In clear, sunny weather on Monday morning, the Courier-Sun visited Sunset Ridge with NBN representatives for the stated purpose of dispelling the “myths” put forward by some in the community about NBN fixed wireless in the area.
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The time of day and the weather couldn’t have been more different from the conditions that residents such as Jason Errey and Arne Hansen say engender the worst performance from the fixed wireless network, but NBN managers Ian Scott and Sam Dimarco, who were accompanied by a national wireless technical specialist Iain Pick, had their arguments ready.
Rebuttals
Although the local activists claim Sunset Ridge is unsuitable terrain for fixed wireless as dips and trees impede direct line of sight to the tower on Scotchman’s Hill, NBN has found ‘near line of sight’ is sufficient and having to pass through trees and rain makes minimal difference to the signal.
In brief, the NBN arguments were:
· Even the lowest area of Sunset Ridge Drive near the Hobson Close intersection receives a signal that is three times the cut-off level. Iain demonstrated this by positioning his receiver 2.5m off the ground at the intersection, where it recorded -92dBm. Placed 3.5m up it was getting -91dBm. A reading under -99dBm is unacceptable and every three-point gradation represents a doubling of the signal.
· In 2014 NBN had a brochure saying fixed wireless requires direct line of sight. What they have since found is that Near Line of Sight is sufficient, and having to pass through trees (wet or not) makes minimal difference to the signal. The attenuation caused by trees and rain is very small, Iain said.
· The reason rainy weather seems to impact performance is most likely behavioural – more people are indoors using the network when the weather is poor.
· There are over 120 people in the Sunset Ridge with a fixed wireless service. Arne and Jason, who have been most vocal about its inadequacies, are not among them – they have stayed with ADSL, saying it offers more stability for their high-tech businesses.
Concessions
The NBN representatives did concede that there have been problems with fixed wireless nationally and locally.
There is a performance degradation during busy periods, Ian said. Nationwide, NBN has admitted six per cent of sectors have a download speed of less than 6 Mbps at peak usage times and this is regarded as unacceptable.
At a Senates Estimates hearing in April, NBN Co said one per cent (25 sectors across 18 towers) were dropping below 3 Mbps.
However, neither the Fernmount nor the Scotchmans tower were listed as being among those.
Ian said Scotchmans Tower has had multiple upgrades to ease congestion issues, including the recent install of a new sector on the 3.4GHz spectrum that currently has few people on it.
Complainants
Prior to visiting Sunset Ridge with NBN, the Courier-Sun put out a call for residents who were unhappy with their fixed wireless service to contact us.
We ended up with three – Andrew Hart, who detailed problems his family experiences in this letter; retiree Jeff Woods, who reports poor performance “all the time” with his internet-based phone service and also when using the internet on his home computer; and Asher Solomon, an IT project manager teleworking for international clients, whose wife Anna also works from home as a social media entrepreneur.
Andrew Hart was not able to be at home when we visited, but he provided us with a report from speedtest.net, an app recommended by his RSP Optus for checking download and upload speeds over time.
His family is on a 12 Mbps plan and the extract below demonstrates speeds close to that in the morning but of an evening it consistently falls below 6 Mbps, sometimes as low as 1 Mbps.
Faced with this data, Ian Scott said the speeds indicated a problem, but it was not necessarily the fixed wireless that was to blame.
He said the numbers were between a tenth and a fifth of what the network can currently support in this area at the busiest time, so either there was something wrong with the install, or something was wrong with their Optus service.
He said the only way to fix the problem was to go to Optus and log a speed complaint.
Optus would have to verify that their network was not causing the problem before passing the trouble ticket to NBN to find out what was going on.
Iain Pick said NBN would not need to visit at night to assess the problem, as they could run a speed test remotely to monitor performance over a 24 or 48 hour period.
NBN spokesperson Lynette Keep said the only problem logged with them for Andrew’s address had been in April, and it had been marked as resolved with the dispatch of some new equipment.
Jeff Woods was also unable to meet with us on Monday, as he had a prior engagement, but Iain Pick knew about his complaint and suggested the best resolution might be switching to a different provider for voice calls.
Iain thought Jeff’s retail service provider uses TC4 for voice-over-IP, a standard grade ‘best effort’ traffic class, rather than TC1, which is designed to give highest priority to voice traffic.
He also noted that people who are older or in poor health are advised to stay on their existing landline rather than switching to voice-over-IP, given that those on fixed wireless continue to have their copper connection available and it does not stop working during power outages.
Ian Scott advises consumers to ask for recommendations from neighbours, friends and family in order to find out which RSPs offer exemplary service and quality performance, rather than going with one that promises all-you-can-eat for a budget price.
You get what you pay for, was his summation.
He said that generally it is easy to shop around and try different RSPs on a month-by-month basis.
We were able to visit Asher Solomon, who lives in Hobson Close. He and his wife Anna are on a 25 Mbps plan with iiNet and have no problems during the day, but they regularly experience poor quality connections when trying to videoconference with international clients at Netflix o’clock, 8pm to 10pm.
Using his portable receiver, Iain Pick measured signal strength at their property as -73dBm, which is excellent, and said multiple sectors were marked as available for a connection on the Scotchmans tower.
He thought the antennae on their roof needed to be tilted upwards slightly and said if Asher raised a ticket with iiNet about the degraded speeds at night, he would see about moving him to the new 3.4GHz sector on Scotchmans.
Asher said he had not logged a problem previously as he’d assumed the situation was hopeless and nothing could be done, but he intended to be more proactive in future.
Suggestions
· Don’t resign yourself to a poorly performing service.
· If there’s a problem, raise a ticket with your RSP. They should investigate the problem promptly and refer it to NBN if it is not something they can fix.
· Some RSPs may give you the runaround and make raising a problem a time-consuming, frustrating process. They may have configured their network to operate with a certain amount of congestion in order to reduce their costs. If you are not happy with what you are receiving, try a different RSP, one that offers better service and better performance.