Queensland council plans own optical fibre network

Monday 16th November 2015 00:07 GMT Knoydart

Federal bind

"The federal government, on the other hand, can probably be expected to be on the side of the councils. Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has repeatedly stated his support for infrastructure-based competition, and can hardly be expected to send in the country's telco regulators to block such projects."

There is the rub. The Prime Minister wants nbn to succeed but at the same time wants competition - interesting times ahead.

Maybe a similar situation is the current TPG FTTP verses nbn FTTN build and this might shed some light on how things might pan out.

A possible compromise would be the Rockhampton council to help fund nbn to take fiber to the doorstep and therefore everybody wins.

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Monday 16th November 2015 06:53 GMT Anonymous Coward

At least someone if having a crack

The FSM knows, the LNP have fallen off the goat.

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Tuesday 17th November 2015 01:07 GMT Greyeye

can council do anything effective?

i pretty much doubt this can be cost effective nor possible, with numerous red tapes, tenders, paperworks, bureaucracy along the way, you end up costing rate payers millions of dollars just to start feasibility analysis.

What do you think its going to happen?

1 Hire expensive over $1000/day consultants, external vendors with their own agenda, project managers who claims they know all yet all they can do is chase others to do work

2 even if real work may begin, external contractors will charge more for the local gov work, its just not cost effective. (reason is because its takes 100s of pages document just to attend a tender, you really need to make $ for gov tender as well)

might as well call optus/telstra to lay cable, it would be cheaper.

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1. Wednesday 18th November 2015 03:01 GMT Martin Budden
  
  Re: can council do anything effective?
  
  might as well call optus~~/telstra~~ to lay cable, it would be cheaper.
  
  FTFY: nothing Telstra does is ever cheap.
  
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Tuesday 17th November 2015 03:58 GMT Anonymous Coward

Fibre consortia do work, just not to homes

What councils can usefully do is to install telecommunications conduit in streets containing businesses and schools. Because civil works more than anything else is what stops community fibre projects. Despite your cynicism such projects can be extremely useful: pretty much every school connected to gigabit ethernet in Adelaide does so through a not-for-profit dark fibre consortia. Then there's the example of Wellington.

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1. Tuesday 17th November 2015 05:54 GMT Knoydart
  
  Re: Fibre consortia do work, just not to homes
  
  To be fair in Wellington, it was stringing up fibre on the trolley bus wires which is how city link started but yes infrastructure by Wellington city council was ahead of Telecom NZ at the time
  
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Tuesday 17th November 2015 07:01 GMT Paul J Turner

Why is it called FTTN?

There is One fibre connected to the node and likely Tens of copper lines connecting it to the premises.

Shouldn't it be called Copper To The Node (CTTN) ?

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1. Wednesday 18th November 2015 03:05 GMT Martin Budden
  
  Re: Why is it called FTTN?
  
  Depends on traffic direction: uploads vs downloads. The convention is to refer to it from a download point of view.
  
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Tuesday 17th November 2015 18:58 GMT Anonymous Coward

To start I must congratulate someone for the extremely good photoshop of two glow plugs on to fibre connectors - if they got plugged in it would create a meltdown.

There are a few things that should be considered regarding the proposal.

a) who digs the trenches and lays the conduits?

b) who is responsible for the terminations at both ends?

c) does the council have the manpower with the correct skills to keep everything up and running?

d) is it going to be competitive with national roll-outs?

When there are answers to those questions people in the council area should be able to make up their minds if it is a reasonable proposition.

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1. Wednesday 18th November 2015 22:39 GMT Colin Tree
  
  think globally, act locally
  
  The council owns the roads and footpaths and has the easiest access to working on that land. Council has the best knowledge of existing infrastructure underground and where to dig.
  
  Councils have a lot of expertise in civil engineering. What expertise they don't have with fiber can be employed and work with NBN to achieve a good outcome. Council staff will be retrained and become more valuable to the community.
  
  Council has the communities well-being at it's core. It is very positive value adding for rates income, useful, improved communications for local companies expanding and for residents being in touch with their communities and beyond.
  
  If we call the internet a hi-tech communications road, council is only providing the infrastructure it should. Local electrical/communications companies would be contracted by residents to take the fiber from the boundary to the premises, just as we build our driveway to connect with the greater road system.
  
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Wednesday 18th November 2015 03:10 GMT Martin Budden

We had a workable affordable* NBN plan with FTTH. Then Abbott came along and out of pure contrariness he lumbered us with FTTN.

*would have been even more affordable if Howard hadn't sold Telstra, necessitating buying back what the govt used to own.

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1. Wednesday 20th January 2016 23:19 GMT Veldan
  
  Sorry, but no
  
  Hate to burst your bubble, but no we didn't.
  
  We had an incredibly under budgeted completely unworkable plan for FTTH, that the current government knew would never see the light of day.
  
  The $40-50Bn that they claimed would have completed the project would have (as with all good government projects) easily quadrupled in cost. The actual people working within the NBNco have barely shifted, the idea that under a different government they would somehow be several orders of magnitude more efficient is complete rubbish.
  
  FTTN was the only way to try and keep the NBNs budget within reason and even then it is failing. FTTH was a pipe dream of the highest order, one which the ALP loves because they can keep attacking the LNP for failing to live up to it (only because they never had to actually build it).
  
  I say this as someone working within the telco industry and having to deal with these people on a daily basis. FTTH never would have worked without footing a $200BN bill... minimum.
  
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Friday 20th November 2015 11:00 GMT ClaudeKrowe

Major Telcos abandon regional Australia Lets support Infrastructure that Bypasses them

I side with the comments supporting the Rockhampton council. The local council have the workers who know the infrastructure very well, it makes lots of sense. Besides one major Telco has a high profile reputation of shipping Aussie Jobs overseas (can anyone guess who) &

Some context; during the (short - relief) reign of Tones (TA & Co) he visited the region over Beef Week which was a global drawcard. All TA & Co (W Truss) really offered was to support improvement of inland trucking roads and add live export to Port Alma, which directly will help Central & North Qld (all good sure).

But LNP, how about some better communications for the constituents, Oh No can't do, while Canberra and Dress circle suburbs of Sydney all can connect to Fibre plans!

No wonder switched on business attuned Mayors (Like Mayor Strelow in RRC) decide to invest in the infrastructure of the future and not wait for OVER THREE LONG YEARS for the the nbn to bring Copper connected, slow, drop out prone (rainy wet seasons + Tropical Cyclones) To THE NODE. The RRC will be on a winner as it is also being advised by Mr Beven Slattery.

Well done to Mayor Strelow for showing up this MTM MTurnbull Mess network for what it is.

ClaudeKrowe

Australia - Regional Queensland

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Saturday 2nd January 2016 19:20 GMT FuzzyTheBear

The fun ..

Building new networks is nice. Allows them to use the latest in spying technology and monitor all the traffic plus keep tabs on everyone and all political opponents. I'm all for it. Just like the USA's Congress is tasting the pudding they dish out to their citizens ( the old if you have nothing to hide ... ) and obviously don't like to eat , maybe when everyone will be under scrutiny and the information gathered used to jail crooked politicians and traitors we will see an end to this universal big brother surveillance trip. The Army and politicians are the first that needs to be spied on. They are in positions to sell out their countries to damage the very citizens they swore to protect.

Spy the shit out of them and use the information to jail everyone of them that step out of the line.

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