I don't fully understand - what is the difference between the NBN being offered by Labour and Liberal (description, pros/cons of each, etc), and why are they insistent on doing it differently?

http://bit.ly/16Otv9I

:P

-PB

:lol: you're not feeling lucky, punk?

Wait...so one of the MAJOR ELECTION ISSUES that the parties have designated isn't being costed. And we're still meant to vote for them?

Which makes me wonder how they arrived at the figures that they plucked out of the air when FTTN was first released as their NBN policy (and something I questions myself).

Who did they get to do those figures? Who did they get to endorse FTTN as a viable solution? etc etc

A lot of people wondered this because no industry expert or otherwise had ever come out and said that FTTN was a better approach to the FTTH plan that had already been put in place.

ISP directors and the like have all come out against it, industry analysts and technicians think its terrible. The only people wanting it to happen are Telstra and that's because they will make a boat load of cash off of it.

-PB

The win is in the bag for the Libs. They don't have to do anything and submit their costings as late as possible. Just focus on Labor and get the focus off themselves. Well played Abbott.

Forgive my ignorance, but when is the vote? And how the hell do I vote from overseas, I got home to a nasty fine last time I went back. Sadly I am obligated to vote, yet having been out of the country for a while havent the slightest about for whom.

Sat 7 Sep.

I assume you could postal vote - though I have NFI about the whole process

Both AAPT and iinet have declared publically they prefer FTTN.

There aren't many in the IT/technical world who like FTTN but it is more popular among accountants.

People support FTTN mostly because it is much easier to roll out, much cheaper and about 1/3 cheaper to the end user, which means you can have more people enjoying the benefits of high speed broadband and reap the economic benefits sooner, unlike the current FTTH model which is way behind schedule and suffering serious build issues and cost blowouts, and grossly overestimated how much people are willing to pay for internet and underestimated competing technologies such as 4G. I don't thing NBN Co in its current format has the expertise and skills needed to deliver a cost effective FTTH, therefore you need to float alternative policies like the Coalitions which while using inferior technology the actually delivery and provisioning of services is more manageable. FTTN can provide an upgrade path to FTTH later when it's needed, and you would actually have a skilled telco completing it rather unskilled bureaucrats.

It may be hard to arrange to postal vote if you are *already* overseas... look up if you have a local Australian consulate / embassy / etc. that will be open for voting.



I know for example for a state election once when I was in Brisbane but enrolled in WA I went to some Western Australian government office that was open for voting for that election.

Have you got a source for AAPT/iiNet because the last I saw on Whirlpool they were against it?

-PB

"Yuile said FTTP is justified in greenfield estates, as the economics are better than building FTTP in brownfield sites, but by using FTTN as a starting point, further fibre links could be rolled out in the future."

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/441093/fttn_makes_sense_nbn_aapt_says/

"But iiNet chief financial officer David Buckingham rejected the idea his company would suffer under NBN. He preferred the Coalition’s plan and said it would make iiNet more money sooner.

[Inside the business] the technology lovers love the Labor version but the accountants like myself ... like the idea of the faster rollout and hopefully a lower cost because that’s how we can differentiate,” he said. “So as a CFO I’m looking forward to the lower cost base and the faster rollout.” The NBN policy of both parties would open up the rural and regional markets currently dominated by Telstra, resulting in more customers for rival players, Mr Buckingham said."

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/iinet_aapt_say_coalition_nbn_would_Ua0ZJSyqN18oPe7v7UfjPM

So... AAPT have made a statement that contradicts the general consensus in the industry that FTTN is a barrier to FTTP rather than a stepping stone, and a single person within iinet (the person responsible for the cash) is taking a short term cash injection view rather than a long term infrastructure one.

Compelling stuff, Rusty. Well done mate.

To be fair, I said back in June that the longer this election campaign is the more chance there is of Abbott putting his foot in his mouth. 2 months later and he's doing it for us on an almost daily basis.

The sad thing is that the kind of people who vote for Abbott are the kind of people who don't care about his party's costings.

In the 2007 election Labor didn't provide their costings until the day before the election. Labor not setting the bar very high.
And it's bizarre how you accuse liberal voters not caring about the parties costings despite Labor promising a surplus and delivering a $30 billon deficit. Obviously they don't care about cost period.

Ok so fun fact: Labor promised to have the budget in surplus by 2016/17. Not in 2013.

Also, Labor and Liberal parties both submitted policies for costing just 3 days prior to the election. Moreover, the 6 policies that the LNP submitted late accounted for some 30% of their budget.

There's no industry consensus that FTTN is a barrier to FTTH. None of the telcos have come out and said FTTN is a bad idea. Some have expressed their preference for FTTH, others FTTN , but most are technology agnostic and care more about the bottom line than the medium. Even NZ, who have installed about 3000 FTTN cabinets throughout the country delivering ADSL and slower VDSL services are now extending fibre to the home, so the upgrade potential from FTTN to FTTH is absolutely feasible.

There's nothing the iinet CFO or AAPT guy said to indicate they're not supporting long term infrastructure, in fact he said “Both parties have a plan for NBN that provides massive improvements for customers in terms of speed and significant improvements for us particularly in regional Australia.” It's just that the Coalitions NBN costs less to build, costs less to the end user and delivers similar speeds to the Labors.

A 2 lane highway is cheaper than a 5 lane.
However, when you subsequently upgrade that 2 lane highway to 5 lanes, the final cost is much more due to two sets of fixed costs, rather than one.

Regardless of FTTN or FTTH's upgrade compatibility or the thoughts of any of the telco's, FTTN is an already substantially obsolete system. Why would you insist on spending billions of dollars on a system that is already globally obsolete and will be even more laughably so by the time the project is complete?

Labor promised to have the budget in surplus in 2013, but they instead delivered an $18 billion deficit, which a couple months later they upgraded to $30 billion. Fuck. So when Labor promise to have the budget in surplus in 16/17, we know we can't really take them on faith, either because they are lying through their teeth, or they are utterly incompetent, probably a combination of both.

Meanwhile the Liberals have a reliable, consistent track record of delivering surpluses under Howard and Costello, while Labor prime ministers usually deliver strong deficits. So who do you trust more to deliver a surplus, the party who has promised them in the past and failed, or the party who has promised them in the past and succeeded? Given their recent profligate spending I don't think under Labor you will see a budget surplus perhaps ever again. It's not in their economic DNA and cut costs where it's needed, and we all know much they love pissing money up the wall.

Where is your evidence FTTN is obsolete? Goverments across the worlds are rolling it out, private companies are spending billions on new techniques such as vectoring and phantom mode to attain FTTH esque speeds. There is posssibly more international demand for FTTN then there is for fibre at the moment, given its recent advances. It's because it's easier to build, more affordable and you can attract more end users. Fibre is better but there's no point building a national FTTH network when no one else is. We will have the best internet network in the world and nothing to use on it.

Economic 'experts' predicted a surplus for 2013 but Labor never made any promise to deliver a surplus this year (short of a few selective quotes in the Daily Terror). They did promise a surplus for 2017 though. And if you're telling me with absolute certainty that this won't happen then while you've got your crystal ball out I'd like to know Saturday's winning lotto numbers.

I frankly don't care about the surplus. The word carries so many great 'positive' connotations for idiot swing/undecided voters. Oh, you've got a $40bn surplus? Good for you! So why aren't we spending that $40bn on something important, y'know, like on our failing health system or education? Money isn't worth anything unless you spend it. Except if you're a lifelong Liberal voter who uses money in lieu of having a penis.

Majority of countries are currently upgrading from FTTN
Former ACCC head Graeme Samuel: FTTN is obsolete

But if you build a 2 lane highway, you save on interest costs and use the capex savings to invest in programs which deliver revenue sooner and at a higher rate of return, and the proceeds can be used to pay for future highway expansions at a lower capex due to the evolution of more cost effective highway building technology.

You can do better than copying and pasting.

You asked for evidence, I gave it to you. Dumbass.

]

Contact the local embassy/Consulate

Not true. FTTN requires pretty much the same amount of work to be done to roll it out. You have to build a fridge sized cabinet in the street, then connect fiber to it, then cut through all the copper in the street over to the cabinet. With the special vectoring Turnbull is espousing, it requires a home visit to install a central splitter.

It is not 'much cheaper'. The coalition says their policy will cost $29.4 billion. The taxpayer injection for the current NBN is $30.4 billion. Additionally, both plans intend to recoup this investment at a 7% return rate. This effectively nullifies the idea that either plan is going to 'cost less', because it has no cost. It only has a return.

This actually assumes the coalition plan will make it's money back. This is extremely doubtful.

Additionally, the coalition plan does not take into account the cost to acquire the Telstra owned copper access network, which is required to be bought by the Coalition to create their FTTN network. This cost will be in the billions, likely close to $10 billion dollars.



So you get a massively inferior service slightly quicker?

FTTN won't do much more than 50mbps if it's rolled out in the next 3 years, while NBNco are going to release 1000mbps speeds by Christmas. There is also upload speed to take into account. NBNco upload speeds will be thousands of times faster. The 1000mpbs download speed is match with a 400mbps upload, while the FTTN plan will at most 20mbps. Much likely closer to 5 or 10.



It is roughly 3 months behind on a schedule that goes out beyond 2020.



NBN has done no such thing.

Take up rates for the current NBN are spectacular, far outstripped the equivalent rates for HFC and ADSL at similar times, and NBNco were surprised at the much higher numbers taking up the highest speed plans. As of May this year, Minnamurra & Wilunga rollout sites had takeup rates over 63%, Kingston Beach had 50%, and another 6 were over 40%.

http://www.nbnco.com.au/industry/service-providers/newsletter/may-2013.html



Said upgrade path will cost far more than simply doing FTTP to begin with, and is far from simple to setup.



There is industry consensus that FTTN is an inferior technology, and that using FTTN as a stepping stone is massively wasteful when FTTP is already being rolled out across the country.



New Zealand started with FTTN, then realised that it was wasteful and switched from FTTN to a FTTP rollout. NZ isn't an example that should be used to show that FTTN can be used to extend to FTTP, it's an example that should be used as a reason why you shouldn't do FTTN in the first place.

http://delimiter.com.au/2012/08/24/fibre-to-the-home-the-preferred-option-says-nz/



It doesn't cost less, it doesn't cost less to the end user, and it doesn't deliver similar speeds in either download or upload.



It is obsolete, because of the existence of FTTP.

It is being rolled out by incumbent telcos who seek to maintain a fixed line monopoly and squeeze the last remnants of profit out of archaic copper networks that they own. NBNco does not own the copper network in Australia, because John Winston Howard sold Telstra without keeping the wholesale side of the network in the hands of the Government.



This is very wrong.

There are FTTP deployments across the planet, in Asia alone countries like China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, all have FTTP available.

You say the Liberals have a consistent economic record and blindly overlook the Keating and Hawke Governments that provided the restructured economy for them...and overlook the mining boom.

You lambast he Rudd/Gillard economic record, yet overlook the global economy?

Not a very strong argument there mate.


How do explain Australia's AAA rating, low interest rates, low unemployment rate, and not falling into the global recession?