NBN 3.0 from the Alliance for Affordable Broadband: Open Letter

Yep. Exactly hat I have been pushing to Abbott, Jensen,and lots and lots of others in hundreds of emails.

Where do I join?

Mark Addinall.

your damn right Wayne.

What a joke? why build something thats only 1/10th of whats needed? Who are you working for? Who's supporting you, who paid you to ''sign'' this which is probably written by someone else?

Do it properly, all capital cities, best possible speed we can attain with current technology, spread out from there as time continues.

You live in the country and dont like that? dont live in the country(no one is forcing you to, its choice to live there, with the knowledge that the infrastructure is not as developed.)

I live in the city, i want the best we can get. We diserve it, we pay our tax's, its our VOTE, its our Country. Why be 50th when we can be first?

- Marak

I think the answer to this drivel comes in point 1. At least some of these people have vested interests on behalf of the companies they work for of preserving their existing investments in profitable markets. What they don't want is a return of a govt funded build to service the needs of the entire populace. They are happy to collect profits from the most profitable sectors of the market, expecting govt to fund those areas which are unprofitable for them to service, but do not want that govt service to operate in profitable areas in order to fund the unprofitable ones. In short, they want to continue collecting their profits without facing competition from a govt enterprise seeking to deliver equitable access to all Australians. We should give them the same respect trhey show us, which is none at all.

@ Marak, there's no need for disrespect towards country people. It's there you find the mines, farms and other resources that provide city folk like yourself the essentials you live on. Few in those areas expects to have exactly the same services you get in the city. But private enterprise has failed to deliver even basic service levels to city standards. They have just as much entitlement to services as you. Sure, cities need the NBN - but rural areas have been neglected for so long that rolling out there first is merely addressing the imbalance.

What these people are saying is purely in an effort to save there sweet arses. They know that the NBN will be like a wildfire that flattens their playing field and will allow buy in to markets that were once $100m minimum start ups for thousands of dollars. Of course the current crop don't want it. The people who sold hay to the horses that transported people around last century Sydney didn't like the way the car industry took off either. Yes, 'alliance' I understand your fear but trying to convince people that its in their best interests to not support the NBN is just plain wrong. I work on the sidelines of this industry and have watched for years as better faster technologies, some mentioned above, were not used, and how the public has been basically ripped off, now your saying that they are available and will be used ? too late by far boys, what happened over the last 10 years ? stuff all. You better get on the NBN bandwagon guys, nothing is going to stop it now, even Murdoch has tried his 'damndest' to put an end to it and will fail. Why do you think Packer got out of free to air, Because he realised a teenager will be able to set up a broadcasting facilty for a few grand and get customers anywhere in the world, yep, a truly level playing field. The NBN will be the greatest addition to infrastructure in the history of this country, just watch.

I thing that is the poorest manifesto I have seen.
Basically the bottom line is do nothing because you already have broad band.
The fiber-optic to the node will provide for the next 50years of IT infrastructure. I can clearly see you do not understand the opportunity it represents to the future of prosperity in Australia.

PS Markets gave the USA a 3rd world Power System where one fault can take out the whole easten seaboard.

People bag the NBN plan for being too expensive while the coalition is saving money by handing it over to capitalism.

I know my broadband needs have trippled in the last few years as more media is being pushed to the web. The ISPs have been more than happy with this move as it forces people to spend more on their internet connection to allow Australians to experience new online world. I'm now forced to make a decision: Do I stick with very local ISPs like Internode and Adam? They offer local technical support but I'll be forced to monitor my internet quota as though it's my calorie intake. If I go with TPG I know as soon as I have a technical problem I'll be put in touch with someone in India via the worst voip imaginable but I'll have the quota to browse the internet guilt free.

Having a single system that all ISPs have access to will mean companies will be forced to set themselves apart from the pack by the service they give. It turns this oligopoly into a free market, it's only natural that the current industry leaders aren't happy with that prospect.

We believe..... really?

I believe you lot are a bunch of self-interested companies that see the NBN as real competition for what you see as "your" market areas.

These guys are just trying to save their ass, nothing bad to say about Bevan and I'm suprised to hear his stance on the NBN - but look at the lits of names, vast majority of them are Wireless providers - ghee, they must make a killing from broadband blackspots and RIM's - no wonder they don't like the NBN.

We need this to move forward, if a few small companies need to get taken out in the process, so be it. In the past many things people use today on a daily basis, things like Telephone or Car's - killed off other industries.

If I had access to HFC I would not be complaining, I only have access to sluggish DSL we need to share with 3 computers, a xbox, a bunch of smartphones and a laptop - it's impossible to do even a quarter of that at once, and I consider myself one of the lucky with a 18Mbps connection.

If anyone seriously thinks 4G is 'up to 100Mbps' take a look at the Vividwireless speedtest thread on Whirlpool in the Wireless ISP's section - it's laughable.

FTTN fails because it relies on the copper cables, we all see how that 'up to' 24Mbps really turns out :))

'Fraid I can't consider wireless - high latency, patchy coverage, slow *actual* speeds.

Broadband access is a utility and a household necessity. Such services are better provided by a mix of public and private, with public construction and ownership of the common infrastructure.

Once again a series of statements that are all individually rational and compelling. The overwhelming problem that I have with all of this, is that there is never a discussion around the magic term, LATENCY, this is the overwhelming problem with regards to wireless. Speed is great, however the improvements to the network optimised only when latency is minimised.
Yes it does matter, so start talking about it.

[quote] we believe that a mix of technologies and a market based approach will deliver the best outcome. [/quote]

"market based approach" and that's proved successful to date. NOT!

"market based approach" is the reason many Australians still do not have decent broadband (many can not get > 1.5Mbps speeds)

The only ones that want NBN fibre are the geeks downloading p0rn & illegal copyright. If you want fibre then pay for it yourself.

Yeehah!! At last a groundswell of rational people are standing up to the insane, draconian NBN 2.0 approach of taking Fiber to every home (FTTH).

Fiber to the Node (FTTN) is a much more sensible approach with much better and much sooner ROI which means private sector will be much more interested in making it happen. It's the approach taken by many smart countries - and it has been very successful. Most countries, including NZ, have various FTTN technologies (eg VDSL2) giving speeds up to 50Mbps (and 100Mbps products available next year: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042110-alcatel-lucent-boosts-broadband-over-copper.html) over copper for the last mile.

FTTN is the ideal compromise solution and it serves a great phase 1 of a 2 phase process that will eventually give those who need 1Gbps the FTTH option without throwing away the phase 1 FTTN investment.

Please, I work for a company that currently designs and installs fibre and wireless technologies. Anyone saying that a wireless network could opnly cost 3 Billion is dreaming. To get the coverage and data rates required you need excessive access points all connected via fibre anyway. Costs for wireless project I have worked on are marginally less than maybe at most 20% cheaper than the fibre to the desktop model.

But then again I live in a capital city and I'm still waiting for ADSL 2 or any kind of cable to run past. Oh thats right no overhead powerlines so that won't happen, unless the government steps in and spends my taxes on something useful rather than welfare for middle income families like baby bonus etc which we don't need to have.

Funny how these four or five NBN detractors commenting here, all sound the same. They even say the same things, like... you pay for it...

Dear sir, if you are going to spread your propaganda using multiple names, at least have the intelligence to do "something" different...!

LOL...!

This is wrong on so many levels.

1) Future proofing. In 20 years we will be transferring virtual worlds, AI intelligences and whatever technology follows 3D blu-ray, on demand. Imagine the broadband required by technologies as advanced as The Matrix. It can be done with 1Gbps fibre.
2) A broadband company that will be rendered defunct by the NBN and a bunch of wireless network operators label the NBN as unnecessary. Talk about vested interests.
3) Anyone who has ever spent time on Unwired or the like, realises how slow and congested it is. Anyone with a Vodafone or Optus mobile realises how congested it gets. The only way to reduce congestion is to have a mobile tower on every corner of every street.

"We believe in infrastructure based competition."

Wasn't that already tried with the Optus and Telstra HFC rollouts? Yeah, that worked bloody well, didn't it? A small portion of the country got two cables running down their street, and the rest got absolutely nothing.

Also, talk about a jumbled message. In the first few points can basically be summarised thusly: Governments should pitch in when services aren't being delivered, but they're far too incompetent to do so. Riiiiiight.

"We believe a competitive National Fibre Backhaul Network (NFBN) platform is critical to the development of broadband in Australia."

Backhaul competition isn't going to mean squat if the last mile is still owned by a monopoly. Sounds an awful lot like that point was dictated to them by Mr Rabbit.

The rest isn't even worth commenting on.

There seems to be a few around that don't realize this isn't going to affect just the gaming sector, which seems to be what they revolve it around. Sure enough, it'll certainly boost the reliability on that side, but there's far more uses on other ends too.

I'm talking first up for companies. Those with networks that don't just span the site, but span over a state and so on. On site there's no worries, but getting off site regardless of whether it's through 3G, branch ports or hotel ports - depending where the job is - accessing anything is a nightmare with the time it takes. And that's going with Telstra where possible.

Another business aspect that can apply to customers too is technical support. It's becoming more common for IT departments to directly access a PC through the net, using it as though they were sitting in front of it. Typically the quality of this is heavily affected when going remote, struggling over lower speeds. Gotta remember it's not your download speed, but your upload that counts here. Most of which is abysmal.

On the other end, web pages are - as they were when ADSL was first being driven - becoming more media rich all the time. Long gone are the simple pages that could be loaded without trouble on normal connections, Australian lines are becoming too congested and slow to really browse the web without waiting all the time for each to load up. Particularly poor when researching.

As for those on wireless - you've not tried living in a suburb that's got landline shortage. Seriously, it struggles to load even the Google home page at midday onwards until about 2am. Relying on wireless for anything outside phone use or being on the move is a sad excuse of an idea for a nation.

Without building the NBN now, we're simply going to fall further and further behind. I'd love to be in Tassie right now, who's already got a portion wired up with fibre.

The men that wrote this article all have vested interests in stopping the type of infrastructure planned by the NBN. They all have companies or work for companies that generate a great deal of their income from fibre connections from their data centres to customer premises. Imagine what would happen to their bottom line if a business could purchase a 1Gbs fibre link from the NBN wholsaler. The businesses could even link all thier offices directly & require less reliance on all these major corporations data centres. Any major company would not rely on the wirless netwok that they propose for their critical data thus these men have saved gauranteed their business model remains safe. It was just like the Mining companies threatening to pull out investment because they would in realility only be making $4Billion profit instead of $6Billion becuase of the mining tax.

Shameless these CEOs. You guys make me sick!

@Dazza "I think its shameful that people put personal toys before health, education and housing. Yuppies gone mad"

As with all opinions there is more than one side, it is very easy to throw your arguement on its head, as follows.

"I think its shameful that people cant see the benifits to health,education and housing the NB can bring, Yuppies gone mad"

Now here is the how.
Education...really do I honestly have to explain that one, come on seriously.

Health...The diagnostic and medical teaching is going to be greatly enhanced, a rural trainee doctor is now a possble this ties into education also.

Housing...As a company moving out from a city is now a possible consideration, this tied in with cheaper rates and tax enterprise zones, affordable housing also follows.
This plan worked very well in Europe, took the pressure off cities and revitalise failing towns, in fact it worked to well, and some cities had to try and encourge some people to move back.

As for your understanding of the fibre map, leave that to others, to explain would have to start at fibre 101 and then work upwards to final network, and thats way way beyond 3000 chars, but it will provide the 97% coverage promised to what is your point exactly?

@42... addendum to my last paragraph - "we would have an NBN paid for, over the projected build period"...!

Oh look...@44

Another new comer/naysayer, who sounds just like the old naysayer(s) has magically appeared, 5 days after this thread has come and gone ...LOL

We need NBN for Dummies

@ 42,43 ,45.

Do you have a job yet fool !

All your waffle @ 42 the nation actually gets benefit and services for that expenditure.

And the return from NBN will be ?? when ?? and the Take Up will be ??

Always the best for last! And the cost Fool will be ??

@Raymond & Doubt
Or should that be Raymoubt or Domond? It's so hard to tell you guys apart, we'd almost swear you were the same person. Maybe we'll just refer to you as Statler and Waldorf.

And most of the NBN supporters have more than enough tech nous to know what is in the national interest. And to know what is pure FUD.

By the way, Statler and Waldorf, you did notice that you started posting again on a thread that is twelve months old. didn't you? What with you guys being right up to date and all.