NBN petition for FTTH

[wilfred]

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[tom66]

Half of me thinks 100Mbit is plenty for 99% of people. It's especially enough for 1080p video streaming.

FTTH is being rolled out in the UK. We have FTTC. To get FTTH you have to pay around £700+charge above 100m from exchange to have BT personally install a fibre link to your home. Then approx £60/month IIRC. And then you get 330/30 speeds.  Hardly worth it.

[tom66]

I agree -- high speed >25Mbit broadband means that services like Netflix become practical in countries which are stuck with cable and satellite TV monopolies. But the cost of installing such a network has to be balanced against the potential benefits. Once you get above 100Mbit, the only real benefit is faster download and upload speeds for general use. I can't think of any other service which would benefit.

[Lurch]

Half of me thinks 100Mbit is plenty for 99% of people. It's especially enough for 1080p video streaming.

FTTH is being rolled out in the UK. We have FTTC. To get FTTH you have to pay around £700+charge above 100m from exchange to have BT personally install a fibre link to your home. Then approx £60/month IIRC. And then you get 330/30 speeds.  Hardly worth it.

And then you can either select a reliable ISP, or one that gives decent monthly bandwidth allowances, but not both.

But then, that is the same for all speed connections still. It's fine rolling this technology out but it still isn't usable. I downgraded all my FTTC connections as I found I couldn't connect to anything at a decent speed in general, not many servers allowed downloads above a few meg anyway, torrents never really got above 10-12, YouTube is total shit and doesn't really work in HD with HTML5 or Flash and although my connection was rock solid my limits were pony. I could switch to someone else with unlimited use, or higher caps but then I get unreliable connections. Basically it's not worth it yet, I don't really see any difference between my ADSL and FTTC connections anyway, apart from £10-15 pcm.

[tom66]

Must of had a bad ISP. I'm able to go >8MB/s on bittorrent; that's 64Mbit out of rated 73Mbit. £33/month for me inclusive of line rental.

[ve7xen]

I can't think of any other service which would benefit.

Do you really believe that nobody will think of ways to make good use of such services, should they become widely available?

It's very reminiscent of the oft-misquoted "Nobody will ever need more than 640KB of RAM" thing. Just because nobody has figured out what to use it for yet doesn't mean it won't be immensely important in the future. It's very much a chicken and egg situation.

My personal opinion is that while the bandwidth is important and practically essential for Western countries to adopt to not be left in the proverbial dust, what's much more important IMO is the opportunity to rid ourselves of the telecom monopolies. Such national broadband strategies are a great opportunity to treat our internet infrastructure more like the essential public service that it is.

[tom66]

I'd imagine the one thing that might come along is 4K video streaming. That might require 100~200Mbits to do well.  25~40Mbits looks good for 1080p, so approx 4x bitrate ought to work for 4K.

But yes, I'm having a hard time considering other possibilities.

[ve7xen]

But yes, I'm having a hard time considering other possibilities.

I can't think of much either, but I believe that is because we are too shortsighted to see them, not because there aren't any. I believe this has been well proven by the progress of countless other 'useless' technological advancements over the past few decades.

[nctnico]

I have glass fiber to my home for over 5 years and it has never been lit. The ISPs still see it as a premium service so they charge a lot and want to push TV and telephone as well. I don't need the stinking TV with the endless amount of commercials and series being two years behind to what is on uTorrent.  I'll just wait until they cancel my ADSL connection and connect the glass fiber for the same price. Happened to my ADSL connection as well. I started with 256kbit and now its 12Mbit and I'm still paying the same price.

[tom66]

BBC ran a prototype 4K run to a few large screen for the Olympics, but none to terrestial devices. We have 5 Freeview HD channels-- I'd doubt they even have the capacity for a single additional 4K channel.

[EEVblog]

Just because nobody has figured out what to use it for yet doesn't mean it won't be immensely important in the future.

Wrong. There are currently countless uses now where these high speeds are useful. Telecommuting, content creation (like me), remote medical stuff etc
Indeed, progress in society is being held back because we don't have proper broadband access for everyone.
Anyone who says otherwise is demonstrably wrong.

[kizzap]

Ironically it seems Malcolm Turnbull  has decided to 'review' his options with the current NBN plan, making it sound like he is reconsidering the FTTN option. As it stands the majority of the Board of Directors of NBN Co. has resigned too.

I'm wondering if this is the result of the pressure people have been putting on him?

-kizzap

[ve7xen]

Wrong. There are currently countless uses now where these high speeds are useful. Telecommuting, content creation (like me), remote medical stuff etc

Useful yes, but there's no game changer or killer app, which I think is what people are looking for to 'justify' the investment. I think this attitude is wrongheaded and shortsighted, but it is true. Content creators such as yourself are definitely held back by the asymmetry of today's broadband, but you're a tiny minority and you can get by and still provide 'good enough'.

[AlfBaz]

Ironically it seems Malcolm Turnbull  has decided to 'review' his options with the current NBN plan, making it sound like he is reconsidering the FTTN option. As it stands the majority of the Board of Directors of NBN Co. has resigned too.

I'm wondering if this is the result of the pressure people have been putting on him?

-kizzap

Bit of a chicken/egg thing here. Did they resign before or after they were given instructions
EDIT: or is it the new governments mandate to clear out all technical/scientific departments by the new luddite minister

[nctnico]

IMHO more is always better but the problem is that the major content creators (movie and TV studios) are not moving forward so the extra bandwidth is not really needed. Netflix opened up their shop in the NL a while ago. I looked what they offered but the most recent series they have are two years behind. But hey, lets give them 1 point for trying.

[AlfBaz]

Not to want to defend Malcolm Turnbull because I don't agree with FTTN but he is not a "luddite minister".  I don't think that is fair criticism.

It was meant as tongue in cheek, given no science minister, sacking of the climate commission...

[Rasz]

hilarious petition by people that didnt read the fine print - NBN has traffic limits inside fiber network, you have data caps on traffic that never leaves your super magical lan = FTTH doesnt matter.
ISPs using NBN have to pay per every MB transferred. This is so AT&T ~1990. Reading about NBN reminded me of Vint Cerf lecture where he was describing how AT&T tried to kill internet by lobbying on 9600bps limit between Universities, they didnt want private networks to compete with their leased line business. NBN is old AT&Ts wet dream.

[EEVblog]

FTTH doesnt matter.

You are missing the bigger picture. This is all about building the infrastructure for this country for this century and beyond. Physical fibre to every home and business is everything. Debates about ISP's and how it all works is like arguing over your road speed limits and traffic laws, or how frequenct and how how much your trains are. It's building the infrastructure itself that matters.

[Rasz]

Yes, infrastructure is great, but not when you build a bridge and then not only charge for crossing, but also limit how many times they can cross. Bridges are not consumables, they dont wear out (well, they do, but its calculated in their lifetime/maintenance). They are designed to cope with X cars per hour and thats it. Telling people 'sorry, you already crossed 3 times this week, eff off' is stupid. Not to mention most of the cost is in getting all the permits and digging the dirt out, cost of the fiber/bridge itself is almost negligible - there is NO REASON for limits, no reason other than pretending to build infrastructure while trying hard not to danger the incumbents.

NBN is a copy of wireless carriers Mobile plans. Main difference for consumer between those is if you can reach your cap in 1 hour or 3 hours. Except you cant stretch wireless to accommodate more people if your infrastructure gets saturated (out of frequency bands/time slots) while its trivial to light more strands.

Arguing for FTTH is just arguing for a faster mobile plan that will let you reach data quota in 1 hour instead of 3 hours. It doesnt address the main drawback of the whole NBN.

[EEVblog]

Yes, infrastructure is great, but not when you build a bridge and then not only charge for crossing, but also limit how many times they can cross. Bridges are not consumables, they dont wear out (well, they do, but its calculated in their lifetime/maintenance). They are designed to cope with X cars per hour and thats it. Telling people 'sorry, you already crossed 3 times this week, eff off' is stupid. Not to mention most of the cost is in getting all the permits and digging the dirt out, cost of the fiber/bridge itself is almost negligible - there is NO REASON for limits, no reason other than pretending to build infrastructure while trying hard not to danger the incumbents.

You still don't get it.
Market forces and time and can change the plans, and how it's all priced and metered etc, but basic infrastructure like this is perhaps done once in generation or two.  So quibbling over that which is comparatively much easier changed than the basic infrastructure itself are essentially two different issues.

[peter.mitchell]

Yes, infrastructure is great, but not when you build a bridge and then not only charge for crossing, but also limit how many times they can cross. Bridges are not consumables, they dont wear out (well, they do, but its calculated in their lifetime/maintenance). They are designed to cope with X cars per hour and thats it. Telling people 'sorry, you already crossed 3 times this week, eff off' is stupid. Not to mention most of the cost is in getting all the permits and digging the dirt out, cost of the fiber/bridge itself is almost negligible - there is NO REASON for limits, no reason other than pretending to build infrastructure while trying hard not to danger the incumbents.

You still don't get it.
Market forces and time and can change the plans, and how it's all priced and metered etc, but basic infrastructure like this is perhaps done once in generation or two.  So quibbling over that which is comparatively much easier changed than the basic infrastructure itself are essentially two different issues.

Exactly, because at the moment, you have fiber to somewhere, and then copper from there to the consumer, and how do you upgrade this? you move the fiber closer to the consumer.

It basically comes down to this;

Code: [Select]

ADSL:
Internets=Fiber-----------------Exchange/DSLAM=Copper--------------------CPE=Copper
Fixed Wireless:
Internets=Fiber----------------------------Cell Tower=Wireless           CPE=Copper
FTTN:
Internets=Fiber-------------------------------------------Node=Copper----CPE=Copper
FTTH:
Internets=Fiber----------------------------------------------------------CPE=Copper

Technologies get progressively closer to fiber to the home as they upgrade, so what is the ultimate upgrade? From a pure infrastructure point of view, fiber is the clear choice.

It doesn't matter what the "plans" or "pricing" for it is in it's current state, because eventually the infrastructure will move closer and closer to FTTH anyway. (unless some other magical technology comes up and its like internets via water in the pipes or some wacko future technology)

[Rasz]

data caps suggest they dont/didnt/never intended to bury enough spare fiber as it is = caps will never go away or there will be GNBN project in 20 years to dig it all up and place more cables

FTTH doesnt matter because no one wants to lease a pipe and then additionally pay for the amount of water in said pipe. Incumbents already have all the pipes they want, and new guys will be artificially limited crom competing.
NBN could of been a copy of Stockholms success, but from the start it was undermined by execs from current ISPs.

wilfred exactly - so what does it matter how you are connected if you are going to hit the limit anyway? While ISP that is connecting you  pays out of his ass for every MB you downloads and has zero abilities to offer you a plan with no caps.

I highly recommend reading up on NSFNet history - it is an exact blueprint for what is happening in AU, they(ISPs) learned their mistakes and wont let you have a real competition this time.

[AntiProtonBoy]

*bump*

NBN speeds promised by Coalition cannot be guaranteed: Ziggy Switkowski

That's just fucking great.