Landmark Steps Forward For Australia's NBN

angry tapir writes "After two years of protracted negotiations Telstra, the Australian Federal Government and the NBN Co have come to definitive agreements on the structural separation of Telstra and the use of its network assets in Australia's 1Gbps National Broadband Network (NBN). Australia's second largest telco, Optus, has also reached an $800m agreement with the NBN Co for the migration of its hybrid coaxial cable (HFC) customers to the fibre-optic-based NBN."

Comments

Not 1Gbps

[spyder-implee]

100Mbps It's just capable of 1Gbps for later upgrade.

Re:Not 1Gbps

[snookums]

My guess it will be that outside the Capital Cities it will be 100Mbps shared between all connections... which will probably end up being slower that the current system of Telstra enabling an ADSL2+ Exchange with an 8MBps backhaul, and then selling dozens of 20Mbps connections to the houses connected to it.

Also... thousands of "remote" users currently on ADSL or ADSL2+ will be relegated to NBN Wireless

This is all complete nonsense. The initial spec for the NBN is 2.5 Gbps downstream per GPON (not more than 64 homes) scaling to 40 Gbps, nothing like "100 Mbps shared between all connections". This fiber will then connect your house back to one of 22 points of interconnect, where ISPs will have connectivity (or rent it from a backbone provider). If the ISPs choose to under-provision their non-capital PoPs, that's really no change from today, but there's no reason to believe an ISP would cripple themselves with a 100 Mbps back-haul.

Telstra will also be able to maintain their copper network in places not serviced by NBN fiber. Indeed, they are obliged to continue phone service to these customers for at least 10 years under Universal Service Obligation. so why not run ADSL over those wires too?

References:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1511009
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/broadband/national_broadband_network/nbn_policy_statements

Line quality

[Zuriel]

Even if it didn't actually go faster on paper, there's currently a lot of people on marginal infrastructure. Copper lines that were laid 20 years ago and have been slowly corroding ever since which are adequate for voice but were absolutely never intended for ADSL2+.

If you've been in a group in an online game with an Australian and he's randomly disconnected, we're sorry. A lot of us access the internet over a wet piece of string.

Re:Line quality

[dbIII]

Until about a year ago the copper phone line into my place was wrapped in lead and paper. Every time it rained heavily the net dropped out for a couple of days and the normal voice transmission on the phone was nearly unusable, and eventually last year it was completely dead for about a week before repair. I live less than 5 kilometres from the centre of a state capital - that's how crappy the Telstra network is.
The repaired line survived going under more than a metre of water for a few days so that's a LOT more reliable than dropping out every time it rains :)

Bye bye copper

[dan_barrett]

For those that don't understand the significance, Telstra own the "last mile" copper and HFC network in Australia (Optus own a small chunk of HFC too as mentioned above.) If you want wired internet access from anyone, you generally have to pay Telstra (directly or indirectly.) As you'd expect they've used their postion to unfairly advantage their own internet service, while delaying competitors from access to exchanges to install DSLAMS, gouging competitors for access to the copper network,etc.)

The deal means NBNCo can use Telstra's cable ducts, pits and poles to initially rollout fibre everywhere. it also means maintenance of Telstra's crappy and aging copper phone network will be handed to NBNco soon. Theoreticallly all the existing ISP's paying Telstra for access to the copper network will start paying NBNCo, instead, Because NBNCo are barred from offering retail internet services, in theory access to the network should be a level playing field.

Eventually they'll rip out the existing copper phone network, so we'll just have the optical cable.

My understanding is the NBNCo network will be a 'common carrier'; eg they provide the layer 1/2 network, any internet / cable TV / telephony / other data provider can buy access to the network and deliver internet / TV / telephony / data services over that network.
It's the same model we use for water and power in Australia, eg the power generation company doesn't own or maintain the wires in the street, and isn't responsible for connection to your house. NBNCo are supposed to operate at the same level, providing teh pipes/trucks only, if you will.

According to the pollies NBNCo can't filter the network it at the wholesale, common carrier level. We'll wait and see.

Adam Internet, Internode and others are touting 25 to 100 megabit connections, 100GB/month data at $60/month, which is significantly more expensive than the equivalent over ADSL/copper phone lines. You can buy these right now in areas that are connected (new suburbs that were prewired in South Australia, eg Lochiel Park, LightsView, etc. ) Prospect, Aldinga and other initial rollout sites in Australia will also be able to get fibre internet over this service shortly.

Re:Bye bye copper

[sonicmerlin]

I'd just like to point out the only reason you will have caps on your FTTH connection is because of the government's absurd pricing scheme that isn't used in any other wholesale network in the world. In addition to the usual $xx/(tier of speed) retail ISPs have to pay NBNCo (known as AVC, ex: $24/12mbit, $36/50 mbit, etc.), there is an additional "contention charge", called the connectivity virtual circuit (CVC). ISPs attempting to provision bandwidth to their customers will have to pay $20/mbit of actual throughput.

There are two points to consider here. One is that this charge is utterly unrelated to the cost or difficulty of transferring data on the new network. The FTTH network will be provisioned extremely well. Charging $20/mbit is ludicrous. Those prices are beyond inflated. Currently international transit data to Australia costs $40/mbit, and drops 50% every year on average. Worst of all is that NBNco's business plan foresees charges dropping only 50% after 10 years. Bandwidth costs around the world drop 35% *annually*.

The second point is that NBNCo is ostensibly using CVC charges to hasten payback on the network. However it absolutely doesn't need a CVC charge, and could instead simply increase each AVC tier by a few dollars/month. Simon Hackett, the founder and private owner of Internode, has relentlessly criticized the NBN over this issue (http://delimiter.com.au/2011/05/20/conroy-has-stuffed-up-nbn-pricing-says-hackett/).

Because of CVC, 90-95% of the FTTH's capacity will go unused. Remember, GPON allocates 2.4 gbit/s to each node of 32 users. FTTH networks like Verizon FIOS deliver virtually 1:1 uncontended bandwidth to their customers. XGPON (10 gbit/s) is already commercially available and NBNCo will no doubt adopt it in a few years. This will mean an even smaller % of the network's will be utilized. Make no mistake: if not for the absurd and unnecessary CVC charges everyone in Australia would have unlimited, uncapped accounts.

Actually, 1Gbps will be offered next year

[Namarrgon]

Sacrificing modpoints to say this:

...providing broadband services with initial speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (mbps), rising to 1 gigabit per second (gbps) in 2012, and with the capacity for further upgrades in the future...

Taken from NBNCo's Overview PDF.