[LINK] A plastic bag and a bit of rope

[David Boxall]

Goold old Aussie ingenuity.
<http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2016/s4588209.htm>
> LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: If you're one of the millions of Australians 
> expecting the National Broadband Network (NBN) at your place soon you 
> may want to watch this next story.
>
> The Government's accepted a recommendation that the NBN be fully 
> privatised, something that will please the major telcos.
>
> But in places where the highly politicised network has already rolled 
> out, like the Central Coast of New South Wales, it's not so much the 
> speed that's the problem, it's having the NBN working at all.
>
> Andy Park reports.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: So when the NBN goes down, we don't get a lot of great 
> mobile phone coverage.
>
> The NBN went down last week for six days. So we get a dongle and pop 
> it in a plastic bag, we clip it on to a rope that has been slung over 
> a tree, a little fancy clip.
>
> ANDY PARK: This is quite high-tech, this is jungle internet, MacGyver 
> internet.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: MacGyver internet. So we clip that on and then we just 
> pull it up the tree.
>
> And so we can get away with minimal internet use when the NBN is not 
> working.
>
> ANDY PARK: This is David Sneddon's experience of Australia's $49 
> billion National Broadband Network.
>
> You're still relying on a plastic bag and a bit of rope?
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: In 2016.
>
> ANDY PARK: The tree-changing high school teacher and his family moved 
> to the Central Coast of New South Wales on the promise of better 
> work-life balance.
>
> Problem is, David Sneddon can't do his job marking online classwork or 
> even use the landline because his Telstra NBN fibre to the node 
> internet connection is unreliable.
>
> It's not just the outages because his internet relies on ageing copper 
> wire, he's not getting the speed he thought he'd get.
>
> So your house is back there.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: My house is back there.
>
> ANDY PARK: And how much, what is your internet speed then?
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: So when we tested today, we got 34.6 megabits download 
> per second download, 16 up. And then if we go, what is it, one, two, 
> three, four houses up, we get 58.3 megabits download and 25 up.
>
> ANDY PARK: So between, well, three to four houses, there's basically a 
> double the difference in internet speed?
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: Pretty much so.
>
> ANDY PARK: He's paying Telstra for a premium plan, promising up to 100 
> megabits per second.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: If you go to the supermarket to buy a kilo of apples, 
> you get a kilo of apples, end of story.
>
> But if we turn the apples into the NBN and we say it's megabits or 
> something like that, I order a kilo of apples from Telstra, Telstra 
> say I can't give you that kilo of apples, I'll have the NBN deliver them.
>
> And the NBN lose some on the way and give some to my neighbour down 
> the road and I get delivered 350 grams of apples but I have paid for 
> up to a kilo of apples.
>
> How is that fair for anybody?
>
> ANDY PARK: The NBN Co says any issues with his internet speed are 
> Telstra's domain.
>
> We asked the NBN Co about his outages on Monday.
>
> JOHN SIMON, CO CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, NBN: The NBN network does not 
> go down for six days. We do monitor and we do know where there are 
> faults and we respond to them.
>
> ANDY PARK: But today, they admitted it took them six days to restore 
> David's service after it went down adding.
>
> STATEMENT FROM NBN CO SPOKESPERSON: He now gets an internet service 
> which is far superior to most people in Australia.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: It's been a fraught experience in terms of both dealing 
> with the service provider being Telstra, not being able to talk to the 
> NBN who are the wholesaler, connection issues, timing, missed 
> appointments, the list goes on and on.
>
> ANDY PARK: It's not just dropouts or slowdowns, for some it's the wait 
> to get the NBN in the first place.
>
> This is not some remote corner of Australia. In fact, the centre of 
> Sydney is less than 40km in that direction.
>
> And for the people here who successfully lobbied for the area to be 
> one of the guinea pigs for the NBN's rollout, the service so far is 
> proving to be less than world-class.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS, FORMER CHAIRMAN, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AUSTRALIA: I 
> don't regret it, the upgrade.
>
> I'm, you know, reflective about the lessons that could be learnt in 
> the rollout.
>
> ANDY PARK: Local digital entrepreneur, David Abrahams, pushed for the 
> Central Coast to be one of the first NBN rollout areas.
>
> But now, he's become critical of the NBN over what he says are huge 
> inconsistencies in service delivery.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS: I think it's fair to say that the NBN Co, even today, 
> raise expectations up perhaps too high and, therefore, the ombudsman 
> is flooded with various complaints.
>
> ANDY PARK: In the last financial year alone, the telco ombudsman 
> received 664 complaints about the NBN in this area.
>
> JUDI JONES, TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY OMBUDSMAN: They're lodging 
> complaints initially about delays in connection. So getting connected 
> to the NBN. And then it's about faults.
>
> So that's slow data speeds, dropouts, unusable service.
>
> JOHN SIMON: By then the end of June there was 48,000 premises 
> connected. So that in itself, if you do the maths, 600 versus 48,000, 
> it's actually quite a very small number, but I'm the first to agree 
> that one issue is one too many.
>
> ANDY PARK: There's no complaints about the NBN here at the Central 
> Coast Leagues Club which has some of the fastest internet in the area.
>
> WORKER: David.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS: Yeah mate.
>
> WORKER: Do you mind if I use the internet here at the bar.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS: Sure, go right ahead.
>
> ANDY PARK: That's why David Abrahams, who unsuccessfully attempted to 
> run for Labor pre-selection last year, has his office here.
>
> He shares his bandwidth with local internet business owners who are 
> still waiting for the NBN.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS: I call them my internet refugees because of the very, 
> the variable experiences that we have up here.
>
> ANDY PARK: This seems like a likely excuse using the bar as, for a 
> workplace, why do you come in here, what sort of work do you do?
>
> MARC CHARETTE, DIGITAL ENTREPRENEUR: I'm actually a Google street 
> virtual tour photographer. I don't have NBN, I've actually got less 
> than that and waiting for it, hasn't even shown up yet. It's one of 
> those things, it's just like, where do you go where you can actually 
> get a decent connection.
>
> JOHN SIMON: When you scale-up a network and you get large demands, 
> processes always improve, you refine the workmanship of the 
> installation crews, et cetera.
>
> So there's always an improvement process that occurs and we've seen that.
>
> ANDY PARK: David Sneddon says he would be happy to go back to ADSL.
>
> DAVID SNEDDON: It's a feeling of resigned frustration, we don't feel 
> that anyone is going to be able to change it and it's certainly not 
> going to be fixed any time soon.
>
> DAVID ABRAHAMS: I hate this to be foisted on our experience on the 
> rest of the nation, regions similar to us.
>
> You just have to rely on whatever you can get. Now that's not 
> acceptable really in a developed nation like ours. 

-- 
David Boxall                         | "Cheer up" they said.
                                      | "Things could be worse."
http://david.boxall.id.au            | So I cheered up and,
                                      | Sure enough, things got worse.
                                      |              --Murphy's musing