[AusNOG] NBN Review shows FTTN blowout of 12bn, FTTH blowout of 29bn

[Paul Brooks]

On 16/12/2013 10:10 AM, Beeson, Ayden wrote:
> http://www.nbnco.com.au/about-us/media/news/strategic-review.html
>
> Check there, they talk about guaranteed wholesale speeds (even then, they say "should be able to") and there is a * on that section.
>
> The * section is at the bottom and basically gives the "we can't guarantee anything to end users due to this incomplete list of possible issues", copper condition is not even mentioned, though it'll be the largest contributor of faults....
The * at the bottom basically says all they will design the NBN to provide the
wholesale speeds to the RSPs, but the end-user experience might be affected by stuff
the ISP or end-user controls that NBN Co doesn't control. That is perfectly reasonable
and consistent with the current position - its the same on the current fibre-based
NBN. NBN Co has never guaranteed end-user experience, and can't.
Copper condition isn't mentioned as this is something that will be inside the NBN that
NBN Co *can* control, or work around, or remediate, and will be inside the NBN
responsibility to fix.

What is concerning is that the media people drafting this release appear to have
screwed up the translation from the Strategic Review document, and turned "access to
50 Mbps or more" into "up to 50 Mbps", etc - downplaying the outcome from the Review.
Near as I can tell, the words in the press release try to describe the stats in the
Strategic Review P98 "Premises with access to download speed by CY19", last column.
But those figures say "96% of premises gets 25 Mbps or more, 91% gets 50 Mbps or more,
65-75% get 100 Mbps (or more)", which is somewhat better than the "up to" in the press
release.

I'd like to think this is just sloppy conversions by marketing people who don't know
any better. Then we're both right - this media release says "up to" so no guarantees
for service speeds as you've highlighted, and the SR document itself does provide
evidence they'll have a minimum 25 Mbps threshold according to the new government
policy, as I indicated earlier.


>
> All mention if guaranteed minimum speed to end-users has been removed from all government policy talks, articles etc. that I have seen and been replaced with this same generic "wholesaler" speed promise.
>
> Its political speak for "we moved the goalposts, hopefully nobody notices cause it's in the fine print"
They moved the goalposts the moment "everyone in the fixed-line footprint gets access
to 100 Mbps, and the technology can provide 1000 Mbps" changed to "25 Mbps for
everyone, and 50 Mbps or more to 90% of lines in the fixed-line footprint". I think
most people noticed that one.

cheers,
    P.