NBN: Posts moved to a new blog. No more on this blog.

This Blog was intended to be about "I.T." issues in general, but has become overtaken by the NBN.
Posts and Comments have been moved to a dedicated Blog...
Please update any feeds you might have, assuming you want.

I'll be removing the NBN posts from this Blog down the line.

NBN: Coalition Fibre to the Node isn't pure-digital broadband, isn't secure, isn't meant to last

Not only is the Coalition's Fibre to the Node (FTTN) plan to share two mutually-interfering networks, over existing copper, more complex and expensive that it need be, it also flags they aren't designing it for longevity. Implicit in this design choice is "we're building it to throw away, soon." i.e. with a 10-15 year, or less, economic life.

The network design can never be optimum for either phone or digital/broadband, the combination is more complex, expensive and lower reliability than pure-digital and is missing two critical network design element: it doesn't follow the existing NBN design (standard device interfaces, end-end control & L2 Bitstreams) but ignores that engineering designs can only be optimised to for one thing.

NBN: Coalition Fine Print - 1.1M houses WONT get 25Mbps.

When is a guarantee not a guarantee? When it's a Political statement.

The "minimum" guaranteed speed excludes one in seven (13%) premises covered by the Coalition's DSL-FTTN: or 1.1M premises will be "NOT happy, Mal!"

While the "target" is 10%, that's across all 11.3M fixed-lines, including the 24% premises served by Fibre. The 1.1M excepted premises will all come from the 8.968M premises covered by FTTN.

NBN: Correcting the Record on the Coalition NBN Plan

This is a collection of Omissions, inaccuracies or misleading statement in the Coalition's NBN Policy documents.

Please Note:

• The comments here are concise and assume a more technical knowledge than "an ordinary reader".
• I'm NOT supporting either Political Party or their Policy.
• Both Plans have deep, concerning issues.
• Both side of Politics are making unfounded statements and questionable promises.
• This piece is NOT analysis or recommendation for or against the Coalition Plan. It only seeks to layout facts that can be checked and confirmed on the public record.

NBN: Turnbull pre-releases Policy to News Ltd, engages Full-FUD drive.

News Ltd is spruiking for the Coalition again, spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt far and wide.

It's complete B/S for anyone, including NBN Co and Conroy, to say they know the exact project cost or completion schedule, either "on-time, on-budget" or a gross exaggeration of 2-3 times over budget, or even as Turnbull has been claiming, "it is a failing project".

I'm sorry, but "Failing projects" don't deliver anything, the NBN Co work is progressing and progressing well. The ALP and NBN Co are doing a lousy job of selling their performance and informing the public of their progress. MT would be right to criticise there.

NBN: CommsDay vs ABC.

Media Watch pointed to the CommsDay "riposte" to the ABC's definitive article listing the issues around NBN. [Part 2 of article]. Written 14-march-2013.

Here's my analysis of Grahame Lynch's "50 problems". Commsday comments in this colour.
[18-Mar: Apologies to Grahame for misspelling his name]

For completeness, some disclosure: I don't work for, or hold shares in, a Telco, NBN Co or one of their suppliers or contractors, nor am I a member or supporter of any Political Party. Neither do I support the Labor NBN plan over the Coalition's unannounced NBN. I hold the position that either Policy with deliver better broadband access. My interest is for a clear and informed debate on what I consider the defining Technology of the 21st Century for national Business Productivity and Competitiveness.

NBN: The Economics of FTTH vs FTTN

Do you know a Bargain when you see one??
Is either NBN Policy proposal offering a bargain or the opposite, a "lemon"?

NBN: FTTN in Australia - the Gungahlin Experiment

In 1995, Telstra announced that the new Town Centre in Northern Canberra, Gungahlin, would be a testbed for "broadband", with a $20-$30MM project announced laying "Fibre to the Kerb", which many people like me interpreted as "Fibre to the Home".

What Telstra deployed was RIM's, Remote Integrated Multiplexors, designed initially as an 'integrated' extension of the local Telephone Exchange. ADSL broadband was not supported. Instead of a world-class demonstration of the application and utility of fast broadband, Gungahlin residents were locked in a battle for even minimal access speeds.

For the rest of Australia, we have very clear demonstration of two things from this nearly two decade 'experiment':

• Fibre-to-the-Node, even 15 years ago when it was a much, much cheaper technology than Fibre-to-the-Premises, is fraught for consumers.
• Even when the subscribers thought they were out of the woods with high-speed ADSL 2+ available, the sting-in-the-tail of FTTN became apparent: congestion on the node "backhaul" makes line access rate irrelevant.
• The Coalition, during the Howard government from 1996 to 2007, did not prioritise, nor apparently see the need for, a National Broadband Network.
• It is only since the Telstra SSU agreements early 2012 that the Coalition has become committed to an NBN of any flavour.

NBN: Costing the Coalition FTTN. It's not Good News.

Mr Turnbull, in his CommsDay address, seemed to be proposing the Paul Fletcher, "Wired Brown Land" FTTN:

• 25Mbps guaranteed, VDSL2
• 800m max wiring (approx. 500m road distance)
• we can infer 40-60 subs per node, consistent with the 160 subs/node of the first Telstra FTTN.
• The "golden screwdriver" is "Multi-Service Nodes": field upgradable from copper to Fibre.

So, what's it going to cost to roll this out to 12M subs, the 93% of premises addressed by NBN Co?

Will Mr Turnbull achieve the Coalition tagline, "Better Broadband, Cheaper, Sooner, More Affordable"?

NBN: Coalition supports Free Markets not Monopolies

Mr Turnbull wrote a commentary on a speech by the Chairman of NBN Co, "Policy Choices in Project NBN".

Mr Turnbull engages in the usual political rhetoric, specious comments and gratuitous insult, summarised at the end, but does raise two points that need addressing:

• Monopolies, and
• Provision of new services during the transition from Telstra to NBN Co., "greenfield" installs.

In a single paragraph, reformatted here, Mr Turnbull makes what I see as a substantial, multi-layered policy statement.

The key words here are “without making the subsidies explicit and transparent.”

And therein lies a very big difference in philosophy.

Not only do we prefer competition to government monopoly, but we believe that subsidies should be explicit and transparent.

We are thoroughly committed to providing access to broadband to regional and remote Australia at city prices –
   so there is no discrimination by reason of geography –

but the cost of doing so should be transparent.

(precedent) What, after all, is the USO?

NBN: Coalition support for Free Markets vs Monopolies

Mr Turnbull wrote a recent commentary on a speech by the Chairman of NBN Co, entitled "Policy Choices in Project NBN".

[Long. 2850 words total, 2000 words of mine]

I made this comment on his blog:

Malcolm,
You keep on top of the debate and are continually moving it forward. Excellent work as both a Shadow Minister and prospective Minister.

I’m impressed with your criticisms of the NBN Co rollout. Informed and useful.

Here is not the place to nitpick the Coalition policy. You have one, have made promises that can be evaluated and have publicly committed to continuing a National Broadband Network.

Thanks for being so active in this debate and not allowing the incumbents to be complacent or go unchallenged. Well done.

regards
steve jenkin

Here are my criticisms of his blogpost.

NBN: Politics trumps Economics, Business, Technical and Social needs.

In a previous piece, I commented on a set of posts on the Business Spectator site, centred around Alan Kohler and Malcolm Turnbull 'debating' the Liberal plan for a National Broadband Network (NBN).

Politics is The Art of The Possible, where Perception is Everything.
The NBN is first and foremost in the Political realm, not in the Business, Economics, Social or Technical.

NBN: The Turnbull Guarantee we'll never see...

Technology Spectator has written some recent pieces on Turnbull's NBN proposal I've commented on (below):

• "Why the BT model won't work"
• "The Coalition's NBN collision course"

If Mr Turnbull owned the NBN he's proposing, would he offer an effective bandwidth guarantee (or your money back)? I wonder...

As far as I can see, he's proposing VDSL2 with as few Cabinets and as little backhaul as he can get away with.

Saves $$$
But, if that's his solution, in busyhour, most people won't see 5Mbps.

Will Mr Turnbull offer a meaningful guarantee of minimum performance?
Could that have

Because NBN Co is not notionally a Govt service, but a commercial Co, the ACCC might have something to say about election promises, guarantees and misleading or deceptive comments.

So, will Mr Turnbull and the Coalition offer customers a performance guarantee for the their NBN?
If they do, will he/they be liable for commercial statement under the Trade Practice Act/Competition and Consumer Act?

That would make Political history in a way nobody would want to see.

NBN: Will Apple's Next Big Thing "Break the Internet" as we know it?

Will Apple, in 2013, release its next Game Changer for Television following on from the iPod, iPhone, and iPad?
If they do, will that break the Internet as we know it when 50-250MM people trying to stream a World Cup final?

Nobody can supply Terrabit server links, let alone afford them. To reinvent watching TV, Apple has to reinvent its distribution over the Internet.

The surprising thing is we were first on the cusp of wide-scale "Video-on-Demand" in 1993.
Can, twenty years later, we get there this time?

NBN: Needed for "Smart Grid" and other New Century Industries

With the release by IBM of "Australia's Digital Future to 2050" by Phil Ruthven of IBISworld there is now some very good modelling to say "The Internet Changes Everything", with some Industry bulwarks of the past set to disappear or radically shrink and others, "New Century Industries" (my words), that don't yet exist at scale, will come to the fore of our economy.

Previous pieces that link the NBN/Smart-Internet with "Negawatt" programs are now more relevant:

• Smart Internet+Smart-Grid: making money and reducing carbon footprint
• Smart-Grids and Carbon Trading: Enough for an economic Negawatt scheme?

NBN: Demand Forecasts and Liberal Policies

The NBN started as an estimated $5B Rudd/Conroy project tender to deploy Fibre-to-the-Node, to which the owner of the copper network to the Nodes, Telstra, declined to respond beyond a single page.

The next iteration was the $43B Rudd/Conroy Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) scheme as a tertiary-level Stimulus Package, addressing longer-term impacts of the GFC. It hadn't been ALP policy before then.

After Kevin '07 became Toast '10, Gillard/Conroy had the opportunity to walk away from the NBN, but the ALP became wedded to the NBN in the 2010 election.

In the spirit of the knife-edge Parliament, the Abbott/Turnbull Opposition stance on the NBN is "not what they said", with Turnbull initially charged by Abbott with "destroy the NBN" and now having morphed that into "we'll do it cheaper, with less waste".

The NBN is the most notable current place where Politics meets Engineering.

NBN: Turnbull and 'inside the house' costs. Nope!

Malcolm Turnbull trotted this out and it really needs to be highlighted and responded to in and of itself:

it's is so fundamentally flawed as to be inconceivable for an informed person, let alone the expert commentator he'd like to portray himself as

From Malcolm Turnbull's "Comms Day" 2012 speech:

Another takeaway is that ‘inside the house’ costs for FTTP can mount and become a serious economic factor. These costs tend to fall over time, and vary from place to place, but in the UK ‘inside the house’ expenses have been estimated to be 20 per cent of total FTTP costs. 

The Telstra fibre rollout in South Brisbane likewise indicates this expense is likely to be material – Telstra this week confirmed industry reports that it is using up to a day of technician labour at each residential premise, adding up to $1000 to the cost of the cutover. 

It is not clear NBN Co has budgeted for this expense anywhere. If it has, it would be instructive for someone from NBN Co to explain where and how.

No Telco has ever been responsible for 'inside the home costs'.

NBN and the impact of Australian Telco's Business Practices.

AUSTRALIAN TELCO BUSINESS PRACTICES

Australian Telcos aren't just uncooperative, their behaviours are pernicious, obstructive and often perversely self-injurious. This (and the GFC) is why Telstra's share price fell around three times pre-NBN, and has recovered over 10% in the short time since the NBN arrangement has been completed.

There are 4 incontestable examples of this:

• Telstra/Optus cable rollout.
• ISDN only as a 'premium service'.
• ADSL 1 (ACCC intervention), ADSL 2 turn-on and ADSL 2 DSLAMs & ULL (non) churning.
• Mobile roaming.

The NBN and defending against Cyber warfare attacks.

CYBER-WARFARE and the Australian NBN.

We know from "Stuxnet" that Nation States are actively building and deploying Cyber warfare tools, applying them to National Security concerns and running them as Military, not technical, operations. This includes accurate reconnaissance and network topology and vulnerability mapping. The worst case is that attackers will gain access to the network control tools and infrastructure.

Recent coverage suggests that Obama denied a US Military request to launch a cyber attack on Syria's infrastructure during the recent 'troubles'.

From the "slammer" worm, we know that any Cyber warfare attack will be fully developed within 3 minutes, and any attack will be launched at the worst possible time for defenders, possibly accompanied by physical distractions.

Recovery from "munitions grade" worm/malware compromise will be long and expensive. Experience is that malware infections is as damaging to businesses as a fire: Within 12 months of a fire, 80-90% of small businesses fail.

The NBN as an Essential Strategic Defence for Cyber-warfare.

Whilst reading this piece today I 'had a thought'.

"Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved

online",  Nick Hopkins, guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 April 2012 15.00 BST

One argument in support of the NBN I've not heard is about Security, but not the "how to keep your bank account and credit card safe" kind - the usual direct theft or Identity Fraud talked about at Cyber-Security conferences.

The National Security kind that interest the Intelligence agencies and Military, a.k.a. "Cyber-warfare".

This is as far removed from normal Cyber-security as guarding bank vaults is from fighting a war. Attack, and hence Defence, is taken to a whole new level: because the resources employed and what is at stake is taken to a whole new level.