Putting NB service into perspective

In response to a recent letter published on 19 July – NBN is stubbornly holding onto outdated technology and deployment methods.

I pen this note as it is important that the community gets the facts when it comes to the nbn network.

Firstly to be half-way built is fantastic, the nbn network project is Australia’s single biggest telecommunications infrastructure project ever.

No other country in the world of our size and geography has taken on the challenge of providing ubiquitous access to all premises.

The progress in the build has been accelerated by adopting a multi-technology mix approach which involves using a range of technologies to rollout the network  to all Australians by 2020 in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

To have continued down the path of predominantly Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) with a small mix of Fixed Wireless and Satellite will have added another six to eight years to the build and would also have cost $30bn more. Current take-up rate of nbn services is more than 75 percent which is above forecast.

For the residents and businesses in the townships of Urunga, Mylestom, Repton and Raleigh I’d like to address the misinformation surrounding Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN).

The average distance from the node to the premises in a FTTN technology scenario is 450m as reported, roughly two-thirds of end users will be within this distance whereby we are achieving average wholesale speeds of 70Mbps download speed and 30Mbps up.

That is over eight times faster than the average Australian ADSL connection downstream and over 40 times faster in upload speeds, to suggest that an end user will experience an unstable service and will not notice an appreciable speed difference is purely false and misleading.

All of our networks have upgrade paths. For FTTN the upgrade path lies in technology called G.fast which is capable of Gigabit speeds. In 2018 we will be releasing 100/40 speed tiers over our Fixed Wireless network, this is the network that services parts of Sunset Ridge area.

The Fixed Wireless network has the capability of delivering Gigabit speeds as proven through recent trials in country Victoria. 

For perspective – nbn offers Gigabit speeds to its retail partners today, in fact more than 1.5 million homes and businesses across the country served by Fibre-to-the-Premises technology can access it on their nbn network connection.

However due to minimal demand most retailers are not selling Gigabit services, we expect this to change over time as new throughput-hungry applications, like virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and 8K TV make their way to the masses.

Further to the point above, just 4 per cent of homes and businesses are connected to a 100/40 service today. I say this not to be brash but to give real perspective as naturally we all want the biggest and the best, however settle into want we know and need.

To this end more than 82 per cent of Australians that are connected to the nbn network are connecting to speed plans at 25Mbps or lower. For additional context, more than 91 per cent of homes and businesses that are able to connect to the nbn network via Fixed Wireless service today in Bellingen are choosing to connect to speed plans of 25/5 and below.

In my work travels I deal with many communities who are recently nbn enabled or on the cusp of being so. The real challenge for these communities is how they embrace the technology and use it to its full potential, and for most this will not come naturally.

The reference to 'stall out' as reported in the Digital Evolution Index 2017 is as much about consumer behaviours and adoption as it is the network that enables this. To move the needle on this Index, if that is how we are to judge ourselves, we must not only subscribe to higher speed plans but change the way we use the internet for Business, Education and Lifestyle/Entertainment, and for many this means an update of our hardware and software as well.

This for me is what the community should be focused on, access to fast internet alone will not shift the needle.

We will continue to work closely with the Bellingen Shire Council in the lead up to switch on of the network in parts of Dorrigo, Bellingen, Urunga, Mylestom and Raleigh. Throughout this period we will engage the community directly through a series of community engagement forums and marketing communications. 

For those interested to learn more about the nbn network in the interim I encourage you to visit our website (nbn.com.au) to gain the facts, or talk to your preferred phone and internet provider.