It’s not quite that straight forward. While the NBN would use the same cable, it needs to be changed to connect to the NBN backbone rather than Telstra or Optus. It also needs to be upgraded in some areas as the existing cable network is not sufficient to support high speeds for every house that would be connecting to the cable.
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New rules strengthen consumer protections in NBN migration
The Australian Communications and Media Authority is putting in place new rules to significantly improve the experience of consumers moving to the National Broadband Network.
‘Today we are releasing for public comment a second set of new rules that will protect consumers moving to NBN services,’ said ACMA Chair, Nerida O’Loughlin.
These rules will ensure that consumers have the information they need to choose a service plan that meets their needs. They will also ensure that consumers have confidence that their new NBN service will work as promised,’ Ms O’Loughlin said.
‘And if there is a problem with their new NBN service, consumers will be able to move back to their old service while the problem is fixed. They may also agree to an alternative service if they prefer,’ Ms O’Loughlin added.
The draft new rules respond to recent ACMA research of residential households that connected to the NBN in the previous 12 months about their experience in moving to and using the NBN. This showed that about 14 per cent of internet households reported being left without an internet service for more than a week when moving to the NBN. Only around half of internet households knew the speed required to meet their needs.
‘The migration to the NBN is a complex task for industry and consumers. These rules are designed to address consumer “pain points” in the process. We look forward to feedback on the draft rules we have released today,’ Ms O’Loughlin said.
The ACMA welcomes comments on the draft new rules. The deadline for submissions is 5 pm, 11 May 2018.
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So, can someone hug me now!
Looks like I’m in the small patch that is around 200m wide by 200m long that is going to be HFC… While the rest get brand new FTTC…
I’ll shake your hand instead of a hug? Digital handshaking is the way of the future though.
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I’M GETTING FTTC!!!
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I’m getting that too, later in the year, should be much quicker than my ADSL which isnt the quickest, but you never know with the NBN
Lol!
That’s very dial up like in this day and age.
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There’s recent reports going out that Bill Morrow (CEO of NBN) is considering throttling gamers on Fixed Wireless connections because of their heavy usage.
I’m not sure if what he says is true (I believe online games tend to use minimal data), but look at the comments sections on Facebook and any news article and you see that everyone is whingeing about how this wouldn’t have happened under the original Labor NBN, which is not true.
The fact is, Fixed Wireless was always planned to be rolled out under Labor’s plan - to about 8% of all premises across the country. It’s only the fixed line rollout that had been changed from FTTP to the various technologies ranging in shitness.
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From what I’ve read, the reference to gamers is only speculation by Bill about who’s using the majority of data. I’d have thought it’s more likely to be streaming services - it’s been well publicised the sigificant increase in data used across the country when Netflix launched.
However, gaming could be a culprit too. Basically anything that’s continuously using data cause congestion very quickly if there isn’t enough capacity.
Unfotunately, it’s a difficult situation. For a lot of isolated towns and properties connected by fixed wireless, the cost of running any sort of fixed line to is prohibitavely expensive to install. Fixed wireless is much cheaper to install in these locations (but still quite expensive), but it very expensive to maintain, with each site needing regular maintance and licence renewals.
Most towers are connected back to the network by microwave network through other towers, which means that any traffic from the “outer” towers add to the bandwidth required at the “inner” towers. These links are quite variable in the amount of traffic they can handle, with it depending on the frequency, distance and weather conditions. A single microwave link used by the NBN is only capable of somewhere between 300mbps and 1Gbps (very rarely that much) - so which fills up quickly once you connect a few towers and get a few users wanting to max out their connection. Multiple links can (and are) used, but that requires more equipment to be installed and maintained, but the bottle necks are always going to be far smaller than what can be achieved with fibre.
25mbps is really all that ever should have been offered on fixed wireless initially - it’s far more than anyone using the service could get before.
I don’t think that gamers playing games is the number 1 contribution to NBN congestion, especially seeing articles saying that games actually use lower data per hour than streaming from YouTube or Netflix.
What I think is happening is gamers (and others) are viewing a lot more Twitch streams, which uses a similar data amount to YouTube. Streamers occasionally do 12 and 24-hour streams on the platform, which in turn leads viewers to tune in for longer periods of time, which leads to more congestion on the network.
When I heard this news on radio this morning I could not believe it. Is the NBN connection THAT expensive?
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Yep, putting cable in the ground is expensive, particularly on “smaller” jobs that don’t have the cost efficiencies of doing a much larger area.
We got FTTP for our office - one of only 3 places in the city with FTTP, one is the council and the second is a grocer. It was $30k for the fibre and that wasn’t far to run, a client had a quote for near $50k. It’s because it doesn’t run to the nearest node but to a different connection point. Would love it at home but would probably cost me a few hundred k.
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Which city are you in?
More of a town… but when we just scrape in to be able to call ourselves a city we will! It’s in Tassie so that’ll narrow it down.
I have a feeling it’s either Devonport or Burnie?
Yeah, Devrock as featured briefly on The Weekly the other night in Tom’s Go Away Launceston episode.
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So for the 3rd time this year NBN Co have changed the time frame for my property, its now showing October to December 2020 … even though I can right now get Telstra HFC since that will the technology choice offered.
Shambles absolute shambles, at least Optus HFC does the job here with premium speed more than enough data all for $65 a month.
Not bad for being 45meters away from the router.
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My FTTC keeps changing too, was July-Sep 2018, then Oct-Dec 2018, now Jan-Mar 2019, even though construction has already started.
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