Rebel yell: NBN 3.0 is a much better idea

Yes finally someone is talking sense. Labor’s $43+ billion NBN rollout of 80's technology certainly appears to be a massive waste of public money. Australia's incoming Government needs to review the current NBN model to provide all with a quality service at a affordable price.

As an ICT veteran about to turn 50, with my own company, that has itself undertaken contracts with several of the telecommunication companies in Australia over many years, may I make the following real world observations, with no particular intent to push any of the current political broadband infrastructure agendas, but in the hope that these comments will be considered by all the contenders and stakeholders, in any debate going forward.

The argument that Australia can not afford per capita, to install a national broadband network with fibre to the premises should perhaps be unemotionally considered in light of the fact that during the rollout period of 8+ years for the NBN going forward, the equivalent budget for our military spending will be in excess of $250 Billion dollars of tax payers money or approximately one NBN every year, perhaps forever, and far fewer Australians will get to play with, or benefit from the big boy toys that such military funding provides. Not that we don't need military infrastructure, I merely want to put the NBN cost to benefit ratio into a real world perspective. Also consider that the average road and highway costs on average $1million per kilometre and over each ongoing 8 year period every household pays many thousands of dollars to own and operate their cars both in direct costs and hidden taxes and excises. Older people drive less and usually not in peak hours, does that mean we should not have as many expensive roads? Older people evidently don't want the NBN does that mean we should only support dial up internet in rural areas, as has been the case and will be for at least a few more years regardless of the broadband outcome?

Perhaps the NBN project should have been rolled into the military funding portfolio from the outset, in the interests of national security and intelligence etc. Keeping in mind that the birth of the internet was a DARPA[NET] project by the United States during the cold war.

Ongoing support and servicing spending for the NBN will be low, and come from ISP payments once commissioned, compared to the ongoing public spending on military infrastructure and services year over year.

Ironically several of the executive members of NBNCo are ex military power brokers.

The decision to select fibre to the premises for NBN was in my opinion a smarter choice and is ultimately cheaper than fibre to the node because other last mile technologies cost more to implement and the ongoing servicing costs are higher.
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What the NBN does NOT appear to provide is a high speed reliable mobile [moving] broadband service outside of the fibre to the premises infrastructure paradigm, in other words for $40 Billion plus dollars Australians should be able to have fast broadband access in all fixed locations and also everywhere they are travelling as well.

The case therefore exists for wireless MOBILE broadband as well as wireless and FTTP fixed broadband infrastructure, as our citizens do not cease to need connectivity the moment they leave a fixed location. Currently none of the political and/or industry driven proposals for national broadband addresses this issue.

It is usually overlooked that wireless broadband infrastructure must also provide for mobile data reliability at high physical speeds of mobility in transit, such as when travelling in high-speed trains, aircraft and cars on freeways with passengers using broadband. This is critical when travelling above 60km per hour.

Most consumers are not aware that current wireless and mobile voice technologies can not seamlessly perform reliable wireless handover between cells or transmitter/receiver towers at such high transit speeds.

This is also why voice calls drop out when travelling in cars over these speeds because the next cell cannot process the seamless connection handover fast enough.

And even now our most advanced telco's are still installing services that fail because of this factor, using prior technology instead of testing and adopting leading edge ratified IEEE solutions that will adapt to suit our lifestyles now and in the future.

Larger worldwide telcos favour wireless data technologies that utilise their considerable investment in the 3G spectrum, currently used for voice and data, because they (and therefore we) paid huge amounts of money to the previous Government/s worldwide to buy commercial access to those radio spectrums when they were auctioned off. These technologies are based on World War 2 radio technology for communication which is why they don't cut it in the digital age and why they are not reliable enough. But we are still now paying for the auction fees.

Currently there is one Telco installing commercial WiMAX 4G wireless broadband services in some capital cities in Australia, this is a positive private sector undertaking except that they appear to be using 802.16e instead of the more desirable 802.16m, (which is capable of mobile use at physical transit handover speeds beyond 300km per hour and therefore a better choice for all customers that want to use broadband data while travelling faster than 60km per hour.) The same question needs to be asked about LTE 4G wireless data services, and the National alternate WiMAX solution previously proposed by the OPEL consortium, and now perhaps being revisited in this NBN 3.0 proposal

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Just recently I sought to have a phone line installed in yet another residence, which required trench work from a pole further up the road and the connection took 12 weeks - it should take no more than 10 business days. I had ADSL 2 connected to the line and the phone number supplied proved to be one that had not been in required 6 month quarantine at all so I got abusive phone calls night and day directed at whomever had owned the number a week or two earlier in a nearby suburb. Clearly they had needed to disconnect it to avoid such calls. Naturally I took action to have the number changed to a quarantined number that had been unused for some time, the number was switched almost immediately with the comment that there would be a slight hiccup with the ADSL 2 service. The ADSL service went off 8 days ago and we were told it would be between 24 and 48 hours to reinstate it, our ISP has since admitted that it will be 21 days in total before we are reconnected to the ADSL 2 service, and no one can tell us why, even the outsource staff in Malaysia have no idea why.

My point here is that this may be the level of service Australians can look forward to if our next federal government adopts to stay with the current Telco paradigm and just patch more speed on to the badly formed infrastructure made up of many private sector players. And this in the city of Sydney, I would not want to project how these issues would translate into rural contexts.

The issues and points of failure in our current telco marketplace appear to be in part due to the involvement of so many players and to many points of responsibility and contention.

From all accounts so far the Tasmanian experience for NBNCo connections is without fault. If this is the service difference when we contrast and compare our options then surely this difference needs fair consideration.

Perhaps this was also the driving force behind the creation of the NBNCo, an attempt by some politicians to reboot the industry afresh and delete the many layers of years of inter-competitive private sector rot, that may exist. Or at least to level the playing field for the good of consumers.

Personally I have not yet found a Telco or ISP in Australia that understands real customer service and brand loyalty and my preference would be to have one point of service that provides fixed and mobile broadband at a flat rate with no other billing so that I can just get on with using the technology to fulfil all my communication needs. The technology exists but the industry will to make it work for everyone is another matter.

At the risk of upsetting some people may I make a comment about internet censorship? As most people want to either have it or not have it , may I propose the option that the federal government sets up an ISP service on the back of whatever national internet network we ultimately get blessed, or cursed with, and that they don't then establish the ISP as a government business unit that makes profit and has shareholders. Instead create it as a publicly funded utility that has in place all the protection and censorship functions that have been proposed to date so that any families, schools, churches and other consumers that want a censored ISP can subscribe. Perhaps with the added capacity to subsidise costs by 50% to any families that are entitled to the family tax benefits Parts A & B. It seems to me that this would be a fairer approach for anyone that is unable for whatever reason to monitor or facilitate safe use of the net for their families, notwithstanding that even this would not be a perfect solution for safe internet use, according to many commentators.

For the record I home-schooled my sons, (without any public funding, and we don't even get to claim GST back on education related inputs) so I am in a position to be across my children's internet use and teach and advise them accordingly but clearly that is a luxury most families don't have. Ironically my eldest son now works hard for a major telco.

Finally if we are going to endure wireless 4G towers in rural areas across our nation under the coalition proposal and to a lesser extent with the NBNCo proposal, then perhaps many of these should be installed safely on private farm land in return for perpetual free broadband to the owner, for permitting and perhaps even assisting with such installations, (many of them have the equipment and this would reduce the rollout costs). Such a willingness to help ones rural neighbours may become a badge of honour in local communities and it should permit far broader areas of coverage than by just using public land locations.

Also where are the broadband internet services, optically isolated for safety, over power-lines, at least if only for the more remote rural sites that have on grid infrastructure power-lines already installed?

If you read all of this, thank you - what is needed for a working outcome is good debate and an understanding of the solutions, not just the perceived problems, this should not be a Ford versus Holden versus BMW debate, it should be about fixing a broken and overly complex network full of obsolete and incompatible infrastructure and business systems, and then expanding the coverage. Or instead lets just buy Kevin & Julia's BMW.