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

[Mark ZZZ Smith]

>________________________________
> From: Robert Hudson <hudrob at gmail.com>
>To: Mark ZZZ Smith <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au> 
>Cc: Tim McCullagh <technical at halenet.com.au>; "ausnog at lists.ausnog.net" <ausnog at lists.ausnog.net> 
>Sent: Tuesday, 17 September 2013 9:45 PM
>Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Screw the NBN, says TPG: We'll do our own FTTB
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>On 17 September 2013 21:31, Mark ZZZ Smith <markzzzsmith at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
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>>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)
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>Define "happy".
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Lack of TIO complaints, and lack of wide spread news articles about the actual imminent and catastrophic failure of the copper network, and in the same articles the wide scale measures Telstra is going to take to replace it because if they don't, they'll fail their USO obligations.

Lets assume that *all* of the TIO complaints made about both Internet services and land line services were related to copper local loop faults, and impacted an Internet broadband service. According to the latest TIO annual report :

http://www.tio.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/107975/TIO-2012-Annual-Report.pdf


The total number of new complaints in 2012 related to Internet services was 30,856 and for land line services was 37,425, so a total of 68281 new complaints that we'll count as Internet broadband service complaints. 

As per that abs report above, at the end of 2012, there were 4 727 000 DSL services reported by ISPs with more than 1000 subscribers. 

So, 68281/4 727 000 is equal to a maximum of 1.4% of DSL services that were impacted by a fault that was not resolved the customers satisfaction by their ISP to the point where the customer complained to the TIO.

I don't think a TIO reportable fault rate of 1.4% indicates imminent and catastrophic failure of the copper network, or that, as per your assertion, "the "last-mile" in particular is an absolute mess". 

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