Internode: Price, not speed, is the key broadband issue

You think...

Yes, you 'think' he's wrong.

I'm sorry, where is your ISP? Where is your partner ISP in studying what people want? In fact, where is anything whatsoever that proves that what YOU want and YOUR priorities are in any way representative of the wider community in general?

The 'NBN at any cost' crowd remind me of long term dole bludgers. Hands out for whatever they can get regardless of the cost to everyone else. Nevermind the fact that, by Conroy's own admission, wholesale costs of $40-70 per month (compared to ~$18 for ADSL atm) are what to expect... Yep, the biggest single price rise in Australian internet history. I'm sure those hardest hit by the economic climate will appreciate being unable to afford even a basic service, or, alternately, that ISP's will want to cut margins so thin because Conroy's white elephant will need as much money as possible just to keep it from dying...

ps. Since you already have ADSL2+ I'm sure that you won't mind being amongst the last upgraded after blackspots, tech blocked and regional/rural underserved are given first crack at the NBN right?

Reverse.

PS: The article also states that 50% of ADSL2+ customers are getting less than 12mbps. Which is kind of poor.

Wrong, some more

"Well millions of people pay more then $50 for there[their] internet though[through] Telstra or Telstra resale so I think your[you're] wrong."
No they don't where'd you pull that figure from?

"I got ADSL2+ because of the speed, damn the price!"
Congrats, you are part of that 4% MM mentioned.

"However there are many people who want fast speeds, or who currently are on ADSL2+ but are so far from the exchange they end up with sub ADSL1 speeds."
I always love those type of quotes. What exactly is sub ADSL1 speeds? Or do you mean 'Not the maximum of ADSL1' of which even fewer ADSL1 customers actually even get close to.

"I don't see how you can compare your opinion against two organisation who actually have the hard physical data in front of them."
Because this is the internet and so my baseless opinion is of equal worth!

price yes, but...

price is an issue - internode are aware of this, hence their easy broadband offering at the $50 price point. But for many like myself, in a regional area stuck on a dslam with no competitive alternative, you're stuck playing by Telstra's rules. That means paying for a phone line rental I don't want to get a service I do want, and being restricted to whatever ADSL products can be offered within Telstra's monopoly wholesale port pricing.

Eliminate the dead money in line rental for a traditional phone service I don't need or want but can't avoid, I'd happily spend that on better broadband speeds. That $50 a month becomes $80 real quick, or $100 if VoIP savings are calculated in.

Speed vs Cost .. evidence based comparison

I am typing this out on a 100mbps FTTH connection in Japan. I am here in Japan for the next couple of months working from home remotely, and my personal experience is that there is not significant difference or impact between the high speed eoNet fibre connection here, or the Optus Cable connection at home.

Usage is primarily VPN/Business Apps(Notes/SAP etc), and web streaming video. Exactly the same in Japan and Australia.

Incidentally, Installation of the fibre here is free and it costs 5000Y(around AUD$50/month)

Obviously the cost performance is unachievable in Australia. But if asked if I would rather keep the performance(which I suspect is comparable to the completed Australian NBN in 10-15 years time), or look at cost .. it's a no brainer really , isn't it?

speed

I live in the country and i am connected at 1.5mbit, I moved here from the the city where i was connected at 20mbit.
I can hardly tell the difference, normal browsing.. no difference, youtube videos play straight away on 1.5 pages load quick, downloads are fine...
I dont understand the problem.
this is from a 100% home perspective.

as for business.... pricing and speed is pathetic.

We will need it, no doubt.

Reminds me when I went in to buy a 100mhz 486 when they first came out. The 'techie' literally laughed and questioned why I would need a cpu that quick!
We may not really need fibre speeds now but you can be damn sure we will in the not too distant future. Think of it as a piece of infrastructure. We don't expect the pacific highway (or any other public road) to make a profit. We just need it no matter what the cost otherwise day to day functioning becomes impossible.

Not $50 for Internet - rather $80 for Internet+Phone

I agree with most of the article. We have a price problem.

It was useless that we were rated a few years back as having a 1.1Mbps average... when that was because so many people had the slowest adsl connections due to price. If everyone had been switched to the fastest their hardware could handle (without any upgrades) our average would have been closer to 6 or 8Mbps at a guess. No headlines from that though!

But Lindsay is wrong to say that means we need a $50/mth NBN internet price target. What we need is an $80 Internet+Phone target, and that's much more achievable. (or even $100/mth which includes a basic TV package)

Value is the Key - Show me the Benefits

While we all want faster speeds the key is value. As a small business focused on email, banking, and transactional internet access what additional benefits will the NBN bring & for what price. Fairly obvously if you don't have good access or speed now then the answer is huge value.

However for the average Small Business what benefits will my business get from the NBN? and what price will I have to pay for these additional benefits? the end result is value.

So show me the benefits - given I have cable & I am a business - speed is only a marginal benefit. At the moment I wouldn't pay more to do what I do now faster!

You are all missing the point

The NBN is not just about speed, nor is it just about price. We are reaching the limitations of copper infrastructure NOW, and the completion of the NBN is still 8 years away, possibly more.

If you want to be stuck on Dialup / ADSL1 / if you are lucky ADSL2+ in 8 years time then fine. It will be like dial up at that point, because the rest of the world's internet will have evolved, and with it, the websites, content and applications using it. ADSL2+ will be unusable and frustratingly slow in 8 years time, I promise you. And many people would not even HAVE that access to ADSL2+ speeds without an NBN. 8 years ago I finally got a 512/128 ADSL1 connection - something that feels like dial up to me compared to my current connection.

And this doesn't even take into account the number of people in metro areas who should be able to get DSL but cannot at all due to the dodgey cheapo technology Telstra have used to expand their infrastructure as cheaply as possible (IE RIMs etc). Entire estates built in recent years have been effected by this problem. They can use a Telephone...yay for them.

Then you have all the applications that we have not even dreamed up yet that the NBN will make possible / invent. When you have a FTTH network that will continue to improve in speed *STARTING* at 100Mbps, Full HD video on demand (probably multiple streams for multiple users) whilst talking on the phone (multiple calls at once) whilst downloading a file, playing on line games, browsing the web and working on email whilst *insert new not yet thought of application for such a high speed network* - it all becomes reality. It will take time for this all to be taken up, but it will happen.

And as a pattern begins to emerge that each person in a household has their own computer, a family of 4 can suddenly become ADSL2+ divided by 4. More realistically though, it means suddenly no one can use the internet at all because someone else is watching youtube - you get disconnected from your online games and (if you are on VOIP) your wife's phone call gets disconnected/garbled too. These problems can be solved by technology called QoS, but no normal person will be able to use QoS, it needs to be configured (something the NBN may implement by default, but may not really rely on).

The government, universities and many businesses will move to this network, as well as the residential sector progressively. There is need for this in a huge number of environments. It also creates competition and larger number of options to data users.

Before you say it is too expensive, keep in mind that these "cheap" ADSL plans that start at $30 first require an active phone number. $30 suddenly becomes $51 (plus expensive call costs). This is based on Telstra pricing, the Number 1 provider of these services. If this is all included under one service on the NBN, why is everyone claiming such expense?

Being a fan of Internode, I really think that this comment from them is short sighted, and really quite silly. If people are looking to spend $40-50 on their broadband, with their existing phone on the same network, you get people wanting to spend $60-90 on their home phone and internet bundle...something I expect to be available on the NBN.

But, you all stay on your ADSL for the next 8 years, and when you still haven't migrated, blog about it and I will search for you on Google in 8 years time to point and laugh.

I think Internode should be embarrassed about having released a statement in this stance. And the funniest quote I have heard in ages was a part of it:

“When consumers from a couple of years ago said ‘We want ADSL2+’, what they are actually saying is ‘We want cheaper Internet’"

OMG, that has to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. If that was what they are actually saying, wouldn't they have said "We want cheaper Internet". Seriously, I had to chuckle about that one.

Value is key

Consumers were demanding ADSL2+ because ADSL 1 was way too slow and Cable is only available in select areas. Also at the time, ADSL was far more expensive than Cable anyway while being slower and having worse download limits.

Now that ADSL2+ is around which has the potential for speeds faster than 20Mbit/s and is available in more areas than Cable, the only room for improvement is pricing. The aging copper wires in most areas can barely deliver the full potential of ADSL2+ thanks to Telstra and their lack of infrastructure maintenance or upgrades over the last few years.

Delivering good value using the best speeds possible with a good amount of download limit (without using the archaic method of charging an amount for every MB over the quota) is the best thing which can be done until the NBN is available and can actually show any kind of noticeable improvement to speed and get us caught up to other countries.

What about the RIM's and Pair Gains

I want more speed and would be happy to pay the same "inflated" price as I do now. But thanks to shoddy wiring technology, I can't.
I'm stuck on ADSL1 paying for 8mbps, getting 3mbps if I'm lucky and in peak times maybe 1mbps.
In my previous house I was able to get ADSL2+, connected at 16mbps and at 2/3rds the price I pay now!
I pay more to get less! What a ridiculous setup!
I do care about speed and people will care about speed into the future.
Just as 256k was acceptable in 2005, and is now laughably slow. In 4-5 years time (if not sooner), 1.5mbps will also be laughably slow! To me it's already laughably slow.
In fact my 3mbps connection is slow!
Planning for the future based on today's expectations is a pretty poor way to plan.

Faster Internet would be nice but...

I would prefer more bandwidth and at a much cheaper cost(I hate paying so much for so very little!).

NBN network does not add up

Say you have 8,000,000 (prospective) customers(mixture of home and business) to connect the NBN network at $43 billion dollars.

That will work out at $5,375 per connection.

Well, as a home consumer I have just signed to broadband for first time to an ADSL2+ plan at $29.95 per month. I am locked into that for 24 months,plus $29.95 per month for telephone.

So, $360 broadband per year + Telephone ($360) + call costs.

Somehow, the figures do not add up commercially,.i.e. business plan

Methinks this NBN network has the potential to become a white elephant.

And in the end who pays...

Use a "World best" test (as they did before GST came in)

Here's my parity-test for "World best Internet value"

Compare Australian ISP pricing to what anyone can get, say, in France:

Cf: http://Free.TV in French, but clear to English readers)

For about Au$ 50 / month (with ZERO inst./setup fees), get:

1. 20-something Mb/Sec -or- 100 Mb/Sec,
depending on the media you have
(ie, ADSL-2+ -or- fibre = FTTH)

2. Internet usage is UNLIMITED (for that Au$ 50/month)

3. unlimited whole-of-France phone service

4. unlimited HD TV (if on-contract, get HD rec'g box Free)

---

Alternate "parity test" for World-best Internet plans:

Track down the prices & service details for:

"StockholmsStadsNat" in Sweden

And compare to that; they don't include TV or phone, per se, but - as it's up to 100 / 100 Mb/Sec, you can supply
these things for yourself, all for less than Au$ 50 /mon.

---

When Aussies can get that kind of value for ~ Au$ 50 /mon,
then we'll be right.

I understand that Telstra once "wasted" $1 bil, eg, investing in Asia (some years ago); it's not been leading us any closer to World best.

Nor has Internode, as their most recent plan price show.

They sit together, claiming to be "premium" class ISPs, while others - eg, TPG (and maybe ExeTel?) run ahead &
try to drag Aussie ISPs closer to World best.

But even these guys are a ways off-the-mark, aided by
Telstra's exorbitant fees for use of copper pairs, to
deliver Internet services over its last leg of travel.

Excuses won't solve it for Australia.

PS Where are the Greens in this debate? I'm confident that near-100% Internet saturation would enable folks to save trips (&, thereby, reduce their carbon footprints).

Gov't has provided freeways & road services, in the past,
and it's got a clear role - for all the right reasons -
to provide similar, if -virtual- freeways & roads
in Australia's next generation Internet.

(Remember: Early phone players were many & very overpriced; the Internet is ready for a step away from its first "overpriced" generation... towards its "universal & green" generation. Let's take it, even if we have to leave behind the Telstra-class (sorry, Internode, but - with your current pricing - that includes you, too.)

Re: NBN doesn't add up

Do your math properly dude ... your 60 per month for both phone and net * 12 months in a year is actually $720 per year, you will pay the network off in less than 10 years. of course uptake won't be 100%, but business may pay upwards of 20000 a year for that same fibre...

Get rid of Pair Gains and RIMs!!!

No use going on and on about price speed etc etc when Tel$tra won't upgrade the existing infrastructure for people who are on pair gains and RIMs thus can't even get ADSL1!

I rather have more download limit than speed and at a cheaper price.. Something like 1.5mbps with 100gb mothly downloads...