[LINK] Demand 'still not there' for 1Gbps: NBN Co

[David Boxall]

On 15/02/2017 10:36 PM, Stephen Loosley wrote:
> ...  this afternoon on the NBN website is a blog by Bill Morrow. He’s the 
Chief Executive Officer of nbn. He does make some interesting points, ...
How interesting are the points he makes? How revealing are the points he 
tries to make?

What would a sceptic make of output from an overtly political 
organisation like nbn™, particularly when the headline ends with "The 
facts"? Spin?

Morrow asserts:
> Rather than build for a demand that may materialise in 10 years, we are constructing a national network capable of continuous upgrading to meet market needs as and when they arise.  ...
Is that sensible or responsible?

We're building with materials that should serve for a century or more. 
Most of the cost is in labour and logistics, not the fibre. Overall, the 
cost of trenching or ducting 144-strand (or more) cable is not 
substantially greater than doing it with 4-strand. Yet nbn™ specifies 
the lowest capacity that will meet current demand (4-strand for FttN 
feeds, for example). Their architecture typically caters for a 
quadrupling of demand, if not less. In a market in which demand is 
increasing exponentially, that should do until next Wednesday (slight 
exaggeration there).

Again, Morrow raises the Conservative cost bogey. As I've pointed out, 
characteristics and prices of the technology are such that we could 
afford to write off the cost of a full-fibre network over its service 
life. We won't have to, but we could. Add to that the fact that interest 
rates are at historic lows - there's never been a better time to borrow 
funds. The reality is that cost is insignificant, notwithstanding 
Conservative nappy-fouling.

Finally, nbn™ deliberately sabotaged the network by changing its 
topology. It's now less reliable and more difficult to upgrade.
<http://david.boxall.id.au/201604/#Wreckingthefoundations>

-- 
David Boxall                    |  All that is required
                                 |  for evil to prevail is
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  for good men to do nothing.
                                 |     -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)