[AusNOG] Simon Hackett's presentation from Comms Day yesterday - NBN fibre on copper prices

[ausnog at greig.net.au]

Couple of not very well thought out thoughts about the presentation.

The presentation starts off with a very scary graph and a premise. The 
graph shows that the NBN prices will go up and up and the current ADSL2+ 
price will remain fixed. The premise is that up until now, 
communications prices have always come down. Now, this is a sales 
tactic; and that's exactly what this is, a sales presentation, he is 
selling an idea. Tell a scary story, then come in with the wonderful 
solution. But before we even look at the solution, is the scary story 
even true.

Well, first, let’s look at the premise, prices have always gone down. 
Really? Sure, I remember paying $6/hour for Internet access and that did 
come down, but I recall for a long time paying much less than $30/month 
for Internet access and that has gone up and up over the past decade, 
the same with my other communications like mobile phones. Is the idea 
that communications prices have always come down really true? Not per 
Mbps, but per consumer?

Now the graph it's self, honestly I couldn't be bothered calculating 
the NBN line for myself because the ADSL2+ line to me just seems 
unbelievable. In 2040, the wholesale cost of a line will be exactly the 
same as today? Pure inflation at an average rate of 4.4% (The average 
rate from 1980-2010) should mean that today’s $20 will be $72.94 in 
2040. All of a sudden that super scary story starts sounding a lot more 
reasonable and we are in less need to be sold a solution. Funny that.

Then we have the comments about NBN charging for them doing nothing. 
How so? There are bottlenecks in the network. This isn't dark fibre, 
this is a GPON network and an aggregation network. Greater bandwidth 
comes at greater expense to NBN. What’s funny is at this point, he's 
talking about wanting less interference of his data flows by NBN, and 
then later in the presentation is calling for MORE aggregation by 
reducing the number of POIs. You can’t have it both ways.

Not needing PSTN? No need for battery backup? We can just use best 
effort VoIP? The case of Sam Bolding is forgotten so quickly. There are 
people out there that require phones as a matter of life and death. Many 
of the existing PSTN-like providers make you sign wavers ensuring you 
understand that their service IS NOT a Standard Telephone Service 
because they cannot provide the availability required for people who 
need it. Let’s just put the responsibility for a vital service in the 
hands of a non-tech savvy elderly person to ensure they can get an 
ambulance when they are in the middle of a medical emergency.

He describes himself as a wise old bird of the industry. What industry? 
The telecommunications industry or the Internet industry, in my mind, 
they are two different things. One is open and free, has been very 
innovative, but can also happily ignore many of the problems faced by 
the telecommunications industry which by necessity has required heavy 
regulation. I don't think it's wise to use the same approach building a 
telecommunications network as building parts of the Internet.

Just my thoughts.

Glen

On 18.07.2013 10:45, George Fong wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> If you haven't already seen it, here's a link to Simon's thought
> provoking and challenging presentation at Comms Day. Is NBNCo doing 
> it
> too hard, too complex and too expensive?
>
> http://simonhackett.com/2013/07/17/nbn-fibre-on-a-copper-budget/
>
> Cheers
> g.
>
> --
>  Doing Dry July again! https://au.dryjuly.com/profile/georgefong [1]
>
>  Just remember, wherever you go .... there you are.