[LINK] A plastic bag and a bit of rope
David Boxall
linkdb at boxall.name
Thu Dec 8 13:43:01 AEDT 2016
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
More information about the Link
mailing list