It has been another eventful couple of weeks in the life of NBN!
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As a brief recap,
- Amber Dornbush (head of NSW/ACT) has now written to us twice to tell us that NBN Local is our new best friend and here to listen to community concerns, but that it has been “misreported that NBN was lobbied successfully to change the Multi-technology Mix for the community”, because only “NBN [selects] the most cost-effective, best fit and effective rollout technology for each home, business and community across the country”;
- (Pigs really do fly);
- The ACCC has struck a deal with Telstra to refund 42,000 customers for signing up customers to NBN services that NBN could not provide;
- (The nation was shocked);
- Fairfax is reporting that the Murdoch Empire, you know, the same one that lobbied so hard to kill the original FTTP based NBN because it would compete with Foxtel, is not doing so well and likely to be broken up and sold.
- (We have no words for this, only sorrow).
- The first business on the Sunset Ridge estate is making provisions to roll back to ADSL from Fixed Wireless due to stability issues.
Looking at these points in more detail, it is worth noting that NBN Local was put in place to try to engage local communities in the wonder that is the NBN. Despite all of our successes lobbying the NBN we have had on behalf of the shire, about a third of Bellingen town is still slated for Fixed Wireless and we are waiting to see the performance of the rollout in Urunga, particularly the outer areas. It is still worth noting that NBN have spent more on trying to put parts of Bellingen town onto Fixed Wireless that it would have cost to complete the wired roll out and, it is still more economic to complete the wired rollout as the tower only has infrastructure in place for 60% of the eligible lots.
We have also been told that the Sunset Ridge Estate has been tested at a number of places, successfully, for signal strength. Here is the rub on that. Firstly, FW is mobile phone technology, so anybody can walk around with a mobile receiver and find a strong signal. Also, most houses in the estate do not have line of sight to the tower, and beams from that tower do not bend over or around hills – they get bounced off of things into the valley behind. So, if you get a signal during installation, it has bounced off a tree, house, parked car, lady crossing the road. As things change, tree grows up, gets chopped down, house gets renovated, car is moved, it rains; your service level will change, usually for the worse. We therefore strongly urge all users and anyone that wants or needs fast internet to keep contacting the Local Member.
To the ACCC ruling. So, 42,000 Telstra customers will be getting refunds for services sold to them, by Telstra, that the NBN could not provide. It is important to note here, that this is nothing to do with congestion due to the reseller, this is wholly to do with the service that NBN has allowed the reseller to provide, but could not deliver. NBN has a mandate in areas that are getting a wired service to provide a minimum speed of 12mbps for the first 18 months and then 25mbps thereafter (those on a wireless service have no minimum speed guarantee). But Telstra (and others) have been selling 50 and 100Mbps plans on behalf of the NBN, but the NBN network has not been able to deliver those speeds, usually due to tail lengths of more than 300m past the node and/or poor quality copper. This ruling is a direct response to NBN when they state that people are not signing up to high speeds because the reality is, that most people will never get speeds higher than 25Mbps. It is also a direct response to NBN when they say FTTN is the same technology being rolled out in the UK and Germany, it is not, the Germans and Poms have tail lengths of 300m, the average NBN user has a tail length of greater than 450m. As a result of the ruling, we will stop seeing speeds being advertised and the reality of the NBN mess will set in.
As a final thought, the combined yearly costs of Amber Dornbusch, her Bellingen marketing campaign and our local NBN representative would pay for the completion of the wired roll out in Bellingen, and another town every year after that. Rural communities provide 60% of the nation’s GDP so keep fighting for fair representation for our schools, businesses and communities.
Jason Errey
Bellingen