Fraudband

[Neferti]

He wont listen Rorschach, and I doubt he even reads what is written, he is so sure that he is right and everybody else is wrong. What a boring, old dweeb!

[Jovial_Monk]

Wow, the most ignorant member here, probably the most ignorant member since the first days at the ABC, makes a post.

Post says nothing.

[Jovial_Monk]

Article on the NBN and why it had to be done the way the ALP did:

The Real Deal on the Coalition NBN: same price, worse outcomes.

The reason the ALP Government, not private industry, had to build an NBN is because the Coalition deliberately screwed-up both Broadband and Telecommunications. In the early 1990's, Telstra had plans, within it's normal budget, to rollout Fibre to all homes by 2010. In 2005, Telstra wanted to build a node-based NBN by 2010. What happened is solely the failure of the Liberal & National parties to make proper decisions.

Over the decade 1997-2007 when action was needed and the private sector could have delivered, they didn't just sit on their hands, they did exactly the wrong things: ignoring Broadband, privatising Telstra unseparated and not implementing legislation to create strong competition in Telecommunications.

For the Coalition to now want Broadband "sooner" is hypocritical and disingenuous.

The ALP created a new type of Public-Private Partnership where they leveraged the historically low interest rates, "patient" capital for long-term support and the Government's ability to accept low returns.

The NBN is built exactly like a Tollway/Motorway: someone else builds it, runs it and charges the public, then the asset is handed back to the Government. The sole difference is that the Government has contributed most, not all, the Equity - and it gets paid back in full with handsome dividends.

The real cost to taxpayers is the interest on the Equity funds: $12.5 billion until 2033 when its paid back. Then we get another $40-$45 billion in dividends by 2040.

http://stevej-on-nbn.blogspot.com.au/20 ... -same.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Steve goes on to delineate why #Fraudband is such a bad deal:

The Turnbull Node Plan is a tissue of lies. Here's how:
The real cost to taxpayers of the current plan is only $12.5 billion, yet the Coalition has never released their estimate of this cost, or even if their NBN Public-Private Partnership will payback the Equity. Over 20 years to 2033, this is $40 billion in interest and $30 billion in loans, putting the taxpayer at risk of a $70 billion loss from the Fibre to the Node Plan.

The Coalition NBN Budget is unbelievable:
If their claim to only change one thing, 75% of fixed-lines are Copper/VDSL2, then that's only $12 billion of the Budget. Yet Turnbull claims savings of $17 billion after spending $8 billion on building the FTTN. It's a complete fantasy.
On top of this, the Coalition plans to throw-away the FTTN, destroying half of its investment. That deliberate and planned waste of $4 billion is never included.

At the best, a Copper FTTN costs the same as the current full fibre, and will only be complete a year earlier. This is not the deal of a lifetime, but the con of a lifetime.

All the NBN profits are generated by the top 25% of users, the rest of us get services at, or below, cost.
This happens because usage is exponential. The top 1% of users download 50% more data than the entire lower 50% (10% vs 6.42%).

Higher speeds allow those, like businesses, who place a dollar value on their time, to reduce total costs. Wages are far, far higher than Broadband rental.

The NBN take-up and income is already 18-24 months ahead of Budget. It is spectacularly successful financially.
The Coalition hasn't released the charges they used in their model, nor contradicted they'll use "One speed, one Price" charging, rather than the tiered pricing model.

Because businesses make up 48%-49% of ISP connections, they need to be able to get guaranteed speeds anywhere, not just "designated areas". Wages lost waiting for downloads and uploads is many, many times the monthly broadband rental.

NBN Co currently charges wholesale prices of $24 - $38 for the same line, soon this increases to $150. "Tiered pricing" reduces the entry-level costs at least two-fold, increases profits and allows customers, who want, to pay more for something they value: time savings.

Contrary to Turnbull's assertion of "nobody needs more than 25Mbps", the real income figures of NBN Co released on 19-April, show that 31% of consumers are already paying for 100Mbps.[My emphasis] That's way more than the 18% included in the forecasts, increasing Average Revenue Per User considerable. Something that a "one speed, one price" regime cannot do.

[Rorschach]

Gee Steve jenkin has been in IT nearly as long as me.

http://www.commsday.com/blog/riposte-re ... eve-jenkin" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Policy slows Labor's political bandwidth
* by: Grahame Lynch
* From: The Australian
* April 10, 2013 12:00AM

MALCOLM Turnbull has probably just neutralised one of the few remaining electoral positives for the Labor government.

The opposition communications spokesman's NBN policy strikes a strong middle path between those who want a fully fledged fibre-to-the home network and those who resist any legitimate government subsidy of broadband.

At $20 billion in capital expenditure, the Coalition's broadband plan is the second-most generous in the world after Labor's. Broadband diehards the world over might envy Labor's FTTH policy but they probably would even break an arm to get the Coalition's as well.

Given that just six years ago, the Coalition was proposing to spend only a few hundred million dollars on a rural wireless network using a now dying technology called WiMax, it is fair to say it has come a long way. Broadband will be the Coalition's biggest ticket item of expenditure at the next election. Luddites they are not.

But the lesson of that failed WiMax policy and a Labor NBN policy that is unravelling is that technology developments always outwit the best intentioned of policies. But as often as that is pointed out to some the more they retreat into their jetson fantasy shell.

Four years ago, when Stephen Conroy proposed fibre to more than 90 per cent of Australian premises at a funding cost of $43bn , the Communications Minister did so safe in the then-correct technical assumption his was the only real way to deliver so-called "super-fast" broadband speeds of 100Mbps and beyond.

But with many countries unable or unwilling to spend multiple billions on new end-to-end fibre connections, a market was created for platforms that used legacy networks to deliver higher speeds. The result is that technology companies have developed new platforms - such as vectored DSL, gigabit cable and LTE Advanced - that enable existing networks to deliver many times more bandwidth than was previously assumed possible.

These developments have blindsided an existing NBN deployment too wedded to a particular technology - FTTH - which has proven difficult to deliver due to labour shortages and apparent project deficiencies in the deployment process. One of the best aspects of Turnbull's scheme is that it is far less reliant on civil works, which means it is quicker and cheaper to deploy. All points I have made over and over again.

But the aspect that will blindside Labor the most is the fact Turnbull's NBN emulates its policy in so many ways. It retains the "competition reform" aspect of the NBN that effectively serves to "separate" Telstra from network operation and, thus, its alleged incentives to discriminate against other operators. The strong "universal service" aspect to the NBN policy, with a commitment to 25Mbps speeds in the bush, is also retained.

Probably the biggest surprise is that a quarter of the country still gets FTTH but this will be targeted to locations of demand such as schools and offices as well as new housing where there is little cost advantage in deploying copper.

For those who feel Turnbull's NBN is still a little expensive on international benchmarks - and count me as one - there will be the novel experience of his policy actually being subject to three separate reviews looking at the NBN's strategic options, an audit of its finances and performance and its cost-benefit trade-off.

This is probably the best part of the policy to my mind: that it will be subject to review in a way the current NBN policy has not.

Grahame Lynch is founder of Australian telecoms newsletter CommsDay and the former group editorial director of America's Network and Telecom Asia.

[Rorschach]

NBN is welfare for tech-heads
* by: Grahame Lynch
* From: The Australian
* August 13, 2010 12:00AM

THERE is considerable criticism of the Coalition's minimalist broadband policy.

Gizmodo Australia described the policy as a "whole heap of nothing". Industry advocate Paul Budde said: "It is like having many parts of a car spread out on the floor, with no plan on how to put it all together." Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett called it a betrayal. But let's get some things in perspective.

The ALP government's $43 billion policy, at $2000 a head of population, is the most expensive government intervention of its kind in the world. The Coalition policy - at $300 a head - actually ranks comparably to that of Singapore's national broadband network government contribution, which costs about $200 a head of population, and New Zealand's at about $330. In South Korea, the five-year upgrade plan to bring fibre beyond the basement and into all homes is being funded 95 per cent by the private sector, the government contribution equating to a mere $25 a head of Korean population.

While the Coalition's proposed government investment is miserly in comparison with Labor's, it is still way ahead of most comparable countries.

Also, many of the benefits touted by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy of a high-speed broadband world this week - things such as virtual classrooms, smart grids and videoconferenced health care - are as achievable over the platforms envisaged by the Liberal plan as they are over fibre. Conroy's assertions that copper and wireless lack the symmetrical speeds necessary for these applications are not correct. Smart grids, for example, require small strings of information and they are easily facilitated over something as simple as SMS. Indeed, as we can see in Tasmania, early National Broadband Network plans are largely asymmetric anyway and tailored with all the usual off-peak and peak pricing and shaping that we see in the DSL world.

Where the Liberal plan excels economically, but not politically, is in its recognition that there is already substantial broadband infrastructure out there to be leveraged in support of speeds of 30 to 100megabits per second. This was even recommended by the government's NBN implementation study, which suggests that NBN Co should consider using the existing hybrid fibre-coaxial networks that already service a quarter of the nation to help deliver its mandate.

There has been enough private infrastructure investment in recent times to suggest the Coalition's notion of enabling substantial private investment in access is achievable. Operators such as TransACT, Pipe Networks, BigAir, VividWireless and Allegro Networks have built broadband trunk and access networks: with policy and financial support, they potentially could do more.

But leaving things to the market provides little by way of standardised outcome. And this is the problem for the Coalition: a policy grounded in the values of a discipline often derided as the dismal science does not inherently provide for good politics. In his National Press Club debate this week Conroy had one killer line: that the Coalition lacked imagination. For observers who have an interest in information and communications technology but are uninterested in ideological nuance, the Coalition's disdain for mixing imagination and government spending is no match. The NBN has achieved considerable resonance precisely because it is such an over-the-top juggernaut solution; it certainly does not lack for vision or imagination.

For those in the telecoms industry who wonder why the Coalition simply doesn't get it and jump on the fibre bandwagon, I would politely suggest they have themselves to blame.

There has been a clear method in Labor's $43bn "crazy brave" NBN madness. Cast back to April last year when the failure of NBN mark one - partly as a result of economic crisis - occurred. In hindsight, NBN mark two, with its big scary "irrational investor" pose, did exactly what it was intended to do, which was to show that the government at virtually any cost was totally serious on broadband and industry structure and that it would simply outspend any potential obstacle (read Telstra) that got in the way.

The subsequent refusal to submit the NBN policy to normal checks and balances such as a cost-benefit analysis or compliance with competitive neutrality rules fed this narrative and guaranteed that a Coalition that self-identified as a responsible economic manager would never support it - which was exactly what the government wanted as it provided a clear point of differentiation on vision that it could milk for political advantage.

But for fibre supporters in the industry, this same lack of a cost-benefit analysis is a millstone. Given the immense economic and career opportunities that the government is providing for many vendors, contractors and carriers in the sector, I find it astonishing that not one of them has mustered the modest resources required to prepare a credible cost-benefit analysis that attempts to measure the claimed externalities for the NBN in areas such as telecommuting, e-learning and telemedicine that are bandied about ad nauseam. A point made here over and over again to the IT deaf.

In an opinion piece carried by The Age this week, fibre academic and NBN expert panellist Rod Tucker, who is as much as anyone the father of the NBN policy, wrote: "A recent report commissioned by the city of Seattle found that a fibre access network would produce indirect benefits of more than $1bn a year. Scaled to a country the size of Australia, these benefits would amount to more than $5bn per annum. The $43bn price tag on the broadband network is starting to look like a bargain."

Why is the world's largest and most expensive broadband network proposal being justified by recourse to the findings of a report defending a modest infrastructure build for what is only the 23rd biggest city in the US? As I say, Conroy has strategic reasons for not submitting his policy to the test of the dismal science, but the telecommunications industry does not. It is a disgrace that the many economic beneficiaries of Labor's NBN policy believe they should have a bipartisan entitlement to tens of billions of dollars of gifted resources without resourcing credible analysis to back their arguments. To defend an NBN policy that, among other things, is the world's most generous telecom industry welfare scheme by reference to a small US city's economic analysis strikes me as a spectacular cultural cringe.

Grahame Lynch is the founder of telco newsletter Communications Day and a former editorial director of America's Network and Telecom Asia magazines.

[Jovial_Monk]

So no serious opposition?

FTTN will be a horrendous loss making tax money draining suppurating sore on our economy, industry, education, health etc!

Not fast enough, not reliable enough to drive the development of new applications and services. Huge costs to maintain and remediate copper and to power the stupid nodes (which will need active airconditioning during summer, that breaks down say goodbye to a whole heap of electronic components! A permanent loss maker.

ARPU just never going to be enough to repay the borrowings, barely enough to pay the interest on them.

And that is if the Libs actually roll out #Fraudband which I don’t think they will.

[Rorschach]

So... still in denial... penny hasn't dropped yet.
Thing is Monk, people can read and for mine you keep failing to address the realities people put to you.
You have a credibility problem.

[Jovial_Monk]

Some idea of the scale of the work that needs to be done:

OK—the task facing that disgusting liar and arrogant prick Turncoat is monumental—and why I think they will not roll out #Fraudband:

As RickW points out, what Telstra is giving NBN Co to run Fibre for the current $11 billion is prepared ducts.

This is necessary for the Turnbull Node Plan rollout as well.

After the audit, survey and test, before the remediation and reconfiguration of the Telstra Copper Access Network, the pits, pipes and ducts must first be "prepared", but that's code for repaired and remediated. The Copper Access Network is two separate parts: the cables and the access-ways. If you can't run the new Fibre to the Node or fix and reconfigure the (Telstra) Copper distribution pairs, then you can't build your FTTN.

Turnbull might be happy he's duped the public with his uncosted "NBN Lite", but he's also completely ignorant about the real size, costs and schedule of any project touching connections to every premise in Australia.

Size Matters. "Getting to scale" is difficult and requires great skill, ability and experience.

This is why Google, Amazon and Apple have survived while hundreds of "wannbe" competitors have fallen by the way in the last 15 years: Execution at 'scale' is hard. Something Telstra knows and has warned of [slide 12&18] many times.

Turnbull and his advisers simply don't have the experience or ability to complete or control an FTTN project, let alone get it done on-time and on-budget. But worse, they don't even know they don't know.

It's the taxpayer that is going to pick-up the tab for Turnbull's inevitable failure and we will have to wear the decade or two wait for better Broadband. Australian Business Productivity, and hence Competitiveness, will suffer and we will get even further behind the rest of the world. The all-Fibre NBN is simply a catch-up, not an overtake.

If Turnbull's magical "Cost Benefit Analysis" doesn't uncover these drop-dead project risks and predictable schedule challenges, then we'll know it was just a predictable sham and smoke-screen. [My emphasis.]

The Turnbull Node Plan is based on the Copper Fairy coming in the night and magically transforming decades of neglect and decay into a bright, shining new network. Telstra knows this and will lead Turnbull a long and merry chase, extracting tens of billions in taxpayer dollars in the process.

http://stevej-on-nbn.blogspot.com.au/20 ... -will.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Two complete audits of the copper, done again just before cutting the Telstra copper in a node. Fucking madness. Copper is last century! And the $11Bn still has to be paid for remediating the pits and ducts (which #Fraudband will need as much as the real NBN does—can’t access how you going to audit, rerun, remediate etc?

[Rorschach]

Why do you keep ignoring people who try to engage you in real debate on real points?
Got a solution... totally ignore you.
You could of course try and address the reason this site exists and debate instead of preach and flood it with ALP propaganda.

[Jovial_Monk]

Again, no opposition to the points raised by people who have spent decades working for Telstra with the actual wires etc?

#Fraudband really is a disaster of an idea! Will in fact cost more to build than the NBN, can actually only achieve “up to” 25mbps and only in a few sections.

Given this, how is Turncoat (who actually believes in FTTH, not FTTN, and has consequently invested in the French and Spanish FTTH rollouts) going to extricate himself from this mess:

1. Do nothing, hold a few enquiries with carefully selected bestest buddies doing the enquiries (maybe hard to do with Productivity Commission enquiry) saying all too hard and just keep crapping on they will start rolling out “any time now.” Huge risks with this, esp at next election

2. Quietly keep FTTH rolling out, challenge Tone and when Leader switch to FTTH as preferred option—quite a comedown for Malcolm in the Muddle to have to make but has highest rewards for him.

3. Some cherry picking FTTN/H rollouts, making a national scheme more difficult and expensive

4. Try rolling out FTTN—oh boy, pass the popcorn as the idiot gets more and more bogged down as explained in my previous two posts. Suggest you read them and the blogs linked, will give you a good idea why FTTH is the only real option for Turncoat, for the nation—and is far cheaper than FTTN to boot!

What do you reckon? A huge majority want FTTH and want the NBN Co owned by the govt—Telstra’s greed, arrogance and incompetence really has turned a lot of people against it.