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back to article NBN is essential, says Essential poll, but not Turnbull's NBN

Australia's famous two-party divide doesn't apply to our attitude towards the Internet: nearly everybody thinks the Internet is an essential service. According to polling from the Essential Report published yesterday, Liberal voters are slightly more likely to consider the Internet an essential service than Labor – 92 per cent …

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  1. Neoc

    Badly written question.

    And that last question was politically loaded: they should have listed the points of both plans without mentioning which party was for which plan. Yes, I know, most of us are aware of who wants what version of the NBN - but the moment the politicos were mentioned, it would have biased the responses.

    5 0 Reply
  2. Tannin

    Yes. More to the point, the question is misleading about the difference between the two schemes. It says the all-fibre scheme:

    * Would have taken longer (correct)

    * Been faster (technically correct but rather misleading insofar as the hybrid scheme is amply fast for most users and will remain so for quite a few years. In practical reality, speed is and will be almost identical for 95%+ of users until the copper components need replacement in around 10 years, give or take.)

    * Cost more. (False. The hybrid scheme is only slightluy cheaper up front, and that only because it leaves most of the work undone, or skimps on it by using outdated technology. But the overall cost of the hybrid scheme is far higher as most of it will have to be done again in a decade or so. The TOTAL cost of the hybrid scheme will be in the order of 50% to 100% more than the fibre scheme.)

    * Last much longer. (Obviously true but the question mysteriously failed to mention it!)

    5 0 Reply
  3. mathew42
    FAIL

    Most Australians want nice things, but based on NBN take-up are clearly not prepared to pay.

    Meanwhile the unlimited quota brigade campaign is likely to see the end of faster speeds in Australia because RSPs simply won't be able to provide sufficient backhaul at an economic price to make the plans viable.

    If yo uremove the speed tiers, then RSP & NBNCo are incentivised to reduce congestion because the only way to increase revenue will be for people to move on to higher quota plans and people will only migrate if they are exceeding their quota which requires an uncongested network.

    1 5 Reply
  4. aberglas

    Meaningless question Asked

    Correct question:

    "You currently get 5 megabits which allows two concurrent Netflix sessions. Would you be prepared to pay and extra $20 per month to get 25 megabits which would enable 10 concurrent Netflix sessions."

    90% of people will say NO. The others are either so rich they do not care of have a house full of teenagers.

    Do you want more? Yes, of course. Would you pay for more? Hmm. Let me think about that carefully.

    (We are currently on 2 megabits which allows one Netflix plus a little browsing. Provided I use our Gargoyle router (recommended!) to restrain Windows Update. I'd pay $10/month more for 5 megabits as I have teenage daughters. I have no use for 25 megabits.)

    1 7 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Meaningless question Asked

      ""You currently get 5 megabits which allows two concurrent Netflix sessions. Would you be prepared to pay and extra $20 per month to get 25 megabits which would enable 10 concurrent Netflix sessions.""

      Not if you have an ultra HD TV...

      https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

      0 0 Reply
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Essential poll couldn't survey us

    Our string wasn't long enough....

    5 0 Reply
    1. MrDamage Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Essential poll couldn't survey us

      Incorrect. You were using natural string, in clear violation of the Tories move away from fibre(s).

      *badoom-tish*

      /coat

      2 0 Reply
  6. JJKing

    Why, why, why?

    Why, why, why do the naysayers only see this as how it affects them now. Is there nobody looking to the future for this or even how it can vitalise and allow business to grow and add jobs, especially in regional Australia?

    This brilliant idea has been abortonised for political reasons. Even if the original FTTP had cost double what was initially projected, it would have returned that many times over and not that far down the road. Instead so many are "what's in it for me now"; just like our pension rich pollies who suffer ZERO consequences for fucking over the country multiple times.

    9 1 Reply
    1. mathew42
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: Why, why, why?

      Regional Australia (towns < 1000) would have been worse off under Labor's plan because ADSL was being ripped out and replaced by wireless because FTTP was too expensive and FTTN was ideologically unacceptable to a party that had just abandoned FTTN because of Telstra's intransigence.

      The benefits of the NBN according to Labor only occur when speeds are greater than 100Mbps, yet Labor predicted that 50% would be on 12Mbps. Reality has proven worse with over 80% choosing to connect at 25Mbps or slower.

      Clueless people like yourself are directly responsible for MTM because you didn't read and comprehend what Labor was promising possibly because you feared finding that the plan was seriously flawed. If those flaws had been identified and fixed (e.g. removing speed tiers from the artificial pricing model) then FTTP could have been a success. Instead the reality is that for 80% they will experience neglible difference between FTTP & MTM because they are only prepared to pay for 25Mbps. In fact many would consider 25Mbps with unlimited data to be better than 1Gbps with a quota.

      1 4 Reply
      1. Trixr
        Reply Icon

        Re: Why, why, why?

        Well, I live 4.5km from the centre of town in a state capital, and yet I can only get 4Mbps on a good day. So yes, perhaps I'd only choose to connect at 25Mbps, or even bloody 12Mbps, but at least I'd actually get those speeds.

        1 0 Reply
      2. Jasonk
        Reply Icon

        Re: Why, why, why?

        "yet Labor predicted that 50% would be on 12Mbps. Reality has proven worse with over 80% choosing to connect at 25Mbps or slower."

        Wow Mathew what reality do you live in when 50% on 25Mbps is worst than 50% on 12Mbps. Or are you showing your Turnbull fanboy status again.

        Again Mathew you are the clueless one. Eg claiming fttn is faster than fttp now as claiming 59% on 25Mbps is worst that 50% on 12Mbps

        2 0 Reply
    2. aberglas
      Reply Icon

      Re: Why, why, why?

      We are looking for one, just one, real or imagined application that people will realistically want that requires more than 5 megabits.

      2 megabits is plenty for Netflix on a normal TV (I know, that is all I have) provided no teenagers in the house. Nothing else takes bandwidth like television.

      And while video compression has improved over the years, it still has a long, long way to go, with fractal based algorithms promising massive reductions in required bandwidth. And engineers have been able to push more and more over old copper as well.

      So that is why. There is not point. It is like digging everybody's front yard to give them a 100mm water pipe. Sure, that would enable them to have 50 showers at the same time, but that is not actually useful to most people.

      0 4 Reply
      1. mathew42
        Reply Icon
        FAIL

        Re: Why, why, why?

        > We are looking for one, just one, real or imagined application that people will realistically want that requires more than 5 megabits.

        Video conferencing (e.g. Tele-medicine and remote education) is a simple example of an application requiring 100Mbps.or more in bursts that could be considered useful to most people. Labor documented this in the first NBNCo Corporate Plan and then removed the section from subsequent documents.

        Unfortunately those who could benefit most are also unlikely to be wealthy and so will at best choose a cheap NBN plan. With speed tiers this means they are always denied the benefit of fast internet. With quotas they can choose when to consume data.

        0 3 Reply
  7. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    Stop

    The Liberal Party

    Australia's Liberal party is a socially-and-economically conservative party

    Technically they're economic liberals. Wristies by the invisible hand etc. etc.

    0 1 Reply
    1. Cpt Blue Bear
      Reply Icon

      Re: The Liberal Party

      "Technically they're economic liberals. Wristies by the invisible hand etc. etc."

      They might have been 30 years ago but now the party is run by hard right neo-liberal ideologues and religious conservatives. The former seem to rely on corporate welfare to drive business and the latter would certainly be against wristies for or by anyone, because they hate the idea of having any sort of fun, but are probably OK with invisible friends. Sorry, hands.

      3 1 Reply
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NBN

    I hear moving business premises can lead to prolonged outages without any services.

    I wouldn't be surprised. NBN based orders taking multiples of 48 hours for the paperwork to progress. The worst that I know of took over 6 months to get rectified, somone had plugged the wrong line into the wrong port. Once the order for that lot of work was properly queued up it took think it was 16 days for the order to properly be processed. (All that to get the right fibre termination to the right shop)

    Be warned people.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Cpt Blue Bear
      Reply Icon

      Re: NBN

      This sort of thing is nothing new and far from an NBN problem. I've seen Telstra disconnect the wrong phone line on many occasions. In one case they even reconnected it to the wrong port, swapping the phone numbers of two businesses. Seriously, explaining that fault to the operator who couldn't seem to grasp that there could be fault if the line was working.

      SOP procedure seems to be to treat the fix as a new connection and tell the customer "up to ten working days" meaning two weeks. Three if it rains. Four absolute max.

      Six months to fix? Sounds like you're dealing Telstra's Digital Business dept. It can take a week for them to answer the phone. Muppets.

      3 0 Reply
    2. Trixr
      Reply Icon

      Re: NBN

      Yes, I'm sorry, how is that different to the regular c*ckups and delays to service when changing over copper lines at times? Obviously you've never had to get ISDN lines changed in the past.

      And if they're not having to maintain two separate sets of infrastructure everywhere, then perhaps the whole thing will be more seamless/better resourced (if the latter is currently an issue).

      1 0 Reply
    3. mathew42
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: NBN Monopoly

      Poor performance and delays is exactly what is expected when Labor established the NBN as a monopoly with more power than Telstra.

      0 5 Reply
  9. Ybot

    Telstra doesnt own the copper

    The government purchased the copper of Telstra recently for 11 billion dollars. So the questikn needs to be correct for the answers to matter. Maybe you should be asking the question why would we spending 11 billion dollars on copper lines that havent been maintained and are in need of replacing? Most people dont know this deal went through.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Cpt Blue Bear
      Reply Icon

      Re: Telstra doesnt own the copper

      "Maybe you should be asking the question why would we spending 11 billion dollars on copper lines that havent been maintained and are in need of replacing? Most people dont know this deal went through."

      The short answer is to get the rights-of-way. We didn't buy just the contents, we also bought the ducts. Which also turned out to be unmaintained and in need of replacing. And occasionally full of asbestos.

      In Telstra's defence (Christ! I'm going to have to take a shower after writing this) the lines weren't maintained because they were going to be replaced by shiny new fibre. Why spend money on something that's going to be replaced in five years?

      Most people are completely unaware they bought the network. Doubly so that much of what we bought was already paid for by their parents back when Telsta was Telecom Aust and government owned.

      0 0 Reply
  10. rtb61

    3 Year Plan

    I am in a inner city suburb in a capital city, I can see the city centre from my home and I am on the three year plan. What is the three year plan, we guarantee to provide you nothing for three years and that is it, finish, no promise of services after 3 years, nope, could end up on another 3 year plan but they got their off shore kicks backs for spending billions on a network that was going to be scrapped at a loss.

    Blatant in you face corruption now on show, hoping in the most ludicrous fashion imaginable, to hide behind incompetence, see we aren't corrupt, just stupid (seriously, that is to be the excuse for blowing billions of tax payer dollars).

    0 0 Reply

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