NBN: Debunking Turnbull with Alan Jones. - I

Commenting on: Turnbull to Alan Jones, 15-Jul-2013

Well what I mean by optionality is that when you’re in a time of rapid technological change, you don’t want to put all your eggs into one technological basket any earlier than you need to.

Reframing: "its a time of rapid technological change".

No. it isn't, not now. We had that explosion between 1965 and 1985 in fixed lines.

While in fixed transmission technologies, all the work is on Fibre, the other broadscale technologies are

• 3G/4G wireless and WiFi. still trying to get to 1Gbps
• Radio over 4KHZ "Cat 2" phone cable, struggling with 100Mbps and trying for 200-300Mbps (G.fast)
• Fibre is commodity pricing for 1Gbps, volume pricing for 10Gbps, and in production at 100Gbps times 96 DWDM is you need/want (9.6Tbps) - 10,000 times faster than 1Gbps, now.

For Fibre, the Customer Access Network was being actively discussed/researched thirty years ago. I remember reading a stream of research papers around 1983.

For backhaul and long-distance (especially undersea international), the argument was over 25 years ago.
In Australia in 1987, IIRC, the first Fibre Optic link (SYD-CBR-MEL, 'the golden triangle') was put in service. It paid for itself in under 6 months. That same fibre is still in service. Fibre cables last.

The first international fibre cable to Australia was around that time as well.
We very quickly, in ~5 years, went from undersea coax and Intelsat IV & V satellites, to fibre only.''

Only in the mind of Turnbull is there any "rapid technological change" in the Customer Access Network.

• Every Telco in the world has been aware of the inevitable change coming for the last 30-40 years. Telstra in the early 1990's under Frank Blount planned to have a full Fibre CAN in 2010. Under the Howard Govt, this didn't happen.

Incumbent Telcos who OWN the copper, networks, systems and access into houses are looking for ways to protect their current assets and extend the life of their copper. This is the only area where there is any "rapid change". The problem is, each evolution is more complex and expensive is absolute terms, and delivers a smaller incremental advance.

• ADSL1 took 4KHZ cat-2 phone cable from 28/56Kbps to 1.5Mbps over 5km and 8Mbps at 2,400m
• ADSL2 took 8Mbps at 2400m to 24Mbps at 800m.
• At 3,200m, the Australian average distance, ADSL1 is still the fastest connection at 4-5Mbps.
• VDSL2 took 24Mbps to 50Mbps at 400m
• VDSL2 Vectoring will improve 50Mbps to 100Mbps at 200-300m.
• G.fast with full vectoring will deliver 200Mbps over 100-200m, if it works properly.

Even if your own the copper, G.fast is only 30% cheaper, at best, than installing Fibre from scratch.

Each evolution of DSL over cat-2 costs twice the previous technology at time of introduction and yields smaller and smaller increases.

In a world of PC's and mobile computing counting sales in billions, volumes for Telcos, millions, are small. Special Telco electronics don't constitute volume production, they are expensive to make and attract a premium because of their small niche and design for difficult environmental conditions