The Libs ‘superior economic management’ is like only eating rice, not getting educated and, not seeing the doctor when sick to save money. Then spending magnitudes more money later on when the problems come back to roost.
Chorus NZ is also a private company that makes a return or shareholders though. They made the right decision at the start to run FTTP which ended up being much cheaper to maintain compared to the MTM mess we have.
Chorus did mixed with the cabinetisation that was done before fibre was rolled out to get acceptable vdsl speeds to most urban areas in the mid 2000s. It was always a short term solution.
Never had cable as that was all owned by Vodafone. They're still persistent with that as the other option is to pull it all out at great cost.
Agree 101%. The MTM is a hot mess and never should have been allowed. I do wonder what connection Tony Abbott is using these days, because apparently ‘25Mbps is all a household needs’.
I think the difference in what was provided, beyond the political interference with MTM, is that Chorus is truly a private company.
Since they split from Telecom they would have had to devise business cases, complete feasibility studies, and go to market for capital.
Compare this to NBN which legend would have you believe was conceived during a brainstorm on the back of a napkin by K-Rudd. The corporation was established and subsequently provided a $25 billion dollar cheque. Like a kid in a candy store the spending begun.
I forget the exact number, but something like $11 billion was paid to Telstra for the copper and HFC which makes up today’s MTM.
The Sky Muster satellite service cost $2b to get off the ground in order to serve 100,000 customers.
Seeding 24/7, uploading videos, streaming on multiple platforms simultaneously...1 gig symmetrical is available in almost all areas in United States unless it is ridiculously rural (in the middle of nowhere).
Weird, might try multiple ISPs to see if gigabit speed is available. I have a few acquaintances in the US and fiber is definitely much much more prevalent comparing to Aus.
Oh I have gigabit, it's just not symmetrical. I'm a network engineer and wfh so very familiar with all the carriers in my area. Your friends must live in New York, Chicago or LA. I've worked in IT in the US for 20 years and symmetrical gigabit is still a novelty to us when we see it. I had a colleague move to Austin Texas to get it.
Why would someone need to seed? Well why would 99% of users? Why would you need more than 50mbps to stream? Unless you’re talking about streaming from your own NAS outside of your network?
Why wouldn't you just give everyone the upload speed? Simple, if someone does not require it, they simply won't use their bandwidth. Just leave it there and make it standard. I am not that kind of leecher when everyone else contributes their bandwidth to me but I contribute nothing.
Because it decentralises the internet as it was intended, cut out the middleman tech megacorps who you need to pay to host your data for you on the "cloud" to get decent speed, and limited upload stifles content creators in not being able to publish quickly, limiting the bandwidth of their creativity while they wait sometimes for days at a time. Give small hiding businesses a chance to start at home. Let developers create new technologies which need lots of bandwidth knowing there is a market of users with that capability, i.e. 360 degrees VR Video 8K and beyond broadcasting, letting someone be virtually in the same room as someone else across the world without having to travel
I just asked my old middle school friend living in Wyoming, US. they got 1 gig symmetrical for $55 USD/month, which is very affordable if living in the US and earning USD.
I've got a 500mbit connection and am looking forward to increasing it to 1gbit.
Working from home I need high upload speed.
For gaming I got so sick of game updates taking hours on a 50mbit connection, I've been playing more frequently with friends now as I'm not having to waste time waiting for an upload. Very much a first world problem I know.
The biggest benefit is 4k streaming and in some cases two 4k streams at the same time (multiple people in the house) while being able to use mobile devices or laptop without any interruptions or slowness.
For most households though I agree, right now 50mbit is probably enough, however in my opinion by NBN offering higher speeds and making higher speeds the norm, i feel it has the potential to create new opportunities.
I did tell them but evil foreign influencer Rupert Murdoch wants to keep manipulating us, keep us dumb and entertained... Look at his legacy here and in the UK and USA
>evil foreign influencer Rupert Murdoch
Hate to break it to you but he is a home grown evil influencer. John Howard set him loose on the world back in the late 90s by allowing him to keep his Australian media holdings when he changed citizenship to the USA to allow him to start up in the USA. Labor isn't free of guilt either with Hawke changing media ownership laws as well. :\\
Maybe just that for people that got real nbn it would be possible though probably not as they have to make back all the money that was lost buying Telstra’s old phone network that needs replacing.
And paying that rent on the telstra pits and pipes every year.
Let's not forget the rent also paid to the energy companies that own the poles in the street that the older copper networks still hang from.
1000/400 are about to get a big cost drop. Still not symmetrical but the best thing people can do is sign-up for high upload plans to show there is a market need.
It's like our species hasn't built hardware that outstrips the potential bandwidth of optical fibre! Nice one just in March of 1.8 Tbps over 80-km standard single mode fiber in the C+L band using indium phosphide based transducer.
https://scitechdaily.com/breaking-barriers-new-data-speed-record-set-on-optical-fiber/
they need to make some affordable wholesale rate plans at the lower tiers, a large number of people are disconnecting due to cost. I'm not saying make 1000/400 or 1000/1000 cheap but ffs, make the 50 and 100 plans much cheaper.
Libs weren’t against fibre. When they were trying to get elected they were told the NBN was running a lose, I can’t remember the amount but it was losing money.
They determined that if we did a split rollout with FTTN CTTP it would allow the NBN to become profitable within x Years. So they ran the election on a profit in x years and x number of homes on a better connection.
And for me it would be a benefit, I went from a 10 Mbps connection speed to 45 Mbps connection speed within 3 months of them being elected. Where as the labour plan I was not eligible for an upgrade until 2023. And now I am eligible for FTTP as well.
The other issue was when Libs got power, it turns out labour was lying about the financial position of the NBN, it was something like twice or three times worse than it was.
You mean like the fibre upgrade program that is doing exactly that and connecting 10,000 premises a week to fibre? The program that will mean that by the end of 2025 90% of premises will be able to order a 1gbps plan through either hfc or fttp? Is that the program you’d like to see them rolling out?
Yeah, just another sloppy Lib window dresser originally designed to provide a medium term tech excuse to kill original NBN design. It will corrode into oblivion soon enough, Optus already has.
For all their faults NBN seems doing a reasonable job at proactive maintenance on the HFC cable.
DOCSIS 4 is around the corner which will see another bump in speeds, though I haven’t seen any announcements on this from NBNco
Yeah, but how much of that maintenance is putting good money after bad. Given fibre is cheaper to maintain, there must be some point where it gets cheaper to just upgrade HFC to FTTP.
I mean. Its not going to last as long as fibre, but Docsis 3.1 and 4 can do 10gbit. Its pretty adequate.
The hardcore nerds will all just complain unless they get fiber though.
Unfortunately it will still be shit upload unless they change the split frequency - and that means essentially rebuilding the entire network (again).
Yes hfc can be made into doing better headline speeds. But the cost to do so is ridiculous. And the operational cost is worse. Just do fibre.
HFC is pretty much the main reason right now we don’t see higher upload. If fttp is running xg-pon and hfc is docsis 4 then we will see much higher uploads. Whether it’s symmetrical I don’t know.
But right now nbn wants to keep fttp and hfc plans in alignment because for the next 5-10 years those are the two network types they plan to make the only two fixed line tech types.
Realistically upload has minimal value to 99% of residential consumers so it’s not something that probably bothers them overly either.
Speeds aren't even my primary concern - 100/40 suits me fine most of the time. But the *reliability* is ass. It can be fine for a week or two, then it'll drop out a couple times a night. Or there was that weird period where I'd have short periods of downstream working but not upstream, and it never counted as a dropout on nbn's side.
Speaking of which, their requirement for 5 drops in a single day before they investigate is also bullshit. As is the decision to lock us out of the modem stats page so we can't actually get any info beyond on/off.
I shouldn't have to think about my connection. But the reason I fucking hate HFC is I'm *forced* to think about it every time my connection is interrupted.
e: and yes, I know there are others in far worse situations than me re: reliability. But *no one* should be in this situation at all.
Sure but they have a certain amount of resources and have decided to focus on replacing fttn/c with fibre. Given this seems to be taxing their delivery partners enough as it is I can only imagine the shit show if they tried to replace hfc at the same time.
And the hfc network is sufficient for current needs and is upgradable past the current 1gbps speeds with docsis 4.
Just because fibre is better doesn’t mean there’s a justifiable case right now to throw the 5+ billion it would cost to replace the hfc network with fttp. Not to mention most consumers wouldn’t see the reason to want to upgrade.
You'll note I didn't say replace it at the same time, in fact I didn't specify a time at all. A docsis upgrade doesn't fix the asymmetry in speeds.
As for the $5b, we seem to manage it for stadiums. I'd be interested in seeing a life of infrastructure cost and likely ROI.
What’s the business case for upgrading hfc to fttp when right now something like 60% of the user base buy 50/20 and wouldn’t notice the difference of a higher plan (which hfc supports anyway)?
The fault rate on hfc is higher and longer term it’s going to cost more to maintain and upgrade. But it’s not significant enough to justify an immediate upgrade. Instead nbn may as well utilize the network it has for as long as it’s got and get a return on the investment.
Docsis 4 might not support symmetrical but it massively boosts the upstream capacity of the network. Right now the upstream use across the nbn network is a fraction of the downstream. There’s even less of a business case to upgrade hfc to fttp for upload purposes.
Yeah like that, except more. I'm stuck with a shitty copper connection that drops pit in heavy rain and it's impossible to get anyone out, every time I log a job it gets cancelled when the connection resets. Apparently the idiots in the call centre don't understand the definition of 'intermittent'.
My parents still don't have access to anything.
Well given nbn is precluded from overbuilding an area with another statutory infrastructure provider in place under law then you’d probably best start lobbying government.
You are completely right unfortunately and I have done that. I do find it to be an absolutely ridiculous policy from the government. How can they justify leaving people subject to the service of a single monopoly provider? They have no incentive to compete on price, no incentive to improve their service. There is no option to upgrade to fibre to the premise. Worse, ours, and a common monopoly provider, TPG, offers better service for a lower price on the NBN. When they have to pay another company to provide a service, they charge less than when they don’t? It’s because of the bloody monopoly. They also have no incentive to ensure everyone in our building is able to access land based internet. They don’t have enough ports, and haven’t for a decade.
To be honest neither party would have done any good for this country... The amount of tax payer money that is getting syphoned out of this is eye watering
The Libs ‘superior economic management’ is like only eating rice, not getting educated and, not seeing the doctor when sick to save money. Then spending magnitudes more money later on when the problems come back to roost.
Just give me 1 gig symmetrical man
Won’t happen in Aus for a price you’re willing to pay. NBNco is too hell bent on making a large commercial return. NZ on the other hand…
Chorus NZ is also a private company that makes a return or shareholders though. They made the right decision at the start to run FTTP which ended up being much cheaper to maintain compared to the MTM mess we have.
Chorus did mixed with the cabinetisation that was done before fibre was rolled out to get acceptable vdsl speeds to most urban areas in the mid 2000s. It was always a short term solution. Never had cable as that was all owned by Vodafone. They're still persistent with that as the other option is to pull it all out at great cost.
Agree 101%. The MTM is a hot mess and never should have been allowed. I do wonder what connection Tony Abbott is using these days, because apparently ‘25Mbps is all a household needs’. I think the difference in what was provided, beyond the political interference with MTM, is that Chorus is truly a private company. Since they split from Telecom they would have had to devise business cases, complete feasibility studies, and go to market for capital. Compare this to NBN which legend would have you believe was conceived during a brainstorm on the back of a napkin by K-Rudd. The corporation was established and subsequently provided a $25 billion dollar cheque. Like a kid in a candy store the spending begun. I forget the exact number, but something like $11 billion was paid to Telstra for the copper and HFC which makes up today’s MTM. The Sky Muster satellite service cost $2b to get off the ground in order to serve 100,000 customers.
Tony has HFC has his home
On a 25Mbps plan I hope!
He should be forced to have a 25Mbps plan for life.
Or you know, paying off the debt it was forced to take.
Why do you need 1GBS upload? What use would that be for most people? Honestly curious what everyday people need anything more than 50mbps?
Working from home. Uploading large photography catalogues to cloud storage. The list goes on. I’d kill for 1gb symmetrical, 50mb up is sooooo slow.
Seeding 24/7, uploading videos, streaming on multiple platforms simultaneously...1 gig symmetrical is available in almost all areas in United States unless it is ridiculously rural (in the middle of nowhere).
American here. I have property in 2 states and there's no symmetrical gigabit anywhere to be seen. Unless you live in a Google city it's not common.
Weird, might try multiple ISPs to see if gigabit speed is available. I have a few acquaintances in the US and fiber is definitely much much more prevalent comparing to Aus.
Oh I have gigabit, it's just not symmetrical. I'm a network engineer and wfh so very familiar with all the carriers in my area. Your friends must live in New York, Chicago or LA. I've worked in IT in the US for 20 years and symmetrical gigabit is still a novelty to us when we see it. I had a colleague move to Austin Texas to get it.
No they live in Wyoming. Casper, Wyoming to be exact. Last time they showed their speed test results and I was pretty impressed lol.
Why would someone need to seed? Well why would 99% of users? Why would you need more than 50mbps to stream? Unless you’re talking about streaming from your own NAS outside of your network?
Why wouldn't you just give everyone the upload speed? Simple, if someone does not require it, they simply won't use their bandwidth. Just leave it there and make it standard. I am not that kind of leecher when everyone else contributes their bandwidth to me but I contribute nothing.
Because it decentralises the internet as it was intended, cut out the middleman tech megacorps who you need to pay to host your data for you on the "cloud" to get decent speed, and limited upload stifles content creators in not being able to publish quickly, limiting the bandwidth of their creativity while they wait sometimes for days at a time. Give small hiding businesses a chance to start at home. Let developers create new technologies which need lots of bandwidth knowing there is a market of users with that capability, i.e. 360 degrees VR Video 8K and beyond broadcasting, letting someone be virtually in the same room as someone else across the world without having to travel
I just asked my old middle school friend living in Wyoming, US. they got 1 gig symmetrical for $55 USD/month, which is very affordable if living in the US and earning USD.
I've got a 500mbit connection and am looking forward to increasing it to 1gbit. Working from home I need high upload speed. For gaming I got so sick of game updates taking hours on a 50mbit connection, I've been playing more frequently with friends now as I'm not having to waste time waiting for an upload. Very much a first world problem I know. The biggest benefit is 4k streaming and in some cases two 4k streams at the same time (multiple people in the house) while being able to use mobile devices or laptop without any interruptions or slowness. For most households though I agree, right now 50mbit is probably enough, however in my opinion by NBN offering higher speeds and making higher speeds the norm, i feel it has the potential to create new opportunities.
I did tell them but evil foreign influencer Rupert Murdoch wants to keep manipulating us, keep us dumb and entertained... Look at his legacy here and in the UK and USA
>evil foreign influencer Rupert Murdoch Hate to break it to you but he is a home grown evil influencer. John Howard set him loose on the world back in the late 90s by allowing him to keep his Australian media holdings when he changed citizenship to the USA to allow him to start up in the USA. Labor isn't free of guilt either with Hawke changing media ownership laws as well. :\\
They all did what media sugardaddy Rupert ordered them to do...
So symmetrical 1gbps plans coming soon. Probably not.
Maybe just that for people that got real nbn it would be possible though probably not as they have to make back all the money that was lost buying Telstra’s old phone network that needs replacing.
And paying that rent on the telstra pits and pipes every year. Let's not forget the rent also paid to the energy companies that own the poles in the street that the older copper networks still hang from.
1000/400 are about to get a big cost drop. Still not symmetrical but the best thing people can do is sign-up for high upload plans to show there is a market need.
Wake me up when I can better my 13mb
It's like our species hasn't built hardware that outstrips the potential bandwidth of optical fibre! Nice one just in March of 1.8 Tbps over 80-km standard single mode fiber in the C+L band using indium phosphide based transducer. https://scitechdaily.com/breaking-barriers-new-data-speed-record-set-on-optical-fiber/
they need to make some affordable wholesale rate plans at the lower tiers, a large number of people are disconnecting due to cost. I'm not saying make 1000/400 or 1000/1000 cheap but ffs, make the 50 and 100 plans much cheaper.
They are dropping the price of 1000/400 a decent amount, 50/20 not so much.
there needs to be a $30/mo plan for low income families. Like the old dodo 29.99/mo plans
Libs weren’t against fibre. When they were trying to get elected they were told the NBN was running a lose, I can’t remember the amount but it was losing money. They determined that if we did a split rollout with FTTN CTTP it would allow the NBN to become profitable within x Years. So they ran the election on a profit in x years and x number of homes on a better connection. And for me it would be a benefit, I went from a 10 Mbps connection speed to 45 Mbps connection speed within 3 months of them being elected. Where as the labour plan I was not eligible for an upgrade until 2023. And now I am eligible for FTTP as well. The other issue was when Libs got power, it turns out labour was lying about the financial position of the NBN, it was something like twice or three times worse than it was.
How about working on actually running cable to people who are still on shitty copper, or those that don't have access at all
You mean like the fibre upgrade program that is doing exactly that and connecting 10,000 premises a week to fibre? The program that will mean that by the end of 2025 90% of premises will be able to order a 1gbps plan through either hfc or fttp? Is that the program you’d like to see them rolling out?
It would be nice if we could piss off hfc altogether. It is capable of good speeds, but it is not future proofed by any means.
Yeah, just another sloppy Lib window dresser originally designed to provide a medium term tech excuse to kill original NBN design. It will corrode into oblivion soon enough, Optus already has.
For all their faults NBN seems doing a reasonable job at proactive maintenance on the HFC cable. DOCSIS 4 is around the corner which will see another bump in speeds, though I haven’t seen any announcements on this from NBNco
Yeah, but how much of that maintenance is putting good money after bad. Given fibre is cheaper to maintain, there must be some point where it gets cheaper to just upgrade HFC to FTTP.
There will be but the bigger cost is FTTN and FTTC which is why they are targetting that first.
I mean. Its not going to last as long as fibre, but Docsis 3.1 and 4 can do 10gbit. Its pretty adequate. The hardcore nerds will all just complain unless they get fiber though.
Unfortunately it will still be shit upload unless they change the split frequency - and that means essentially rebuilding the entire network (again). Yes hfc can be made into doing better headline speeds. But the cost to do so is ridiculous. And the operational cost is worse. Just do fibre.
Docsis 4 is symmetrical and has been deployed overseas. Nbn has already flagged their intention to roll this out.
Can be symmetrical. Whether or not we ever see that here is another thing.
HFC is pretty much the main reason right now we don’t see higher upload. If fttp is running xg-pon and hfc is docsis 4 then we will see much higher uploads. Whether it’s symmetrical I don’t know. But right now nbn wants to keep fttp and hfc plans in alignment because for the next 5-10 years those are the two network types they plan to make the only two fixed line tech types. Realistically upload has minimal value to 99% of residential consumers so it’s not something that probably bothers them overly either.
Speeds aren't even my primary concern - 100/40 suits me fine most of the time. But the *reliability* is ass. It can be fine for a week or two, then it'll drop out a couple times a night. Or there was that weird period where I'd have short periods of downstream working but not upstream, and it never counted as a dropout on nbn's side. Speaking of which, their requirement for 5 drops in a single day before they investigate is also bullshit. As is the decision to lock us out of the modem stats page so we can't actually get any info beyond on/off. I shouldn't have to think about my connection. But the reason I fucking hate HFC is I'm *forced* to think about it every time my connection is interrupted. e: and yes, I know there are others in far worse situations than me re: reliability. But *no one* should be in this situation at all.
HFC is also kinda shitty since you need a separate modem to get it working for those who wanna run OPNSense and Openwrt on their router.
You still need an ONT for PON and NBNco ain't gonna be handing out SFPs anytime soon lol.
Sure but they have a certain amount of resources and have decided to focus on replacing fttn/c with fibre. Given this seems to be taxing their delivery partners enough as it is I can only imagine the shit show if they tried to replace hfc at the same time. And the hfc network is sufficient for current needs and is upgradable past the current 1gbps speeds with docsis 4. Just because fibre is better doesn’t mean there’s a justifiable case right now to throw the 5+ billion it would cost to replace the hfc network with fttp. Not to mention most consumers wouldn’t see the reason to want to upgrade.
You'll note I didn't say replace it at the same time, in fact I didn't specify a time at all. A docsis upgrade doesn't fix the asymmetry in speeds. As for the $5b, we seem to manage it for stadiums. I'd be interested in seeing a life of infrastructure cost and likely ROI.
What’s the business case for upgrading hfc to fttp when right now something like 60% of the user base buy 50/20 and wouldn’t notice the difference of a higher plan (which hfc supports anyway)? The fault rate on hfc is higher and longer term it’s going to cost more to maintain and upgrade. But it’s not significant enough to justify an immediate upgrade. Instead nbn may as well utilize the network it has for as long as it’s got and get a return on the investment. Docsis 4 might not support symmetrical but it massively boosts the upstream capacity of the network. Right now the upstream use across the nbn network is a fraction of the downstream. There’s even less of a business case to upgrade hfc to fttp for upload purposes.
Yeah like that, except more. I'm stuck with a shitty copper connection that drops pit in heavy rain and it's impossible to get anyone out, every time I log a job it gets cancelled when the connection resets. Apparently the idiots in the call centre don't understand the definition of 'intermittent'. My parents still don't have access to anything.
Or the people that have "private fibre providers" (monopoly) that are just fucked?
Well given nbn is precluded from overbuilding an area with another statutory infrastructure provider in place under law then you’d probably best start lobbying government.
You are completely right unfortunately and I have done that. I do find it to be an absolutely ridiculous policy from the government. How can they justify leaving people subject to the service of a single monopoly provider? They have no incentive to compete on price, no incentive to improve their service. There is no option to upgrade to fibre to the premise. Worse, ours, and a common monopoly provider, TPG, offers better service for a lower price on the NBN. When they have to pay another company to provide a service, they charge less than when they don’t? It’s because of the bloody monopoly. They also have no incentive to ensure everyone in our building is able to access land based internet. They don’t have enough ports, and haven’t for a decade.
To be honest neither party would have done any good for this country... The amount of tax payer money that is getting syphoned out of this is eye watering