[AusNOG] Long live the NBN. The NBN is dead?! [personal]

[Paul Brooks]

On 11/08/2010 10:43 AM, Tim McCullagh wrote:
>
>
> The issue that is being overlooked is that there have been some new 
> developments in DSL and cable technologies and just perhaps the 
> coalition has been talking to some carriers that have suggested they 
> they can get more than 12 Mbps out of existing infrastructure.   I 
> would suggest the 12 Mbps that the coalition are referring to is based 
> on some Wimax fixed wireless or LTE information they have been given 
> and or that relates to the so called sat speed under the current NBN 
> proposal which is to be deployed in regional areas. Without the 
> details of the coalition plan it is difficult to say what they are 
> proposing.  It is also difficult to make the assertions above as well.

Respectfully I would suggest you are wrong.

http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/tls389-transcripttechbriefing.pdf, 
Page 7
http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/download/document/tls385-technologybriefing.pdf, 
Pages 6 and 7

Both from the 16 November 2005 Telstra Technology Briefing.

This _is_ where the 12 Mbps figure that has been percolating through the 
industry for the past several years as a broadband benchmark comes from.


>
> It is worth pointing out that Telstra has 100Mbps on the cable network 
> in Melbourne, but the take up has been low and doesn't justify the 
> roll out in other cities.  Until such time as there is some well 
> researched analysis of customer demand and price curves then I can't 
> see any reason why the government via NBNco should overbuild 2 cable 
> networks in the capital cities and a functioning DSL network without 
> some real justification.   I don't call feeding consultants 
> justification, and most if not all the support I am seeing for NBN is 
> coming from such groups, I certainly am not seeing it from my customer 
> base, that is the ones that have to pay for it.
It is worth pointing out that the Telstra cable network, as is the Optus 
cable network, is each an infrastructure with only one service provider 
- Telstra Bigpond in your example. Customer demand for any speed is 
highly related to retail price, as you note - but Bigpond is hardly 
known as a 'value for money' provider, so I'm doubtful if the takeup 
rate of the higher speeds is representative of anything other than the 
high price, which is set in an environment of little or no competition 
at those offered speeds.

A more telling indicator that your point is correct - that customer 
demand is low for higher speeds when lower speeds are available - is the 
number of people still on 512k and 1.5 Mbps DSL circuits, when higher 
speed plans are available on DSL.


>
> The real test should be to ask those proposing NBN ftth whether they 
> sign the front of the cheque or the back.   We should discard all 
> those replies that sign the back due to conflict of interest, then we 
> will have a clear idea as to the real demand, and I would suggest the 
> numbers supporting NBN will be much lower.  That noisy minority always 
> seem to think they are or represent the majority

The real test, as you point out earlier,is to do a demand curve, after 
throwing out preconceived notions of what 100 Mbps might cost, or 
comparing to todays pricing which is more 'whatever the market might 
just bear'. Ten years ago, when we were mostly on permanantly connected 
56k dialup lines, asking what we might expect to pay for a Megabit 
service would have been similarly difficult to swallow. If whatever the 
future technology might be could get 100Mbps to 500 Mbps or even 10 Gbps 
links to your home for $40/month, and people thought $40/month was 
generally ok, then why not.


> It is a similar arguement to that of replacing your car with a new one 
> every year becasue it will go faster even though the need hasn't 
> changed you can still only drive at the speed limit which hasn't 
> changed.  We don't do this and our 2 3 or 4 year old cars all do the 
> same job.

Perhaps your need hasn't changed. Mine has, and over the next 10 - 30 
years I suspect it will change more. I no longer have a single PC shared 
by all in the household - I have several, each capable of saturating far 
more capacity than thye one I had 10 years ago, along with several 
people who all want to access network resources simultaneously. I'm 
currently finding sub-1 Mbps upstream speeds quite limiting - and 
economically and productively limiting - and others do too.

Its not about going faster, its about providing wider carriageways to 
carry more, possibly at the same speed. A better analogy is the roads 
system - having the national highway system as a collection of one-lane 
dirt roads would not be the optimal state for the nation. Investing in 
paving - and often re-aligning freeways to completely new paths to 
bypass old obstacles and - is something we ask governments to do everyday.

Paul.