NBN news the Rabbit hole.

I was asked recently by my friend should they sign up to the NBN?

My Reply was to remind them of the fable Alice in Wonderland. Alice is enticed into the Rabbit hole and enters a whole new world. She does not do this quickly and has to be enticed if my memory serves me well

NBN is a bit like that, It carries so many unknowns and is a bit scary

 

Your Choice

The idea with our Broadband network is to have everyone use it. They are taking phone calls away from the copper network and replacing them on the NBN network so you share Data and Voice on the one network.

This means that if you don’t go to NBN you cannot have phone numbers for your home or business.the time for this is generally 18 months after it is available in your area.

Costing of this.

In the olden days last year an ADSL link would cost about $35. A telephone line about $28 and your phone calls at about $60 home use total about $123.

Internet speed was usually between 1.6 and 8 Mbps..
Now in these modern times, the above package costs less than $80 a month with speeds between 12 and 100 Mbps.
( iinet 25 Mbps plan unlimited downloads and phone calls. Others are cheaper)

 

If speed is important to you fix it

Many carriers now offer speed packages that better manage your speeds during busy periods. Now a normal home user it does not matter. A business or trader may want to pay a little extra to have a constant fast stream.

It is available from most carriers

The future

Technology is advancing to meet the telcos planned average per user at about 40 Mbps. This is currently under 20Mbps so we have a way to go.

NBN have reduced pricing to the resellers and both FFN and FTTC technologies have improved rapidly. The figure they want to achieve is in line with the developed countries actual.

You can not compare, say Singapore with Australia or other small nation countries because of distance and capacity.

Although saying that I believe within 5 years we will be able to buy speeds at an amazing 1000 Mbps. An early trial has achieved these levels.

 

Conclusion

The rabbit hole is not all that bad. But like any unknown venture, it puts fear into the heads of the wary.

My oft-heard comment is that most complaints come from those that can’t get NBN and that they are happy with

2 Mbps speed on the Internet. Give me a break I can’t think that slowly let alone work at it. I went to a customer recently that achieved the lower speed, I had to log in and do some changes to a procedure, After waiting for the computer to catch up I threw my hands in the air and said I will leave it until I get home. Impossible.

The trick is to pick a carrier that you can trust and will deliver.

Ask me how.

 

 

What’s  good on the NBN4 carries on our discussion on the benefits of the Broadband network.

Are there still more good things?

Are there still more NBN good things to go. Well, hell yea and one of the best.

Speed my friend, good old Download speed and upload if that is important.

Client tales.

Spoke to a country client today who is hesitant to go to NBN because of all the scary stories.

So, I guess you are happy where you are at I said. Let’s do a speed test whilst we are online
I said, try the Telstra one it is easy and quick.

When he said his download was good for the day I thought he was pretty lucky.

His download speed was 1.8Mbps he boasted to me, up from last week.
When I picked myself off the floor and the belly laughing stopped, I explained that was an
awful result and one that I could not work with.

I also rang my Daughter the other day an Optus user who stated her speed was Ok. So,
I said what is it and the rely was 19, no, that’s the ping time I said the next one, yes 2.2 Mbps
Oh, glory be so fast, Not.

Went to a client recently who had phone problems, I needed to log inter her spare computer to set up
a dashboard for her. I threw my hands in the air and shouted, I can’t work at this speed to her shock
she thought that the 2Mbps was quite good.

There are still so many homes and businesses suffering from third world internet.

What was internet speed?

Previously I had reasonable ADSL2 at between 6-8 Mbps, mostly at the higher figure. So, not a lot of problems.
Now at nearly 25 Mbps, I am working OK for a home office.

I will agree the carriers do mess with the speed and play games with channel loading and peak time deterioration but generally, they are now OK. I am here typing at 4.45 in the afternoon, kids are home from School, gamers are out and I still managed a 9-second ping, and 23Mbps upload and 4.5 Mbps download.

I pay for 25 Mbps download so I sit comfortably with that. Now, where are you at?  NBN speed tests.

What speed should you pay for and what can you use?

It is deemed that from 25 Mbps is considered a high-speed network and nearly 80% of connected Australians have chosen that speed. The push will be on to move users up the channel because the average speed affects our world ranking. The target is an average over 40Mbps so we need a lot of users above the line. It will get cheaper and I for one will move with the times.

The Internet use is currently increasing dramatically and we are just on the up curve of the scale.

The advent of items like Google home has added a single new dimension to so many households.
Do I have one? Yes, it was a present but just another device on my network.

Where are we heading with the NBN

It was not that long ago that the internet would drive just a single devise in a computer but add them up now.  Our house alone has two computers, two laptops, an I-pad, Google chrome plus every Grandkid has the pass to log in when they are here. Our mobiles swap to a local network when we are home and now consider the following

TV’s, fridges, alarms, printers, CCTV’s the list goes on and all in one single house.
Oh, and the big one is all the home telephone voice traffic to add another user.
If you have a gamer in the house you really have a need.

They are all going to eat your bandwidth and we will move with the demand to need higher capacity
as the world changes to a cloud environment.

Is the NBN a lousy model?

 

It is argued by some that our NBN is a lousy model and that it will not deliver what we need.
Is it better than ADSL, yes, by a country mile, is it world standard, not yet but some of that is growing pains and the capacity will come as they expand the base? It is the best available at this time yes it is and it does deliver what most of us need.

Fear not the NBN because it will deliver what you want now and bring more to the table in the future.

Peter Hanley

NBN1

NBN2
NBN3

 

What’s good on the NBN 3

 

First of all, we have discussed in the original post the benefit of number portability and in the next one, we looked at Faxing on the NBN and now with what’s good on the NBN3. Telephone call pricing.

Telephone call pricing

Gee, it was not that many years ago that a local telephone call was $0.20 and a National call about $0.15 minute. Then we had Mobile calls with a $0.50 flag fall and the same per minute. Very expensive. Oops, I forgot the line charge at $32.00 a month.

Now don’t get me wrong here what I want you to do is have a look at your phone bill and see how close you get to these amounts.
For every line probably an $80 to $100 line and call charges and more if you call international destinations.

When I started in this business a one minute call to the USA or UK would cost one dollar a minute and that was our offered super discount price. The same call today is around $0.02 a minute.
Now competition created this dramatic discount using a variety of world carriers but often with disastrous voice quality.

While we added services like Skype using VOIP networks and gradually the mobile carriers also came to the party reducing many prices.

The Telstra monopoly

At the same time, Telstra with a monopoly on telephone lines maintained line fees and local calls at a steady rate of INCREASE.

As a by the way but important to understand was in pre-NBN days your telephone line also carried data by splitting the line into two services both quite separate in that neither interfered with the other. The internet was slow but the voice traffic remained consistent.

Now. post-NBN the rules have changed. Your Internet service now carries your voice traffic and is the hero product at your location. That is that your voice quality will be compromised by congestion.

This may not be a problem with a reasonable NBN speed and low voice traffic. I mean here probably 2-3 simultaneous calls plus data. This is an essential element in your planning.

 

New call fees on NBN

 

Now connection to the NBN by SIP or internet providers for your telephone calls is priced to be competitive.
Local and National calls around $0.10 each and CTM at $0.18 minute. Extra lines at $11.00 a month

Furthermore, just like your mobile phone plans, the NBN carriers have capped monthly plans that include all calls. This can be as low as $34.95 a month for the two lines including all but International calls. Three lines and all calls for just over a hundred buck s a month has got to be a saving. BTW International call to the top 25 countries is at just cents per minute.

In conclusion and to cover the most important issues.

Voice is now shared with data so plan carefully to avoid problems.
Think bundled calls and save money.
Choose a reliable carrier
Seek reliable information and advise

Peter Hanley

       

 

 

 

 

Whats good on the NBN 2

Whats good on the NBN 2 is the second in the series of how to gain benefits and cost savings for your business.

First of all a reminder that number 1 was about Number Portability and the advantages that you can now move a number by suburb.

As a result of this small change, it can provide a huge gain in keeping your valuable asset, a phone number.

Today we look at the humble fax machine, a real cost centre that returns little and consumes a lot.

Cloud technology

As a result of Cloud technology, the fax has been moved off the bench and into your email.
Due to falling demand for faxes, many of you will simply opt to cancel the fax altogether and live without it. That is a decision taken by many with little effect on the business.
I will say that the presence of a Fax number on your business details does provide a dimension of care and choice for your customer, therefore consider this before you delete.

For the many that still require a fax service, you now have many choices. Choices that will increase productivity and decrease cost.

NBN and no choice

In addition, when you move to the NBN you have no choice, there is no fax service under a normal NBN connection.

So what is available and how does it work?

First of all Cloud services provide both in and out faxes, therefore, no change there.
Yes, you can change your old fax number to a cloud service. This is called porting the number. Any carrier will do this for you.

As a result, any inbound fax appears as an email on your normal account. File, forward or delete at the press of a button.

Sending a fax

In addition, with sending a fax, you simply address your email to a given fax address and add an attachment.
Consequently, every desk can have its own fax number or service.
Prices vary with services and some are better than others so chose carefully.

Here at Fig-solutionshttps://www.fig-solutions.net we advise on an appropriate service and a cost that will suit your budget or requirement.
One size does not fit all.

Author Peter Hanley

 

Number portability

What’s good on the NBN is the first of a series of articles that highlight some real benefits.

We hear daily about the problems but let’s hear about some of the good things.

I had a call the other day from a client with a problem. The problem was that he had to move his business to save money on large rent increases. Moving was not next door but several suburbs away.

The problem was the phone number he had. Since it had been purchased as a Golden number many years ago he wanted to transfer it to the new premises.

Furthermore in the olden days, like pre-NBN, this was only available on certain high priced lines like ISDN 10 line Primary rate. usually reserved for the bigger business. The rest of us were locked out.

The best available was to get a permanent diversion on the line and pay a line fee and call fees to a new number.

Number portability on NBN

Now my customer was moving to a new site with available NBN. We churned the line to NBN and set him up at the new site with the old number.
Number portability is easy with NBN either intercarrier or changing carriers the process is much the same.
A warning is issued to check on the time for this as some carriers will delay the churn so dot all your questions at day one so you understand what to expect.

The benefit to number portability.

In conclusion, retain the brand you have built over the years by having a consistent phone number.

Peter Hanley 1800116116

Home page

 

What’s good 2

Do NBN carriers overload the channels so you end up with
slower speeds? Your NBN congestion answered.

 

Many suppliers are starting to wish they had controlled channel stuffing in the past as ACCC looks into charging the number One Carrier Telstra plus Optus and certain to follow with many others.

The charges evidently relate to the promise of an achievable speed that could not be, or might not be available to consumers

It has long been a problem with ADSL when in Peak periods your speed slows to a crawl because of congestion.

To think the NBN might be different was really hoping for something that was realistically improbable.

To be clear the NBN contains three specific areas, upload and download speed which are linked and the volume of data or what you use.

The critical complaint generally is around download speed so we will consider that as the core component of this review.

Traffic

You have a Toll road or Highway to suburban road and each will only take so much traffic when you reach capacity things slow down.

No difference here.
You’re trying to push broadband Fibre capacity down copper and into local wiring, nothing could go wrong, or could it?

Who found out first?

Those out of the fixed network and relying on Satellite found this out very early on. The first adopters got great speeds and were very happy and praised the network for a glorious result. As time passes and more connect on the same channel the speed results diminish and users become less enthusiastic.

It is still better than the old system so they live with it.

Where are we happy?

Most of us at home are happy with speeds of anything over the 8 MBPS generally achieved over ADSL. Many have been well below this for a lifetime so the extra gain is a bonus. Given a regular 12 MBPS would be a godsend.

Then we step up to somewhere between the 12 and 25 MBPS ( ignoring 50 and 100 for the moment) result and experience a whole new world.

The problem was the early sales approach was to sell at the maximum result and expect the people to be happy with something less. Worked before why would it not again?

We can all do speed tests now, simply log in and type speed test and away you go. Only 23.5 MBPS and you promised me 25 what are you going to do about it?

As we move to the NBN other problems will diminish your capacity and chew up the bandwidth.

In the olden days, pre-NBN, data was shared with your voice line. Now post NBN voice is shared with the data capacity and it reduces the channel capacity.

So when you are only achieving a low rate of Data it may be in part the fault of Voice.

The ACCC presumes the carriers load the channels to save money and this is the primary cause of the problem, Nothing wrong with the NBN move on nothing to see here.

With the structure of the redesigned Broadband network, we must live with a variety of connection methods. ( forgetting Backhaul and other techie bits)

Fibre to the Node, Fibre to the curb, Coaxial, Satellite.

Distance is a problem.

Because Fibre does not arrive at your premises, rather to a Node or the curb you have a distance problem. As an example, if the Node is within a distance of 400 meters 100 MBPS is arguably available but take that to 800 meters and the very best available would be 50 MBPS.

Distance is a problem and until you get Fibre to the door it always will be.

We have not yet considered internal situations, your cabling, your modem even your computer as a factor to inhibit speed.

The basic NBN system is capable of delivering a usable speed of up to 100 MBPS over Fibre.

You will always have a problem with any copper connection.

The problems with Distance won’t go away.
Possible problems with congestion by carriers will make a difference.

What about Voice

Your voice traffic will take preference to data
Plus problems with Internal cabling and hardware.

So how did the marketing Gurus get it so wrong?

Telephone carriers both fixed and mobile have long been pursued over false and misleading promises and the need to get it right. They have to lay out every charge in the Terms and conditions and even tell you how much you will spend during the life of a contract.

They have known over many years the vagaries of speed with ADSL and that it was only a best available solution.

Did they just take the early NBN model as the ground rules and forget to change with NBN 2.

The carriers give in.

Telstra and Optus have rolled over and are offering to compensate the early users and as I stated before others will follow suit.

They may have learnt their lesson now but were they really that careless before.

More importantly, have they changed? I think not.

Just this week I called a carrier to be advised that I would certainly achieve the speed I wanted and that was a sales guy somewhere in a call centre and coming from a very reliable company.

I work with a carrier that recognizes the problem and confronts the issue upfront. You want to pay less to achieve less that’s fine, you want middle ground that is better you want maximum it comes at a cost.

That is spread across all the speeds of 12, 25, 50 or 100 MBPS. The offer is still based on best effort and only on what they control, channel congestion.

User pays.

This is also the fundamental premise of the NBN being a user pays basis but only on what is possible.

You cannot manage the input limitations that exist you can only live within the confines of your location.

If you demand speeds above this there are other ways to achieve it naturally at a cost.

A model for the masses.

The NBN is a model for the masses and designed to achieve a move away from a failing copper network. Maintenance would have driven prices to a new level trying to band-aid the network.

The NBN is, however, driving prices down with new opportunities and generally delivering above average internet speeds with a bonus of consumer choice.

Telephone call bills have come down by massive amounts compared to the original fixed line charges so we are achieving real gains in both speed and cost.

Ask Questions

When you are buying NBN services ask the questions and use a common sense approach. If it is cheap there is probably a reason.

If it is at home and a 12.5 MBPS seems to be the deal don’t pay for what you don’t want.

The carriers can tell you most of the input components to make your own value judgment.

If you are half a Kl from a node you will not achieve top speed.

Every Voice channel will eat up nearly one megabit second so take that into consideration.

Hardware is also critical so your $50 modem might not achieve what a more expensive one can.

As for carrier congestion, we can only rely on the arbitrators to keep the bastards honest.

NBN questions answered

Peter Hanley

1800 116 116

Telstra NBN call forward codes vary with the type of service that you have with Telstra,

The Telstra NBN Call forward codes

All carriers have different set ups to move your calls where you want.

The strangest is with Telstra Digital business, a multi- line business service.

In the past, we could have both a line hunt service where your call goes through from line 1 to 2 etc when the lines are busy and call forwarding to a message service or even a mobile phone.

Not anymore, you can only choose one or the other to work on your service, or can you?

I have spent a long time with Telstra NBN service to find a way around the problem because many of my messaging clients need a solution. Others just want to go to a mobile after hours or even to a voice mail service.

So, what is the solution?

First up you need to change from line hunt to call forwarding. This can be done by calling Telstra or logging into your dashboard and doing the changes yourself.

I will make this simple for you if line 1 is busy forward call to line 2  if line 2 is busy to line three and so on through all the lines. Simple line hunt. ( your plan will most likely include free local calls but you may wish to check this).

The important part is no answer and what we do then.

Line 1 or your listed access line is the main one. This will be the first line called in busy times and or after hours so we work out what to do with it. On no answer forward to a message service or mobile phone or another phone number anywhere.

Now do the same with lines 2/3 etc.

On the last line number in the group, we also forward busy calls to our chosen access as well as no answer calls.

Now go to Telstra accounting and get Line hunt access fee removed
because it is not needed any more a saving of near $10 a month.

Again, Line 1 on busy to line 2, line 2 to line 3 etc
Line 1-2-3 etc on no answer to your selected location.
Last line both no answer and busy to a selected location.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Authors note; I run a message service for business under the banner Verdi business messaging and use this procedure regularly for our customers. When it is too busy, or out of hours you should consider what to do with your messages. We would love to help

Peter Hanley