[AusNOG] Screw the NBN, says TPG: We'll do our own FTTB

[Robert Hudson]

On 17 September 2013 21:31, Mark ZZZ Smith <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au>wrote:

>
> I think that is debatable. I've worked at a few of those ISPs over the
> last 5 years (with total broadband subscribers of around 250K), and I don't
> remember screaming and panic about the copper network being an "absolute
> mess". If the copper network is so bad, why are there literally millions of
> happy ADSL broadband customers? (
> http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/8153.0~December+2012~Chapter~Type+of+access+connection?OpenDocument
> )
>

Define "happy".


> I've also had ADSL since 2002 in four different properties, including one
> 50 meters from the exchange, and another where I was on the boundary of an
> exchange area, because the house next door was on a different one. In all
> those years I've only had one local loop failure, and that ended up being
> inside the roof of the house, not in the street.
>

I've worked in and around the ISP industry since the 33.6Kbps modem was a
new and exciting thing.

Over that time, there have been issues with the telecommunications
infrastructure - from RIMs and pair gain causing grief for dialup users who
were either unable to connect at all or only able to sustain slow speeds,
to more recent issues such as people who pay for ADSL2+ services that are
theortically capable of 24Mbps downstream and a few Mbps upstream, but are
lucky to get high single-digit Mbps downstream sync and downloads, and
that's often due to the poor condition of the copper network (granted, it's
not all, there's the simple tyranny of distance - but fibre fixes that :)).

Then there are "technology blockers" to even getting ADSL.  Or the people
who have connections that are loosely stable when conditions are perfect,
but as soon as the weather changes, their connections go to shit.  I
actually had a situation in my last home where I could tell that a storm
was coming because the atmospheric humidity would start to cause my ADSL
connection (which barely got to 6Mbps downstream) at the best of times
would start to flake out and sync would drop to 4Mbps or lower).

I'd argue the copper network is probably in better condition than it was 15
> years ago. 15 years ago, all it had to carry was voice calls. Now, it also
> carries millions of ADSL broadband services, and when a subscriber's local
> loop failed, or wasn't up to a reasonable standard, the loop was fixed or
> swapped, at their ISP's expense.
>

Is the reasonable standard" is still 1500Kbps?  Or are Telstra still
claiming that a line that can successfully cope with a fax class II
transmission (at 9600bps) without completely falling in a heap is
"acceptable" in terms of audio quality?

This is not to say it won't need to have better maintenance, or be improved
> to support the Liberal NBN, but I don't think it is approaching
> catastrophic failure, as pro- FTTH people like to imply, otherwise the
> Telstra would already be replacing it at their own expense.
>

Telstra would have replaced/repaired it if they thought they could get a
short term return on doing so, but they can't.  As a company driven by
shareholders, they need to provide return on investment in a short
timeframe, and a national telecommunications infrastructure is not
something that provides such returns on the kind of investment required to
maintain a national copper network.

And let's not forget Telstra's behaviour until recently - until at least a
few years ago it was not uncommon to have Telstra claiming that a telephone
line failed qualification for ADSL services when an ISP other than Bigpond
applied for access on behalf of a customer, but then pass the line when the
customer attempted connection through Bigpond.  Or charging hundreds of
dollars to have a phone number routed over different copper to try get
ADSL, but Bigpond magically being able to absorb those sorts of charges
(and I used this to my advantage at least twice to get ADSL connections
created, which were then switched back to the ISP other than Telstra under
threat of reporting the issue to the TIO).

Telstra do nothing that doesn't benefit their shareholders or appease the
lawmakers.  And frankly, nor should they.  They've admitted to having
grossly under-maintained the copper network because doing so was expensive
- they must be rubbing their hands together at the thought of losing the
maintenance costs AND getting $11b for their trouble...
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