Phone-only consumers to pay more in FTTN and HFC

February 28, 2015June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang 1 Comment

(analysis) NBN Co has confirmed that they will force phone-only customers within their Fibre to the Node and HFC footprints off the existing PSTN service delivered over the current copper network from Telstra exchanges. Like the current migration of customers in the Fibre to the Premises footprint, all customers in the FTTN and HFC footprint will also need to migrate to the NBN network within 18 months after an area is NBN Ready for Service.

However, unlike the FTTP technology where NBN Co will install a Network Termination Device (NTD) at end users’ homes, customers or retail services providers are expected to provide the termination modem to connect to the NBN network. This leaves phone-only customers in an uncertain situation because phone signals are not natively transmitted over the FTTN or HFC networks.

Extra cost to consumers

NBN Co currently charges a minimum of $24.00 per month for its Access Virtual Circuit (similar to line rental, it allows service providers to access the data and voice ports on a customers’ premises). In addition to that, there are overhead costs for service providers to operate, connect and rent phone numbers.

However, in the FTTN or HFC footprint, customers will have to likely purchase (or have subsidised by service providers) a VDSL or cable modem with Voice Over IP (VOIP) functionality to make calls. With VDSL modems with in-built VOIP costing around $200 today, phone-only users in the FTTN footprint will likely have higher up-front costs or ongoing repayment costs compared with their FTTP footprint counterparts who can simply plug their existing phones into the NBN Co provided NTD. This would be a similar situation in the HFC footprint.

This means that consumers who don’t wish to access the Internet, yet retain a fixed-line phone connection, could potentially face up to $200 more up-front — or $8.30 per month on a 24 month contract.

No Backup Battery

It also creates further uncertainty for priority assist customers, or customers with medical or security alarms. The typical modems made available to consumers will unlikely have an uninterrupted power supply (UPS, also known as backup battery) in the event of a power outage. While the street-side nodes used by NBN Co in the FTTN network will have backup batteries, the customer’s modem will be unable to connect in the event of a power outage without a backup battery as well.

Elderly customers or customers with security or medical alarms may need to purchase an additional UPS to ensure their connection remains during a power outage, bearing further costs onto customers who only want a phone service.

FTTx & HFC will drive up mobile-only use

With these additional cost barriers likely to hit consumers in the FTTB/N and HFC footprints, phone-only consumers may be encouraged to abandon the fixed-like service and take up a mobile phone only service instead. With the increasing bandwidth made available using LTE and 3G technologies, transmitting voice and making phone calls over the cellular network has become cheaper than ever.

This may be even more problematic for NBN Co’s business case which used to assume that roughly 7% of the population will have mobile-only services. With the existing 7% of customers representing at least $18 million per year in lost potential revenue, NBN Co may need to find alternative avenues to make additional revenue.

NBN Co tests 3.5GHz fixed wireless in outer metro areas

February 12, 2015June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

NBN Co has commenced testing the 3.5GHz spectrum slated for use in NBN Co’s fixed wireless network in outer metro areas. NBN Co’s current Fixed Wireless network uses the 2.3GHz spectrum in regional areas after acquiring the spectrum from former satellite TV provider Austar. However, it lacked the 2.3GHz spectrum license in metro areas.

In August 2014, Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull directed the ACMA to issue licenses for NBN Co in the 3.5GHz spectrum to cover a spectrum shortage NBN Co faced in outer metro areas.

According to the ACMA license database, there were 41 “Scientific Assigned” licenses issued in the 3.5GHz spectrum range in December 2014. These licenses were assigned onto NBN Co “Test Trailer” that are located in the outer suburbs of Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and Melbourne, where the test equipment resides:

Test Trailer Code	Location
Bris 1	within 8 km of Bribie Island Road near Regina Avenue	NINGI
Bris 8	within 8 km of Warrill View-Peak Crossing Rd	HARRISVILLE
Bris 12	within 6 km of Brookfield Showground	BROOKFIELD
Bris 11	within 8 km of Narangba Road near Alama Road	KURWONGBAH
Bris 2	within 8 km of Hausmann Lane	UPPER CABOOLTURE
Bris 4	within 8 km of Williams Street	DAYBORO
Syd 10	within 10 km of 80-82 Market Street	APPIN
Syd 8	within 10 km of Cnr Wollombi Road / Shingle Gully Road	MILLFIELD
Bris 3	within 8 km of Camp Mountain Road	SAMFORD VILLAGE
Bris 7	within 8 km of 1524-1530 Waterford-Tamborine Road	LOGAN VILLAGE
Bris 5	within 8 km of Reservoir, D’Aguilar, McLeod Lane	BRACALBA
Bris 6	within 8 km of 5460555 Middle Road	GREENBANK
Bris 10	within 15 km of Near Reservoir, Knox Lane	FERNVALE
Syd 1	withn 20 km of Reservoir off Tanilba Bay Road	LEMON TREE PASSAGE
Syd 14	within 6 km of Cnr George Downes Drive / Greta Road	KULNURA
Syd 13	within 10 km of 240 Mowbray Park Road	LAKESLAND
Syd 12	within 5 km of Warragamba Sportsground	WARRAGAMBA
Syd 4	within 20 km of Sandy Creek Road near Whitings Lane	QUORROBOLONG
Bris 9	within 15 km of Lot 4, Wensley Road	SOUTH RIPLEY
Syd 6	within 5 km of Old Northern Road near Wisemans Ferry Road	MAROOTA
Syd 2	within 10 km of Off Italia Road near Lone Pine Road	EAST SEAHAM
Syd 7	within 12 km of 139 Racecourse Road	CLARENDON
Syd 5	within 12 km of Wyee Road near Ruttley Road	WYEE
Syd 9	within 10 km of 5 Lupton Road	BARGO
Syd 3	within 10 km of 2171 Pacific Highway	HEATHERBRAE
Syd 11	within 10 km of 135 Burragorang Road	MOUNT HUNTER
CWMEL_P2_5	within 15 km of Comms Site, Alcorns Road	CRESWICK
CW_SYD_P2_1	within 15 km of 1C Hoddle Street	BURRAWANG
CW_SA_P2_1	within 15 km of Lot 133 Carter Road	RIVERGLEN
CW_SYD_P2_3	within 15 km of Lot 102 Great Western Highway	LITTLE HARTLEY

The test licenses will expire in June 2015. It is expected that around 80,000 premises will be serviceable by NBN Co’s 3.5GHz fixed wireless network once it’s completed.

NBN Co reveals 18 month rollout plan

December 1, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

NBN Co released their new multi-technology “rollout plan” for a forward looking plan of the next 18 months. In their limited rollout plan release, which bares little resemblance or detail previously seen in NBN rollout plans, the company lists the area and the technology planned for use in their 18 month forward plan.

The plan lists on a suburb level, the number of premises NBN Co plans to pass within the next 18 months. It also lists the possible technology types (Fibre to the Premises, Multi-Technology Mix, or Wireless) but does not indicate which (nor how many) premises are covered by which technology.

In usual NBN Co style, the file was published in a stupidly inaccessible format (PDF) — see my complaints here. The official response I got for this format was “to ensure the integrity of our data”… but by exporting the spreadsheet as a PDF, it means the integrity of the data is highly compromised given anyone who wants to do something useful with the data would need to go through a massive amount of conversion needed to get it in a usable format. Given the statement of expectation’s requirement for NBN Co to be transparent, publishing PDF files is clearly just a deterrent for the public to analyse information.

Anyway, I spent a good hour or so putting the data back into an Excel spreadsheet for easier consumption. You can find that here.

Now that I put it all back into an Excel spreadsheet, I was able to do a quick analysis of the technology breakdown (sorta):

Technology Breakdown

Technology	Premises
FTTP Only	161,000
MTM Only	1,383,900
Either FTTP/MTM	243,000
Fixed-line Total	1,787,900
Fixed Wireless	126,600
Total	1,914,500

Also — almost seemly as an afterthought, NBN Co reveals at the bottom of their press release that their rollout plan includes 19% underserved areas vs a nation-wide figure of 16%.

It’s official: NBN Co lowers CVC charges

November 26, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

It’s official. NBN Co released details of their amendment to the Wholesale Broadband Agreement signed by Retail Service Providers, revealing that they will lower the cost of their CVC (connectivity virtual circuit) “from $20.00 per Mbps to $17.50 per Mbps effective 1 February 2015”. In their letter to service providers, available on the NBN Co website, the company says they are “pleased to advise that it will reduce the CVC recurring Charge”.

The CVC is a product purchased by service providers, allowing a fixed amount of data (or bandwidth) to pass through from the NBN network to the ISP’s network. End users within a common point of interconnect share a common CVC to pass the data between networks. If an inadequate amount of CVC is purchased, end users may find their connection to slow drastically during peak hours.

MTM technology guidelines: help crowdfund this FOI request!

November 20, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

Update – Crowd-funding Target Reached!
Thank you to everyone who contributed. I’ll have a quick follow-up blog post up soon.

Do you want NBN Co to release the detailed multi-technology guidelines used to determine which network technology (FTTP, FTTN or HFC) in which areas?

Only a very short summary has been released by the company, and in order to better understand their rollout model, I’ve made a “Freedom of Information” (FOI) request to NBN Co to asking them release the underlying technical guidelines behind the summary.

However, NBN Co is intending to charge $245 for the processing fee of this request… and we need your help to make this request possible!

All the funds raised in this campaign will go towards funding the Freedom of Information request. The costs breakdown charged by NBN Co can be found here on the Right to Know website.

Any financial support towards funding this request would be much appreciated. If successful, it will bring about a better understanding of how NBN Co intends to choose technologies around Australia.

If you’re interested to read more about this request, it can be chronicled here on the Right to Know website.

Important note: Just to add, while I think it’s likely that NBN Co will release this information (as they have already released a summary of it), there is a possibility that the FOI request may not lead to a release of information at all. Depending on what NBN Co decides, the full FOI request charges may still be imposed even if the information is not released.

By donating, you understand that you may not necessarily get a refund of donation even if the FOI request fails. However, I will endeavour to the best of my ability to refund those costs if they are refunded to me by NBN Co.

If you had donated prior to this update, and no longer wish to donate, please let me know. I’d be more than happy to refund the donation.

P.S. I had initially intended to run a Pozible campaign — however, due to age restrictions, it became a bit more problematic. Hopefully this method will be suffice.

Fibre rollout may be one-third less than Strategic Review

November 16, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

(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.

Bill Morrow: APH Hansard

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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Nextgen’s NBN aggregation closes: should we reconsider 121 POIs?

November 7, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang 1 Comment

As a wholesale service provider for NBN Co’s “tails”, Nextgen finally fallen to its knees after they announced order halts, price increases and encouragement to their RSP customers to migrate their customers off its “Virtual Connect” product – in essence, they are closing.

As one of the first providers to provide aggregated wholesale products to Layer 3 retail service providers, Nextgen initially gained footing as a wholesale platform for providers who wanted a mix of UNI-V products as well as data. They sold fixed quota plans to service providers who also marked up the price for a fixed profit. A pretty good deal to dive into the NBN service provider business with little overhead or risks.

As customer numbers grew, however, Nextgen struggled to scale their network to cope with the demand. No doubt the high cost of transit to the multiple NBN points of interconnect and CVC/NNI charges would have played a massive role in this. From the people I’ve spoken to, the network’s quality continued to deteriorate over the years. I suspect for most areas, they didn’t have the numbers or the capacity to purchase CVC and transit above that of the 150Mbps “CVC credit” provided by NBN Co.

However, as the market for wholesale service providers grew (especially with the rise of AAPT’s Layer 3 National Wholesale Broadband product), many Layer 3 providers began to shift to this alternate platform which gave them control over contention and network capacity. The AAPT product is a whole different ball game with the risk of contention falling right at the hands of the service provider. Also, AAPT’s recent introduction of their “NBNPhone” product meant that Layer 3 providers no longer had to rely on Nextgen to get provide UNI-V services to their customers.

What now?

Well, what now? It’s obvious that without solid customer numbers, a network provider would struggle to get into the game of wholesale service for NBN. With the investment required to get transit and CVC/NNI at each of the 121 Points of Interconnect, it’s unlikely that this will change in the near future.

While I know providers like Telstra Wholesale and Optus Wholesale all provide Layer 2 products for resellers, I don’t know if they provide the all-in-one “Layer 3” product that many start-up RSPs need in order to get started. Start-up providers rely on these Layer 3 products and simply don’t have the funds or resources to buy and set up their own co-lo equipment and their own upstream bandwidth at the IX level.

Final thoughts

With Nextgen now out of the game, this leaves AAPT and (I think) M2 Wholesale in the running to attract RSPs for Layer 3 products. Despite ACCC’s intentions, the 121 POI decision has actually led to decreased competition at the wholesale aggregation level. Oops.

NBN Co releases FTTN map: but doesn’t distinguish between FTTP

October 20, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

A few minutes after midnight, on a dark and cold Monday morning — NBN Co released their latest update to the NBN rollout map showing areas that are part of the Fibre to the Node deployment trial. This was a long awaited update — speculated for a whole week before the map update. A full list of CSAMs can be found at the end of this post.

However, one of the striking issues when you first look at the map is… there’s no way to distinguish between an FTTN and an FTTP area. The following screenshot of the rollout map shows both an FTTP and FTTN rollout. The area labeled “B” is in build phase, and happens to be FTTP… but can you distinguish which technology is used in the other “P” sites?

Hopefully, NBN Co will eventually fix it up and let us know which technology is being rolled out in which areas 🙂

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NBN Co’s irrational love for PDF

July 28, 2014June 1, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

For a Government that criticised the former NBN Co management for not being transparent enough while in opposition, NBN Co is faring quite poorly to date under this new Government and new management… especially in the accessibility of information.

We’ve seen improvements and streamlining of metrics – moves I’m truly supportive of and commend. At the same time, however, we’re seeing a massive shift in information culture from NBN Co… and for the most part, it has left my head scratching. While I’m supportive of the publications of the weekly rollout metrics and the monthly rollout regions list, they’re both published in such a way that’s completely inaccessible and non-manipulable.

Take the 82 page long monthly rollout regions list, for example. For a list of that magnitude, NBN Co chose to publish the information in a PDF document… of all formats. If you compare this to other telecommunications providers, be-it Telstra (locally) or BT/Openreach (UK), they all use formats that make sense in the context. Long lists will always be published in an accessible format like an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV (comma-separated values) spreadsheet. The whole point of having these files is to be able to do quick filters, quick calculations and a quick understanding or overview of the rollout. But NBN Co’s illogical choice to use the PDF format defeats the whole purpose of the file. The irony in all of this is that the PDF file was exported from Microsoft Excel… yes, it was an Excel document to start with!

nbn™ publishes their weekly communities in rollout spreadsheet in PDF to annoy the shit out of people

Likewise, the weekly rollout metrics is published in a PDF file – again. Having a grid of figures in a closed and inaccessible format is another layer of inconvenience deliberately designed by NBN Co for people who actually want to make use of the data. Your ordinary Australian is not going to go onto the NBN Co website to see how many premises were activated last week… that information is intended at analysts and for meeting Government objectives. But how is a PDF document of numbers a convenient format for analysts and followers of the NBN? The answer: it isn’t.

What we’re seeing from NBN Co is something quite unusual (in industry terms). On one hand, Government directives want them to be more transparent… on the other, they make it as inconvenient and as hard as possible for anyone to get anything useful out of the data they publish.

I still haven’t covered the data they’ve removed from their website, or the completely closed off spatial for network boundaries. Transparency at NBN Co can be improved so much if they just made data available to people in the format that is most logical for the intended audience… and PDF is clearly not here.

In my honest opinion, the culture of transparency has worsened at NBN Co, and I’m worried that it will only continue to deteriorate.

NBN hearing, now less of a cat-fight

July 12, 2014May 27, 2015 Kenneth Tsang Leave a comment

The latest public hearing for the Select Senate Committee on the National Broadband Network convened in Canberra yesterday, and for the first time – the entire hearing seemed relatively productive and much less like a cat fight.

If you remember at the last Senate Budget Estimates hearing, the NBN Co hearing was abruptly stopped before its designated time slot had finished after the chair Senator John Williams insisted to end the session that had started earlier than scheduled.

While the makeup and the dynamics of this Select Senate Committee is vastly different from a Budget Estimates hearing, both NBN Co and the opposition senators are beginning to “give way” to one another.

NBN Co, under the leadership of 10 week new CEO Bill Morrow, has become far more open and helpful in these hearings compared with previous hearings where interim CEO Ziggy Switkowski led the way. Executives are beginning to loosen up, trying to find answers for Senators during the session rather than leaving everything “on notice”. They’re even throwing in the occasional joke for the public record. Perhaps too, the executives are beginning to settle into their roles and are being increasingly accustomed to the vigour and detail explored in these hearings – especially the questioning from Senator Conroy.

The tides are turning too, with opposition senators from both Labor and Greens recognising that Fibre to the Node has become a reality that is likely unstoppable for the near future. There appears to be a shift of questioning from continual criticism of the MTM NBN to a more technology-centric discussion about the “new” rollout technologies. Neither Conroy nor Ludlam agree with the MTM shift (they’ve simply accepted it as a fact); however, the friendlier side of both sides were definitely on show during this hearing.

Far more was learnt about the proposed product constructs for the NBN Copper Access Service (NCAS) and about the rollout trials than previously. The fact that the executives are opening up to more detailed questioning is great news.

It’s also been great to see Senator Ludlam step up his questioning for the executives. Recent appointment of Renai LeMay (founder of independent technology news site, Delimiter) as Parliamentary Business and Communications Advisor to Senator Scott Ludlam has certainly seen increased vigour in questioning by the tech-savy Greens senator who has always taken a unique perspective on questioning. I look forward to more questioning from Senator Ludlam.

Embedded below is a quick highlights reel of yesterday’s hearing: