Australia’s NBN rollout a global embarrassment

Australia’s disastrous roll-out of the high speed National Broadband Network (NBN) has continued to make global headlines in the last 24 hours – including coverage in the New York Times – and for all the wrong reasons.

According to this story on TechGuide, not only does Australia rank well behind the US, Western Europe, Japan and Korea but we also “embarrassingly” fall below countries such as Thailand and Kenya, ranking number 51 on the Akamai ranking of internet speeds. And perhaps most disparagingly, this is despite a $50 billion investment over the last 8 years.

So why have we become the laughing stock of the world – and as the TechGuide writer so aptly put it, a ‘technology backwater’ despite boasting a rich resources market and enviable lifestyle?

What should have been a consistent roll-out of the latest and greatest technology has been chopped and changed more times than one can recall.

The original plans for Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) have been replaced with a mish mash of Fibre to the Node (FTTN) or Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) coupled with existing copper wire infrastructure – and in some areas, now reportedly wireless connections via dedicated NBN towers.

One Australian NBN provider, Telstra has even been forced to start offering existing NBN customers their money back due to unacceptably slow speeds as reported below on Channel 10’s The Project.

So what impact will these continued NBN issues have on small businesses trying to effectively operate in the digital age, and will Australians ultimately get the high speed internet speeds originally promised? Only time will tell.

Click here to read the full story TechGuide or New York Times article here.

 

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Aussies clueless that NBN will be compulsory

Are you one of 6 million Australians who didn’t know it will be mandatory for you to switch to the new NBN network?

According to a new survey from Finder.com.au and a story published on msn.com here, more than one in three Australians (37%) have no plans to switch to the NBN or don’t know what it is.

What is most surprising about the research is that so many people mistakenly believe the NBN is optional, and haven’t twigged to the fact that their existing telephone and internet will be cut off if they don’t make the transition.

In short, the NBN will be the new universal communications infrastructure network, completely replacing the existing copper network that landline telephones and many home broadband connections rely on.

And this changeover is not that far away with the Government imposing a deadline of 2020 for all 11.9 million Australian premises to switch over to the NBN network.

So how come 6 million Aussies could be left in the dark, disconnected? 

Of the 2004 Australians surveyed, 17% said they would not make the switch, while 18% didn’t know what they would do or didn’t understand what the NBN was about.

Even a small percentage of those who did plan to move across to National Broadband Network aren’t in a hurry – claiming they would take 18 to 24 months to make the transition. Little do they realise that their phone and internet would be cut off during this time with telecommunication companies obliged to deactivate existing copper within 18 months of NBN arriving in their area.

Click here to read the full article.

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NBN achieves ‘lightning fast’ speeds in promising lab trial of XG.FAST technology

EMERGING technology that promises to dramatically increase internet speeds over copper wires has been successfully trialled in the lab by the National Broadband Network (NBN), the company said.

NBN co has concluded its trials of high-bandwidth technology known as XG.FAST which commenced last month, claiming to have achieved “lightning fast” peak aggregate speed of 8Gbps over 30m of twisted-pair copper, it said in a statement Tuesday.

The mandated minimum speeds to be provided under the NBN is 25Mbps. According to the latest Akamai State of the Internet Report the average Australian broadband speed currently comes in at 8.5Mbps. As NBN co points out, the XG.FAST trials provide speeds which are 900 times faster than the current national average.

The NBN also said it achieved peak average speeds of 5Gbps over a 70m copper line.

A number of technologists and media commentators have lamented the NBN’s commitment to using Telstra’s ageing copper network (which will eventually need to be replaced) to help build much of the giant infrastructure project, but the company is keen to prove there is plenty of life left in copper with new technology allowing for greater performance.

“Although XG.FAST is still in its very early stages of development the lab trials we have conducted demonstrates the huge potential that the technology offers,” NBN’s chief technology officer Dennis Steiger said in a statement.

“XG.FAST gives us the potential ability to deliver multi-gigabit speeds over copper lines — virtually on a par with what is currently available on Fibre-to-the-Premises — but at a lower cost and time to deploy.

“While our core goal remains to connect eight million premises to the NBN by 2020 we are keeping a close eye on new technologies like XG.FAST to ensure we can meet the future bandwidth demands of Australian broadband users,” he said.

The lab trials were conducted at the NBN headquarters in northern Sydney in conjunction with vendor Nokia.

NBN co is the third operator in the global market to trial the technology, after the UK’s BT last year and Germany’s Deutsche Telekom in February.

SO WHAT IS XG. FAST?

Simply put XG.FAST is the next version of a Nokia-owned technology known as G.Fast which provides a way to send information across the end of a digital subscriber line (DSL) with much greater speeds.

G.Fast is seen by some as the answer to the copper versus fibre debate because it allows copper to be given fibre-like abilities, and is rolled out over the final 30 to 100m of copper wiring.

Chief executive Bill Morrow has always maintained the building of the NBN has been about getting the network to Australians as quickly as possible while ensuring a clear path to upgrade its potential.

During a site trip outside of Brisbane in March, Mr Morrow told news.com.au that with the emergence of new “techniques that are further advanced, that further reduce the cost … then we’ll push the fibre down the street to give people what they need, when they need it.”

The trial of XG.FAST technology is about ensuring he is able to make good on that promise.

The company recently announced it will abandon much of Optus’ cable TV network and instead opt to roll out fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FttDP) for an extra 700,000 premises, meaning fibre will be run closer to the final connection at the home.

While the rollout of XG.FAST in the field is still many years away, such FttDP connections could be the ideal place to start introducing the technology, and ultimately provide Australians with the broadband capabilities we will desperately require in the future.

By: Nick Whingham

Posted On: http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/nbn/nbn-achieves-lightning-fast-speeds-in-promising-lab-trial-of-xgfast-technology/news-story/5db03b8b3581b956322af638574a1652

 

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