**Poll** - How do you use the NBN?

I created a wiki about the NBN you may find useful to read at [quote=“grahroll, post:1, topic:14546”]
The NBN and things you should know
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As I don’t know your area’s make up, eg dense housing or sparse rural, I can’t really give you any idea about how you might improve your likely NBN speeds. However I do recommend you contact your local Federal & State MPs, your council, your State’s Senators and complain/ask for improved service.

If you have many around you in the same “boat” get a petition together to lodge in both Federal & State Parliaments through your local representatives. Try to get the NBN to fit Micro-Nodes[quote=“grahroll, post:1, topic:14546”]
Node/s & Micro Nodes:
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closer to you (if getting FTTN) or to get a change from FTTN to FTTC/FTTP for your area. If you can, get your council to support you to lodge an Area Switch on your area’s behalf:[quote=“grahroll, post:13, topic:14546”]
TECHNOLOGY CHOICE PROGRAM:
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Read the following article about a successful local council intervention of behalf of their residents:

http://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2017/08/30/local-council-nbn-fttc-precedent/

Hopefully you may have success but at the risk of sounding trite (but I am sincere in my hope) as the saying goes “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

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It is hard to comment on and use a service that you do not have currently.

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Your comment says all it needs to :slight_smile:

Some long for the NBN … and long … and long … and long … (but isn’t the ‘trying’ fun?)

Some long for the NBN and when they get it, its a case of careful what you wished for …

Some get the NBN and its a difficult birth but not so bad once it arrives … (takes a while to recover).

Some get the NBN and think its wonderful - easy birth and no looking back …

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It seems I am always in the minority as that was my experience. The installation was done when it was promised, it worked out of the box, the speed has been what was promised and the connection has been reliable. I have to re-boot the modem about every 2 months and once we were off the air for a few hours as some facility down the line was broken.

The good news is my total package is much faster, has much more data, is more reliable and cheaper than my previous ‘broad band’ and landline phone combination. The better news is that it is very likely to stay that way unless the cattle and rabbits get WiFi.

For those who say the NBN is a total crock - it may be in some areas and using some tech but it is not 100%.

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FTTN here, after having been promised FTTP as everyone was. I signed up for 25/5 because I did not want to have speeds lower than my ADSL2+ which generally were about 13-14/1 so 12/1 would have been a downgrade. I’ve been reasonably content with it, streaming Netflix, iView, SBSonDemand has been pretty much free of issues, and my general use (email, messaging and web) has been trouble free.

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True - but I do know that my current ADSL2+ that sits at 12Mb/s is going to be replaced with a similar 12Mb/s fixed wireless that won’t be any quicker, will not stay up in power outages, and will still suffer from lack of capacity because the back haul is going to be over wireless and not fibre. Did I mention it will cost more for less data. Did I mention that I’m not ready for a VOIP service. Perhaps I am wrong. I don’t live in a swinging seat and 90% of the local government area is getting fibre. Unlike the old PMG which had a charter to get equal service to all, the NBN does not the same charter. It does not even have a service level guarantee. If you live in a city you will get water to your premises from a big main just down the street (FTN). For the rest of us a horse and cart will drop off water bottles as it drives past one at a time just in case some one down the street needs one too. Did I mention we will be charged more for the service and get less delivered.

The only good news is the NBN hasn’t even built the first local tower, so for another three years I’ll be able to keep my cheep and reliable ADSL2+. Hope I can convert all my bills back to paper in three years and still pay cash.

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Read my reply to @margaret.rouse above

Do get your local area involved in an approach to your local council, State member/s and Federal Senators and MPs about the service and getting an Area Switch. [quote=“grahroll, post:13, topic:14546”]
Area Switch:
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Fixed Wifi rely on Fibre back to the FAN (Fibre Access Node) or AN (such as the local exchange) for their backhaul, some say that there may be up to no more than 3 hops by microwave transmission to get from your tower to a tower that is supplied by fibre but NBN has so far supplied all towers by fibre from what I understand (this may have changed since I last investigated). Also in your area there is more than enough fibre network to connect all towers. This is partly why I don’t understand why they just don’t bite the bullet and place all the planned Wifi connections on FTTP or FTTC. But as I noted in my reply to margaret an Area Switch would at least give you a much better service, it is worth the effort.

You can choose currently from 12/1, 25/5 and 50/20 by Fixed Wifi but as you state the cost will be more as you ramp up the speed tiers.

  • Producer, not a consumer. Requires high upload speeds. As in up-loader of content to Youtube, thingiverse, etc. Producers are becoming more common, it is about time our Internet connections could cope with this. Maybe there would be more producers of high quality content if we could get better upload bandwidth.
  • Interactive ssh sessions. Requires low latency, but isn’t for games.

Download speed isn’t a significant problem with my ADSL (although it can be inconsistent times), upload speed is the big problem. Uploading files on a low bandwidth upload connection can reduce latency significantly (unless care is taken). Both concepts that many politicians don’t seem to understand.

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I have noticed a general slowdown in my streaming downloads of late. It used to be OK to watch iView and other commercial streaming services at night, but since mid-September many programs would suddenly pause mid-stream, several times during each episode. I’m on a Telstra Broadband Medium NBN service, fibre to the basement of our apartment block, and haven’t used anywhere near the maximum data limits, so there is no reason for the slowdown. Could be that more subscribers are on this service in my block now. Wonder how I can overcome this.

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Hi

The buffering is likely the result of Telstra not having enough CVC for that time period to cover all the users they have. Currently the average CVC purchased by RSPs is about 900 Kbps per user. When large amounts of users are on and using the net the amount of bandwidth available for you to stream is drastically cut and then your stream has to buffer to continue providing the show. Netflix and similar need about 2 Mbps of bandwidth to run in continuous mode, and good quality, without buffering. Of course some of the slow down may be due to the people in your block using the internet but this would be an extremely minimal impact compared to the CVC issue.

See the entry in the NBN Wiki:

The most likely fix for your issue is getting the RSP, in your case Telstra, to increase the CVC they purchase, the chances of this happening are very, very, very, slim and is really based on the cost to their bottom line (which is substantial). You could also try altering when you use these streaming services but this may be difficult or unsatisfactory for your lifestyle (including work).

You could also get your connection to the node in your basement checked but this is an unlikely cause of your issue particularly if it runs well at other times.

I also recommend you lodge a complaint with the ACCC about your service. This is because the ACCC are looking into the service provided by NBN Co and the RSPs (the providers to the consumers like Telstra and TPG). If enough people advise of their problems hopefully a better service will ensue after the ACCC has enough proof to take action.

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We are fortunate that we live in a Telstra community and have cable to our house. We get what they call velocity which is high speed any way and is fast enough to watch things like SBS on demand without any problems. We also get TV and phone via the same optic fibre. I have tried to find out when it will be changed to NBN but no one can tell me. At this stage I am not bothered by NBN as I am very happy with the service we have. Bob

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We’re one of the lucky ones that lives in an area with Fibre to the House thanks to Tassie being one of the first states to get the NBN, so our NBN infrastructure was already approved for FTTH before the Coalition changed it to FTTN for everyone else. With 6 people in our house starting at the age of 16 and going up from there, we have a lot of devices using the internet all at the same time for gaming, streaming, general browsing etc. We pay for full speed and now that the general teething problems seem to have buggered off we all get to do our own thing without a hiccup via the WiFi connection on the Telstra supplied modem/router.

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We’ve been one of the rare cases it seems with NBN. It seems hilarious to me that I moved from Belmore in Sydney to a regional town (Tamworth) and get far better internet service than I ever had lol. We built on a new land release up here and luckily for us the local council has in it’s planning guidelines that all new developments must have full service connection to each property to get approved - including NBN FTTP.
With a 5yo YouTube & Roblox addict, a wife that still works for the Sydney Children’s Hospital Network from home (and has constant Skype meetings to attend) and a gaming dad we have had minimal problems in the 6 months since our house got completed. Download speeds constantly between 90-100mps and uploads consistently above 30mps means we can all be doing intensive tasks without anyone suffering lag.
A note to those that are having lots of random disconnects each day - we’ve found that rebooting the modem each morning solves this problem to a large degree. The modem supplied to us by Optus doesn’t seem capable of a sustained uptime dealing with large data requirements each day (Sagem F@st modem). I’m guessing that the modem’s buffer gets overloaded due to the fact that a daily restart seems to fix the problem. We are sourcing our own modem that seems better suited to what the NBN can provide and will update after seeing whether this makes a difference to the daily restart requirements.
A quick note regarding the disconnects - since our NBN box is in a cupboard in the centre of our house it is easy to access, and when we had the disconnects early on you could see on the box it was not actually the NBN that was out. Fibre network connection was all green, whilst modem was reading no network access. Quick 10 second reboot of the modem and normal service resumed.

FTTP is fantastic and what the NBN should be by default, FTTN can be good depending on where you are distance wise on the network, NBN wireless is crap unless it’s the only option for getting online that you have (some internet is better than no internet). It would also be nice if the government made the retailers pay for the bandwidth on the backbone they need for the customers they sign up - would fix a lot of the lag problems people in high density areas suffer. Although nothing will fix the lag problems of the trans-pacific cable until multiple cables are laid.

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Thank you very much for your advice!

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Well! Where do I start? I’m more interested in speed and reduced cost than in paying more for large-gig-requirements for streaming. In other words, give me the gigs I want (8 or 9 or 10 maximum per month), and the reduced cost for needing only that amount.
It seems to me that the NBN targets customers who want a lot and are happy to pay a lot. Please give low-usage customers a go.

Toriko.

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You might like to read this link and the referred to article:

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Would be nice to have more than a handful of mbps. Currently we have had dial up speed on fixed wireless NBN. Excuses trotted out by Telstra include : 2 days ago… the modem gets confused! 3 days ago…We are doing maintenance (support staff have no knowledge but assure us that everything is fine at the Telstra end). We want to go back to ADSL but are not allowed to. At least ADSL was only offline a couple of times a month not 5 or 6 times a day. Not sure if it is lack of bandwidth or just plain lack of planning. Over the whole thing at the moment.

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Make three complaints, one to Telstra, one to the TIO and one to the ACCC. It may not achieve much for you at the moment but it should help get the NBN fixed and you should get some compensation.

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Thanks we are putting a whole village case together to pursue the abysmal service

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Yes aidapottinger
I found that too that they will not let you go back to ADSL which on average was a faster ans definitely more reliable service…never dropped below 12. NBN at times is like going back to dial up days.
Not only does the internet keep dropping out so does the phone …if you have a blackout and need assistance, neither the phone or internet work.