I'm loving this thread. It's bringing out the conceptions and the truth in many respects. So many misconceptions out in public land.
Australia is one of the most sparsely populated continents in the world. As a result, we have pioneered some of the best telco solutions that have been adopted by many other countries around the globe.
In most places, 50 km is a long way. In Australia, 500 km is pretty normal. Aussie comms knowledge is held in pretty high regard globally. There at least 10 companies that are at the forefront of design and manufacturing in Australia. The problem is, you've never heard of them.
Here's a secret, you have been able to get fibre to your home in Australia for at least 15 years. I've installed at least 30 installs for CEO's, web heads, private web servers for websites run from home, etc. etc. the only issue in the past was that the individual user paid for his connection ( ie. three blokes standing around while one bloke dug a ditch). The longest run we did for a private client was close to 60 km. Close to half a million, but he has made 10 times this figure since as a result.
The Government is now offering to install fibre to your house for free! FREE! Going to say it again, FREE! Yes I know that you are paying for it through your taxes ( so am I ) but the cost is massively reduced when the crew is in your street and everyone is getting it at the same time. It might cost $5000 to do one house in a street but if everyone in the street is getting it, it will reduce the cost to sub $1000 per house. Here's the deal with governments; they will spend all of our money regardless. I would rather they spend it on something I want than on some commie pinko, greenie bulll**** that I don't. There won't be any savings if they don't build the NBN, there will just be more cats eyes on the Hume Highway, or more speed cameras, or new boats for the Navy, or better services for the terminally unemployed, or arts funding for an obscure, dead European 18 th century interpretive dance funding grant.

Answering some questions.
Laurie: mobile phone towers don't go to an exchange. They may be built right on top but they all connect to distribution hubs before they hit the network. The voice/ data does travel through fibre and may go via an exchange but not through. Just how the pits and ducts are run. Having said that, there are exchanges and then there are exchanges.

Dindsale: yep, I agree, distance has always been a killer in Australia. There is little point in comparing us to tiny nation overseas. Korea works because the country is 700 km long and 90% of the country want to play Starcraft. But, it will only be more expensive next year and double the year after that.

Mark_australia: yes it is expensive. Looked at the pricing for Telstra NBN. $130 for UP TO 12mbs 500 gb plan chocked to 256 Kbps. What a crock, gouge the consumers. You can pay an extra $5 p/m for 25 Mbps or an extra $20 p/m for 100 Mbps. Like I'm going to pay $1200 bucks a year for some bloke to tap three keys on his computer. You can get 8 Mbps on crappy old adsl or 10 Mbps or faster on Adsl2 for half that. ( when every one else on my street jumped on to ADSL2, my ADSL connection rose from avg 2.5 Mbps to 7.2 Mbps, bloke next door was bitchin' that his new service was slower than his old. Yep I said smiling!)

Mathew: yep right as well. My 3G and 4G services work great- til school finishes, then 20,000 kids log on to face book and call of duty and the system grounds to a halt.
Google drops out ' cause it can't connect to a server..

In summary, the best time for the NBN is now. Bit like buying a house, when's the best time? As soon as you can!

I believe building the Darwin to Melbourne high speed mag lev rail line through the heart lands would be a better spend than the NBN.

THAT is what you call a "Nation Building Project".

It's all very well to do some 'Nation building' but how about maintaining what we have already!!!!!
.. Crap roads, hospitals, schools, power network, water system, rail etc.

FormulaNova said..

cisco said..

I believe building the Darwin to Melbourne high speed mag lev rail line through the heart lands would be a better spend than the NBN.

THAT is what you call a "Nation Building Project".

Why would you use a mag-lev train? DO you want it for freight or passengers? If for freight, why mag-lev?

If you want it for people, why? Do you want the boat people to get to Melbourne quicker?

My understanding is we already have a rail service between Darwin and the south, so why a new link? What is it going to give us that we can't already do?

It would be a freight line of course. The benefits are that it would reduce the turnaround of container ships coming to Australia from six weeks to six days. It would eliminate much of the shipping through the Great Barrier Reef. It would get most of the heavy trucks off the interstate highways.

Wasn't there talk once of building a freight line between the Pilbara iron ore mines and the Queensland coal mines then build a refinery/smelter at each end?

Instead of digging it up and shipping it out as raw materials cart iron ore east to the waiting coal and use the return journey to cart coal back to the waiting iron ore?

TheWolf said..

cisco said..
It would get most of the heavy trucks off the interstate highways.

You think the TWU would allow that?

Nah, never happen the Gov would miss out to much on fuel taxes, registration fees etc

Harrow said...
Lost count of the number of times they've tried to get a Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne fast train project going, the busiest route in Australia, so no hope of a Darwin to Melbourne.

Not just a fast train, but a very fast train.

Mark _australia said..
I repeat that the vast majority of industry will NOT make any more money, that is an enormous lie.

It's about creating a platform for new industries. Car makers aren't going to get much leverage off a the NBN, nor are coal mines.
Perhaps we should try to diversify away from these industries that we seem overly reliant on?

Mark _australia said..

Mathew that is my point.
The roads are full of potholes (can't afford to fix them) the train network is falling to bits (at least in in WA) so they are closing many lines which puts all the freight onto the roads (like it will increase trucks on some minor highways 10 fold) - they can't afford to maintain the rail lines apparently. But we CAN afford a massive NBN??!!
Phones are a bad anology as it was NEW. We have internet now, so to spend huge amounts to make it better is a different kettle of fish.
I repeat that the vast majority of industry will NOT make any more money, that is an enormous lie.

45 / 10 / 2 ~ $2.3 billion... that is < 2% of the health budget alone, ignoring health-inflation.

let me spell it out -> $2b will make a sniff of difference to the road system + health + trains... but it will spur growth in other areas.

Chris6791 said..

NBN is being rolled out in my area now, apparently it will go live in about six months or so. I was surfing my ISP and the NBN website last night. The plans seem quite reasonable and the physical connection is free I think but they don't guarantee it will be free for the life of the rollout. I suspect it is free in the early stages just to artificially inflate the connection statistics... Plus they will switch off the local copper network about 18 months after NBN goes live.

So what I get from that is, NBN is coming and you might as well get on board or get totally left behind.

No, as for connection cost, it is probably free in the early stages, as that's when they will have the ground dug up and be adding connections to things. The economies of scale with these sort of things is good, and it should be much cheaper to connect everyone in a street at the same time than individually.

Just the effort required in digging trenches for a new connection should be much less. When Telstra re-ran a copper cable for me recently, I was impressed with the way they did it, but if it was a few neighbours it wouldn't have been much more work. Just tunneling under my driveway took ages, and it would make more sense if they were running 50 cables instead of 1.

kiteboy dave said..

Chris6791 said..

NBN is being rolled out in my area now, apparently it will go live in about six months or so. I was surfing my ISP and the NBN website last night. The plans seem quite reasonable and the physical connection is free I think but they don't guarantee it will be free for the life of the rollout. I suspect it is free in the early stages just to artificially inflate the connection statistics... Plus they will switch off the local copper network about 18 months after NBN goes live.

So what I get from that is, NBN is coming and you might as well get on board or get totally left behind.

My take would be that it's free while Labor is in power, and they're expecting Libs to come in, at which point it will cost you up to $5,000 to run your own fibre to your street corner fridge cabinet.

I still don't understand the Coalitions idea. Are they going to keep the existing copper forever and run the data services across the same copper from the local cabinet, or are they going to run the voice services from the cabinet too?

It sounds like a bit of a cludge, but being a bit of a pessimist, if the Coalition are elected I hope they stick to their promise of providing some NBN even if the free version is a cut down version. I like the idea of being able to host stuff all around the country.

Chris6791 said..
I suspect it is free in the early stages just to artificially inflate the connection statistics... Plus they will switch off the local copper network about 18 months after NBN goes live.

It is free connection because your area was eligable for what was called National broadband guarantee. That guarantee was abandoned as unviable and the NBN was launched to take it's place. Areas that had been covered by the guarantee were given free connection instead of subsidised alternate delivery methods.

The real issue here Simondo has nothing to do with NBN or FTTN. It's to do with the crap Wi-Fi connection on your Iphone. I have turned mine off even inside the house. The standard 3G is much faster.

My wifi is a good speed, my PC and even Ipad are super fast on it. My Iphone however sucks. Even skype calls are more reliable and clearer inside the house on 3G.

Seems to be a known issue with Iphony 5.


discussions.apple.com/thread/4626029

cameron2156 said..


<great internet speed removed because it is lower than what the NBN will deliver>

this was speed i got on me 4g phone on sunny coast, kills my home internet for dead

As long as you are the only user, you will be fine! Go for it!

I can drive 250km/h on the freeway into the city.

Probably been mentioned already, Mitsubishi is already testing 6G wireless that supposedly will have the same speed as the NBN (1 gig).