Ways to be Down on NBN

They did agree to give me a 10% discount in the end.

However, the nbn is still cr@p! My wife uses a square reader for herself and the Organic Community Garden Group, and for most of this week has been unable to get to the sqareup website to do the books before the next market - nothing loads to a blank page. She called another stall holder today and discovered that they could get it, so I hotspotted my phone and was able to load the page straight away. It seems nbn satellite is somehow stopping the page form loading.

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Phone hot spot time again. ANT Communications sent an email recently saying they were doing upgrades and that the internet would be out for half an hour at a time between midnight and 6am over the weekend.
Last I saw the nbn satellite service was just after 11am yesterday, although it was missing in action before that brief appearance, for much of Saturday and early Sunday.
Seems something went seriously wrong with the upgrades - but it is just more of the continuing unreliability I’m suffering from.
It is clear that nbn satellite is nowhere near reliable enough for my purposes, as I rely on it for monitoring my aquaponics system (currently with 150 Rainbow Trout in it), as well as controlling the pumps and also a generator, so today I will be going to with Optus 4G for internet, and ending my contract with ANT at the end of my contracted month.

nbn satellite - just say NO!

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Now over 3 days into the latest outage…
I’ve emailed ANT and requested they end my contract at the end of the current billing month and that they give me a discount for the past 3 day outage, which they have agreed to. Who knows how much longer it is going to last, but I’m totally over it as I have too much dependence on a reliable connection for my aquaponics and off-grid generator control for such an unreliable service.

I should have a new phone SIM with 60GB/month on it arriving this week, and I’ll just put it into my old Motorola phone and use it as a hotspot.

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On satellite NBN with no mobile coverage. Our service has been going slow (or not at all) for months, with the ISP taking 2 months to respond to our enquiry with the usual “check your connections… is the power on …”

Fast.com sometimes reports it cannot connect to servers, or 550kbs or very slow then suddenly 11Mbs! The ISP are pushing Sky Muster Plus as a solution to our problems. It costs more. Is it any better?

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“Sky Muster Plus” is what I’ve been suffering on. Up to 25Mbps, but more commonly ~12-15Mbps download, with 1-5Mbps upload.
Only when it is working though, which it hasn’t been for over 3 days now.

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107,000 customers out of 436,000 in the satellite coverage area (rounded as of 19Nov20). 25% uptake compared to >50% on NBN Fixed Wireless and approx 67% on NBN Fixed Line.

Each Satellite supports at best 80Gbps raw capacity shared across all the users in the Satellite footprint.

In comparison for just one customer a single coax in the NBN HFC footprint supports up to 1Gbps as does FTTC. Faster is also available to some.

The satellite service performance continually escapes public scrutiny. The lack of public data on the NBN performance and service quality leaves only customers such as @gordon and @zackarii to tell it as it is.

For what ever capacity or technical reasons, and perhaps some conscious NBN Co customer prioritisation of services it has dropped off the radar as a significant national concern.

Rather than ask if it’s fit for purpose, the polite question may be what is it really fit for?

Customers opting for a mobile data network alternative where it is a better solution should be getting their money back to put towards the service they can receive.

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Update on this from a couple of days ago:

I’ve emailed ANT again today, as the router is still showing the orange ring of no connection light, and asked that my contract be terminated immediately, which they have agreed to. My new SIM from Optus arrived this morning, which I’ve put it into an old Motorola phone and now I just have to reconfigure a few remote control switches, temperature loggers etc and things will all be good again.
The slower raw speed is invisible- pages load much faster with the ping speed being <1/25 of what the satellite delivered.

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Well one MP was a member of the “Ways to be Down on NBN” club this week in Parliament and that was the Opposition’s Michelle Rowland. Worth the reading so the link to the Hansard report of the speech is:

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansardr/9a1e24b1-0e45-4b80-ba2d-d97d388965e1/&sid=0098

First line “There is no greater example of deception, incompetence, short-sightedness and poor economic management by this government than when it comes to the NBN”.

Further in “The fact is that Australians have always known that the original fibre plan would’ve been far cheaper and faster to roll out and would perform better than what those opposite always claimed. And we know from these reports that not only did we know that and not only did the Australian people know that, but the Liberal Party knew that in 2013 and they concealed it, wilfully concealed it, from the Australian people.”

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How not to build a telecommunications network in the 2020s:

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Hey, don’t blame NBN for that. They had started rolling out nice new fibre everywhere when the Coalition came back to Government in 2013 and told them to stop and reuse whatever old garbage was laid in pits or strung from poles. HFC, FTTN anyone?

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At 7:30 this morning, the lights momentarily flickered but when the aircons would not start, I realised that the mains power was off and we were running off the battery.

Ergon’s mickey mouse network was off for more than an hour, probably caused by some major incident such as an ant urinating on a cross arm.

I grabbed a long extension lead and connected the power board in the office to an outlet in our bedroom which is connected to the backup box.

I was pleased to see that the NBN modem was able to connect so the NBN Node some 400 metres down our street so it obviously does have battery backup.

When the mains finally came back on, there was again a momentary flicker. The switching speed between the mains and the battery is absolutely amazing.

At least Ergon is not a way for us to be down on the NBN.

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AussieBB had a bad afternoon yesterday and their systems, not the NBN, were down for about 1 hour 4 minutes. No VOIP phones, no internet services, their own phones were out, and their app host could not talk to anything in the AussieBB infrastructure.

I understand why there are so few routers with integrated VOIP on the market but an increasing number with SIMs(4G/LTE) or ability to use a 4G dongle for backup.

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Looks like somebody influential lives in the area of Alpha, Qld:


The town of Alpha (population 335 at the 2016 census) is being switched from Sky Muster satellite to Fibre to the Premises. That’s a very small population to attract such investment.

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The area is earmarked for major development of the Galilee Basin, with Alpha township as the service and support hub. I suspect that it is forward planning often not seen in other parts of the country.

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I have heard of the concept, but never for one moment imagined that it might be applied to the NBN!

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Money talks when it comes to mining and other development of state significance.

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The investment is not by the NBN. Alpha or the Alpha community need to fund the upgrade. Where are the funds coming from might be of clarify?

Approx $20,000 per occupied household. Or $16,000 per dwelling?

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It says in the blurb above that it is being funded by co-contributions by nbn™ and Barcaldine Shire Council and I think the Federal Govt under the Regional Connectivity funds. Perhaps no out of pocket for the residents or a very small contribution.

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So the

is probably Clive Palmer and/or Gina Rinehart.

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I read the financials as $3,181,572 plus a co-Contribution by the NBN and Barcaldine Shire Council. This suggests the total cost is more than $3.182M.

It would be no surprise

Exceptionally generous if the additional $20,000 per household is largely from this source?

It would set a precedent for every other community in Australia for funding, electoral preferences excluded. It may by many be seen to equate very directly an expanded mining future with good outcomes for rural NBN services!! :roll_eyes:

The price of upgrading the other 425,000+ NBN Satellite premises and 620,000+ NBN Fixed Wireless premises to fibre. $21B plus co-Contributions from the NBN and your local council. How hard could it be?

Anyone who has looked at Alpha on Google Earth will realise it is small enough to be served by an upgrade to NBN Fixed Wireless with a Million dollar tower capable of handling 800+ customers, or Telstra 5G on its handful of street corners. Looks like the lamb and beef patties have made room for pork on the local BBQ.

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