NBN Connection

[Unicorn]

:laugh2: .... My NBN node is 36,000k away and then has to come back. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Muster

[Hercules]

I can't wait till Labor rips up all the FTTN cables and replaces them with FTTP. It's about the only thing that could persuade me to leave 4G mobile broadband. :winkextra:

[Fulvio]

I can't wait till Labor rips up all the FTTN cables and replaces them with FTTP.

Thus doubling the cost. Great money-saving plan by the economic disaster area that passes for a right-wing party, eh? Couldn't run a lemonade stand, let alone a country.

[JeffH]

Fibre to the node is turning out to be a rather poor model due to the "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link" syndrome. The weakest link being the existing, mostly ancient copper cables from the node to the premises.
Restricts speed and prone to faults which will cost as much for repair/replacement as doing it with modern technology in the first place.
The fault that killed my service was not a recent occurrence -a pillar full of severely corroded connections due to water ingress. Some years ago I started complaining about poor (and sometimes non-existent) service during and shortly after rain. Telstra would duly test the line a few days later -after time for it to dry out- and report no fault condition found. I gave up after a few attempts as I could not convince anyone they needed to test quickly. while the fault was still worst.
Wireless NBN seems to be the best option here but not available at my place. The demarcation line is down our street and I am on the FTTN side; houses opposite are on the Wireless side.

Maybe I should get a 4G smartphone and plug that into my computer for internet. I suspect that may not be a cheap alternative but have never checked the likely costs. Both telstra and Optus have new 4G towers in our town. Boy have they played havoc with TV receptions using, as they do, the now redundant TV band frequencies that any TV antenna more than about two years old is designed to receive. I should not complain about that as it has given me plenty of work.

[trout]

There is absolutely NO risk of the NBN cable ever getting out to our Little House on the Prairie So 4G it is for us :angel:
Instead of spending all this money on increasing the speed for all the City Slickers Maybe it would be better spent on increasing the coverage in the multitude of areas that have absolutely NO phone or internet connection in Australia :good:

[seedyrom]

100gb of 4G for $70 per month. No contract.
http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband?SID=con:mhome:tog:5:feb17:mbb:

[Hercules]

Wow! When I signed up for 4G two years, the best month-to-month plan I could find was 25GB for $90 with Vodafone. It felt like a total steal at the time, and the service has been fantastic, but after reading what you just said, I feel like I'm being ripped off. :dash1:

[trout]

We are with Telstra and we are definitely getting ripped off But when we travel to remote areas Telstra is King, The other providers don't have any coverage at most remote places.

[runway]

We are with Telstra and we are definitely getting ripped off But when we travel to remote areas Telstra is King, The other providers don't have any coverage at most remote places.

Telstra is only way to go for mobile phone coverage everywhere which is separate from NBN

[Fulvio]

Wow! When I signed up for 4G two years, the best month-to-month plan I could find was 25GB for $90 with Vodafone. It felt like a total steal at the time, and the service has been fantastic, but after reading what you just said, I feel like I'm being ripped off. :dash1:

Heh, not that many years ago, before I landed this $65 unlimited deal, I considered buying one of those 4G mobile routers that let you set up an instant network. The equivalent amount of data I then had for $79 came in at a cool $18,000/mth from the cheapest provider (Vodafone I think). And you only got two weeks to use it too.

Of course I passed. After giving them some instant feedback.

[Hercules]

Look what's in the AFR this morning (possible paywall):

http://www.afr.com/technology/web/nbn/nbn-complaints-were-getting-what-we-voted-for-20170720-gxfiy2

NBN complaints? We're getting what we voted for

By Paul Smith

It is probably of some surprise to Communications Minister Mitch Fifield that sentiment is suddenly turning so pointedly against the Coalition-flavoured national broadband network.

The Minister did the media rounds earlier this month to trumpet the fact that the plan to connect the nation to high speed broadband is half way through, arriving for his interviews with the air of a man that feels he is fulfilling his remit to the letter.

There are now about 5.7 million premises in Australia able to connect to the NBN, and about 2.4 million people have signed up, Mr Fifield said the network will be 75 per cent built by mid 2018, and will be finished by 2020. By the government's own narrow definition of success it is in clover, it promised to get the network built quicker than Labor, and it is ... but it is finally being made to realise that this is not enough.

Take a look at any of the barometers of our times – Twitter comments, Facebook musings or quaint old Google News – and they will show the Minister the uncomfortable reality that the natives are increasingly restless ... and they don't blame Labor.

All of a sudden you cannot turn around for stories about Australians dissatisfied with their broadband lot, with News Ltd newspapers now also piling on in a way that makes you wonder if they have installed Men In Black style memory erasing technology at its salubrious offices.

The Minister will be surprised mainly because he is simply doing and saying the same thing that the Coalition has been presenting (to generally good press reception) since it took office from the last Labor government.

The Minister has stuck rigidly to the line that the problem most Australians had with Labor's "gold-plated" fibre to the home plan was that it was taking too long.

Under the Coalition's cheaper fibre to the node plan, he maintains that Australians will be connected years faster and without the waste of money (cue party poppers.)

The problems is that now the previously ill-informed or disinterested public are seeing the NBN in their own streets instead of in headlines that they flick past, they aren't happy with what we have collectively signed up for.

Complaints can be split largely into three camps ... those that have been connected and are realising that the experience is largely similar or even worse than what they already had (when's the brave new future coming?!); those that have been connected and had it messed up by NBN, their internet service provider or both (can I have my old internet switched back on please?); and those that are still waiting for any sign that the NBN is coming to them and are feeling increasingly like they are stood in an endless queue at a food stand, where they can already see people ahead of them spitting the food in the bin.

There are many reasons why the NBN has been a troubled project for both political parties since its inception, and the main one is that it was a political football from day one, where every problem was seized upon as evidence of the folly of the idea.

From a practical perspective the issue has always been that it is simply a very big undertaking. There are a range of potential excuses for any individual problems that arise and the general public are largely (justifiably) ignorant to what is happening on the other side of their buffering computer and TV screen.

This is not a simple case of the Coalition picking the wrong technology to base the rollout on (although it did), this is a case of a hugely complex and time consuming initiative proving to be hugely complex and time consuming.

Those that leapt all over the Labor government for the problems with the rollout of its technically superior version of a broadband network are seeing that there are also problems with the compromised version of the NBN that they demanded we adopt.

NBN CEO Bill Morrow gets called all the names under the sun by Twitter warriors, but he is no fool. He is simply prosecuting a defined strategy pretty effectively.

Internet Service Providers are also being rightfully raked over the coals for misleading download speed advertising, but they are also generally trying to offer the fastest packages they can afford to, under the CVC price regime that NBN has to charge in order to make ends meet.

We are finally seeing the reality of a flawed policy being realised, with the frustrating thing being that there has been no shortage of people pointing out that it was flawed to begin with.

One of the country's most knowledgeable internet entrepreneurs Bevan Slattery has already told the government that, in order to get the job done properly, they must stop forcing NBN to make a commercial return. That way NBN could stop charging ISPs so much and make higher speeds more affordable.

However there is way too much political water under the bridge to make that a feasible move for either party, because whichever Treasurer or Finance Minister puts the NBN on the books will have big deficit numbers to explain to a population that doesn't understand enough not to simply blame the government of the day.

So we are stuck with the situation we have today ... great isn't it?

Of course plenty of the people who are now complaining voted for the government to be doing exactly what it is doing, and probably tut-tutted along as shock jocks spoke about Labor's "white elephant" NBN.

NBN's current stats apparently show that only one in ten installations go awry, but those kind of figures don't do anything to appease an under-whelmed and covetous nation, full of people that see first hand how much better things can be whenever they travel overseas.

The ironic thing is that Labor's initial NBN plan was electorally popular, so they could feasibly have sold it as a necessary infrastructure investment in the nation's future, without all the ROI nonsense to begin with ... its not like the promised national surplus arrived anyway.

Malcolm Turnbull could then have simply promised to sharpen up the rollout and taken credit for doing so.

We'd still have had problems and point scoring no doubt, but at least it would be a rocky road that was heading somewhere exciting.

Instead we are where we are, spending billions to upgrade things for some people, while keeping lots of us on an even keel and watching on as we continue to fall behind others elsewhere in the world.

It's a long way from the exciting prospect the NBN once seemed to be.

Paul Smith is the Financial Review's technology editor.

[JeffH]

there has been no shortage of people pointing out that it was flawed to begin with.

Now why does the name "Fulvio" spring into my mind?

[Fulvio]

there has been no shortage of people pointing out that it was flawed to begin with.

Now why does the name "Fulvio" spring into my mind?

Because I have been shouting about the false economics of this idiotic lobotomised 3rd-rate and doubly expensive disaster ever since the Libtards first floated the idea.

This was always going to be a disaster movie that didn't end well, but most people never bothered to think before voting, so here we are.

Historically, the right are terrible shepherds of the public good across the globe. Only their rich mates win, while everyone else gets poorer thanks to their political mantras and failed policies. The fact that half the voters are prepared to repeatedly swallow their swill is downright depressing and proof of the lack of sentient life forms in the electorate.

People get the leadership they deserve.

[JeffH]

People get the leadership they deserve.

False! Only the less than half that voted for them. The majority of the people just get stiffed by the system, regardless of who they voted for. And what "leadership" are you referring to -little evidence of that to be found?
Regardless many politicians vote in parliament against the wishes of a clear majority of their electorates that they purport to represent.

[interest]

Australia continues to fall behind most of the developed world when it comes to home broadband internet speeds. According to Akamai's latest State of the Internet Report, our internet connection speeds are now slower than 50 other nations, including the likes of Thailand, Estonia, Bulgaria and Kenya.
Here are the top 25 countries for average internet speeds, ranked from fastest to slowest:


1. South Korea: 26.1Mbps
 2. Norway: 23.6Mbps
 3. Sweden: 22.817.3Mbps
 4. Hong Kong: 21.9Mbps
 5. Switzerland: 21.23Mbps
 6. Denmark: 20.7Mbps
 7. Finland 20.6Mbps
 8. Singapore: 20.2Mbps
 9. Japan: 19.6Mbps
 10. Netherlands: 17.6Mbps
 11. Latvia: 17.2Mbps
 12. Czech Republic: 17.3Mbps
 13. United States: 17.2Mbps
 14. United Kingdom: 16.3Mbps
 15. Romania: 16.1Mbps
 16. Belgium: 15.9Mbps
 17. Spain: 15.4Mbps
 18. Ireland: 15.3Mbps
 19. Taiwan: 15.6Mbps
 20. Bulgaria: 15.6Mbps
 21. Kenya: 15.0Mbps
 22. Lithuanian: 14.6Mbps
 23. Canada: 14.9Mbps
 24. Hungary: 14.3Mbps
 25. Germany: 14.6Mbps

 51. Australia: 10.1Mbps