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NBN horror stories

A general warning on NBN horror stories and some things to think about.

The NBN network is active across Australia in many areas and businesses.

A host of hundreds of providers have access to the network and retail their value proposition to you the customer.
Offers, Features and prices vary because of this competitive environment however so do services and support.

My roll as a consultant and advisor in messaging and telephone costs across a broad spectrum of businesses. I certainly have some terrible stories with NBN connectivity.

we  have all  heard many terrible stories with NBN connectivity.

Stories that have cost a lot of money in IT support to get up and going. Furthermore  businesses being off the air for weeks at a time and to completely wrong information being provided.

You can Google countless stories of slow speeds well below that promised by the carriers and poor quality networks and support.

The Internet is still plagued by a couple of major disruptors.

To get the NBN rolling corners were cut and some of the old technology was retained to speed up the introduction of the new network.

The network is based around a Fibre Optic delivery going right to your home or business.

For expediency in some places they still use the copper network to the local Node or to your premises.

If you have copper in the link you may have problems.
In the bad old days, the distance from the exchange could affect your speed, well guess what? It still does.

Other areas may have either wireless or satellite connectivity.

How can we impact all this?

One of the great features of the NBN network is that it is designed as a high-speed network and it is just that.

It is also designed to carry both Voice and data traffic which becomes a juggling act to obtain the best service quality.
On the other hand, if you want speed you must pay for it.
It is really a user pays system, both speed and quantity come at a price. For a basic home service, a basic speed of about 12mbps (megabits per second) should run your emails and downloads plus a voice channel for phone calls.

You may get away with a nominal 50GB of data all at a nice low price.

I run a home office and come within these boundaries except when the Kids stay over and take the opportunity to download a bundle of whatever.

I had to upgrade to a 100 GB data to accommodate their input.

This is all complicated by the need to mix your Voice traffic with your data over the one channel so everyone competes for bandwidth.

In many businesses, it may be advisable to have one NBN channel just for your voice and another for data.

The compensating factor is that calls should be cheaper overall presenting a general saving.

Picking the right carrier.

Trusting the big guns to be the best may not be the premium pick.

Telstra has the name, Optus have a following and TPG have the price but search their support pages before leapfrogging into a mire.

Making a recommendation without knowing your business is fraught with danger and I certainly won’t stick my neck out.

You can, however, go to my cheat sheet to work up a profile of your business needs.

The author is Peter Hanley of Select consulting a pioneer in business communications 1800116116