Amazulu

With Labor fantasy magic pudding economics maybe. K Rudd never costed it properly and shackled us with a truly clusterf**ked business model (the NBN is MBA course fodder for how NOT to implement a major infrastructure project)

Never forget - the left don't do real economics. They just don't get it

Beoz

You do realise the bulk of the cost comes from providing the fibre from the node to the premise - in some places that's a very long way. Even on your standard quarter acre block, you are looking at digging up 30 metres of footpaths, driveways, clay, sandstone, and restoring all these things after construction.

Costed on average per property at a double FTTN or FTTC.

A simple battle axe block were costed to be in the order of $50,000......... and for what purpose.

Future proofing just in case airwave transmission doesn't happen.

Really? I can have a dish setup with a fast connection way quicker than I can having fibre installed - I know by recent experience. Moving forward that's where we are headed and costs of data via this will come down massively.

GarryP

https://delimiter.com.au/2016/03/09/...s-fttn-levels/

Perfectly possible to do it for a similar price, and you need to take into account the cost of the nodes etc. for FTTN plus the cost of fixing the degraded copper, the maintenance, etc. over years, .....

In the end FTTP is a comparable price and an order of magnitude or more better utility. The only reason we still have copper is the coalition couldn't admit they had it wrong and labor had it right.

Beoz

Can't wait for the cost blow outs on this. It's going to be fun to watch.

If we can provide technology—tubes, ducts, pipes and widgets—that takes someone five minutes to install

"If" ..... of course if.

Reality. Civil excavations = big dollars. Clearly missed from the cost analysis.

Then there's other factors. Its NZ. No one lives there and it's a small footprint.

There certainly is increased cost as the article outlines. A lot and they didn't account for the Civils.

Degrading copper is not really an argument. Yes it degrades faster than fibre but hardly worth worrying about. It's not like it degrades over 5 or 10 years. By then its 5G time.

Or if not. Then we look at fibre to the premise. No point spending money on wasted requirement.

Beoz

Corroding copper. Assuming that's to the premises. If that actually happens, to replace is the responsibility of Telstra or the property owner. Not the tax payer. Right?

GarryP

You do realise this is history, right?

It's been happening, the prices are what have been delivered, at up to 1Gbps speeds.

Due to be finished by 2022, ahead of schedule, reaching 87% of the population.

Beoz

And? It's not that it can't be done. Its whether the tax payer needs to pay for 1 Gbps at great expense and the answer is simple a big fat NO.

GarryP

You put in FTTP, doing it right, and the cost is comparable with the cost of doing FTTN. The 1Gbps (and higher) capability comes for free, it's just a matter of what you send down the fibre.

The hair shirt far right are penny wise, pound foolish, it seems.

Beoz

I don't think anyone has ever said that the costs of doing FTTN or FTTP were comparable, except you.

Its going to be a bias defence but here is what NBN have to say.

https://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/the-nb...s-with-oranges

GarryP

On the contrary, EVERYONE has said that you can get FTTP costs down to ~$2500-$3000, whilst the NBNCo figures for FTTN ignore the ongoing maintenance and power costs.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/wh...12-gx9dti.html

NBNCo's quoted cost for FTTN : $2200
NBNCo's quoted cost for FTTC : $2900
NBNCo's quoted cost for FTTP : $4400
Realistic cost from NZ for FTTP : $2781

and copper and powered nodes have ongoing costs. A FTTN costs about $1489 each and every year, just in electricity, plus $6250 minimum to hook it up. If you assume 250 households per node, that means $6 per year per household in power, and $25 in hookup. And THEN you get maintenance on that corroded copper, AND the failure to reach 100 Mbit and often not even be faster than ADSL, AND the total lack of an upgrade path, meaning it's life is much more limited before it's ripped out.

Trunbull's destruction of the NBN will be a cost that will echo down the years - and should rightly fall on the coalition.

Beoz

So 6 bucks and a 1 off $25. Not exactly taxing. Have you priced corroding copper per property? I am not exactly sure that's all going to add up to difference between FTTN and FTTP in your pricing table above.

The upgrade path is pretty simple if you want it. Here it is. https://www2.nbnco.com.au/residentia...ricing-factors

There are 7 points in the NBN Apples to Oranges article. Obviously they have been put together to explain to people like you how you cannot compare Australia to New Zealand. It might be worth arguing each one of those.

FWIW. Singapore supposedly has FTTP and I can honestly say I cannot find a fast internet speed in Singapore anywhere.

1) The delivery model

In New Zealand, Telecom NZ was split into a wholesale operator, Chorus, and a retailer, Spark. Chorus retained ownership of infrastructure assets.

Chorus won the vast majority of the work to build FTTP networks in the UFB project, which meant that they could use all of their existing legacy assets in the ground, pits, ducts and exchanges to build their new FTTP network.

By contrast, here in Australia nbn was created as a start-up Government Business Enterprise back in April 2009 – the company had no network assets at all and to this day has to lease or buy these crucial assets from Telstra – something that costs us hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Indeed, of the total $4,400 it costs us to connect every brownfield FTTP premises, almost $1,000 is paid to Telstra in leasing or acquisition costs.

2) The starting point

Another crucial advantage the Kiwis have over Australia in terms of broadband deployment is that, when they started building their FTTP network, Chorus already had a near-nationwide Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) network in place that delivers wholesale speeds to retailers of between 30–100Mbps.

This meant that Chorus had already installed much of their feeder fibre from their exchanges to street corner cabinets – meaning far less work was required to go from FTTN to FTTP, with Chorus taking fibre only a few hundred metres in most cases.

By contrast, here in Australia the large-scale FTTN network that had been much discussed in the mid-to-late 2000s was never actually built, which meant that nbn faced a huge challenge in taking fibre an average of 2.5 kilometres from the Telstra exchange to the end-user premises.

3) The cost of FTTP

Chorus in New Zealand were effectively going from FTTN to FTTP, whereas the nbn FTTP build required going from ADSL to FTTP and that is a very big difference in terms of cost per-premises delivery. On top of this, of course, is the fact that labour costs in Australia exceed those in New Zealand.

Much has been made about Chorus reducing their FTTP delivery costs over the last few years but, the reality of the matter is that a major reason their FTTP costs have come down – and this is something Chorus have already made public – is that they were compelled to start their FTTP rollouts in more expensive areas and then moved the build to many cheaper areas later on.

Of course, Chorus have also reviewed their architecture, contracts and processes along the way to also reduce cost as we would expect, but there is no real magic bullet there in terms of reducing their FTTP delivery costs.

The Chorus FTTP cost per premises (CPP) is a blend of brownfield, or existing area build, and greenfield, or build in a new development area. The nbn CPP of $4,400 is just brownfields. If a blended brown and greenfield CPP was calculated for nbn on a like-for-like basis, it reduces CPP by around $100.

4) The FTTP last-mile

Another big difference is in the way in which Chorus and nbn deliver their FTTP networks.

At Chorus they have a significant amount of their FTTP network that is delivered aerially into the end-user premises – this helps to lower the cost and time of delivery very substantially.

Moreover, even when Chorus are deploying in a non-aerial location they can still use a range of other ways to reach the premises if the lead-in conduit is blocked; they can run fibre ducting down fence-lines or even micro-trench the fibre across lawns.

At nbn,only 15%of the lead-ins are able to be delivered aerially, meaning the vast majority of our FTTP networks were built in areas where we had to deliver the fibre via an underground lead-in conduit. Around half the time the existing conduit was blocked or needed replacing, meaning huge time and cost – sometimes well above $20,000 – to deliver the connection.

Chorus do not find themselves in this position. If an end user requires a ‘non-standard’ FTTP connection then sometimes the Government provides a subsidy via Crown Fibre Holdings – although this applies only to business premises.

5) No forced disconnection

Another huge difference between our two countries is that here in Australia most fixed-line legacy services will be switched off 18 months after an area is made ready for service – the New Zealanders do not have this in place.

This means that for nbn we need to migrate every premises that has ordered a service and is in an affected Service Area Module within 18 months of services launching there – that is a huge challenge for us because some premises can be extremely complicated to connect.

The upside of this migration model for us is that by the time an affected SAM is disconnected we have around 75% take-up rate – by contrast the voluntary migration model they have in New Zealand means that FTTP take-up is still below 40%.

What this means is that Chorus will have to maintain and operate duplicate networks in the same areas – FTTN and FTTP – because there is no compulsion for affected end users to switch over, so Chorus need to figure out how to get everyone off DSL to FTTP and that’s not an easy task.

On the plus side, with a nationwide FTTN network in place Chorus also has the luxury of allowing ‘complex’ premises that would be difficult to connect to FTTP to remain on their FTTN networks – nbn is not in a position to do this.

6) The scale of the challenge

The final difference between our goals is simply one of scale – Australia is a massive country and is roughly 30 times the size of New Zealand.

Moreover, we have to deliver a fixed-broadband model to 93% of premises in this huge country. In New Zealand the UFB-1 model only calls for FTTP to be deployed to around 75% of the country – that is an absolutely massive difference right there. UFB-1 is only delivered to areas within 50km from an urban area.

nbn has to deploy fixed-broadband networks in places like regional Tasmania that in New Zealand are currently served by Fixed Wireless services – this is a crucial fact to bear in mind when trying to compare what is being done in New Zealand to what is being done here in Australia.

It is interesting to note that Chorus anticipate that their costs to deliver FTTP to regional areas of New Zealand will increase by NZ$600 from current costs.

7) No CVC charge

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two models in terms of impacting end users is that our Kiwi cousins did not implement a data consumption charge on their network in the same way that nbn did with our Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge.

Chorus and the other UFB FTTP operators in New Zealand charge their retailers an access charge based on wholesale speed – 50Mbps, 100Mbps or 1Gbps, etc. – and then that’s it; it’s over to the operator to deliver those speeds.

Here on the nbn™ broadband access network, we not only charge a wholesale speed-based access charge – our Access Virtual Circuit (AVC) – but we also charge the CVC at around $14.50/1Mbps in order to generate revenues from retailers, who then sell services to the end users.

This means that, on the nbn™ access network, end-user experience can be negatively impacted if retailers don’t buy sufficient CVC – we are working to address this but it’s a crucial difference between here and New Zealand.

Amazulu

Be careful what you wish for:
PC GDP (source: IMF)
Australia USD56K
NZ USD41.5K

HDI (source: UN)
Australia 0.939 3rd
NZ 0.917 16th
etc

They may have batter broadband and scenery but that's about it - and it's minger central

GarryP

And all of them are complete bollocks.

Beoz

Beoz

Really. They have cut pretty deep there and made some pretty good arguments.