[AusNOG] Gosford City Council and NBN RSP.

[Mark Delany]

On 30May14, Sam Silvester allegedly wrote:

> Realistically, the thing that locks most people into a single ISP and makes
> change difficult are lengthy contract terms and bundle deals - and having
> more ports available doesn't change that.

The other factor is switching uncertainty. Leastwise for ADSL a
consumer can never be sure how long the gap will be between losing the
old connection and gaining the new. Depends on whether the underlying
wholesaler changes, whether the ISPs are churn friendly, whether
you're switching between naked and not, whether you're retaining the
number associated with the line and more. There are certainly
anecdotal nightmares out there.

And we of course have no experience on switching uncertainty with HFC.

Switching should be as seamless and gap-less as it is for mobile
numbers; but I don't think it's close to that. The current sad state
of LNP also shows what can happen if providers aren't strongly
compelled to perform (I'm currently working a port that's taken over a
month thus far and we're still not there).

As others have said, you don't need physical separation to achieve it,
but there is something to be said for being able to have more than one
active provider at a time or at a minimum that switching uncertainty
isn't a barrier to consumer choice.


Mark.