The irony of NBN’s satellite numbers

After spending millions on consultants to criticise past decisions in the 2013 NBN Strategic Review, the company responsible for building the National Broadband Network, NBN Co, has repeated supposed past mistakes in a metric definition.

The review was highly critical of the former management of NBN Co when it stated that its Interim Satellite Service (ISS) had passed 250,000 premises when the satellites only had capacity to service 48,000 premises:

NBN Co has previously reported Satellite premises covered as 250,000, however the Independent Assessment considers that it is more appropriate to report 48,000 Premises Passed given the contractually limited capacity of the ISS.

NBN Co Strategic Review, Page 50

Consequently, the review revised the company’s performance figure down in the review — stating the former management had missed the target of 250k premises by 80% (page 40) by reclassifying the meaning of the metric.

Strategic Review says that NBN Co has missed their Corporate Plan target by 80% by "reclassifying" the meaning of Satellite Premises Passed
Strategic Review says that NBN Co has missed their Corporate Plan target by 80% by “reclassifying” the meaning of Satellite Premises Passed

Yet, three years later — here we are again with the company using the total satellite footprint as their headline “Premises Passed and Ready for Service” figure.

NBN Co’s weekly progress report, which provides a high-level summary of premises passed across Australia, says 404,064 premises have been “covered” by the Long Term Satellite service. Yet, in the 2016 corporate plan, the company states that satellites only has the capacity to service 250,000 premises at a time.

Following the footsteps of the Strategic Review, NBN Co will technically miss its corporate plan satellite target by around 50%.

NBN Co reports 404,064 premises covered by satellite as at 16th June 2016, yet the satellites can only handle 250,000 premises.
NBN Co reports 404,064 premises covered by satellite as at 16th June 2016, yet the satellites can only handle 250,000 premises.

The hilarity of it all

What can I say? Metrics are arbitrarily defined by those who want to portray a specific outcome. Criticism of metric definition is moot, and really occurs only when trying to pursue a line of argument intended by those writing it. The Strategic Review is an excellent example of this.

Perhaps unnoticed by many at the time, the numbers in the review favoured the Multi-Technology Mix even though there was no increase in capacity for the satellite.

The review considered only 206,000 premises passed by FY16 in the “revised outlook” — however, it magically jumped up to 340,000 premises passed in the adopted “multi-technology” case without any physical changes to the satellites.

NBN's satellite apparently passes 340k by FY16 premises in the MTM model
NBN’s satellite apparently passes 340k by FY16 premises in the MTM model
... yet in the revised outlook, only 206k premises are passed with satellite even though there are no changes to the satellite
… yet in the revised outlook, only 206k premises are passed with satellite even though there are no changes to the satellite

Remarkable isn’t it? Just goes to show how a metric can be reclassified to portray missed targets, then rapidly reclassified again to make your own rollout model look better 😉

LNP backflip: “announcing” FTTN for West Coast Tasmania

NBN and the Coalition backtracks after facing massive community backlash for forcing thousands of homes and businesses in west coast Tasmania onto satellite

It’s possibly the height of hypocrisy.  The Government who led the charge to remove fixed-line communications in thousands of homes and business in Tasmanian West Coast communities is now “announcing” that they’re rolling out Fibre to the Node (FTTN) and Fixed Wireless networks in the townships of Queenstown, Rosebery, Zeehan and Strahan after massive community backlash.

Queenstown, the largest of the communities, already has existing fixed-line infrastructure including ADSL2+ and 4G mobile connections provided by Telstra.  The initial commitment by the former NBN-management was to rollout Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) to Queenstown, Rosebery and Zeehan.  This later changed to Fibre to the Node (FTTN) when the Coalition’s preferred Multi-Technology Mix model was introduced.

However, jxeeno blog’s analysis of the 18 month construction plan last July showed these areas were removed from the Fixed-Line rollout schedule.  It was later revealed in a Senate hearing that these towns were permanently removed after from the fixed-line rollout in favour of the long term satellite service.  This is despite the Coalition’s initiated Strategic Review modelled that the satellite beam servicing west coast Tasmania will likely be “severely oversubscribed”.

Up until this week, Queenstown remained the largest suburb covered entirely by the Long Term Satellite Service — originally intended for remote communities.

After strong community resistance arguing that their “new” national broadband network connections will be worse than their existing ADSL2+ services (in terms of latency and data allowances) and continued questioning by Tasmanian Labor Senator Anne Urquhart in various Senate hearings — it looks like for once, politics and community resistance has finally made a difference to the National Broadband Network’s so-called Multi-Technology Mix.

Now only if the broader outcry for reforming the Multi-Technology Mix is heard.

Fibre rollout may be one-third less than Strategic Review

(analysis) NBN Co may rollout as little as 16% fibre to the premises under new principles released by the company. Their new guidelines reveal that within the fixed-line footprint, only new developments with over 100 premises or areas where fibre rollout are in advanced stages will likely receive Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). Remaining premises will be served by a mix of HFC and Fibre to the Node or Basement in the fixed-line footprint. This is despite the NBN Co Strategic Review initiated by the incoming Coalition government released 11 months ago suggested that at least 24% of premises in Australia will get FTTP.

Calculations conducted using myNBN.info’s extensive statistics reveal that only around 70 Fixed-line Service Areas (comparable to cities, see tables below) around the whole of Australia are “completed” or “in advanced stages” of the rollout (at least 50% of the rollout modules have at least begun build preparation). This accounts for roughly 1 million premises, or 8% at the end of the rollout in 2020. In addition, NBN Co expects another approximately 1 million premises in new developments (known as greenfields areas) with over 100 premises, accounting for a further 8%1. The total of 16% is roughly one third less than the original 24% suggested in the Strategic Review, or approximately 1 million premises around Australia.

The Government’s statement of expectations mandates the company to provide at least 25 mbps download speeds to all Australian premises with at least 90% of premises in the fixed-line footprint able to get 50 mbps or faster download speeds. NBN Co will only consider installing fibre in areas, not individual premises, where NBN Co finds the existing copper infrastructure to be incapable of delivering speeds required by the mandate. NBN Co is also investigating the possibility for installing fibre in limited “high-profit” areas as well as providing an end-user co-funded “fibre on demand” model.

The figure for greenfields fibre rollout may decrease further as the Government considers new rules that encourage property developers to use alternative fibre providers such as Opticomm.

In previous testimony, NBN Co’s CEO Bill Morrow had indicated that the Fibre to the Premises rollout mix may in fact be higher than that modelled in the Strategic Review:

Bill Morrow: In fact, the number that I recall is a bit higher than that in the early stage of the modelling that we are working on right now.

However, it appears that the modelling has reversed in terms of the number of FTTP premises. In less than 11 months, the multi-technology modelling conducted by NBN Co in their strategic review appears to have been proven to be inaccurate.

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