nbn™ hits the half-way mark – but has more than half of the job left

nbn™, the organisation building and operating Australia's national broadband network (NBN), has passed the half-way point of its mission to re-wire the nation. The company says that as of today “5.7 million homes and businesses are able to order a service from their retailer”, which means half of all Australians can hook up. …

[mr. deadlift]

That report, released on May 11th, 2017, tells us that nbn™ had 4,621,404 premises ready for service, but just 2,010,210 activated.

I wonder what percentage of them are MTM/HFC clustardfucks, im one of those stats and would dearly love five minutes alone with Minister Fifeild, i really would!

[eldakka]

less-than-enthusiastic takeup

Since when is an uptake of around 50% for anything, 'less-than-enthusiastic'? If I was selling a new product into a market that has active competition, I'd be delighted with a ~50% uptake.

Those that do sign up for an NBN connection mostly aren't buying faster connections.

Unless we know the before-and-after speeds, this statement has no basis in fact. Even not knowing specific customer speeds, it should be noted that the rollout started in places that had slower available speeds initially. Many of the areas first serviced had, at best, standard ADSL1, 8Mbps. And this is very dependent on distance. The vast majority of people 'on' 8Mbps ADSL1 were getting speeds far, far lower than 8Mbps. Therefore a guaranteed 12/1 would be at least 50%, if not much better, than they would have had before the NBN rolled in, therefore 12/1 is 'a faster speed' than many had beforehand.

The fastest speeds available to most of the rest of the country was ADSL2+, 24Mbps/1Mbps (up to 2Mbps up if using Annex M, but that reduces down speed), excluding those lucky few, a very tiny %, who could get cable or VDSL. And again, most people 'on' ADSL2+ won't get anywhere near 24Mbps. I'm on ADSL2+, the connection is very unreliable, mostly sitting at around 14Mbps, sometimes dropping as low as 3Mbps for periods of a few days (probably due to bad cables). And I won't get NBN in my area - a suburb of Canberra, the capital city, for another 2 years (at the earliest).

Therefore, a guaranteed 12/1 (the lowest plan in the graph, ~33%) would improve my service to a stable, guaranteed speed.

And the 25/5 plan, a guaranteed speed as I understand it, is better than any ADSL2+ theoretical capability, and significantly better than any 'realistic' delivered capability. I'd be delighted with 25/5, and for my parents, for example, I wouldn't recommend anything higher than 25/5, as that would be more than sufficient for their use-pattern, 12/1 would do them now, but 25/5 would be better for opening them up to more capability.

As people who were previously on ADSL1/2 get experience with the higher, stable, speeds of NBN, and as more services become available from the internet (Netflix only recently came to Australia for example), and as long as it remains affordable, more people will migrate to higher speeds.

[GrumpyOldBloke]

The 12/1 and 25/5 are line termination speeds which sadly have nothing to do with throughput given nbn's cvc based contention problems. Low uptake doesn't only impact the nbn's finances but also the ability of the RSP's to economically aggregate enough cvc capacity per POI to give a half decent internet experience during the evening peak.

[andygrace]

Indeed and this is exactly why the nbn is and always has been a dead duck. The killer was the always going to be the business model and mandatory interconnect fee, due to the absurdly expensive rollout. The network will obviously never get a 100% take-up rate - even forcing people off POTS. Some people simply don't want or need fixed access to home anymore. 50% or 60% might be it!

The telcos worked this out a long time ago. LTE-A cells are turning up every few hundred metres in metro areas, connected to trunk fibre and streaming media edge caches. The wireless providers are offering major content players including Netflix unmetered on their mobile plans and the data caps are constantly increasing - $65 for 50GB per month is now common (in addition to unmetered streaming) and plans are data-additive. Not uncommon in homes with kids to have 100G+ per month per family.

Add in WiFi hotspots everywhere, and rich apps running in the cloud whether that's a good idea or not, and the nbn is now seriously in danger of being irrelevant way before the rollout is finished.

[Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor]

Given that the whole point of the NBN was faster, more resilient connections, and every ISP is hitting its customers ASAP once the NBN rolls into town, I think the slow uptake is notable.

FWIW I worry that even a 25Mbps NBN connection would send me backwards from the 16Mbps I've been lucky to have over a 900m cable run for the last 11 years.

[Tim99]

Simon

You might be lucky, I think it depends more than anything on your ISP.

I live in a retirement village, with an nbn fibre line into our comms room, and VDSL into each house (max distance <200m). We each almost always get ~75Mbps down and 35Mbs up, this can drop occasionally to ~20Mbps down in the evening with a bit more latency. Doing the sums I reckon our wholesaler buys a $3-4000/month CVC - Which for $33/month, unlimited data, seems pretty good to me. As more houses are built (we have about 170 with another 60 to go) we can buy more connectivity, perhaps at the same cost/house.

[CentralCoasty]

Less than optimal take-up. So even telling everyone that their existing copper line is going to die has resulted in less than half taking up the service.

I did - almost as soon as it became available and am now thinking of cancelling it.

Voip? No. Dont need it. Make & receive calls by mobile these days.

Data? Same. Even with video streaming/Netflix etc I still get by on my (shared) data usage with the Mrs.

I wonder how many of the younger generation are really going to bother tying themselves into a fixed service with the mobile data becoming cheaper by the month.

[Tim99]

@CentralCoasty

The killer for mobile data is media streaming like Netflix at ~1GB an hour upwards. The young'uns (and pensioners like me) are not going to give that up unless 4G gets a lot cheaper

[Pompous Git]

"Since when is an uptake of around 50% for anything, 'less-than-enthusiastic'?"

When it's compulsory? If you don't NBN you lose Internet connectivity and frequently your telephone service.

The "guaranteed 12 Mb/s" you are so looking forward to might just be 10 Mb/s max, 3 Mb/s frequently and 0 b/s weekly. Not to mention 256 kb/s when shaped. Did I mention 10% of the bandwidth we had on ADSL? Broadband? More like fraudband...

[bjh]

Limbo

What's missing from the numbers is the number of people in NBN limbo. I've signed up for an HFC NBN connection, had the NTD installed in pretty short order but the connection doesn't work (won't get upstream sync).

I've now been waiting for over a month for someone to come and fix the issue, most likely a faulty lead-in, but all I can get from NBNCo is that they're "awaiting an update from the HFC team" which never comes.

From what I've read in online forums, I'm far from alone being in this situation.

[mcdardy]

I was lucky enough to be one of the last suburbs that had an FTTP box installed. I even made the installers install the NTD in my study on the other side of the house. I call it fibre to the computer.

Previously, I was on a sub 1.5 adsl sync with a copper run stretching nearly 4.5km. The line attenuation was atrocious. The NBN changed my life!

I sympathise with all those unlucky enough to be stuck with FTTN.

[Pompous Git]

"I even made the installers install the NTD in my study on the other side of the house. I call it fibre to the computer."

I call it fucking incredible! NBN installer insisted the NTD go in the living area adjacent to the dining table! He had to "borrow" some Cat 5 off me because he didn't have any.

Blind friend's house the NTD was installed at the opposite end of the house to his living room and computer. I donated 25 metres of Cat 5 to run from the front bedroom, past the master bedroom to the living room where the now redundant POTS outlet is and the computer. Somebody else donated the long telephone cable...

[Carl D]

"I was lucky enough to be one of the last suburbs that had an FTTP box installed. I even made the installers install the NTD in my study on the other side of the house. I call it fibre to the computer."

-mcdardy

Same here - Rivervale in Perth, West Australia. I've got fibre all the way to the NTD on the wall directly behind my computer desk in the bedroom which was the easiest place for the NBN installer to put it anyway seeing as the bedroom is at the front of the house and the external box is on the wall just outside the bedroom.

Then it's fibre from the NTD to the Telstra modem/router next to my computer desk and finally it's a short ethernet cable to the PC.

We're lucky because the fibre to the home that we got was already contracted to be done under the previous Federal Labor government before the Liberals got in and made a mess of the whole thing with fibre to the node.

[Anonymous Coward]

What NBN? What roll out?

Pfffffft, may a leperous camel take a dump in their office coffee machine.

I can see the city from my house.

We aren't even on the NBN map.

On a good day, we enjoy a 3mbps max dl rate.

[-tim]

How many have disconnected?

My boss decided to move the small office off Internode into NBN HFC. It turns out that the HFC was providing half the speed of the naked DSL. We also lost our static IP address and our IPv6. Internode said they couldn't reconnect the DSL so I went to their online form and had a new DSL connection installed. Once that was live, I disconnected the NBN. It won't come back on until they can get their act together. Someone else in the office is running their business phones over 4G as the tower is out their back window. They won't be keeping their NBN connection either.

[GrumpyOldBloke]

Re: How many have disconnected?

Internode over nbn HFC is just resold lowest common denominator TPG without all the Internode goodies - like static IP. When they take my ADSL modem from my cold wrinkly hands its sadly good bye to Internode.

[Flat Phillip]

How ready is ready

I live in one of those locations where it is ready for service (passed the RFS date in March) but... well its not quite orderable yet.

So the website helpfully says

YOUR AVAILABILITY

SERVICE AVAILABLE

and then:

There’s still work to do before we connect your premises.

So, using their own statistics, which are more about stretching the truth then reporting what is actually happening, am I one of the 50% that is ready for service or the 50% that is not?

[JJKing]

So angry that I don't have strong enough words.

I have a green Node box less than 2 metres from the gate in the fence yet it is 305 metres for the "optic fibre copper" to reach the house. Since I knew I had lost the lottery, I kept an eye on the build and kept jumping on the nbn site to see when it would go live; it was slated for June. Circ 19th June, I get an email loudly proclaiming that nbn went live on 2nd June. As of 30 seconds ago, 11th July, the nbn site still says There’s still work to do before we connect your premises. but I know of someone who is in the same rollout block and Telstra connect them 3 weeks ago. Bloody nbn wankers! Can't even keep a simple website updated. Guess that's why the rollout is amateur hour multiplied.

Now we come to the good part. I applied to my ISP and had to settle for 50/20 due to the 305 metre run of effing copper (I remember that a study had been done and to be able to connect at 100/40 on FTTN, the node had to be within 250 metres of the house) but I really wanted 100/40. After being dicked around by my ISP I received and email from them with the Subject: Sorry, we’ve hit a bump.

Message: PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT AFTER HAVING PERFORMED AN ADDRESS BASED SERVICE QUALIFICATION CHECK WITH OUR WHOLESALE SUPPLIER WE HAVE IDENTIFIED THAT WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO PROCEED WITH YOUR ORDER AT THIS STAGE. THE REASON GIVEN WAS "NO NBN FIBRE CABLES". THIS OCCURS WHEN OUR WHOLESALE SUPPLIERS RECORDS SHOW THAT YOUR PREMISE DOES NOT HAVE AN NBN SUPPLIED FIBRE LINE FROM YOUR LOCAL EXCHANGE TO YOUR HOUSE/APARTMENT/UNIT ETC. (The uppercase was how I received it, the bold is mine)

Now remember I mentioned I have a FTTN box over my back fence, so WTF does the lack of a fibre cable to my house enter into the equation? Why, when someone really wants to connect at the highest speed possible, do the nbn and ISP conspire to hinder that? Look at the complaints, the nbn blames the ISP and the ISP blames nbn therefore they are both working against us. Bloody bill morrow should be sacked WITHOUT a Golden Parachute for the FUBAR he is apparently not presiding over.

After researching which nbn Plan I should choose, I found that all the cheapest plans required a FTTP connection. So not only is my sphincter getting stretched by the LNP for their clusterfuck mishmash of "Slower, Later, More Expensive" mixed up media, but I am also forced to pay more by being fucked over yet again by having that vastly inferior FTTN forced on me. I really want to do serious physical harm to the onion eating and turnbullshit for what they have destroyed for purely political reasons. They should both be tried for Treason for sabotaging Australian infrastructure though the onion eater may be a pommy spy if he still hold dual citizenship.

While my whinges are I suppose really quite minor, I empathise totally with those who have changed to nbn, have had dropout and disconnection problems and then can't get back onto there previously working Internet connection. It seems that four months to rectify these issues is not uncommon. An Internet connection now days is nearly as important as a phone connection (landline or mobile), water and electricity.

Apologies for the long winded rant but this clusterfuck doesn't seem to be getting any better and it is still costing us Billions of $$$.

[Colin Tree]

retailers and techs

So the retailers take the cream off the NBN profits to do what precisely ?

They provide a router/wifi and a poor service.

If a retailer came to our street and offered us all a fibre upgrade from the box to the premises, then I would think they were providing something worthwhile.

Think it was an extra $200 dollars difference between Turdbull moron NBN and the real NBN ?

It has now come to The Well but the copper in the ground is fully forked. We can tell when it rains by the depth of water and the number of Telstra techs repairing connections.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

I'm in an area serviced by iiNet's own FTTN network, which was upgraded to VDSL2 about three years ago. Like for like, it's cheaper than NBN. If only they'd continued the FTTP roll-out...

An NBN cabinet was installed on my parents' street about a month ago but they won't be able to sign up until September. They can't wait to get off their ~3Mb/s ADSL2+ connection, so what's taking so long?

[Jim_E]

Malcolm Should Have Left Well Alone

If Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott had not gutted the original NBN plan for fibre to the premises we would have been much better off by now. The promise of all connections by 2016 was not even non-core, it was "pigs might fly". The cost blowout would probably have been the same as most Government projects include this feature.

We would probably have been at the same stage of rollout by now but with a proper expandable service, far fewer faults, inability to connects and bandwidth pinches.

[Anonymous Coward]

NBN

Brought to you by Dads Army.

- Captain Turnbull

[Paul 129]

Re: NBN

Brought to you by Dads Army.

- Captain Turnbull

"Brought to you", that's ironic on so many levels. If you think this would have been any better with Labor at the helm, I have some real estate that you might like to invest in.

Behind a Clusterf#ck of these proportions, you'll find politicians of all ilks, perverting the project so they can point the finger at each other.

These days, I think it's called bipartisanship?

[MrDamage]

Re: NBN

I have to disagree with you there.

Under Labour, it would have been a FTTH clusterfuck

Under the Conalition, it's a FTTN clusterfuck, with the added bonus of a complete clusterfuck in 3 years time when it becomes apparent that the MTM idea was doomed from the get-go.

But what do I know, I have to wait until 2020 before the "fixed wireless" version of 2 tins cans connected with string replaces my 4.5/1Mbps ADSL2 line.

[rtb61]

HFC

Half way, that lie involves sticking people on unupgraded HFC and sharing bandwidth. People have no comprehension of the rip off of HFC. Some suburbs get FTTP, a fibre connection per home, some get HFC a fibre connection per street, they fail to grasp that they are forced to share what other home owners get. HFC is basically the poverty version of NBN, just a crap out stop gap to pump up the numbers, a blatant lie.