[AusNOG] NBNCo releases its response to industry consultation

[John Edwards]

On 25/03/2010, at 2:53 PM, lists wrote:

>  If you put it 
> on power poles then fine, but expect long delays when trucks trees and wind 
> bring it down as will happen.

Hi Tim,

Overhead cabling is intuitively more fragile than cable in ducts, but in reality the lead-in from the street is rarely the cause of faults in service.

Most of Adelaide's suburban ADSL2+ services share a backhaul network that is largely overhead, and in the 5 years it's been active I'm not aware that there's ever been a failure related to a physical cable fault. This may be attributable to SA's use of concrete stobie poles for power that are extremely resistant to collision. Failures have occurred far more often in switching software or ironically in the power to the equipment located at electrical substations.

Vehicles in Australia are limited to 4.3m in height - unless the guys doing the new installs are subjected to the same lack of training that has resulted in dodgy ceiling insulation around the country recently (not an impossible scenario given that some of these people are out looking for jobs right now..) it's going to be difficult for trucks to hit it.

Current copper overhead lead-ins are often reconnected when they succumb to gravity, resulting in physical defects in the line. A connectorised fibre lead-in is likely to be entirely replaced in a similar situation - increasing the cost for the fix, but providing a more reliable outcome over the life of the service.

John Edwards