Internet download speeds

hi gordon.
interesting. from what i gathered from nbn co there’s no fixed wifi at all in the area? and, the closest houses are all in town (murrurundi) and they already have landline nbn.
meanwhile, i’ll plod along with my 2.5mbs (on a good day) whilst paying an exorbitant sum for the privilege of doing so…

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See: https://www.nbnco.com.au/learn-about-the-nbn/rollout-map.html#
and zoom in on Murrurundi, and there’s definitely no fixed wireless available there.

Have you tried setting your phone as a hotspot for data? Plans are available with decent data allowances, I have 12GB/month with Optus for $40 (and the usual unlimited phone, SMS etc), and resort to that when nbn isn’t working.

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i looked at mobile hotspotting but the allowances are pretty pathetic, especially so considering i was/am looking to use the nbn for work (i’m a video producer). i must compliment telstra however on keeping my adsl connection ‘working’, even if the speed is so poor at least i do have it and they’re excellent at getting any problem attended to post haste.
i shall continue watching the debacle roll on and hope that sense prevails (HA!) and fixed wireless comes to murrurundi :wink:

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Sort of yes and sort of no about running the Fibre to your house. For the most part they can run fibre almost to your premises in the conduit that Telstra and others have already put in place. What remains is from the pit to your house and this does not always include conduit. If it doesn’t then under the NBN rules they have to install that conduit and then complete the run of fibre to the house. If they are using HFC in an aerial cable area it is the only time they will continue with an aerial connection.

My friend @vax2000 is going to “benefit” from the change from HFC to HTTC, this means the, possibly non-conduit, run of copper from the pit to his house will be used instead of the drilling and so on needed to fit conduit and fibre to his house. FTTC is certainly going to be faster than FTTN as the attenuation over copper will be significantly lessened by the short run of copper left.

Of course this run of copper could already be through conduit to the house and why in that case would/should it be so expensive to do, when for HTTC they are already running fibrre to a pit no more than 200 metres from the house. And I am bewildered about what they will do/ are doing in these cases about older suburbs where copper is run aerially to the house???

The cheapest way wouldn’t be a street application but an area, suburb or council application as the quote cost would be adsorbed by a larger group than just the street or would be funded by the ratepayers/council. The community need to get actively annoyed :slight_smile: and lobby their Councillors to push for better.

This may not be the NBN Tower. Many fixed Wifi towers are being purpose built for the NBN, a local Comms tower may or may not have the NBN presence on it. Nor is the Fixed Wifi a good answer when it comes to speed particularly in areas of heavy rainfall, foliage and anything else that interferes with the signal. However you may have more success if you try to find someone who runs a wireless internet service in your area and connect through them or get your community to set one up (could be costly this way though).

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You make some good points and yes FTTC is definitely better than FTTN, but it’s still taking the piecemeal approach to the whole thing. Whether it’s FTTN, FTTC or the present mess with fixed wireless and satellite services (or lack thereof) at the moment doesn’t matter, because all those things will have to be done again in 10 or 15 years when companies like Amazon arc up about their potential customers not being able to get online when they want to. No Australian government is ever going to be in power long enough to see an NBN type build through from start to finish, so you know the Coalition will be in there at some stage to destroy it - and the only voices the Coalition hears come from their future/past employers in the private sector, as they don’t give a toss about you unless you are in a marginal seat and even then it’s only if it looks good for them, not the end benefit that counts.

Think Baaaahrnaby’s destruction of the APVMA he moved from Canberra to Armidale. It was supposed to be a huge benefit to the Ag industry, create jobs in his New England electorate and the majority of employees were supposed to move with it, but he forgot to ask them first if they wanted to move lol. The vast majority told him to stick Armidale up his jumper and left to easily pick up work in other places in Canberra. Decades & decades of combined experience lost to the APVMA in a pork barrelling exercise that has become a circus. To get staff to move to Armidale they are offering them $55k (a year’s wage to many people) in moving expenses if they agree to stay in Armidale for 2 years and since they still expect 85% to say no, the taxpayer has the upcoming cost of redundancies to pay, as well as the recently announced need to hire overseas workers to fill roles of those staying in Canberra lol. Any hope we have for a fit for purpose NBN nationwide is disappearing faster than the Murray-Darling system, and because it’s national infrastructure pork-barrelling won’t help.

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I have no disagreement with your view on the inadequacy of the current MTM NBN and have made similar responses in this community’s discussions as to the poor outcomes it provides in many cases. I agree the long view must be taken and not the electoral time clock mentality that seems to pervade these important decisions. Rudd’s plan certainly took the long view but the Australian pocket view was what won in the end of that. We now have many complaining about the outcome that many of them voted for.

We it seems as a nation have become addicted to the Short Attention span, and Sound Bite process that some politicians revel in to get elected, regardless of cost to the wider community they represent. Before we can fix the long term problems we need to start looking as a Nation to the long term issues and not the current day to day minutiae.

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well said. grahroll.

unfortunately for many of us rural and outback users i think any talk of nbn is rather pointless - we’re such an igsinificat number that no one is particularly interested in servicing us.

i’m sort of hoping 5g might be an answer, but even then, optus, et al haven’t offered their wireless services outside of metro areas.

fed-up

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Some places in the outback are not as bad as you might think - but it is still incredibly variable. In the town closest to every beach in Australia, I get 83 ms ping from Melbourne, 24m down 11m up on a 25m service - according to various dodgy speed testing services, and in the real world, downloading, streaming, gaming all coexist unless I really hammer it. We’ve had that for nearly 2 years now.

I reckon the view of policy makers is very selective, and politics of a region makes a big difference. I guess thats stating the obvious …

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The mouse that roared?

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Wamboin is a project of SmartFarmNet.

Also reported on the ABC (in case news.com is paywalled):
NBN frustration prompts community to take high-speed internet into their own hands - ABC News

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Well - maybe.
It’s reassuring to see the initiative of this group.

Does the NBN Co really care that it may have a thousand or so less customers on a loss making service?
Is it not the future Sale Value of the NBN that might be affected?

From a purely national accounts view - you could suggest that allowing any group to step outside the NBN increases the future national debt (tax payer costs) due to any shortfall in the value of the NBN on it’s sale.

How should a liberal government view this - applaud free enterprise?
Or act responsibly to reduce debt by maximising the market value of the NBN?

A merry dance for any politician if this is a marginal seat!

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Would that really be responsible? Consistent with neoliberal dogma perhaps, but responsible?

Responsible would be retaining the NBN in public ownership, renationalising the infrastructure that was alienated with the Telstra privatisation and combining the two for the common good. That would optimise the value of the infrastructure to the nation, if not the market.

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David4, a wonderful proposition!
There remains much frustration with the internet in our extended family. The NBN has so far only reached one of our many households. The NBN remains somewhat mysterious due to it’s lack of presence. Most politely I have yet to try a ouija board to help with answers.

I was most hopeful of pointing out that considering the Wamboin project proposal, liberal principles might give rise to two competing and opposite outcomes. Both using ideas and thought bubbles with our current federal government leadership. With a consequence of the two self incinerating the whole.

In reality my take on how the liberal party might respond to the Wamboin project proposal is to hope it fades unfulfilled. I doubt that the LNP has any desire to take a position publicly. You risk deficating all over your small investor/business support base with one or admitting you got the NBN wrong with the other. The ALP in opposition seems to be equally silent on most things NBN. No fibre for us!

Up until the NBN rollout here I had stable and reliable ADSL. Now it is often flaky, and despite the local exchange now being on fibre still suffers slow downs at peak times! I am still considering my options for the future. Only two more years and we might have NBN available?

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According to our government, NBN will be available to every Australian premises by the end of 2020. The project will then be “finished” and ready for sale.

Of course, the quality of the “available” service will vary. If your place is too hard, they’ll dump you on satellite.

Whatever happened to the spirit and courage that ran copper to most of Australia’s population? :thinking:

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It got hijacked by the popularity of responding to 3-word slogans at the ballot box. (I know you know)

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so we’re with skymesh. first, their service is second to none (and i’ve been connected since the net was public, and with a great many isp’s, many of whom… well, you don’t get to say many isp’s without having changed often ;(
i can’t complain about speeds, 25/5, obviously can’t complain about the weather drop outs, but i can about the data allowances.
i realise that skymesh is about average in allowances - i pay $60 month for 60/120gb. but really, 60gb is, (considering m$ 1803 upgrade was over 3gb and downloaded at least once or twice on three pc’s), somewhat mean. yeah, 120gb off peak sounds good, but it’s not of much practical use to the average family. start streaming, downloading movies, updates, and program downloads,etc., will soon chew up 60gb, and when compared to ‘unlimited’ on nearly all other connections, it really does shame the ‘promise’ of what the nbn was meant to deliver rurally.
of course, as many have pointed out, the whole things is simply a political football with points scoring in marginal seats, whilst the rest of us are simply fobbed off.
i’m not pissed, but i’m certainly not happy ;-(

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Hey Phil, do you mean ideological slogans like:
“I’m OK Jack” or “Pollies come first” or “screw the people’”? (These can be strung together and mixed up as needed.)

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I don’t agree those would attract votes although they are more honest than any electioneering I have seen or heard in yonks.

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Which reminds me. Many of us when the next federal parliament is elected will not have the NBN. “Internet Speed Unknown” a new short movie brought to us by - well we don’t know until the election.

Yet we will be expected to have accepted the NBN outcome we don’t have. Expected to accept the sale of the NBN. And to accept the as yet undetermined conditions of sale. We don’t even have any certainty on an acceptable CSG!

I’ve not fingered any political party here. The ALP is also missing in action. Do they support the sale? It was also in their plan! How will they respond to the digital divide of consumers with sub-standard speeds and resticitve data downloads?

At what point following will the free to air broadcast services give up and become online only? Driving home that the digital divide is also about who gets to watch what they like, when they choose, and in glorious 3D 4xHD or even 8xHD!

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There is no expectation of even an unacceptable CSG (Customer Service Guarantee) let alone any certainty of an acceptable one.

ACCAN have made a submission on many factors but that also addresses CSG to the ACCC Inquiry that argues it is needed but the result of that will reside firstly with the Inquiry and then with the Government of the day who deal with the Inquiry Report. Is it a hopeful outcome? My thinking it will be mostly rejected as a cost burden unsustainable by NBNCo particularly because of the poor outcomes that the MTM NBN is already showing for many.

The following is most of the ACCAN take on CSG from their policy paper of 2017 and which is attached to their ACCC Inquiry submission:

"Broadband is now considered essential to provide access to services and employment opportunities, as well as entertainment and education. This is true for all consumers, no matter whether they live in regional, rural or remote areas or in the cities.

Reliable broadband connections are also pivotal for small businesses and farmers who often rely on them to run their businesses. Internet connections provide opportunities for farmers to use sophisticated agricultural software to monitor yield predictions and more. But when services fail, there are no guarantees that apply to internet services to ensure faults are fixed within certain timeframes. This can result in long outages, meaning lost money and productivity for farmers and small businesses, and frustration for general consumers.

The current consumer telecommunications guarantee, the Customer Service Guarantee (CSG), only applies to connection and fault repair times on fixed-line telephone (i.e. voice) services. This leaves consumers with no guarantees for fixed broadband (i.e. data) services.

ACCAN has been calling for an updated CSG to include service timeframes for fault rectification, connections and appointment keeping as the standard for internet connections. We are also proposing independent service reliability benchmarking to ensure that disruptions to services are minimised.

An updated CSG with service guarantees and reliability measures to underpin the provision of voice and data services, to deliver more accountability from providers and nbn, is also one of the five outcomes of the Regional, Rural and Remote Communications Coalition (which ACCAN is a member of). At the moment, there are no requirements for nbn to publish information on repair times or network reliability metrics, leaving consumers with little transparency around reliability of services. There is a need for updated, fully accountable and independently monitored CSG arrangements and reliability performance measures.

At ACCAN, we often hear from consumers in rural, regional and remote areas who experience faults with their services that last for long periods and disrupt their ability to conduct business, educate their children and stay connected with the rest of the world. The lack of guarantees for internet services also affects consumers in metro areas."

There is a topic in this forum regarding CSG and I will leave any further mention of it by me to be done in that topic.

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