Along with five-fold increase in individual premises switches.
NBN Co has revealed that two undisclosed groups of premises have opted for an “area switch” to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology.
Full story here.

High-speed, reliable broadband is an important factor in deciding where to live, according to a new FTTH satisfaction survey conducted by research and consulting firm RVA LLC for the Fiber to the Home Council. More than 90% (91%) of respondents said quality broadband was “very important” in choosing a community in which to live — second only to “safe streets,” which was cited by 98% of respondents.
Full story here.

The telecommunications industry has delivered the Coalition Government and NBN Co a sharp rebuke over the current business model for the National Broadband Network (NBN).
The NBN is a nation building project that has been hijacked by politics and the fallout is slowly gaining momentum. Aspiration is a key to the potential for success or failure and there has been a constant undermining of the aspirational factors underpinning the original concept for the NBN.
Full story here.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a discussion paper on ways to improve the information provided to consumers on broadband speed and performance.
The Commission said it was concerned about the current lack of clear information about broadband performance in advertising and other material available to consumers.
Full story here.

Both Labor and the Coalition have put forward their broadband policies for the 2016 Federal Election and while the National Broadband Network (NBN) may not be the standout election issue there should be concern within Coalition ranks that the ABC Vote Compass found that about 70 per cent of Australians favour returning to an all fibre fixed access network even if it takes longer and costs more.
The Coalition government may be returned on Saturday and if it is then there needs to be a quiet rethink about why the Government has adopted such an unpopular policy and what can be done to quell the disquiet.
Full story here.

Internet speeds many times faster than the National Broadband Network (NBN) will be made available to businesses in South Australia.
Commercial access will be allowed to an optical fibre network that, until now, has been used exclusively by universities, the Defence department and some schools.
The South Australian Government is pledging nearly $5 million to give businesses access to SABRENet — a research and education network which processes data many times faster than the NBN.
Full story here.

With one week left before the federal election, we've provided a guide for which candidates support fibre to the premises and which are opting for a multi-technology mix for Australia's National Broadband Network.
Full story here.

Former National Broadband Network CEO Mike Quigley has excoriated the government’s NBN plan, developed by then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, as “short-sighted, expensive” and a “huge miscalculation” in a speech in Melbourne on Wednesday.
Full story here.

Former NBN Co. boss Mike Quigley took to the stage in Melbourne last night to defend his legacy and lash the government’s NBN plan, developed by then communications minister Malcolm Turnbull, as “short-sighted, expensive” and a “huge miscalculation”.
“The original NBN was a visionary project,” he said, and “it is such a pity that so much time and effort has been spent on trying to discredit and destroy the original FTTP-based NBN”.
Full story here.

THE first chief executive of the National Broadband Network Mike Quigley has delivered a scathing critique of the Coalition’s current multi technology rollout strategy and pointed to evidence that a majority of the NBN will quickly become obsolete.
Full story here.

It is not too late to change the current direction of the NBN, but that change would need to be made in a controlled and managed way to ensure the project is not subject to another major disruption.
Full story here.

The claim
"[The Coalition] have had almost three years on this... Over that time we have gone from 30th in the world for internet speeds to 60th in the world for internet speeds," Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare told ABC's RN Breakfast on June 13, 2016.
Has Australia's global rank for internet speeds fallen from 30th to 60th under the Coalition? ABC Fact Check investigates.

The verdict
Mr Clare is correct.
Experts contacted by Fact Check said reports relied on by Mr Clare, published by content delivery network provider Akamai, are highly regarded and accepted by the industry.
Full story here.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appears to have misled the ABC’s Q&A program about key facts regarding the National Broadband Network project, repeating a set of common misconceptions about the initiative in response to a question on air last night.
Almost all of the rollout progress which the NBN has made under the Coalition has been using Labor’s initial Fibre to the Premises technology, courtesy of the fact that that planning work had already been undertaken before the Coalition came into power in September 2013. The successful launch of the NBN company’s satellite earlier this year can also be chalked up to Labor.
Full story here.

Cisco’s internet traffic forecast describes a sobering explosion of traffic growth and exposes government nbn plans as woefully inadequate - PC World Australia
Full story here.

Australians are using more data — 40 per cent more in June of last year than the year before it. That naturally suggests we’d ideally choose a network with more bandwidth and more potential for future bandwidth. But not when politics get in the way — and they have, and will continue to.
Full story here.

Labor’s broadband plan includes few surprises and fulfils Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s commitment to responsibly increase the construction of fibre to the premises (FTTP). At the same time, it would ensure the completion of the National Broadband Network (NBN) is not delayed further.
It shifts the focus back to providing Australia with broadband infrastructure that would slowly arrest the country’s slide in the global broadband rankings. Importantly, this would help business compete in the global digital economy.
Full story here.

As hinted in earlier announcements by Shadow Communications Minister, Jason Clare, Labor’s much-anticipated policy for the National Broadband Network released Monday commits the party – if elected – to move away from the Coalition’s fibre to the node (FTTN) network and transition back to a roll-out of fibre to the premises (FTTP). This was the central pillar of Labor’s original NBN. So how does this compare with the Coalition’s version of the NBN? Let’s have a look.
Full story here.

A Shorten government would review the board and management of the NBN if it wins office, with some of the company's most senior figures likely to exit the organisation.
Labor has pledged to phase out the use of the copper-based fibre-to-the-node technology - a centrepiece of the NBN rollout under the Coalition - and instead connect up to two million premises directly to fibre. It would also commission Infrastructure Australia to examine how to upgrade homes connected through fibre-to-the-node to full fibre after the initial rollout is complete.
Full story here.

Bill Shorten is better off keeping the details of his first-rate fibre NBN close to his chest until the election is sorted.
A Labor win at the 2016 Federal Election is likely to mean a shift back towards FTTP but contracts and agreement signed by NBN Co over the past two years for FTTN and the remediation of the Telstra HFC network, prior to it transitioning to become part of the NBN, will make it difficult for an immediate return to the original model.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten indicated in his Budget reply speech that Labor will return to a first-rate fibre NBN. Just what that entails is unknown at the moment and things may remain that way until the election is done and dusted.
Whether Labor can actually make this happen remains to be seen but for now silence might be the best policy for Shorten.
Full story here.

MARK GREGORY
The question of whether Fibre to the Distribution Point (FTTdp) is a viable alternative to Fibre to the Node (FTTN) or simply an interim step for a future upgrade from FTTN to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) has become a focus of the NBN debate. It’s the middle ground option that many hoped would attract bipartisan support but that looks increasingly unlikely. The Turnbull government is committed to pursuing the cheapest approach to rolling out the National Broadband Network.
Full Story here.

Malcolm Turnbull fulfilled what was in his brief – from Tony Abbott – but never in any mandate. He demolished the NBN.
Full story here.

However, Mr Morrow said RSPs needed the scale of NBN's trial to increase, before it became commercially viable for them to fully participate. This is because the internet providers would need to rework their own internal systems to change prices, support and packages for customers based on a new technology.
Full story here.

The global growth of all fibre access network penetration has significantly increased during 2015 as global broadband subscribers reached 751 million. All fibre access is now growing significantly faster than the Coalition Government’s preferred cable broadband (HFC) and Fibre to the Node (FTTN).
Full story here.

New data showing Telstra's large holding of wholesale services on the National Broadband Network have sparked competition and pricing concerns among smaller internet players.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released on Friday its first data on the telecommunication companies' market shares on the NBN.
The NBN Wholesale Market Indicators report shows Telstra has the most NBN wholesale access services across a number of technologies, including fibre to the node.
Telstra has more than 47 per cent of NBN market share when it comes to fibre to the premise, and more than 58 per cent of market share for fibre to the node, the ACCC's report shows.
Full story here.

The lack of transparency surrounding the NBN is a warning sign that cannot be ignored. Australians will be left with a second-rate broadband network at a time when our major competitors in the global digital economy are rolling out fibre to homes and business.
Full story here.

NBN Co’s largesse unfortunately further complicates an already chaotic telecommunications market, with successive deals serving to undermine the NBN’s promise of delivering an open and fair competitive telecommunications market.
The new deal means that the amount being paid to Telstra by NBN Co is close to $13 billion and we should expect further contracts between NBN Co and Telstra adding to the approximately $13 billion already committed before the NBN rollout is completed.
Full story here.

The Coalition’s National Broadband Network (NBN) plan is in trouble and the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull should heed the mounting calls for Coalition NBN plan to be dropped before the nation’s digital future is harmed irreparably.
Full story here.

IA has also issued what it says is a new nbn policy ratified by its board and which stresses that Government “must ensure provision of the best possible national broadband network, using the most technologically advanced means of delivery available from time to time, and delivering services comparable with world’s best practice”.
The new policy and calls for a bi-partisan approach at political level, follows IA’s ongoing claims of slowed deployments, installation problems and switchover issues.
Full story here.

At the end of February, NBN said it had 23,232 FttN services activated. In December last year, almost a full 14 months since NBN announced construction work would begin on FttN, Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield proudly announced that in 51 days, 1,000 customers had signed up to FttN services.
Full story here.

Melbourne University’s Professor Rod Tucker is a former Director of the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society.
“My view is that FTTP would be a much better outcome for Australia, but FTTDP would be a reasonable second-best because it would replace FTTN."
Full story here.

While Vodafone has a big mobile network and plenty of fast, high quality 4G spectrum, it doesn't have a presence in fixed broadband services despite dabbling it several years ago.
This leaves it stranded to an extent, unable to offer the bundled deals of multiple services - including pay TV - that Telstra, Optus, TPG and Vocus sell.
Ovum's principal telecommunications analyst Craig Skinner said it is likely that four big NBN providers are about all the market could sustain.
Full story here.

While we await confirmation of the date for this year's federal election, both sides of politics are already firing the first barbs in a characteristically adversarial debate about broadband policy.
But in reality, in this election, we could hopefully be seeing the final salvos before both parties finally settle on similar positions and cut out the incredibly unhelpful politicisation of telecommunications infrastructure.
Full story here.

The head of the government body rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN) has defended the current mix of technology for the rollout as being adequate for today's needs.
However, Mark Gregory from the School of Engineering at RMIT, was scathing of the rollout.
"It's probably the most expensive project to roll out an obsolete second-hand technology in the world's history," he said.
Full story here.

The five-letter acronym on every telco nerd’s mind at the moment — FTTdp — stands for fibre to the distribution point. Sitting somewhere in between fibre to the node (FTTN) and fibre to the premises (FTTP or FTTH) in speed, cost and complexity, it’s a new potential technology that may feature heavily in the future of the NBN. It promises to be cheaper than FTTP, faster than FTTN and equally quick to roll out.
Full story here.

With a Fibre To The Distribution Point (FTTdp) NBN model, fibre is run to the street lead-in pit at the front of the building, where it joins up with an existing copper lead-in of around 30 metres. It avoids the need to dig up your front yard, promises high speeds via VDSL2, has the ability to be upgraded to Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), boasts a network capability almost up there with full FTTP and yet — due to the use of existing copper lead-ins — costs less. Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare recently sung the praises of FTTdp, leading to questions about a potential change in NBN policy from FTTP for the Labor party’s election campaign.
Full story here.

Peak time congestion.
The changing usage patterns of Australian broadband customers means that one of the key revenue streams for NBN — the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) charge — needs a major rethink, according to Optus’ head of regulatory affairs, David Epstein.
Full story here.

About 2.7 million Australians are now estimated to watch Netflix, and at last count, number-two player Stan – which is joint owned by Fairfax Media and Channel Nine – had more than 700,000 subscribers.
Australians are increasingly opting for these services – as well as free-to-air catch-up TV services such as ABC's iView – over traditional broadcast free-to-air and pay TV viewing, which don't require an internet connection.
Full story here.

"But now, as we enter Malcolm Turnbull's 'age of innovation' and we're told the NBN is the most important infrastructure project of the 21st century, we're expected to rely on a decaying copper network that experts say is already past its use-by date, instead of investing in fibre which the same experts say could service our internet needs for the next 100 years."
Australia's global rankings for internet speed had plummeted from 30th less than three years ago to 60th in the world according to last week's updated rankings.
Full story here.

THE much maligned National Broadband Network (NBN) continues to be dogged by calls for the current strategy to be abandoned out of fears the use of copper will cause the project to be outdated before it’s completed.
The CEO of the country’s peak internet body, Laurie Patton, brought the issue to the forefront this week with his comments that Australia’s internet speeds warranted a national outcry.
His comments came in the wake of the State of The Internet report produced by US content delivery network provider Akamai. The company publishes a quarterly report comparing internet speeds from countries around the world.
Unsurprisingly Australia did not fare well, slipping to 60th in the global rankings in terms of average peak internet speed — considered to be crucial measurement in broadband performance. The unflattering ranking represents a continued slide as the nation ranked 30th in the category when Mr Turnbull held the post of Communications Minister just a few years ago.
“Singapore, with whom we are destined to be in serious competition as an Asia-Pacific innovation hub, already has internet speeds 100 times faster than ours,” Mr Patton wrote, urging the government to return to a full fibre rollout. “The maximum speed that can be squeezed out of copper is limited.”
Full story here.

A trio of independent technology experts on the ABC’s Q and A program last night heavily criticised Australia’s political sector for politicising, lying about, and ultimately destroying the all-fibre National Broadband Network they agreed the country needed to progress its innovative future.
Full story here.

A Federal Labor government will roll out more fibre-to-homes, its communications spokesman Jason Clare says, after flicking the off switch on the coalition’s preferred fibre-to-the-node National Broadband Network rollout.
“The longer the coalition is in government, the more second-rate FTTN they roll out."
Full story here.

The fact that the Minister mentioned ‘cost-effective’ opens up the business case for a long-term view of costs and can also take into account the maintenance of copper vs fibre, the power problems associated with the nodes, and well-funded estimates of where the costs of fibre networks will be in one, two or three years’ time.

It is hard to see if all of this was planned in advance, but it came as a surprise that only a few days later Bill Morrow announced an FTTdp trial in Sydney, with an indication that full commercial deployment for 300,000 homes could happen in 2017. This is certainly re-opening the door for more nationwide fibre solutions.

Furthermore, in an election year the government is in desperate need of some positive policies – and as all politicians know the NBN is something the voters are interested in; and research has indicated that most people don’t worry about the cost – they are far more in line with Tony Windsor’s approach.

Both Tony Windsor and the Labor Party have already indicated that the NBN will be high on their election agenda and Labor has its eyes very much fixed on FTTdp. It is not too difficult to predict that they most likely will promise an FTTdp network.

All of this might persuade Malcolm Turnbull to take the bull by the horns and announce his own FTTdp policy, carefully replacing the FttN solution.

The trouble with the latter is that once you install the 20,000 street cabinets (nodes) you have created a massive barrier to the proper development of an FttH network. All of these cabinets will then quickly end up on the scrap heap of the superhighway as they are not needed in an FTTdp or FTTH solution. Such a massive investment is expensive, and I believe that ugly footpath furniture is not in the national interest and should be avoided at all costs. Those 20,000 cabinets will be major obstacles if Australia wants to be an innovative nation that is moving into the digital/sharing/interconnected economy. FttN most certainly doesn’t fit into the PM’s innovation policy, and that might be the key reason why he never mentioned his MtM in the context of innovation.
Full story here.

Australia’s efforts to become a leader in the global digital economy will soon take another giant stride with the announcement, in February 2016, that Qantas will use the National Broadband Network (NBN) satellites to offer in-flight Wi-Fi.
Full story here.

Technology trials to begin next month.
NBN chief executive Bill Morrow has revealed he expects up to 300,000 premises to receive fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdp) coupled with skinny fibre instead of fibre-to-the-node or fixed wireless.
Read the full story here.

According to the new nbn company, the cost of Fibre-to-the-Node is $1,600 per premises while a Skinny Fibre connection is $2,000. Full Fibre-to-the-Premises was calculated as $2,600 per premises in the NBN Co 2013 Corporate Plan though that figure was expected to drop over time. However, the Coalition Government’s highly-contentious Ergas-analysis ballooned this figure up to $3,700.
Read the full story here.

Bill Shorten this week said Labor would make sure that there would be a “greater role” for Fibre to the Premises technology in the National Broadband Network if it won the upcoming Federal Election. However, the Opposition Leader also intimated Labor wouldn’t be able to reverse the changes Malcolm Turnbull has made to the project.
Read the full story here.

Mark Gregory
Rather than providing improved quality over the next five years, similar to France where 4K streaming is set to occur at 70 Mbps, it appears that Australians will have to get used to the poor quality video streaming provided by companies like Stan and Presto today.

Another problem identified during the discussion was the “last mile congestion during peak times” that occurs typically between 8pm and 10pm when according to Sneesby “from the early evening hours to the later evening hours there is a 50 per cent increase in that incidence of degradation, and around a 30 per cent increase in those consumers who are experiencing what we call buffering, which is effectively pausing in their video during that peak time.”
Full story here.

With the NBN being one of the issues that made him choose to support Labor over the Coalition in 2013, Tony Windsor is returning to politics due to stalling with NBN, defence, and education funding.
Read the full story here.

Caveat emptor!!!!
Did anyone receive a letter from "connect nbn services" today? See photo below, if so throw it in the bin, here's some comments from Whirlpool about them: "Phoenixing is par for the course for these operators", "I would suggest caution – Caveat emptor", "I would avoid doing business with Exceed Connect", " see this Whirlpool post for full comments: https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm…
NFCA members can email info@nfca.org.au if you receive any dodgy looking offers for nbn services and we'll do our best to sort through them. No need to sign up to any nbn service until the real nbn advise that 4MLS is ready for service, that was advertised as being Q3-2016.

In responding to questions at the Senate Estimates hearing held on 9 February 2016, NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow admitted he did not know the number of nodes being built during the Fibre to the Node (FTTN) rollout and he went on to say that any information about what is being rolled out by NBN Co would be commercial-in-confidence, meaning that he would very selectively answer questions put to him by Senators. By the end of the session, Morrow had answered very few questions.
Read the full story here.

Journalists generally report the news but over the last week one of that tribe, Nick Ross, the former technology editor of the ABC, has become the focal point of a number of news stories.
And if one wonders why a story that could essentially be said to be all about politics is figuring in these columns, it is because it concerns a topic that is central to all our technological needs: the NBN.
Unfortunately, given the fact that the two major political parties in Australia, Labor and the Coalition, have taken dramatically opposed paths to getting a broadband network that is operational, the NBN has sadly become more of a political than a technological issue.
Sadly, because without all the political interference, there would have been much more progress in delivering fast internet to the residents of this vast, brown land.
Read the full story here.

This is a series of articles from New Matilda about Tech journo Nick Ross and the ABC’s NBN coverage.
In the lead up to the 2013 federal election, amid a fierce political debate between the major parties over the roll out of the National Broadband Network, an ABC editor-journalist was directed by his boss to find any story he could that was critical of the Labor Party’s NBN Plan in order to provide “insurance” against attacks on the ABC by the Coalition.
Full Part 1 article here. 21/1/2016 False Balance: ABC Directed Journalist To Target Labor NBN Plan For “Insurance” Against Coalition Attacks.
Full Part 2 article here. 22/1/2016 FALSE BALANCE: ABC coverage of the NBN since September 2013.
Full Part 3 article here. 24/1/2016 FALSE BALANCE: See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil…
Full Part 4 article here. 24/1/2016 FALSE BALANCE: The Full Transcript Of The Meeting Between Nick Ross And Bruce Belsham
Full Part 5 article here. 25/1/2016 FALSE BALANCE: The Ifs, Buts And Maybes Of The ABC Belsham-Ross Story.

By Cosima Marriner November 14, 2003
Telstra will replace its century-old copper wire phone network with new technology within the next 15 years, saying the ageing lines are now at "five minutes to midnight".
Telstra executives revealed the problem at a Senate inquiry into broadband services on Wednesday - the same day the company was forced to apologise again for problems with its BigPond email service.
In an email sent to customers late on Wednesday night, Telstra said the most recent email problems had to do with balancing the load on the system, rather than its actual capacity.
"The BigPond team would like to apologise for some intermittent email problems you may have experienced this week," Telstra said.
"We quickly dedicated all available resources to the problem, working to address it by rebalancing the email load."
Telstra's chief executive, Ziggy Switkowski, has promised to spend $100 million upgrading BigPond, after 1.5 million internet customers had their emails delayed by up to 48 hours.
The Telstra board is likely to come under fire for the email problems from shareholders at the company's annual general meeting today.
Telstra's manager of regulatory strategy, Tony Warren, gave the Senate broadband inquiry details of the company's problems with its ageing copper network.
He said ADSL, the high-speed internet service that runs over copper wires, was the bridging broadband technology Telstra was using until it replaced the network.
He described ADSL as the "last sweat" of revenue Telstra could wring out of the 100-year-old copper wire network.
A Telstra spokesman denied the ageing copper wire had anything to do with the email problems.

New revelations and evidence have emerged that paints a murky picture of editorial process at the ABC.
Read the full story here.

If we want to talk speeds it is important to remember the following:

Downstream speeds = entertainment
Upstream speeds = economic development
Yet I have seldom heard those conservative voice allude to this interpretation of a broadband network.

If we follow the logic of the FttH deniers there would be no need to build 4-lane freeways, as nobody drives 200km on them, even though it is something that would easily be possible.

Similarly we don’t build broadband networks for speed; we build them for capacity, safety, reliability, etc. Have you ever heard a road engineer or the Minister for Transport talk about road speeds when they develop their road infrastructure plans? Certainly it would be one of the considerations, but it is of such little importance that it is never the subject of debate, at least never to the extent that politicians debate broadband speeds.

Read the full article here.

While on the one hand the government promotes innovation and wants to create ‘silicon valleys’ in Australia it is actively preventing Australia from getting the first-class infrastructure needed to enable it to deliver on its innovation policy. As has been noted by us before , it is extraordinary that the government doesn’t even mention the NBN as a key element of its innovation strategy, a clear indication that it doesn’t believe in the second-rate version it is now trying to deliver to Australians.
Read the full story here.

While the Coalition’s version of the NBN, once completed, will provide a significant uptick in connectivity to many Australians, the price paid will be heavy indeed — not just from a fiscal perspective but from the lamentable waste of a prime opportunity.
The national broadband network should presumably be rolled out by mid-2020 and the end result will inevitably dismay some and amaze others. It’s likely that the talk of selling NBN Co will be back on the agenda by then, along with a wholesale recognition of what this shallow version of the NBN truly represents.
Read the full story here.

It makes sense to spend $4,400 CAPEX on FTTP (rather than $2,100 on FTTN CAPEX) when the OPEX and Revenue make the margins much more favourable for FTTP than for FTTN. The OPEX and Revenue figures from the HFC slide indicate a $30 per month margin benefit (OPEX plus revenue difference) for FTTP over FTTN or $365 per annum. This margin benefit makes FTTP more attractive than FTTN after 6 1/2 years of installation.
Read the full story here.
Supporting spreadsheets here.

A researcher from Monash University has published a detailed analysis of the NBN company’s costs which appears to show that Labor’s technically superior Fibre to the Premises model represents better financial value than the Coalition’s preferred Fibre to the Node technology only a scant few years after FTTP was deployed.
Read the full story here.

The NBN company has gone to market to purchase ‘Fibre to the Distribution Point’ (FTTdp) hardware that will allow it to deploy fibre further out into its growing Fibre to the Node network, as speculation increases that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull will formalise a widespread FTTdp rollout ahead of this year’s Federal Election.
Read the full story here.

A new report from consultancy Ovum, revealed that the average monthly download usage on the NBN network was 73GB in March 2015 but shot up to 110GB by September. The change represents a rise of 51 percent in just six months and as such some capacity issues due to network demand.
Read the full story here.

Three-quarters of Dubbo will have the equivalent of Ferraris in their front yard while the rest will have Morris Minors if NBN continues at its current internet delivery system, according to Dubbo councillor Allan Smith.
Read the full story here.

Budde has long maintained it's a missed opportunity for Australia. "The sad story is that it now looks like the fibre to the home (FTTH) network could have been delivered for a price not that far different from the second-rate system that we are getting. The people and businesses of Australia have never been concerned about the cost of this long-term national infrastructure project, instead they have argued – do it once and do it right."
Read the full story here.

FTTP is hands down the fastest, most flexible, cheapest to maintain and future proofed technology in the mix. Fibre to the premises involves, at its most basic state, feeding a fibre optic cable directly from the exchange (or nbn™ POP – Point of Presence) to your home.
Read the full story here.

Optus has paid fines of $51,000 for making false claims about its broadband services, saying they were “NBN-like” in their speeds.
Five infringement notices were issued to the telecoms firm by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The commission also accepted an enforceable undertaking from Optus – effectively an agreement to correct the situation and ensure it doesn’t occur in the future.
Read the full story here.

Broadband adoption rates in Australia are well below those in other countries, with Australia currently ranked in the bottom third of qualifying countries for 15mbps broadband adoption.
And, average connection speeds are currently 7.8Mbps which sees Australia sitting at 46th position on the global rankings in the third quarter this year.
Read the full story here.

After 14 months since construction work was announced, the fibre-to-the-node portion of the National Broadband Network has passed a milestone; 1000 customers have been connected. That’s the triumphant news from Australia’s minister for communications this afternoon.
Read the full story here.

It's been a tough few weeks for the Prime Minister's record on the national broadband network (NBN), though you might have missed it amid all the talk about "innovation" and "the ideas boom".
Back in April 2013, then shadow communications minister Malcolm Turnbull unveiled a plan to bury Labor's fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) NBN with a three-word slogan: Fast. Affordable. Sooner.
"It's turning out to be a bit of a shoddy, delayed, sticky tape and rubber band and gaffer tape solution." Senior telco executive.
Read the full story here.

Companies wishing to leverage their existing fibre networks to compete with NBN Co in urban areas, including TPG Telecom and Vocus Communications argue that by shifting the $6 cost onto their customers would improve NBN Co’s bottom line whilst making it harder for them to compete.
Read the full story here.

“The NBN company now is trialing a new technology, they know their copper NBN is not going to be good enough for the future, so they are now trialing something called fibre to the distribution point or an easy way to understand that is fibre to the driveway,” he said.
“They are trialing this now, I suspect before the next election, they will announce they are going to ditch their copper NBN and roll out fibre to the driveway instead and when they do, remember this point: it will be proof that Malcolm Turnbull got it wrong on the NBN.”
Read the full story here.

NSW north coast customers at risk of three years without the Internet
Long-time indy ISP Linknet on the NSW north coast is shuttering its business, saying it's been overbuilt by the NBN and can't recapitalise to become a reseller.
Read the full story here.

From one of Australia’s best political ideas to a smouldering mess of ideology trumping the good of nation, the NBN looks likely to fail in almost spectacular fashion.
Read the full story here.

ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)‏
The company charged with rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN) has been accused of wasting taxpayers' money by installing exactly the same internet services on top of existing broadband in some areas.
Read the full story here.

A combination of the government's dire fiscal position, and criticism of the progress at NBN, is fuelling the decision to engage in what would in effect be the biggest privatisation since the Howard government offloaded Telstra. Glenn Hunt
Read the full story here.

Greencom, a broadband provider which has partnered with Metrofibre Networx, has successfully tested a water pipe-based fibre “home drop” system.
“The attractiveness of the Atlantis Hydrotec solution is the fact that it enables us to effectively fix the price of the home drop,” said Paul Colmer, Greencom’s Technical Director.
“It is fairly simple for us to predict how much it will cost to pass a property, however, it is that final home drop that brings with it so many challenges and uncertainties.”
Read the full story here.

It is not only geeks that realise fibre broadband is the only way to go, individuals, community groups and councils are all wanting quality fibre NBN.
Tasmania's West Coast Council is campaigning to get fibre rather than inferior satellite NBN.
The NBN Co advised Council that the whole West Coast will be serviced by satellite only. The Council is looking to encourage population growth and business investment. Without the best available NBN service we are behind the 8-ball. Health and education services to us can also be greatly improved with good quality NBN.
See full story here.

Mark Gregory - Technology Spectator
Nine months since its launch NBN Co’s Technology Change Program (TCP) initiative is starting to look a lot like paltry window dressing, designed to substantiate Malcolm Turnbull’s promise last year to facilitate a mechanism for access technology upgrades.
Our request for NBN Co to identify any Area Switch or Individual Premises Switch applications that have proceeded beyond the feasibility study estimate phase was declined, so it’s unclear just how many premises or areas on the path to an upgrade. NBN Co has been rolling out Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) now for about four years and greenfield FTTP rollouts are ongoing. However, when it comes to brownfields estates several councils and people in these estates contend that their experience with NBN Co on TCP has been less than satisfactory.
Read the full story here.

Paul Budde Technology Spectator
"While I can understand the political realities Turnbull had to negotiate at the time, if he truly had the interest of the nation on his mind he could have formulated policies that would have maintained the FTTH as the end goal of the NBN – something he has mentioned to me on several occasions he also believes. Unfortunately, he has stubbornly stuck to the MTM model, which may have seemed the cheaper and quicker option at the time but is starting to unravel now."
Read the full story here.

Harry Tucker news.com.au
THE Aussie home of the future will be full of devices that connect to the internet, and have up to 12 apps using an internet connection at any one time.
That’s according to research by Telsyte, commissioned by the NBN. The two company’s found that an average household will go from using nine internet connected devices to 29 by 2020. This will be through everything from smart TVs and computers to smoke alarms or washing machines.
Because of this, the NBN says there will be five typical Australian households. They vary from busy families that will average up to 19 internet applications being used at once, to older couples that will use just 9.
While the NBN commissioned the report, the network that is being rolled out might not be fast enough to actually handle the demand in which they are claiming will be on the network.
Read the full story here.

Richard Chirgwin
Network neutrality has never been the flame-bait topic in Australia that it is in America, but that could be about to change, courtesy of the “Netflix effect”.
That's the message delivered yesterday by nbnTM chair Ziggy Switkowski at a Sydney conference yesterday.
Telco newsletter and conference co-organiser Communications Day reported from the NBN Forum conference that Switkowski said: “Net neutrality is a discussion we need to have a very sophisticated debate around in this country. Are all packets of data equal and is this a sustainable concept over the next few years?”
His point is that the arrival of Netflix and its smaller, more local competitors has changed how people use the Internet: already, nbnTM retail service providers (RSPs) are reporting residential monthly downloads around 200 GB; and by 2020, Switkowski believes, 80 per cent of NBN traffic will be streaming video.
Read the full story here

“Brisbane doesn’t really compete in this space at this stage although Southport on the Gold Coast anchored by Griffith Uni have a research and development precinct that is going gangbusters,” he said. This research facility was involved in nanotechnology, robotics, artificial intelligence and medical research, particularly around malaria.

Interesting video with Alan Kohler at the end - Netflix, Stan, Foxtel, etc using adaptive bitrate streaming techniques to compensate for poor internet speeds.

Read the full story here.

MARK GREGORY
TECHNOLOGY NBN BUZZ TELECOMMUNICATION
According to the previous NBN CEO Quigley, $500 is all we should be paying for FTTP!!
Quigley states that “far from being a difference of over $2,000 per premises (or 80 per cent) [between FTTN & FTTP] as implied by Mr Turnbull, the true like-for-like difference is closer to $500 (or about 10-15 per cent).”
See the full story here

Below is from the transcript of the Background Briefing ABC interview (or skip to 31:10 and listen) by Paddy Manning:

Bill Morrow: "The average cost per premise to deploy fibre-to-the-prem all the way up to the side of the home into the first plate of the wall inside the home is very easily seen as somewhere between $4,300 and $4,600 per household. When you look at the weighted average to build out using the two new technologies and the portion that will still be fibre-to-the-prem, still considering satellite and fixed wireless, it's on average of about $2,700. You can just see clearly the difference of nearly $2,000 per household and business. We talk about it in terms of premises. There's roughly 11 million of those that are around the country today. So you can already see a $22 billion difference in terms of the cost to build out to reach everybody's house."

Using figures from Bill Morrow's interview with Paddy Manning on ABC's Radio national program, Background Briefing, the difference "between $4,300 and $4,600 per household for FTTP " and "the two new technologies [FTTN, HFC]" being "on average of about $2,700" is therefore $1600-1900, the amount that would be payable for TCP. 124 x $1600-$1900 is $198400 - $235600 (a lot different to the estimate provided by NBN which was $429000-$495000 (or $3459-$3992 per lot) and more like figures provided in Mark Gregory's article.

'I suspect that the government will announce, before the next election, that they're going to abandon fibre to the node and go to something called fibre to the curb, fibre to the distribution point,' Clare says.
See the full story here

MARK GREGORY
TECHNOLOGY NBN BUZZ TELECOMMUNICATION
NBN Co’s Technology Choice Program (TCP) provides a mechanism for individuals or local community groups to upgrade their National Broadband Network (NBN) access technology and while the concept might appear straightforward, for one local community group - the Nathan Forrest Community Association (NFCA) – the road to a technology upgrade has been a bewildering one.
Read the full article here

By Corinne Reichert
NBN's CEO has revealed that only premises that are more than 1km from the node and unable to reach speeds of 25Mbps using FttN will be connected to FttdP.
Full story here

By Renai LeMay
Delimiter has today publicly released the controversial document detailing the National Broadband Network’s planned construction and ready for service dates over the next three years, which the Senate Environment and Communications Committee last night refused Labor Senator Stephen Conroy permission to table.
The document contains a considerable amount of detailed information about precisely which geographic areas around Australia will receive the various types of NBN infrastructure over the next three years. This detailed information was not included in the NBN company’s three-year rollout plan.
For example, it includes dates — on a quarter by quarter or half by half basis — where the NBN’s infrastructure build will commence in certain areas, as well as detailing those dates where the same areas are expected to be made ready for service for customers to actually order NBN broadband services.

Interesting leaked document shows Anticipated Technology* for 4MLS (that's us) as FTTP,FTTN previously this has only been FTTN which of the 600 houses serviced by 4MLS will be getting FTTP?

Read the full story and download the document here.

A link to the NBN Corporate Plan 2016 on the web.
Page 67 has a table indicating the costs of the various technologies.

By Martin Kovacs
NBN, the company rolling out the national broadband network, has defended the capabilities of fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) technology.
In a blog post, Tony Brown, NBN public affairs manager, stated the NBN is "supercharging existing copper network lines and pay-TV cables".
"NBN is also working to deliver high-speed broadband to Australia up to eight years sooner and for $20 billion less of taxpayers' money than if we had continued down the path of a predominantly all-fibre network," Brown wrote.
READ MORE

So far, in our FTTN deployment we have not had to replace any copper – or perform any substantial remediation work – to the copper running from our street cabinets to end-user premises with new fibre.
READ MORE

By Nick Wood, Total Telecom
But in places like Newcastle and the Central Coast, closer to 90% of the copper pairs have needed work. In some places the copper is so bad it has to be replaced. Replacing old copper…with new copper,
READ MORE

By Renai LeMay
A letter tabled in the Senate by the Government yesterday has revealed that as Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull explicitly asked the NBN company to create information that could help the Coalition make the case that Labor’s Fibre to the Premises model was not worth pursuing.
READ MORE

By Renai LeMay
Those of you who followed the controversial comments recently made by Singaporean telco MyRepublic about Australia’s National Broadband Network may recall that the company’s advertisements when it entered the New Zealand market featured actor William Shatner — best known for his iconic roles on Star Trek and Boston Legal. Well, your writer suspects Shatner may not be available for MyRepublic’s planned Australian launch —
READ MORE

Despite having over 50 service providers delivering NBN services to customers, according to the nbn website, only 6 service providers are equipped to offer Fibre to the Node services to customers at launch.
READ MORE

This is the story of one small rural community in USA who "did it themselves"

Current ISP rates are as follows:
Internet only: $24.95/month, for access to 1Gps (one gigabit per second) symmetrical (upload and download) network speed, with no data cap *
Telephone only: $29.95/month, for full-featured phone service **
Combined Internet and phone: $44.95/month
Distinctive ring for a second number on a single phone line: $8.95
Separate second phone line: $24.95
In addition to ISP rates, subscribers are billed for LMLP operating costs. The current LMLP charge is $49.95/month, regardless of type of service.
READ MORE

Sky Muster’s successful launch is an admirable achievement but it won’t be able to do the job on its own. In fact, even with a second satellite in operation, capacity concerns are likely to be an issue.
READ MORE

KWINANA councillors have unanimously agreed to fight NBN Co’s new cost-saving plan to deliver a slower internet service to the area.
Kwinana is one of many suburbs in the State yet to have the fibre-optic technology installed.
In an effort to roll the infrastructure out quicker, NBN Co announced last month that it would change plans for future installations from fibre to the premises to fibre to the node.
The move would mean that rather than individual homes being directly connected to a fibre-optic cable, existing copper lines out from each house would connect to a shared neighbourhood node.
Full story here.
Council Meeting Addendum here.

A satellite designed to deliver high-speed internet services to 400,000 Australian homes has been launched in South America.
READ MORE

New Communications Minister, Senator Mitch Fifield has signalled that the Turnbull government is open to including more fibre-to-the-premise in the national broadband network as the $56 billion project rolls out.
READ MORE

There is currently a great deal of debate regarding the need for gigabit networks. There are still a lot of voices, often led by conservative political and media people, who argue that hardly anyone needs such networks. Unfortunately for them, however, their arguments are totally flawed. And who are they, anyway, to set the tone for such new infrastructure.
READ MORE

As Australia struggles to complete the National Broadband Network (NBN) utilising copper technologies the development of new Passive Optical Network (PON) systems has continued and earlier this year the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approved the most recent version of PON known as NG-PON2, which provides a total throughput of 40 Gbps downstream and 10 Gbps upstream over a single fibre distributed to connected premises.

The roll out of the original FttH-based NBN is nearing its end, to be replaced by a so called multi technology mix, using the copper and HFC networks, which are used for the FttN roll out. This part of the roll out will start taking on momentum in 2016. All preparations have been made but there remains a level of uncertainty regarding the quality of the old network and any potential budget blow outs having been included in the longer term plans of the NBN company. This report analyses the changes and provides overviews and updates on the roll out as well as other statistical data on the project. It also details the different technologies and their individual plans and progress. With Malcolm Turnbull now in charge of the political environment in Australia it is expected that he will express his vision on the digital economy and the roll the NBN will play, these issues are also analysed in the report.

Just before he dethroned Tony Abbott to become Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull phoned long-time rival and independent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde.

NBN has switched on the fibre-to-the-node portion of its multi-technology mix high-speed broadband network, with promises that it will deliver speeds of 100Mbps.

ACCC calls for broadband monitoring
The establishment of a broadband services monitoring program for consumers has been recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).

MARK GREGORY 18 SEP, 11:35 AM 8
TECHNOLOGY NBN BUZZ TELECOMMUNICATION
New Zealand’s equivalent to NBN Co provides damaging evidence that the Coalition’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is unlikely to be delivered more affordably and sooner than Labor's full-fibre plan.

10 Tips On Contracts For Fttp Networks In New Developments
by Michael Sparksman the Managing Director of OPENetworks who is a solicitor of the Supreme Courts of Queensland who has over 30 years of legal experience and specialises in telecommunications law and regulation.

Laureate Emeritus Professor Rod Tucker
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering The University of Melbourne
Engineering & IT Public Lecture Series
Full Presentation here

The Coalition sold the Australian public a product that was supposed to be fast, one-third the cost and arrive sooner than what Labor was offering us. Instead the Coalition’s NBN will be so slow that it is obsolete by the time it’s in place, it will cost about the same as Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN, and it won’t arrive on our doorsteps much sooner.
Read the full story here.

Slattery plugs into NBN talks for Rockhampton city
Mr Slattery, a former North Rockhampton High student who is now one of the nation's leading tech entrepreneurs, said the fibre to node cabinet locations had come across some issues, and the whole network would be fitted without fibre to the premises.

NBN under fire for affordability, accessibility ZDnet
"..Satellite and fixed wireless cost AU$7,900 and AU$4,900 per premises, respectively; fibre to the premises in existing premises costs AU$4,400, with new premises less than half the cost, at AU$2,100; fibre to the node costs AU$2,300 per premises; and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) is the cheapest technology, at AU$1,800 per premises.."

Presto says Australia’s internet speeds too slow for 4K content and blames new NBN
"..[Australia] is missing out on the latest television technology because the Federal Government abandoned the original National Broadband Network plan and banished households to inadequate broadband speeds, according to a top Presto executive..."

Battle of the blowouts: How real can Labor make its Real NBN?
"...NBN now says it costs on average AU$4,600 for each FttP connection, around double the AU$2,200 to AU$2,500 range NBN claimed for FttP under former CEO Mike Quigley..."

Turnbull ‘has no clue what he is doing’, says Paul Budde
Comment by David "..no-one knows how much a FTTP build would cost. The cost per premise given in the latest report are almost double the costs claimed by the conservative governments rollout in New Zealand, and three or four times the costs claimed by US operators like Verizon. It is virtually certain that nbn’s latest estimates are contorted in various way to make Malcolms preferred approach look better." Tinman_au "Copper…fibre…they cost the same to lay. Malcolm is gonna need a whole lot more nodes for FttN than they needed FSAM’s for FttP"

The NBN blowout and the blame game Technical Spectator
"...While Turnbull has doggedly clung to a claim that the average cost for FTTP connections would be $4400 per connection in brownfield regions and $2100 in greenfield regions, documents leaked from NBN Co in 2014 identified that the cost was far lower."

Hard to get a handle on the NBN colossus
"...Brownfields FTTP connections cost $4400 per premise and greenfields FTTP $2100. FTTN connections cost $2300 and HFC $1800. Fixed wireless costs $4900 per premise and satellite a staggering $7900. In other words, in the core of the network, FTTP costs nearly twice as much as FTTN and about 2.5 times HFC..."

Turnbull defends NBN cost blowout itnews
"..The plan shows the NBN will exhaust its federal government equity funding of $29.5 billion in financial year 2017, meaning it will be required to go to the financial markets to secure bonds and other debt funding..."

The NBN needs up to an extra $26.5 billion to complete the network news.com.au
"...As at 30 June, the actual cost was $3632 in direct capex and $4387 including lease costs..."

NBN faces cost blow out Business Spectator
"...The figures were outlined in the release of the NBN’s long-awaited corporate plan which showed that the average cost of connecting a home with FTTN will cost $2300 per premise. Connecting a home with Labor’s favoured fibre to the premise technology will cost $4400 per existing premise and $2100 per greenfield premise..."

NBN faces $1.5 billion reality bite AFR
"..Data transmission is growing exponentially because of the explosion in the use of streaming video on demand services such as Netflix and Stan.....
NBN says there was a 17 per cent spike in the data transmitted across its network following the launch of Netflix earlier this year.
The average download per user in June 2014 was 77GB. This rose to 90GB in March before Netflix was launched and then hit 109GB in June this year...
Small [RSP] players simply cannot afford to go into each of those regions. That is why Morrow is talking to the ACCC about ensuring there is increased competition.."

“Criminal”: MyRepublic CEO mourns loss of Australia’s “marvellous” NBN vision
“If he believes — if his technology guys think they can get 90 megabits per second on FTTN, then they’ve never built networks. What he’s doing is building a grass hut to meet commitments in the election.”

I'm buying FTTP from NBN.. so called "on demand".. the cost estimation for 1,000 meters? $10,000 - $20,000
Well just to give you an idea of rough costs based on my experience
Fibre cable: ~$3pm ($3,000)
Hauling: ~$5pm ($5,000)
Splicing, testing, leadins: ~$1000-2000
GPON ONT: $2000 (should be NBN subsidised though)
Admin costs, design, easment access, DA's: ~$500
Plus you need boring and conduit for that section of road which could easily run into the thousands
$10-20k isn't totally out of the question

Analysis: 164k NBN Fibre to the Node premises delayed jxeeno blog
"...According to rollout information produced by the company rolling out the National Broadband Network, the ready for service dates for around 164 thousand premises in the NBN Fibre to the Node trial area have been delayed since the company’s estimates in May..."

Telstra threat MyRepublic details Australia launch and slams NBN AFR

"..Mr Rodrigues told Fairfax Media that MyRepublic will build a local team this year and launch services by mid-2016 with the goal of shaking up the entire broadband market.

"We've kind of re-engineered the economics of telcos and this is what David Thodey was talking about," he said. "We're going to come in with an unlimited 100 megabit per second offer at the $80-$90 per month range.

"We acquire customers at a fraction of the cost of incumbents, we [provide] service [to] those customers at a fraction of the cost and we don't churn."

By comparison, Optus charges $125 per month for broadband bundles with similar conditions while TPG customers pay $99 per month. Telstra does not offer home consumers unlimited downloads and users pay $135 per month for a 100Mbps service with 1 Terabyte of data.

Mr Rodrigues said he "loved the NBN" but that it had lost its way by moving onto fibre-to-the-node technology, which partly relies on slower copper phone lines to cut costs and save time. His company benefits from networks that operate on one foundation technology...."

Blog: 20 Years Too Long To Wait for Broadband Upgrades MT blog
"One of the key points about the nbn™ is that it is designed to allow entrepreneurs like Mr Rodrigues to shake-up the market. "

The Case For Integrating Community And Building Services Onto A FTTP Network
Common services that may be carried over FTTP networks include:
• IP intercom (audio and video),
• IP Closed Circuit TV (CCTV)
• Access control systems
• Security monitoring & alarm systems,
• Building management systems
• Smart Home Controls, e.g. energy monitoring
• Utility metering, e.g. electricity, water, gas, etc.
• Medical alert & nurse call systems
• Community Wi-Fi
• Community electronic signage
• Community facilities Intranet,
and many other services not listed above.

NBN network design dissected AFR
"...There appears to be a rollout cost differential between the MTM methodology and the FTTP methodology of about $500 -$800 per premises excluding the premises drop line and internal fittings (about $500) which could arguably be pushed onto customers through retail service provider product plans..."

Consumers embrace home Wi-Fi, but ‘disparity’ between expectations and reality ITwire
"...Good quality Wi-Fi has become a necessity in homes: 72% of consumers consider a high-speed Internet connection in every room of their house either vitally important or very important.."

Costly tests to see if NBN not a waste
Burnie City Council has led the way by deciding to outlay the money to NBN (formerly NBN Co) in a bid to have fibre-to-the-premises connected in its CBD.
Ald Dow said the council would pay a $1000 fee for a quote and, if it proceeded, $10,000 for a detailed design.
“The only process available to understand the magnitude of the cost difference between fibre to the premises and fibre to the node is to request a quote,” Ald Dow said.

Fiber optic cable is one of the most popular mediums for both new cabling installations and upgrades, including backbone, horizontal, and even desktop applications. Fiber offers a number of advantages over copper.
Read full article here.

Turnbull promises full per-premises cost of fibre NBN ZDnet
"...When Turnbull announced the Coalition's broadband policy in April 2013, he had estimated that the cost to pass each premises by fibre would be AU$3,400. NBN Co at the time rejected this, stating that the cost per premises would be between AU$2,200 and AU$2,500.."

Turnbull fooling nobody but himself on NBN Co FttP savings ZDnet

"...It wasn't too long ago that the Coalition was claiming that it would cost AU$3,600 per premises to build an FttP NBN. With NBN Co savings dropping per-premises costs towards AU$1,000, there's a valid argument that the Strategic Review and cost-benefit analysis no longer represent FttP's costs correctly..."

"..Turnbull still says that FttP isn't getting cheaper — but what, then, are we to think when presented with evidence that simply redesigning the fibre loop reduced the average cost of connecting 3,657 premises in Victoria Park, WA, from AU$1,239 to AU$1,034? That the costs of connecting 4,900 premises in rural Maitland, NSW, had dropped from AU$1,844 to AU$1,287 per premises?
Would Turnbull have been so quick to discount the projected cost savings — which had been duly incorporated into an updated version 13 of the NBN Co Corporate Plan 2013-16 that he discredited, and has, unsurprisingly, not released — if there had been proof last September that the rollout to 3,625 mostly new homes in Toowoomba, Queensland, could be slimmed down from AU$1,776 per premises to AU$1,363?

Or that 4,689 mostly new homes in Penrith, NSW, could be connected for AU$1,189 per premises using optimised placement of Fibre Distribution Hubs, compared with AU$1,480 before?

Remember that the government recently committed AU$150 million to get Telstra to connect 200,000 fibre-to-the-node (FttN) homes — an average of AU$750 per premises. That's a big saving on AU$1,844 per premises, but not such a big difference, compared with AU$1,287..."

Quigley's 'Project Fox' still saving NBN Co money on fibre: Morrow ZDnet
"...NBN Co will not abandon key cost- and time-saving methods for rolling out fibre to the premises developed in a program under the code name "Project Fox" by former CEO Mike Quigley, according to new CEO Bill Morrow..."

NBN Co denies claims of cost-saving fibre 'pilot' study ZDnet
"...NBN Co has denied that a cost-effective fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) rollout to 2,484 premises in Melton, Victoria, was a pilot of design improvements to the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout proposed by the company's former CEO."

Labor's all-fibre national broadband network could have been delivered faster and for less money than originally forecast, according to the confidential results of a pilot study completed last month.
The pilot took into account design changes formulated by network builder, NBN Co, last year as then chief executive Mike Quigley undertook a substantial review of the project and identified initiatives to reduce its cost and length.

Read the full story here

Aside from his qualifications for a role at NBN Co, Hackett has also been one of the most vocal analysts of the NBN over the past several years since the project was founded in April 2009, and has proved uncannily accurate at predicting the future dynamics of the project.

As early as December 2010, Hackett warned that the ACCC’s Points of Interconnect decision with relation to the NBN would cause massive headaches for smaller ISPs and a dramatic consolidation of the industry. The executive turned out to be right. In September 2011, Hackett warned that if the Coalition won the 2013 election and changed NBN Co’s model, there would be a much greater impetus for other ISPs to deploy their own fibre, which is precisely what is happening currently with TPG.

In October 2011 Hackett called for ownership of Telstra’s copper to be transferred to NBN Co as part of its deal with the telco, arguing future Federal Governments may want to use the infrastructure to build hybrid fibre to the node networks. This precise model is being discussed by Telstra and NBN Co right now.

In all of these cases, Hackett argued against conventional wisdom espoused by the previous Labor Government, the competition regulator (the ACCC) or NBN Co itself — and turned out to be accurate in his predictions about the future of the NBN project.

Full Story Here

By Mark Gregory
This paper provides a flexible upgrade path for the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN), given that the new federal government has a policy of altering the construction methodology to introduce a copper-based access system such as Fibre to the Node (FTTN). The operational advantages of eliminating FTTN cabinets by use of FTTS (Fibre to the Street) technology are spelled out.
Read the full paper here.

Coalition launches alternative NBN policy ZDnet

"All Australians can expect to be able to get download speeds of up to 25 megabits per second on the National Broadband Network (NBN) at the end of the first term of an Abbott government, the party has promised."

"..The Coalition has promised that should it win government in September, the NBN would be scaled back, so that instead of fibre-to-the-premise for 93 percent of Australian premises, it would only be pushed out to 22 percent of premises in areas already being constructed by NBN, new housing premises, or in areas where the copper is too degraded to deliver 25Mbps speeds; 71 percent of the population would get access to the NBN via fibre-to-the-node, which would continue to use the existing Telstra copper line from the node to the premise."

Commsday Sydney 013 - The problem with FTTN

Fibre also offers revolution to television with every household being able to access the bulk of the developed world's TV channels as well as a plethora of on-demand and other services. Potentially, more importantly, fibre is the only medium capable of broadcasting to the new Ultra High Definition "4K" TVs. These might be new now, but in 10 years' time they'll be common (more on this below).

Fibre also means an end to paying phone line rental and expensive phone calls. It also means ubiquitous crystal-clear, high-definition sound quality on phones which will please people whose technology requirements don't stray far from an old-fashioned telephone.

Telecommuting means many more people won't have to commute to work anymore and nor will they need to live in cities.
Read the full story here

Coalition Broadband Policy - Frequently Asked Questions
The last serious plans for FTTN in Australia in 2007 and 2008 had maximum loop lengths of between 750m and 800m.

Clarification on fibre-on-demand costs

THE COALITION’S PLAN FOR A BETTER NBN