The NBN

Much has been said and written about Australia's plan to deploy a mixed fibre and satellite network to it's population. Unfortunately, much of the debate has been based along political ideologies, rather than logic, fact and reason.

Here's a quick Q&A on my thoughts on the National Broadband Network.

Q. What is the National Broadband Network?
A. The NBN is simply a network being built to replace the existing copper network which was originally developed by the Postmaster General in the earlier part of the 20th Century, and Telecom/Telstra in the latter parts.

Q. What technology is being used to deploy the NBN and who will get it?
A. The NBN is being developed using a fibre to the premises model that will cover 93% of the Australian population. The remaining 7% will be covered by wide band satellite coverage, solely due to the wide expanse of the Australian landscape making it financially unviable to to fibre to every premises.

Q. What is the aim of the NBN?
A. There are numerous aims of the NBN.

• To ensure Australia does not suffer from "digital divide" by giving all users reasonable access to internet, particularly in areas that companies do not believe is commercially viable.
• To replace an aging copper network that was not designed for modern communications
• To increase Australia's GDP by enabling business to work more efficiently and effectively, while developing technological advances ahead of the global curve.
• To enable Australian business and consumers access to affordable broadband 
• To mitigate the issues with access to the current Telstra owned network by consumers and other internet service providers and to ensure that growth in the sector can occur
• To provide a network that can cope with the growing demands of business and consumers for bandwidth
• Provide a platform to implement tele-health programs, to reduce overhead on hospitals and remote communities that do not have access to common health services

Q. How much will the NBN cost the tax payer?

A. This is an interesting answer, due to the way the NBN is being funded. To break it down:

• NBN access will be similar to what you currently pay for internet access, except you will not have to pay line rental for your phone. The cheapest NBN plans begin at approximately $35 per month.
• The cost to construct the NBN is up to $43 billion Australian dollars. $27.5 billion will be funded by the Australian taxpayer, and the Government will sell bonds and borrow to cover the remaining expenses. 
• The NBN is a national asset, and as such is scheduled to return a profit to it's shareholders during the period of investment. This return will be generated from the Australian public using the NBN rather than Telstra's current copper lines. An agreement has been made to compensate Telstra for it's loss of service, in order to migrate all users to NBN services.

Q. Are there other methods to deploy an NBN that would be cheaper?

A. Yes there are cheaper methods of deploying an NBN in the short term. Fibre to the Node is often touted as a good alternative and the Federal Liberal Party went to the last election with a platform of deploying a wireless network. The Government also looked very closely at other options prior to announcing the NBN, by sending out a tender to private business to build a network that would cover 90% of the Australian population. No tender met the requirements.

Q. Why was the fibre to the premises model chosen over these other alternatives?

A. There are a number of reasons:

• Fibre to the node is similar to building the M2 motorway with only 2 lanes in each direction. It will take significant further investment at a later date (when inflation has increased the dollar for dollar requirement) to build a network that can cope with the growth in the Australian population. The network is still hamstrung by copper, which requires large amounts of maintenance cost due to it's age and suffers in performance. The overall cost of this model would significantly increase over the estimated 40 year life span of the fibre NBN and we would miss out on the benefits today.
• Wireless networks via 3g or 4g suffer from issues with latency and contention, meaning that they are not suitable alternatives for Australian business. We would also need a mobile phone tower every few hundred metres in every street to ensure coverage. Wireless is a complimentary technology, which is shown today by the take up of home broadband compared to mobile data.

Q. Why are people so anti NBN?

A. Unfortunately Australian is experiencing one of the most verbally violent and heated political area's that we have experienced. This is fuelled by the 24 hour media cycle and media ownership and business agenda's. The opposition leader Tony Abbott, stated that his goal was to "oppose" everything that the government stood for, and this included the NBN which has been a favourite area of attack for the Liberal National Party. This has flooded down to an increasingly conservative Australia who are not interested in the facts of the NBN, merely the headlines read by right wing media outlets. The primary reason given to oppose the NBN is cost. The level of funding from the Australian taxpayer is only marginally more than a years funding for the Defence budget. Over the lifespan of investment this is a very cheap option, however people find this difficult to see.

Q. How will the NBN change my life?

A. Starting at home, you will see a huge amount of new services delivered by broadband to your home. This includes television by new providers such as Apple and Google which will drive pricing down for Australian consumers. Families will be able to stream hi def video, tele conference, work from home, play games and download applications at the same time without interference.

Businesses will have greater access to fast broadband which will allow them to use secure datacentres without the requirement of expensive thin client applications such as Citrix XenApp. Business in regional areas will also have equal access without the hug cost overheads and poor performance they currently experience. Farmers will be able to store their business data in the cloud and access it securely, small business will have similar access to broadband that large enterprise currently has, but cannot currently afford.

Q. When will I get the NBN?

A. Check out the roll out plan here

http://nbnco.com.au/rollout/rollout-map.html

Q. Will I get the NBN if Tony Abbott is elected as Prime Minister.

A. That is very difficult to say, given that Abbott has stated that he will stop the NBN. However there is legislation that is in place to enable the NBN, a signed agreement with Telstra to separate and migrate users to NBN and investment by companies such as Telstra, IInet and Vodafone to connect themselves to the NBN. It is hard to imagine he could therefore "stop" the NBN, but it is highly possible that he will try to change the NBN Co plan to cover a fibre to the node network. NBN Co is funded to roll out with 3rd party contracts signed up to and including 2015 by which stage a significant amount of premises would be rolled out. 

Q. Should I be excited about the NBN? 

A. ABSOLUTELY