Primus CEO: Shutting down copper is “a really dumb thing to do”

Wow, finally some sense. Ask the customer what they want instead of forcing something down their necks. My parents are quite happy with their $10/month internet connection. I'm sure the NBN won't offer them that price for a fibre connection.

According to currently released pricing, my $40/month ADSL2+ will not be possible either, so I'm going to get forcibly f..ked out of an extra $20/month for something I don't want.

No one will be complaining once it is rolled out, except the unfortunate people on satellite connections. Like all faster technologies, once you try it out, there is no going back. Time is money, the less time something takes to load, the better!

This totally misses the point of why nbn needs the copper alternative to disappear. As mentioned by Paul Fletcher before he went into politics, networks are natural monopolies. If you are the first to run fibre or copper down a street you are going to get 100% of the streets business which makes it worthwhile, if you are the second network then you are battling the incumbant and would be lucky to pick up 10% of that streets business within 5 years...this would make the cost per premises too high to remain competitive against the incumbent. This B grade CEO has no clue about basic economic principles.

Paul, I like your thinking.
Thats is why I propose all highways, freeways, and main road have no speed limit.
If your car cannot do at least 260Km/Hr, then it should not be registered.
In fact, the only cars allowed on the road should be high performance vehicles such as Holden and Ford V8s.
Everything else should be scrapped.
Got a 4 cylinder, scrap it. It may be suitable for you today, but you have to keep up with the times !!!!!
Everyone should be forced in to this (Just like everyone is being forced on to the NBN).
Trust me, just like what you said, once you try it out, there is no going back. Time is money, the less time something, the better!

(P.S. I AM being sarcastic)

Matti, the obvious flaw with that would be the risk of injury or death.

If everyone was able to upgrade their car for a small price and get to any destinations MUCH faster with NO risk, i don't think there would be a problem with it?

Keen as for the NBN ^_^

Primus CEO is a twat, the reason that in the USA failed is because there is practically no regulation in the USA, you have both Verizon and AT&T abusing their market power, as well as AT&T failing to get their archived target speeds, and their FTTN is exactly like ADSL is now an "Upto" Market, virtually creating situations the copper is forcing consumers to put up with stupid connections and crap speeds.

Primus is like any other CEO, looking after their profit.

If you leave Copper network running, there will be a number of scenarios will happen:

1) Remaining consumers will move to Wireless.
2) Low customer uptake on Copper network will increase prices further upwards - the ACCC has no bite to stop this.
3) Telstra will further abandon their Copper network.

Unfortunatly CEOs like Primus CEO is just refusing to face the reality is that Fibre is here to stay, it's the most logical step to move from Copper network.

What CEO Primus is doing is sending a confusing *dumb* message.

FTTN is never going to be better than FTTP.

FTTP is extendable to 15km, where as FTTN is at 1km MAX, without the loss of any speed.
FTTN you investing once, then moving to FTTP you are investing twice.

That means twice as long to repay the network, that means higher ROI, and that means higher prices for the consumers.

That means an excuse to rise prices for the ISP's as well.

This is why some providers like the idea of FTTN, because they see possibly higher margins in some areas depending on what they specialize in.

Providers like iiNet will be seeing upto 27% drop in pricing, this would mean that quotas will be adjusted more - not necessarily mean a drop in price.

91% of data is moved onto fixed line networks.

Well said Matti!
Whilst Julia's got ahold of Australia's wallet, she should upgrade all our entire train system to highspeed rail, it's totally uneconomical for our small but spread out population, but hey if it gets us there faster and our fares increase by 50% why not? That's Labor economics for you!

all these people quoting 'my internet only costs' X - you all seem quite happy to neglect to mention you also have to pay for a phone line. that $10/month plan? what does it run on? thats right, a phone line. with a monthly rental. how much does it cost now? That 40/month? with phone, try 70/month

if you are going to be negative and try and quote pricing, include the necessary bits and pieces so your argument isnt half-assed

What a stupid comment 'Guest', I have a $40plan bundled with my $10phone line but don't have a fixed phone so is costs me $50/month...see the maths really wasn't that hard for u. You forgetting the hidden $46billion NBN cost, who do you think is paying for that? Or are u that stupid? Idiot!

Yes we should always listen to all company CEO's as they genuinely have the consumers best interests at heart NOT!!!!!

Mazerski does know that a FTTN network would mean that he would be disconnected from virtually all his on-net customers and would have to go through Telstra Wholesale? Looking at Primus prices, that means no more naked services, another $10-30 price increase for customers and a mandatory phone line rental.

Hmm, maybe he would like all his customers to be forcibly migrated just like in South Brisbane.

The thing I can't figure out is what copper network he is talking about. From the tone of his statements it's not the slow painful morass of cobbled together patch cable and duct tape that I am connected too, wow pair gains that's got gains in the title if i'm gaining something that must be good right? What Telstras gave my whole street it's own special sub exchange so that we don't have to share with all those people on the full featured exchange people 100 meters away use, cool i'm so lucky, since ADSL and phone calls without an almost subliminal buzzing are just for people who can't afford overpriced mobile services.

Seriously, before he throws this sort of crap out there he should seriously consider who is going to pay the billions that would be required to haul the copper network out of last century and into this one, when you take those costs into account NBN just makes sense. Anybody who thinks the NBN is a bad idea needs to talk to one of the poor people who thanks to Telstra's half arsing and cost cutting on their fixed line network and blatant price gouging on their wireless network to know that the $10-40 a month internet would be nice if it existed for everyone but for some it's a myth.

If we had a system that wasn't broken then fair enough don't fix it, but with what we have... It's time for a change!

NBN sucks for customers like me. I can see Parliament House but cannot get ADSL let alone ADSL2+. You think I'd be a prime candidate for NBN. No, I have a wireless connection through Netspeed using the Motorola Canopy wireless system. 8Mbit connection and 100G downloads for $30 a month and I've ditched my copper connection. There are parts of both the Govt and Coalition solutions that could be put into place for a much better national solution but do you think we'd ever see politicians, of both flavours, agreeing to something. My concern with NBN as presented is simply the cost, for both the capital investment and then ongoing consumer costs. Still, I guess it's all better than my works expensive leased line and connection to ARPAnet in 1988 all just to submit maintanance data back to Sikorsky.

I think you are all missing the point, The point is that they should be run concurrently so you dont end up back in this exact same place with a monopoly in 50 years time.

Think about it sure we will have an open wholesale market, Great but with everyone buying the same product at the same price from the NBN co, When the NBN raises prices the entire field raises prices. There is only one provider and that provider is the government. What happens next time Labor pulls us into massive debt, Oh look here there is 15 million people here lets just raise this cost by $10 a month and look how much money comes in. Enough for a polly's next pay rise.

The only way we will shed the issues that we have with Telstra currently being a monopoly is to have BOTH retail AND infrastructure competition.

There is nothing stopping us from putting VDSL into the market instead of ADSL, Nothing stopping 2.5million people on cable from using it instead. Both provide similar speeds to fibre.

And just FYI to Daniel above, NBN is going to be an "upto" service you are sharing your fibre using TDMA with others in your street. You will never get a didicated 100mbps to your house or business using the NBN because it is a shared medium.......Yes... Just like the NBNco and Labor are telling us that Cable doesnt cut it because its a shared medium... They are rolling out effectivly the same thing in their fibre network... Hypocrisy from a government that knows its a BAD decision to run they way they are, But it gets the votes so they dont care.

@Jeff, @Paul

Agree. For NBN, you need economy of scale. Even more so for a sparsely populated country like Australia. Tom coming from NA where pop density is far far higher with existing cable and copper infra prevalent and more service providers means consumer has a CURRENT choice. In Aust esp the regions, consumers has only Telstra as their choice.

What Tom proposed is ideal. However leaving copper lines active to compete with fibre will mean higher average price for NBN subscribers throughout. Worse for the regions!

Eventually, the cost to maintain the copper would be so high that they are no longer viable to present to customers as an option. When the inevitable time comes, NBN adoption will be in full scale. But that simply means a very long time and longer time to achieve a lower NBN price for everyone.

Matti mate, you have missed the boat!

The NBN is not the cars on the road IT IS THE ROAD. It is like saying lets let everyone keep the old gravel road instead of the nice sealed one.

Everyone can keep their 4 banger if they want - they just get to drive it on a better road. Try driving your nice new v8 on the old pot holed gravel road and see how it goes compared to the new highway. Same goes for your networked devices on copper compared to fibre.

This is why highways should be state owned - same goes for the NBN, power lines, health etc. There are certain infrastructure that is better kept in state hands (to keep universal access available) than given to the private sector to extort (corporate greed) the public with.

@Chris
in what way is fibre a shared medium?
what is Tdma?

I believe Mazerski is only interested in:

1. What is best for his career when he eventually goes back to the USA.
2. What is best for Primus USA (also see 1)

He is not interested in what is best for Australia.

The article is very short on real facts to back Mazerski's economic assertions and I suspect the hybrid model has already been evaluated and discarded by some very good Australian economists/network engineers when designing the NBN.

This article is simply a 'puff' press release from Primus from a new Yank CEO who wants to be noticed.

Tom Mazerski is correct we need fibre between exchange and nodes (The Back Bone) but not to the house, there should be more nodes around so the end points can run adsl2+ or better to more homes, the only people wanting fibre are those with poor connection speeds I get better than 15Mps downloads and can download a 700Mb file in around 5 Mins and it won't matter to me if it takes 1 min or 3 mins less if based on current cost my phone and internet goes up from $60 for unlimited downloads and phone line rental to over $140 for only 200Gb, the only good thing about the NBN is that it could take 10 Years to get to Me.

@ looktall

Go look in a bit deeper, The NBN is not direct fibre from the POI to your house its sent to a box in your street similar to a RIM then seperated into a single fibre to each house from there so the bandwidth ends being shared between multiple houses using TDMA technology.

TDMA is Time division Multiplex Access. So you get a slot of time allotted to your connection when your allowed to use the bandwidth.

Same technology that allows multiple mobile phones to share the same spectrum with GSM/3G technology.

For little extra cost while installing you could get dedicated fibre to each house but hey thats not the way Labor wants to roll.

re: Asking customers what they want.

As Steve Jobs famously said "customers don't know what they want" and when it comes to new technology, I agree with him.

Steve Jobs wasn't always right, but the market has spoken and ultimately said he was right about his approach to product design and features. Put good people on the team (and himself) designing the products and they will deliver something that the market will buy.

I also remember the change I made from dial-up to ADSL. I wasn't really sure I wanted broadband and the higher price of ADSL but there is no way I'd now go back to dial-up. I predict the same thing with fibre.

I'm a pensioner, and despite what some people might think, we're not all just a bunch of old fogies peering through thick glasses trying to read the occasional email on a dial-up connection.

I have ADSL2+, and due to the lousy copper to my home, I'm lucky to get 3Mbps on a good day.

I also have children living in Europe and the US, and I'd really like to be able to talk to them using a good quality video connection, butthat's simply impossible with my current service. Even on the lowest resolution settings. there's constant breakup and stuttering, so audio is usually the best we can do.

Of course most of the time, YouTube is also a stuttering beast that can only be watched by caching, so viewing any sort of unplanned entertainment there is also not the best experience.

Tom, you might be happy with copper, so you're welcome to have mine. But please, please, please... let me have my NBN FTTH as soon as it's possible to do it.

Thanks for thinking of me, but please don't do me any more favours.

The biggest disruptive threat to the NBN's business is wireless.

Around 44 per cent of all internet connections are now wireless and growing at an annual double-digit rate of 14.8%.

Consumers are increasingly shifting towards mobile devices, such as iPads, Blackberries, and laptops.

And this trend will only strengthen through time as smart-phone penetration increases and wireless speeds improve. Yet the NBN's business plan would have us believe that wireless broadband growth will slow, not accelerate. LOL!

The NBN would have being great in the last decade gone by, no doubt about it! But we are now entering the wireless age where people want to be mobile with their internet access and as the technology in tables & smartphones ascends in the next few years the NBN will be totally leapfrogged.

I have no doubt that the NBN will eventually represent the biggest misallocation of public fund in Australia's history, NO DOUBT!

I put to anyone out there to agrue against this considering the growing market in wireless...

@Phillip I see you used pretty numbers in an effort to assume your figures will simply be taken as fact.

Might I direct you to

[url="http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/why-not-wireless/"]NBN Myths[/url]

Whilst your figures might be correct what you fail to recognise is that over 90% of all data downloaded is done via a fixed broadband connection Wireless take up is more often taken as a complement to a fixed connection not instead of.

I would like this option actually. As a renter, I'm a bit worried that my landlord is going to say no, or that as an old block of flats, it might not be possible. I'm not sure what wireless reception would be like here if the television reception is anything to go by, and in any case, I would rather not have to fork out for wireless.

Renters at least should be able to keep their copper if they're denied a connection to fibre.

"Background in economics" That says it all. Has no idea what he is talking about

@Chris - it would take every single person on the GPON to sign up to 100Mbps for you to not get a dedicated 100Mbps service, and even then, it would be 78Mbps dedicated.

Remember NBNco are using 2.5Gbps GPON's and that is split over just 32 people.

Also note the GPON can _easily_ be upgraded to 10Gbps and beyond in the future if required, this would provide 312mbps dedicated.

How can you say HFC is 'effectively the same' network when Optus (152Mbps) and Telstra (304Mbps) is shared over hundreds of users? GPON is in a totally different ballpark as far as contention is concerned

The fact remains current broadband choices such as ADSL2+ are more than sufficient. Some already equal or better the NBN speed!

(Except for people that don't know how to setup their computer correctly, like the guy who supposedly can't watch webcams on ADSL2+. What rubbish. I could watch webcam video on dialup. A little blocky, sure. But only slight buffering on 256K - and none at all on 512K. So ditch your 386 and buy a new computer/modem - or get a tech around!)

Dodo is currently offering UNLIMITED downloads, on ADSL2+, for $40 per month. The NBN will not match that for YEARS - if ever! With the current setup, Telstra still makes millions, we have the choice for cheap internet, and we have relative PRIVACY. The NBN is nothing to do with OUR benefit. Once everything goes through government-owned infrastructure, they will be able to monitor everything you say or do and therefore can control you.

That's what the NBN is really for. So the mongrels in government can control what's left of our private lives. What a pity all the sheeple in this country won't take a stand and refuse to take up NBN anything. No internet, no phone... It would only take a few weeks for the whole system to grind to a halt and collapse. Then we could keep our fast AND cheap internet.

re: Allan

Video on dial-up is just not at a standard that people find acceptable. What you call 'acceptable' is not acceptable to me and I expect many others. Are u really suggesting that dial-up is ok for most people?? Sure hope you are not in the telecomms industry.

Dodo do back end throttling (or at least used to - not sure what they do now) to keep data costs low. I've also seen many customers leave Dodo because of poor service. If price is your only consideration, then go for Dodo. If you value service, you gotta pay for it.

As for keeping my fast internet, I'm on ADSL2+ in Melb and can only get 3.5mbps on a good day. I know someone in next suburb and they can't even get ADSL.

I'm looking forward to the day when I can tell Telstra to take their phone line back. I don't need it for phone calls and only have it to get ADSL.

Bring on the NBN.

Sigh, it is frustrating dealing with Luddites and conspiracy theorists.

“I’m an economist by trade so I think basic economics and cost,”
Perhaps he should think beyond basic economics and cost, to advanced economics and cost (and benefit)!

Telstra sold out way too cheap. They had the government over a barrel and had the chance to skewer them, but instead they let them off the hook.

Time to stop thinking of the NBN as just a fast internet service for browsing HD porn or sharing movies of the grandkids but as open wide area network infrastructure to enable high-bandwidth communications (data/voice/video) for individuals, businesses and organisations regardless of geographic location. You want to move your business from to bush? NBN will let you. Bring video conferenced health care to remote communites - that too.

The coalition's market driven options at the edges will make the bush more and not less remote and will result in a dingo's breakfast of mixed technologies.

It was one af Australia's great commitments to remote dwellers to force Telstra (when Govt-owned) to provide copper to far-flung places so every one could access the phone. Market forces would've made this too expensive to leave to private companies. The NBN will do this with the new generation of scalable communication infrastructure - fibre. Will we be too scared and selfish to take this further step of nation building?

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I'm not sure why but this website is loading very slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a issue on my end? I'll check back later
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