The following interview with the NBN per ZDNET middle of last year provides two alternate view points from the NBN Co.
The following statement from the NBN Co suggests that it has never been capable of delivering even 2Mbps average per connected customer at many sites due to limitations on backhaul over a 900Mbps link.
“The maximum bandwidth planned for the microwave hub site back to a FAN [fibre access node] site has been 900Mbps, but is now moving to 4Gbps to support capacity growth, allowing for the aggregation of up to eight eNodeBs [base stations], with a maximum of 2,640 end users.”
You need to do some maths and read the full article. The 2,640 end users on a hub site is a target half of the original design spec, hence there may be sites with more users. To achieve the NBN minimum service standard of 6Mbps at peak time that the NBN Co was committing to at that time with a 900Mbps backhaul there is only sufficient capacity for approx 150 concurrent users at that level of demand. Even with the upgrade to 4Gbps it only provides for approx 666 concurrent users?
The 900 Mbps capacity provides for approx 450 concurrent users out of 2,640 at 2Mbps average. Accepted this is all an over simplification as there are network overheads and other limitations. Data is also accessed in bursts when browsing, however streaming, downloading updates, Utub (Sorry - Youtube) etc require a steady data feed.
Riordan also described two ways in which NBN could improve visibility over how it is tracking and addressing its fixed-wireless network, including publishing which cells are congested.
“Commence in their dashboard reporting or similar how they’re tracking in addressing the cells which don’t currently qualify or meet their own design standard for the 6 megabit per second per end user in the busy hour – that would be one simple step which they could take, and that would at least give people an informed information base to make some policy and other decisions,” he suggested.
The 6 Mbps standard is far from being acceptable and is not consistent with the original NBN promise of 25Mbps minimum speed of service. It is however 3 times faster than the minimum even Telstra is prepared to offer on their fastest NBN FW offer at present.
FW even with improvements looks to have minimum standards that barely match many customers previous ADSL based services. In particular for those who now have an ADSL exchange connected to fibre eliminating physical backhaul limitations, being pushed over to a less than adequate and potentialy more expensive NBN seems very very wrong!
