Total spending in Tasmania is expected to exceed $830 million and it is clear that Conroy is keen to make this a template for a successful national rollout .

Until NBN Co gains legislative exemption from trespassing laws, it needs householder permission to install the fibre-optic cable. Company sources dismiss as unfounded suggestions that many Tasmanians are concerned at the intrusion and cost involved in taking up this broadband service. They say no surveys have been undertaken on customer response and there has been no discussion about costs with the community.

"There has been no pushback. In fact there has been a lot of interest and excitement," one official told The Australian.

But cost to the consumer is a critical and as yet undefined factor in the success of the NBN and it is not confined to the cable, which the government wants connected without needing permission to more than nine million homes, schools and businesses across the country. Once NBN lays the cable a retail service provider will install a set-top box inside or outside the premises. This box, which will cost several hundred dollars, will be the gateway for broadband, phone, television and other services into the home.

Who will bear the cost of this box, which has a shelf life of no more than four years before it will need replacing, is not clear. 4 years

But what is clear is that the cost of internal rewiring required in most established homes to operate this new system will have to be met by the householder. And this is before the regular bills for using the new broadband and wireless services start flowing in.
So what will the real cost to the householder actually be?

Once the coin drops on this it won't be long before the government comes under intense pressure to subsidise these associated costs to offset public confusion and hostility in an effort to keep the NBN project alive. The hard reality is that the volume of traffic will be driven predominantly by price, not speed. Telstra already offers the same 100 megabits per second service to more than a million homes in Melbourne on a $269 a month two-year contract. But just 200 have taken up the service and the company has shelved plans to extend it to other capitals. How many people will be able to afford the service?

The NBN is another example of the government's "father [Kevin] knows best" approach to the country's administration. In this case it wants to prove it can run a national communications network better than anyone else. In the process it has put Telstra on the rack to try to force it to publicly endorse this strategy by agreeing to separate its retail and wholesale businesses. So far all it has achieved is to trash Telstra's shareholder value, including the significant stake held by the Future Fund, and raise further doubts about the government's big-ticket infrastructure policy.

The government is confident Telstra will roll over in the face of threats to prevent it from acquiring spectrum for 4G wireless service, used by the free-to-air television networks for analog broadcasting. If Telstra calls the government's bluff, the NBN and Conroy could be in big trouble.

Meanwhile the Greens have successfully mustered the numbers in the Senate to demand that Conroy table, by tomorrow, a $25m implementation study conducted by McKinsey and KPMG on how the NBN can operate as a viable business venture. But communications industry insiders predict that the report will be seen as vacuous and lacking in convincing propositions.

That wouldn't be surprising. After all, it would be hard, in a democracy, to mount a compelling business case for a government owned or controlled organisation to wire up most homes in the country, at the taxpayer's expense, to deliver a broadband service that many people don't want.

Or as one industry expert predicted last night: "Within 10 years at the latest the use of 4G wireless services will show that Rudd's decision to extend the broadband rollout from the node into the home was just plain stupid."

[Talking Horse]

This poster would have lasted 5 minutes in the old days.

[Rorschach]

This poster has been around since b4 the old days... so much for Talking Horseshit.

[Aussie]

This poster has been around since b4 the old days... so much for Talking Horseshit.

I can assure you Roach that there was no-one using the tag Talking Horse.............in 'the old days.' But, who knows who they are. Time will tell.

[Rorschach]

Funny.... not my meaning at all.
But I suspect a doppelganger from someone here, that narrows it down quite a bit.

[IQS.RLOW]

This poster would have lasted 5 minutes in the old days.

Aussie

[Aussie]

This poster would have lasted 5 minutes in the old days.

Aussie

Not me.

[Rorschach]

Monkey Boy, has been writing crap in The Vortex, LW prog views, labor propaganda, NBN Co propaganda etc, etc, etc... he even gets desperate enough to post opinions of bloggers, who lo and behold hold with his ignorant views on the subject.. they too are ignorant or like telling lies as well. He even posts items from IT based sites like Delimiter and ZDNET... now as much as I like these sources of information, I have time and again told Monkey Boy you have to be aware of who you are quoting and what their biases are.

What IT specialist or site would not like a roll gold national broadband network. Think of all the fun you could have. Of course they are going to be biased. Some even let their political bias get the better of them like several bloggers on ZDNet.

The problem is opinions are just that, unless they are based in fact and unless they are unbiased and established in reason.

Here is an article from "Delimiter" a site he recently cherry picked from...

opinion
FACTLast week Malcolm Turnbull delivered a series of very strong, evidence-based answers to key questions about his rival NBN policy, demonstrating that he would be a safe pair of hands to steward the nation’s broadband future. OPINIONBut, despite his eloquence and depth of knowledge, the Liberal MP has still failed to convince Australia’s technical community that his policy is better than Labor’s. But who did he fail to convince? The gameboys? I'm not sure he'd fail to convince IT management in most big businesses who have to look at value for money and be accountable for such decisions. People who need to live in the real world and not just those that aspire for the "best" without considering the financial consequences. Those that understand that IT is a rapidly moving technology and things quickly become obsolete.

FACTAs some readers may remember, in late July this year Delimiter put a series of questions to Turnbull, in an effort to get the Shadow Communications Minister to further detail the Coalition’s rival NBN policy. The context at the time was that Turnbull was strongly pushing the idea of using a FTTN style of broadband rollout to meet the Coalition’s stated aim of completing the NBN “sooner, cheaper and more affordably for users”.

FTTN is a deployment style which would see fibre extended from Telstra’s telephone exchanges located around the nation to neighbourhood cabinets, instead of all the way to premises as under Labor’s plan (Fibre to the Home, or FTTH). The remaining distance would be covered by Telstra’s existing copper cable. When it took power in November 2007, the current Labor administration also had a FTTN-based policy, but it switched to a more comprehensive FTTH-based policy in April 2009 after a panel of experts rejected private sector bids to build the NBN and recommended the Government go it alone with a more ambitious rollout.

Last week, four months later, Turnbull finally responded to those questions, and reading through them, I found it very hard to fault most of his answers. If I examine most of them, Turnbull has responded convincingly and well. I'm guessing Monkey Boy didn't want to tell anyone that.

Let’s go through a few examples. Delimiter’s first question asked Turnbull what international examples of FTTN-style deployments did the Shadow Communications Minister consider most pertinent to the Australian situation, and why. Turnbull’s answer to this question was extremely brief, but salient, citing the US and the UK, where major telcos AT&T and BT are indeed focusing on using FTTN-style deployments to upgrade their existing copper networks.

Turnbull is right in that these are solid examples relevant to the Australian situation. In the US, AT&T’s so-called “U-verse” fibre to the node build was scheduled to hit some 30 million homes by the end of 2012 (consisting of some 55 to 60 percent of the company’s addressable footprint). The platform provides speeds up to 24Mbps, although such speeds are generally much more guaranteed at various tiers, compared to the so-called “up to 24Mbps” speeds which Australia’s current ADSL2+ footprint offers. In the UK, BT is rolling out fibre to the node in a number of areas and plans to achieve 80Mbps download speeds and 20Mbps upload speeds this year, while in Germany, Deutsche Telekom is also rolling out fibre to the node to millions of homes.

These examples aren’t vendor hype on paper – they’re examples where real-world telcos, incumbents like Telstra, are deploying FTTN networks, as Telstra itself proposed back in 2005 under then-chief executive Sol Trujillo. The sheer truth of the matter is that if Telstra and the then-Howard Government had been able to agree on regulatory settings the best part of a decade ago, then Australia would very likely have a national fibre to the node network right now – and probably the overwhelming majority of residents and many businesses would be quite happy with it.

In other answers to different questions, Turnbull also demonstrated a strong, evidence-based approach. Asked about the fact that many believe a long-term shift to FTTH will be needed anyway, Turnbull pointed out that current technology allowed FTTN networks to be built with a long-term shift to FTTH anyway, meaning that you can have “the best of both worlds”.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has described Turnbull’s FTTN policy as a technical “dead end”, claiming that the technology used to deploy FTTN can’t be upgraded to support FTTH in future. But the truth is that Conroy’s wrong about this. When was Monkey Boy going to tell us this? labor? Lie? How improbable... for the Australia Lying Party. FACTAT&T in the US, for example, is using Alcatel-Lucent Intelligent Service Access Manager (ISAM) devices which the vendor explicitly notes on its website can support both FTTH and FTTN, including a “smooth evolution” from a copper-based network to a fibre-based one.

On other points Turnbull also demonstrated a strong, evidence-based approach.
FACT
It is true, for example, that FTTN can be deployed faster and at lesser cost than FTTH.
It is true that Telstra, for example, has publicly said it doesn’t see many obstacles to working with a Coalition Government on a different type of network deployment.
It is true that lessons about FTTN and its sister technology, VDSL, can be garnered from Europe particularly, where the deployment style does appear to be gaining ascendancy over the FTTH style supported by Labor.

Overall, after reading through his answers with a calm head (Gee why would Renai need a calm head?) and following up the evidence that he referenced, I walked away with the belief that the Coalition’s NBN policy is workable, achievable, and supported by international examples. It would deliver a fundamental improvement to broadband service delivery in Australia that almost every Australian would welcome, and it would finally bring Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure in line with an upgrade path followed by many other countries globally. It’s a good policy, and very well-researched.

What I like about Turnbull’s policy is that it would focus on continuing to use much of the nation’s existing telecommunications networks, (me too) while kickstarting development in areas where better infrastructure is urgently needed. It’s not a revolutionary policy, but an evolutionary one, based on lessons both from within Australia and internationally. Of course, there are caveats; Turnbull hasn’t actually produced a formal policy document yet, and doubts remain about whether Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and other senior Coalition politicians are fully behind Turnbull’s vision, but I’m prepared to take Turnbull at face value on these issues for now, and accept that we’ll know more closer to the next Federal Election. (There's that political Labor doubt creeping in).

At this stage of this article, many readers are no doubt questioning whether I’ve turned to the dark side and have started to drink Turnbull’s kool-aid. Gee look at the language and what is being said... does it perhaps point to some recognised form of bias political bias on behalf of renai in his past articles? hmmm...

I can just imagine the comments that would be posted on Delimiter if I concluded the article at this point. “Bias!!!!” Gee I wonder who reads His stuff then, surely not LW progs, several of the more shrill readers would scream. Ah the shrill gives them away... “Renai is bias! He’s succumbed to Turnbull’s reality distortion field! He’s a Liberal stooge!” ta daaaa, as if I didn't know what I was talking about... Others would merely accuse me of sacrificing my intellect at the altar of journalistic respectability and claim that I was trying to achieve some spurious notion of “balance” by alternately praising both Conroy and Turnbull, in a promiscuous attempt to keep both sides happy with me. But I digress; this article isn’t going to finish at this point; so read on as I feebly attempt to redeem myself in your jaded eyes. Really? Redeem? this'll be good

OPINIONThe truth of the matter is that Turnbull’s NBN policy, as it stands, is the second-best telecommunications policy I’ve ever seen presented in Australia. It’s better than the threadbare vision which Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy took to the 2007 Federal Election. It’s better than the half-baked OPEL vision which Howard-era Communications Minister Helen Coonan was pitching before that point. It’s better than the deregulation-era policies which were around in the 1990’s, as it blends both market competition and government intervention together usefully (although they were needed, they weren’t comprehensive), and it’s obviously a damn sight better than the tripe which then-Shadow Communications Minister Tony Smith took to the 2010 Federal Election – you know, the policy launch Tony Abbott didn’t even both to turn up for and couldn’t even explain when asked about it.

Yes, friends, Turnbull’s NBN policy has evolved into a worthy, achievable, well-thought out telecommunications policy. OPINIONBut it’s not as good a policy as Stephen Conroy’s NBN vision – the best telecommunications policy which Australia has ever had. Best? In what respects? These are things never properly addressed. Good for Gameboys yes. Good for now... yes. Practical? Financially sane? Technologically safe?

It’s easy to count the reasons why. It doesn’t really matter that FTTN is a solid technology which will deliver better broadband to Australia. Labor’s vision uses fundamentally better technology than the Coalition’s – technology which will future-proof the nation for OPINIONthe next fifty years, instead of the next dozen. Technology that allows both upload and download speeds which better the Coalition’s model, and where that fibre technology is simply ridiculously expensive to deploy, wireless and satellite technology which is already providing huge service delivery improvements to the bush. Already? Surely you jest... everyone according to Conroy and Kruddy were going to be connected, even those with driveways 10 kms long.

OPINIONIt doesn’t really matter that the Coalition’s FTTN rollout will “cost less”, because Labor has pretty exhaustively demonstrated that its FTTH vision will eventually pay for itself. It doesn’t really matter that the Coalition’s FTTN rollout will be delivered a handful of years sooner, because Labor’s vision will see much better broadband delivered over a much longer period. Don’t do it halfway – do it right the first time, and benefit for the next 50 years. This is opinion only. No one can say what technological developments are just around the corner let alone in the next 50 years. This is regurgitated ALP propaganda.perhaps from a PR piece Renai has used.

OPINIONIt doesn’t really matter that countries such as the US, the UK and Germany are delivering FTTN networks, because Australia shouldn’t want to be equal with those countries on any front. We should want to exceed them – and the NBN is one massive way in which we can do that as a nation. But at what cost????? It doesn’t matter that it’s possible to re-work Telstra’s $11 billion contract with NBN Co to support a FTTN network build, and it doesn’t matter that that might not take that long. Because Labor has already negotiated extensive contracts with both Telstra and Optus; those contracts are in place right now and are delivering on their aims. Really? In fact they are in fact delivering them at a much slower and more expensive rate than promised.

Do you get where I’m going here? Yes you are following the ALP/NBN song sheet. The sheer fact of the matter is that Labor’s NBN vision uses better technology than the Coalition’s, it represents a better long-term vision for Australia’s telecommunications needs, it will be delivered in a time frame which on a long or even medium-term scale is pretty indistinguishable from the Coalition’s and it won’t cost more because it will pay for itself. Plus, it will vault Australia past our rivals in terms of our telecommunications capacity – and all the private and public sector benefits that entails – instead of merely bringing us up to speed. So lets see that list of real benefits then Renai. Or is that just what the ALP says or just your opinion?

Often in life we’re faced with choices. I like Carlton Draught beer, for example (on some nights I’ve liked it a little too much and ended up with a headache the next morning). But I prefer to drink Coopers Pale Ale – in my view it’s a better beer. Similarly, I usually prefer Thai food to Chinese food – there’s something about the Thai combination of spices which I love. Me... I buy what I can afford... I might love lamb, but hey, who can afford it?

But these are matters of opinion; yep been saying that... there isn’t really one right answer. Some people will prefer a certain option over another one, and it’s impossible to say that they’re wrong, just that you disagree. When it comes to government policy, this is often the case. Vast disagreements exist between different political views on the efficacy of different types of policies.

But when it comes to technology, it is usually always the case that there are better and worse options. Fixed broadband technology can almost always be empirically shown to have better latency and bandwidth than wireless broadband technology. Flash SSD drives can be shown to have better read speeds than traditional magnetic optical drives. LCD screens are just … better than the old CRT alternatives. As the march of technology progresss, old technology is replaced by new – sometimes, as in the case of national telecommunications networks, once every 100 years. Sometimes, as in the case of mobile phone handsets, every year like clockwork. If you can afford it, everyone who works in technology knows that you should go for the best technology available. And in the case of the NBN, Australia can definitely afford to roll out fibre around the nation. Well that again is your opinion re affordability... value for money? Like you said technology is always on the move...

Turnbull has convinced me personally – and no doubt many other Australians – that the Coalition has a solid, workable and achievable broadband policy. But it’s not the best policy out there. OPINIONThat policy belongs to the Australian Labor Party, and that’s the Coalition’s real battle right now – to convince the everyday joe on the street that what it’s offering is better than what the next guy is. That, after all, is what politics is all about. Not showing that you’re good enough — but that you’re better. No Renai... that's call pork-barreling. The ALP have shown how incompetent they are at delivering outcomes and implementing sensible policy. The NBN could be a white elephant, it will definitely represent over-expenditure for outcome.

Let's look at Monkey Boy's source, his font of wisdom... Renai Lemay; country boy from broken hill went to Sydney Uni got a BA... nothing IT or technical there, calls himself a journalist and editor. Used to write for ZDNet and now has his own site "Delimiter."

In his own words;

The first computer I ever spent any serious time on was an Apple IIe, I believe. That was a computer that my father brought home – he used to be a teacher – from his school, in the holidays. We used to play games like Karateka and Carmen Sandiego on that. I still play a lot of computer games and I guess I’ve been playing them ever since he first brought back that Apple IIe.

The easy answer to that is, when you start off, at the moment I’m relying quite a bit on PR sources. And the plan is to gradually reduce that while still covering important things. It’s a common trend in journalism businesses [that] you start off rewriting press releases because you need to re-establish contacts with all your sources of information. After the first couple of weeks, you start to push up the value chain. You move up to high-value content.

A press release rewrite, for me, only takes a very short amount of time, like 10 minutes, 20 minutes – something like that. For example, I’m putting together a major feature article for next Thursday. That will be completely independent material, independent of the press release cycle.

I was a senior editor in the industry and a senior journalist, so I can obviously produce a higher amount of content even if it’s just rewriting a press release. I can write more content into that press release than other people can.

A lot of the stuff that I will be writing will be lower-order content because that’s what publishers need. They need someone to churn through that basic stuff so they can move onto the high-value stuff.

You may note Monkey Boy much I've been telling you re the "info" you've been regurgitating.