NBN News May- 18

As NBN continues to grow with nearly 6.6 million premises ready for connection the competitors are marching in.

The latest is the launch of the blisteringly fast 5G mobile network. This will take a decade to install but many may get an early entry

Telstra is adamant it will not kill the wires-in-ground $84 billion National Broadband Network.

5G technology

Telstra is embracing 5G technology after launching a trial hotspot area on the Gold Coast.

They also are announcing plans to begin offering some 5G services by next year.

Reportedly the technology has been touted as a potential NBN-killer, even by the outgoing NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow.

This is because of its touted  20-gigabits-per-second speed.

That’s 20 times faster than the current mobile standard 4G and significantly quicker than the best NBN plans offering 100Mbps.

For those on a low data consumption this may be great but for the majority ( read Netflixers)  the fixed broadband will be necessary

Mr Riley, who now heads Telstra’s enterprise division, said substantially more data was consumed on the fixed network than on the mobile network.

“I think 5G will increase the number of wireless-only homes and businesses but I don’t think it could replace (the fixed network),” he said.

Mr Riley said data consumption was set to boom when technologies like 4K television and virtual reality applications become commonplace.

Early adopters of 5G technology

He said some of the earliest adopters of 5G technology were Australia’s miners, who were implementing it in autonomous vehicles.

5G as a backup or roaming devise will be in every pocket and business.

The regional areas that most need it will probably be the last to be upgraded so there is a long wait for many.

The changes to our Internet in such a short time are making life easier and more accessible to many as we adapt to a higher speed environment.

Peter Hanley

Wireless internet service providers (WISPs).

NBN news of competition models  WISPs is the new Buzz in country areas. They delivering fast speed internet to businesses and in some cases residential.

What is a WISP?

They offer faster bandwidths than available from the NBN and with a much more consistent connection. This is done by using fixed point-to-point and point-to-multipoint microwave technology in both apparatus licensed and class-licensed spectrum for their ‘last mile’ connectivity.

While controversy continues to rage around the NBN pricing model and claims that services are not delivering the bandwidths advertised – there are, in many areas of Australia, viable alternatives provided by wireless internet service providers (WISPs).

These businesses offer internet access services to businesses and in some cases consumers, that are at higher bandwidths than available from the NBN. They do this by using fixed point-to-point and point-to-multipoint microwave technology in both apparatus licensed and class-licensed spectrum for their ‘last mile’ connectivity.

It is unknown how many WISPs there are in Australia, not even their industry body, the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association of Australia (WISPAU).
The association’s president, Michael Parnell, says WISPAU has about 50 members. “It’s impossible to know how many operators there are, but conservatively we estimate there are about 200,000 WISP customers in total.”

NBN Co model

Where the NBN co-model is basically a domestic market product the WISP offering is designed around faster access for business.

It is quite clear that many country areas have been left out of the first flush of connections and that waiting is not a viable consideration.

Where 80% of businesses in Australia is a small business the NBN model suits the purpose of both speed and capacity.

Inner city larger businesses have a range of private offers to meet their requirements

For those in an area that comes under the range of a WISP, it is certainly worth a consideration.

That is based on current activity. NBN is around forever but I would remain somewhat sceptical about the smaller operators trying to make a good living. Tread your own path.

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NBN CO outage

Over the past days, I have experienced several NBN co outage situations, some that could have been avoided.

What carriers fail on NBN Co

It seems that a lot of carriers are faulting at different times and places.

I who sing the praises of NBN had my first fault this week, everything went off the air for about an hour.

Oh glory me what could I do, nothing she cried, internet down phones off ring the carrier.

Carrier says there are troubles in our area, tell me something I don’t know!

Reset the modem, still nothing but about an hour later whoopee back on the air.

Not so my friend around the corner, different carrier but off-air. He rang the carrier T and they said probably 48 hours

before it would be fixed. Not good enough, rang back at 36 hours and they said we told you 48 hours and we are not there yet. Reset your modem as a start. No effect

Stay with me here because this gets interesting.

Rang back again and they stated that it could be a week. Restart your modem.done. No effect.

Now, this guy works from home, son at college so they are running off a hot spot chewing into data like no tomorrow.

Fixing an NBN problem

Ring the T carrier again to complain. Usual,  guff went on until the carrier said you could try resetting the factory settings in the modem.

A tiny hole near the off button. Poke something sharp in there and wait for about 10 minutes.

Would you believe it fired up and has not missed a beat since? He was off-air for nearly a week because of poor information.

Yes they offered a small credit of a few dollars but nowhere near the damage of a week

How much can a carrier see into the NBN

The carrier can probably see a lot but the customer service can see nothing and their bit in life

is to get you off the phone.

Remember, if all else fails reset the modem.

Hosted phone system went down

Now you need to bribe me to tell you who but a prominent telephone hosting service also had an outage at the same time

albeit in a different state about 24 Hours no phones.

And there is more.

Calls to 1300 numbers went down in three states at about the same time. Now, are we beginning to see a pattern here?

Random outages blamed on the carriers but was it the dreaded NBN after all.

What to do in NBN failure

The good news is that a magic Fairy is in the wings. Your mobile hotspot can always fill in for data but,

and a big but it has always been expensive.

As of this month, some Mobile phone companies are now raising data to almost unlimited downloads, they will throttle you back if you abuse it but it will keep you going. It could be that important backup.

Conclusion

A couple of important life lessons in here that I hope someday will help someone.

Peter Hanley

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NBN news on social standing

I am an unashamed supporter of the NBN and as you troll my posts you will see my reasons.

We had to have a broadband network that was capable of speeds to meet world standards.
Having one such network instead of a myriad of smaller ones makes sense particularly
when you can replace an ancient copper voice network at the same time.

Growing our network socially

In a recent independent report, they looked at the social growth contributed to higher speed networks.
Now I will confess that the NBN we got was Gerry built to meets the needs and costs of a full
FTTC network. It has many constraints and probably some challenges but at least it is meeting the rollout schedule.

Most of us on NBN love it.

The report by Alphabeta was constructed in part from the 2016 Census. As a side, it is good to see it being put to some use. In the report, it concludes that:

• In NBN regions, it is estimated between 1,900 and 5,400 new businesses were created in 2017. This was five times the pace of regions without NBN. If this rate of growth continues, by the end of the rollout there will be between 30,000 and 80,000 additional new businesses as a result of the NBN network.
• The number of self-employed women in NBN regions grew at an average 2.3 percent every year, compared to just 0.1

Self-employed women growth

• 
• percent in non-NBN areas. That’s 20 times more likely than in non-NBN areas. If this trend continues, up to 52,000 additional Australian women will be self-employed by the end of the rollout, due again to the “NBN effect”.
• In the financial and professional services industry it is estimated that this industry alone has benefited from productivity gains worth around $260 million in 2017.
• The NBN generated an estimated $1.2 billion of additional economic activity in 2017. By the end of the rollout, the “NBN effect” is forecast to have helped create 31,000 additional jobs.
• 
• By the end of the rollout, this “NBN-effect” is predicted to have multiplied to $10.4 billion a year, and this effectively equates to a net, present value of $122 billion.

Who uses NBN

• People with NBN are twice as likely to enrol in online courses than their non-NBN counterparts.
• People with NBN are 1.3 times more likely to use internet-connected devices to improve their health and well-being. NBN users are almost a third more likely to use health devices like FitBits or smart watches.
• The “NBN effect” is estimated to have contributed about $90 million dollars in productivity gains to the health industry thus far.
• NBN users are 1.4 times more likely to socialize using the internet than non-NBN users.

This research that was reported,  commissioned and accepted by the NBN company, which is fully owned by the government – could be a game changer for the future of the NBN.

Furthermore, tThe ongoing criticism of the NBN comes, sometimes, from the media looking for an angle to report so that we see the one side of the issue. The bad news is faster and tastier than good news.

Finally, if you accept that just a small percentage of the reported benefits are reasonable it is a great storey.

1800116116

Peter Hanley

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NBN and higher speeds your news update

In prior posts, I have indicated a need to increase the average speed of all users on the NBN.

They, NBN, would like to see an average download speed of over 50 Mbps to meet with the world standard target for developed nations. (OECD)

Now halfway through their roll out they are doing something about it, or are they?

Wholesale pricing is controlled by NBN who sell capacity to the carriers.

The carriers, people like Telstra, Optus, II net etc, then add a margin to get to a retail rate or what you pay. It is a bit more technical than that but you get the idea. It is generally how business works you buy low and sell high.

There are individual rates for each band that people choose, 12.5-25-50 or 100 Mbps. This is a great deal because it all costs the same to NBN, they just take the foot off the throttle.

There are a couple of other costs passed on to us like the number of consumers to a selected band with and throttling the speed during peak times. This may even get worse as we move forward

NBN billing

When all this started NBN came up with a rate to bill the carriers but unfortunately, most consumers selected 25 Mbps or less so decreasing the income for both parties. That is not so good as they need a forecast return on this massive investment.

Recently NBN confronted the problem and dropped the rate to the carriers who in turn to the users and the result was about one million new users upgraded. Hence a better return.

What sticks in my claw is that the original deal with the early adopters, I understand, will remain as was. So they now have a two-tier deal of pricing.

Plus the old distance factor

Add to that the distance factor where many of us can’t achieve speeds anywhere near the top speed of 100 Mbps even if we wanted to. This is a limitation of the FTTN model.

That is until they retrofit to FTTC and like that is happening sometime soon.

Yes, they are rolling out FTTC but only in selected suburbs and only to those having the old HFC channels.

To be fair they have an obligation to connect as many users to NBN as they can and to do that as quickly as possible.

In some circumstances, this is not happening and creating genuine concern for many.

Where is NBN now?

NBN say that 6.5 million homes and businesses are ready for connection and that 3.7 million of them are connected and they are well on the way to 8 million by 2020. In my book that’s 20-32 months away.

It is interesting the difference between the NBN reports and the general public feedback on all of this. I hear the masses screaming every day with complaints. Many of these, to be fair, are billing complaints.

Technology is changing and we never know what is around the corner as they steam towards 2020 and a Utopian high-speed network of world standard.

Peter Hanley

the full NBN co report

FTTC Fibre to the curb Or sometimes ( Kerb)
FTTN Fibre to the node

HFC Hybrid Fibre coaxial

NBN Co-National broadband network in Australia

Mbps Megabits per second

OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

NBN news April 18. More on FTTC and more on speed.

Uptake of faster NBN

I have stated previously that the price perception of faster broadband would limit its growth.

Currently nearly 80% if customers are happy with 25 Mbps or less. I am in this group but would consider a change

if the incentive was good. Not that I am unhappy with my current speed but once you get used to it you always want to fly higher.

A recent discount trial by NBN saw nearly 1 million customers upgrade to higher speed a said Channel 7 report.

“1 million – The number of people upgraded to faster NBN internet speeds in the last four months, as orders for NBN wholesale speeds of 50Mbps or higher more than doubled on the back of NBN Co’s temporary discounted pricing.”

and from NBN

NBN Co’s Chief Customer Officer – Residential, Brad Whitcomb said:

“Our team continues to work closely with internet providers to deliver better broadband speeds for Australians connected to services over the nbn™ access network.

“Three months ago we had less than one in 15 users connected to our ‘sweet spot’ wholesale 50Mbps plans – today we have more than one in four signed-up to them for better value than what they would have previously been paying.

This is a massive leap of upgrade faith 6% to 25% in four months, someone got a set of steak knives as an incentive.

Why didn’t they ask me he said.

Further on the FTTC news.

A bit of Don Trumps fake news here I reckon. It was announced that from a news agency

“The Australian NBN Corporation stated that this week they will be implementing Fibre-To-The-Curb (curb) to over 400,000 homes. An extensive list of the locations hasn’t been released yet”
What they still don’t say is”

Unfortunately the changes that are proposed at the moment are only for areas that were previously marked to get the HFC (hybrid fibre coaxial) connection. The HFC would use the TV paid networks but has been paused since last year due to high fault rates.

Now that is great for those that have HFC and the service upgrade to them was suspended many months ago.

We, of the inner suburbs have to wait for this technology to catch up

I Love NBN

I am unashameably happy with the NBN, The main reason is that I have it, it works, does not drop out and of my paid speed of 25Mnps I regularly average + 23 Mbps on a WiFi connection in my building.

When I go back to a speed of 2-3 Mbps at a customer premises it drives me nearly mad coping with the delay.

Finally, on NBN

The complaints keep rolling in with some saying they are increasing and NBN saying they are decreasing.

It seems that billing and service inquiries are the big increase ( carrier problems) and not failure problems

Peter Hanley

1800116116

The press has been very quiet on any NBN news update of recent times.

First of all, I guess there are better things to talk about.

The recent release on NBN.

NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow said:

“At NBN we are pleased with the improvements seen from the additional work undertaken while sales have been paused on the HFC network. We expect to see an uplift in customer experience as a result of these improvements.

“We are also excited to announce we will be expanding FTTC to cover an additional 440,000 in areas where some long-copper FTTN and new HFC lead-ins were previously planned.

“The team remains at the forefront of technology developments and continues to innovate to bring the best network to all Australians, as quickly and affordably as possible.

“The flexibility of the multi-technology mix allows us to choose the right technology for each area and deliver the project on time and on budget.

“We remain confident of reaching our goal of completing the build and connecting eight million Australian premises by 2020.”

Upgrade to HFC service

NBN Co has also announced that it will begin a staged re-sale of wholesale HFC services to retailers from 27 April 2018.

NBN Co plans to initially release around 1000 premises in the nbn™ HFC access network footprint in Melbourne and Sydney. The company is planning to release around 38,000 HFC premises by the end of June in select areas across Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

This will be a welcome relief for those stuck on the old Optus or Fax network.
All new services were abandoned some months ago while they sorted out the problems,

I don’t think it is a final, let’s go solution yet, a more trial service to fault find. As it should be.

What I want to see on NBN

The FTTN ( Fibre to the node) network change was a stop-gap fill in to speed up the delivery of the NBN at a better price point.

We all understand that distance is a problem and hastening the introduction of long-haul copper links to FTTC is a good idea.

Those in these areas will struggle to get a basic speed let alone a high-speed network.

We wish them well.

Furthermore, we want the new technology to start washing over the original connections in a re-fit operation so high speed is everywhere.

While high speed is considered anything over 25Mbps the average we are aiming for to meet the OECD standards is close to 50 Mbps

Is NBN a good thing

I regularly get asked if they should upgrade to the NBN. This from friends, family and businesses.

My answer is that it may not be the best in the world but it sure beats the pants off the old ADSL Network.

As a result, take the first opportunity you can.

Conclusion

As I said in my opening, things have been quiet on the NBN complains in the press at least.

This is a good thing. Let them really get ahead in the national rollout.

You can read more from Peter Hanley at Fig-solutions.net  

Finally, we say stay ahead of NBN opportunities and benefit.

Peter Hanley

NBN is a real mess

The NBN network is not a mess, or even close to it. As Donald Trump would say “This is fake news”

The NBN is well on its way to meeting or beating the subscriber numbers and returning a significant income to the Australian Government.

Complaints on the NBN

Certainly, there are a lot of complaints about the NBN some founded and some not so.

many of the complaints revolve around not being able to be connected. A fair complaint but when you consider the size of the undertaking, it is only time.

Power outages are another in recent times. No power no phone service.

Many homeowners work on cordless phones. The same goes for power out phone out no change.

The Internet is down, and the power is out so unless you are on a laptop (not WIFI) the power is out.

In these days of cheap mobile phones, every household should have one. This takes the pain away from Power. Unless, of course, you forgot to charge it.

Those on The NBN

It surprises me that many comments that they don’t notice the increased speed when changing to the NBN.

My Home/office works on 25 MBPS download and it really is good.

I often visit customers’ premises and need to access a computer. That my friends are when you notice a difference.

going from 25 down to 2 is a painful experience.

I rang a client this week, we were trying to mirror a result on our computers as I was teaching a function. I would provide a login then we would both access the program at the same time, I kept saying are you there yet and her reply was just waiting, it is downloading. It was painful.

Voice on NBN

Many worry about voice quality over the internet. This probably goes back to the olden days when we were trying to squeeze voice over a very narrow pipe. The effect on Voice was sometimes quite noticeable and in fact pretty poor.

In the NBN arena, data will affect Voice but remember a voice channel is only a small percentage of total input.

I have not yet spoken to anyone with an audio problem.

if you do have a problem with voice quality because data to dominant simply increase your band with to the next level.

A small cost for a huge gain. With a business that has high voice traffic, you may consider separate NBN connections. one for Voice and one for Data. The cost to this size of business is minimal so it really is a valid option.

Changing to the NBN

Again a lot of information around this. Most cutovers are virtually seamless, particularly with domestic use.

There is no need for Technician input as many or most of us find it easy. with business and phone systems, it is a bit different but once in place fairly seamless.

Conclusion

The fear campaign around NBN is mostly built around a lack of supporting information. This plus listening to the winger of a few that place fear and doubt in your mind. As experienced as I am I was also hesitant to move due to perceived issues. Like anyone else, I was the nervous Nellie although completely unfounded.

Want to know more right here.

Peter Hanley