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

[Mark Newton]

On 19/07/2013, at 1:34 AM, "Mark Delany" <g2x at juliet.emu.st> wrote:

>> I do like the idea proposed by Simon that in a lot of the cases the NBN gear
>> wouldn't be required and could be replaced by just the RSP router.
> 
> I see at least three problems with this idea.
> 
> Firstly, it's unclear that RSP routers would be a substantially
> cheaper.

You'd need half as many of them, though.  And the one you'd deploy 
wouldn't need custom software.

> Secondly, it's not clear whether these routers would also need custom
> s/w or h/w to connect into the NBN network.

Yeah it is. The -only- reason NBNCo ONTs have custom software is to 
support the wholesale model that says each port on the ONT has to be 
a virtual silo, independent from the others.

If you assume that a customer is only going to have one RSP, you end
up with ONTs that are exactly the same as everyone else on a GPON network
uses around the world.

> Thus competitive suppliers might be in, ahem, short supply.

http://all-rss.com/item-397941-gigabit-subscriber-d-link-gpon-ont-dpn-5402-dpn-r5402-dpn-r5402c-with-a-voip-gateway/#.UehfXGQY1lo

Picked at random from the second match on a google search:  GPON ONT
with VOIP ports and WiFi retailing for $145.  Buy in bulk with wholesale
discounts and you can probably source them for sub-$100.

> But most importantly, uniformity of product while rolling out to
> millions of naive customers (and technicians), at least for the first
> million or two has a lot of value to it. A lot of folk are still
> grumbling over various DSL routers and those manufacturers have been
> doing it for a decade now.

ISP supplies CPE as part of the service.  Customer never buys a router.
Problem solved.

(that's the model that works elsewhere)

The thing I can't get past is that there's no -reason- for the local loop
to be more expensive in Australia than it is elsewhere in the world.

We always handwave past the cost of comms in Australia by citing distance,
but that's only something that affects long-haul networks.  Building local
loops in an urban locale like Melbourne or Sydney should be no more expensive
than building them in an urban locale like Chicago or Dallas.  We're one of 
the most urbanized nations on earth, if anything our local loops should average
out to something cheaper than other countries, but for some reason we simply
assume that ours is going to cost more.  That's the way it's always been, 
right?

We should be a lot less accepting of that than we are.

The question to ask is, "How can Australia build what we want, as cheaply 
as possible?"

  - mark