nbn | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

No promises from the NBN – the nation building project that guarantees nothing

Australia’s NBN originally promised much, now it guarantees nothing.

Since Australia’s National Broadband Network has started ramping up its connection, the project has been plagued with complaints of underperformance, culminating in Telstra admitting thousands of its customers were entitled to refunds.

Today the national customer rights watchdog, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission published a range of guidelines for advertisers, something I covered for Mumbrella.

What’s striking though – apart from the ACCC’s adding a new layer of complexity with ‘minimum typical busy period speeds’ is the regulator’s requirement for ISPs to state maximum evening speeds on the network, with the cheapest plans offering no guarantees of speeds at all.

There is no qualifying minimum speed for a plan labelled as ‘basic evening speed’ given there is no slower speed tier to which a consumer could move.

By the ACCC’s figures, a third of subscribers on the NBN to date are on the lowest speed plan with no guarantee of any speed at all.

The telephone system being replaced by the NBN at least guaranteed a dial tone and data speeds slightly better than an acoustic coupler, now a large proportion of Australians will not even get that.

Australians are spending at least $50 billion dollars on a project that will see a third of the nation going backwards, future generations are going to wonder how we managed this.

Alternatives to the National Broadband Network – ABC Nightlife

What are the alternatives to the National Broadband Network? For the February 2017 Nightlife we explore what to do if you can’t get the National Broadband Network.

If you missed the show, you can listen through the ABC Nightlife website. Sadly we didn’t get to half the topics but our callers, as well as the NBN PR guy, were fabulous.

Paul Wallbank joins Phillip Clark on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, February 16 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

Last week the NBN announced a third of the country was now covered by their services and the company’s CEO, Bill Morrow, said Australians really don’t want super fast internet. A few weeks before, Telstra announced a new service that will deliver gigabit broadband over their mobile network. We can expect their competitors to offer similar products soon.

At the same time we’re seeing a blast from the past as Nokia are rumoured to be soon releasing an updated version of their classic 3310 phone – are we going to see the ‘tradie phone’ making a comeback?

While the old phone is nice, many people need fast broadband so how is the NBN going and, if you can’t get it, what can you do? Some of the questions

So how is the NBN going?
Wasn’t the government’s revised plan going to mean the whole thing is going to be cheaper and faster than the original project?
Who can get it?
Is it as good as promised?
So what alternatives to the NBN are there?
Doing the sums on those mobile plans, using them can be a pretty expensive business?
It seems we’re going backwards. How does Australian broadband compare globally?
How is this affecting regional communities and businesses?

Join us

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Australia’s NBN debacle

However when it comes to missed targets, broken promises and the sheer scale of money wasted, Australia’s National Broadband Network dwarfs all the world’s broadband roll outs.

One of the most stunning examples of Australia’s uncompetitive, post-mining boom economy is its National Broadband Network.

Announced in 2009 to provide high speed data access to the nation to address the effects of thirty years of poor decisions and poorly thought out policies by successive governments, the project was intended to upgrade the telecommunications network and break the near monopoly of the incumbent telco, Telstra.

Sadly the project quickly foundered as the managers of the company set up to build the network made a series of poor decisions that stemmed from their underestimating of the project’s scope and their arrogant hubris in rejecting the advice of those who did.

To compound the problem, the project was politicised by the intellectually lazy and opportunistic Liberal opposition who promised they could build it for less by utilising existing telephone and Pay-TV infrastructure. On becoming government, the then communications minister and now Prime Minister changed the scope to do that and promised a quicker and cheaper rollout.

Last Friday, the folly of the Liberal Party’s plans were shown when the National Broadband Network company, nbn™, issued their updated business plan that detailed a further retreat from both the original project scope and the government’s promises.

The Melbourne Age’s Lucy Battersby illustrated how completely Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party bungled their costings, showing just how mediocre and dishonest the government and Prime Minister have been in estimating the cost of the project.

However, NBN Co underestimated the cost of using existing hybrid-fibre coaxial [HFC] cables laid by Telstra and Optus in the 1990s. Last year it calculated an average cost of $1800 per house. But detailed field work discovered the cost was actually $2300.

…

In 2013 the Coalition estimated FTTN connections would cost about $900 per premise and this was raised to $1997 in a 2014 strategic review, and raised again in 2015 to about $2300.

In the real world, being out by nearly 300% would cost an estimator or executive their job and for a small business could well see them being put out of business, but in the carnival of mediocrity that marks modern Australian politics, those responsible for such mistakes only thrive, as do the managers of nbn™ who recently awarded themselves fat bonuses.

Adding insult to injury for the long suffering Australian taxpayers and broadband users is that the nbn™’s management have revised the scope again to overcome increased costs and now only 21% of consumers will get a fibre connection as opposed to the 40% claimed when the new government changed the scope.

Those scope changes beg the question why anyone bothered in the first place. Had the network been left with Telstra there’s a reasonable chance 20% of customers would have ended up on fibre by early next decade as the economics of maintaining and installing the technology overtook the older copper system.

Probably the biggest insult though to Australian customers though are the desperate attempts to make the new network profitable with plans to gouge the nation’s telco users as Fairfax’s Elizabeth Knight reported.

Data use per user is anticipated to grow at a compound rate of 30 per cent per cent to 2020.

At first blush these increases in usage might look exaggerated – but wait. Only last year NBN was working off the expectation that this year its existing customers would consume 90 gigabytes per month. But the current rate of consumption is actually 131 gigabytes per month – and rising.

Thus as the years progress towards 2020, NBN not only gets an increase in customers, it get an increase in revenue per customer .Monthly average revenue per user is forecast to increase from $43 this year to $52 in 2020..

So Australians will be expected pay more for their substandard connections to help an organisation that has consistently failed to meet its promises and targets. It should also be noted that rising Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is the opposite of what’s been happening in the real world over the last twenty years as revenues, and profits have fallen.

To be fair, it’s not just Australia that has struggled with rolling out fibre networks. In the US, Google Fiber is going through blood letting and scope changes as the company struggles to meet targets and keep costs under control. That same experience has been repeated around the world.

However when it comes to missed targets, broken promises and the sheer scale of money wasted, Australia’s National Broadband Network dwarfs them all.

Australian taxpayers, voters and telecommunications users should be asking hard questions of their political leaders

You can’t get there from here

What the world can learn from the failure of Australia’s National Broadband Network

I swore – mainly for my own sanity – that I wouldn’t discuss Australia’s National Broadband Network on this site anymore, today though the topic raised an interesting point about business leadership and project management that can’t be ignored.

Australian Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull today released the Broadband Availability and Quality Report (PDF) along with the accompanying My Broadband website that identifies the nation’s telecommunications blackspots.

Extraordinary failure

“It is extraordinary that in six years of Labor talking about Australians having inadequate broadband they never bothered to do the work of actually identifying where services were good, bad or indifferent,” said the minister at the announcement.

Turnbull’s comments are correct, although the criticism is just as valid of previous Liberal and Labor governments who’ve all made incredibly poor decisions in the telecommunications portfolio without considering what was actually happening outside the ministers’ offices.

A bigger lesson though is that before commissioning a project the size of the NBN – estimates have put its cost anywhere between twenty and eighty billion US dollars – it’s a good idea to know where you are are and where you want to go.

Big Hairy Audacious Goals

To put the comments that follow into perspective, I was a supporter of the NBN concept although I thought it was a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

In the shadow of the Global Financial Crisis the NBN project ticked all the boxes; it put cash into the economy, it employed an army of workers and upgraded Australia’s telecommunications network that had been neglected by thirty years of incompetent government policies mixed with incumbent telco greed.

Australia could have afforded ten NBNs during the mining boom of the 2000s; it was an opportunity to rebuild the nation’s ports, roads, railways, schools and tax system that all needed reinvestment and reinvention to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

Building a middle class welfare nanny state

Rather than reform the economy or build modern infrastructure, the Howard Liberal government decided to spend the mining boom’s proceeds on building a middle class welfare state.

Keen students of Australian politics crack a wry smile that the recently elected Abbott Liberal government, of which Turnbull is a member, proposes a paid parental scheme that will complete John Howard’s grand vision of a Middle Class Welfare Nanny State.

One of the tragedies of the populist and cowardly Gillard and Rudd Labor governments that succeeded Howard was neither had the courage to dismantle the Liberal party’s middle class welfare state.

At least though both Rudd and Gillard were prepared to make some big infrastructure investments, even if they weren’t fully thought through and chronically underfunded.

Failing to think through the needs, scope and costs of the project meant the National Broadband Network project quickly collapsed into a managerial mess exacerbated by the dribbling incompetence of the company’s executives, government officials and contractors, which bought us to Turnbull’s announcement today.

A project in search of a scope

The project’s failure is a worrying commentary on the abilities of Australia’s management elites in both the private and public sector, however the lesson for the entire world is understanding both where you are and where you want to go to is essential for a project’s success.

Spending on well planned and necessary infrastructure is good, but to avoid disasters like Australia’s NBN it’s good to start with understanding the problems you want to fix and a project scope that clearly identifies the work that needs to be done.

Unfortunately too many governments and businesses don’t know where they are or where their plans will take them.

What’s coming in tech for 2014 – ABC Nightlife computers

On ABC Local Radio we’ll be looking at the big tech stories for 2014

For the first Nightlife tech spot of 2014 Paul will be joining Kate O’Toole to look at what’s going to big technology news in the year ahead.

The show has been and gone. If you missed it, you can download it from the ABC Nightlife website.

A lot of this year’s technology stories will be around things we’ve been talking about for a while, but a wave of cheap devices is making things like the connected car and smart house more affordable and accessible to homes and businesses.

The Connected car

While it’s early days for the connected car, in the near future we’ll see them talking to intelligent roadsigns to reduce the roadtoll and to our smart houses to let our airconditioners and kettles know we’re on the way home.

2014 is going to see these vehicles become common, by the end of next year we’ll be expecting most models to have these features.

Wearable tech

We’ve been hearing a lot about Google Glass, but the real advances in wearable tech are in devices like the Fitbit that tracks your daily exercise.

The next wave of wearable tech will be intelligent clothing, a good example of this is the Mimobaby kimono that measures a baby’s movements and repiration during the night.

The Internet of Things

One of the truths of the tech industry is that it loves buzzwords – in recent years we’ve had social media, cloud computing and crowdsourcing – the next big one is The Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things deserve the hype. With cheap sensors, accessible internet and cloud computing it’s now possible to connect, monitor and analyse everything from cows to refrigerators. This will have big effects on most industries.

Smartphone wars

For the past few years we’ve seen the iPhone and then Android, primarily Samsung phones, dominate the smartphone market. This is about to change as a wave of cheap Chinese phones flood the market.

Expect smartphone and tablet prices to fall dramatically as a range of new devices appear on the shelves. We will probably see Apple and Samsung respond by increasing the features available on their more expensive, higher margin devices.

3D Printing

Another technology that’s become affordable in recent years is 3D printing. At the CES show, a new range of 3D printers was released that have cameras so you can make copies of items.

3D printing is rapidly gaining acceptance and the worldwide makers’ movement is showing what we can do with these machines.

National Broadband Network

In Australia the NBN will continue to be the biggest local tech story. Unfortunately the project will remain mired in contractual and political problems as the government tries to figure out exactly what it wants to build.

While Australia plays games, the rest of the world is getting on a building their networks and Australians can expect the country to fall further behind the global leaders on almost every measure.

Security

With the revelations of Edward Snowden we can expect security and privacy to be an ongoing story in 2014.

As corporations and social media companies struggle with the challenge of storing and protecting customer’s data, there will be more discussion of how we can protect our vital information both on and offline.

Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Eastern Summer time on Thursday, January 10 or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.

Does small business really want high speed broadband?

Is big business getting all the benefits of high speed broadband?

One of the mantras of the digital economy is new technologies, such as the web and cloud computing, level the playing field for small businesses competing against large corporations. Could it be that belief is wrong?

The Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation last week released its Broadband Impacts report where it examined how high speed internet is changing communities. The results weren’t good for small businesses.

One of the key metrics the ACBI used was business use of websites, it’s shocking enough that only 70% of Australian corporations have an online presence but less than half of small businesses being on the web is disgraceful.

An interesting quirk in the above table indicates that there’s quite a few microbusiness using online sales services and one wonders if the question being asked by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is too limiting in its definition of websites.

The ABS defines businesses with a web presence as those with a website, home page or other web presence but excludes those listed solely as part of an online listing. A web presence was reported by 45% of Australian businesses as at 30 June 2012.

With this definition excluding social media and listing services, it probably does understate the number of Microbusinesses that have an online presence but not a website as defined by the ABS.

The relevance of broadband

In the context of broadband it’s worth noting that websites and online commerce don’t need high speed internet connections, so it’s hard to conclude that giving these businesses faster access is going to make a difference to the way they work.

Where high speed broadband and ubiquitous internet really make a difference is in business operations. As workers become more mobile and the internet of things rolls out, having access to reliable connections is going to become critical to most organisations. Again though, small business tracks poorly on this measure.

Overall the use of cloud services – which is what the bulk of these “new operational processes” will be – is pretty poor across the board although one suspects in the larger organisations various groups have changed their business practiced around services like Dropbox and Documents To Go without senior management being aware of it.

What’s particularly disappointing about this statistic is small businesses are the group most suited to using cloud services and those not adopting these technologies are missing a competitive advantage.

So who needs broadband internet?

These results beg the question – does small business really need high speed broadband access? If they aren’t doing things that could be done on a dial up modem, like registering domains or setting up websites, it’s hard justifying the investment of connecting SMBs to fibre networks.

While there’s no doubt high speed internet is essential to the economic future of communities and nations, we have to keep in mind that not all groups will take advantage of the new technologies. Some will be left behind and in Australia’s case, it may well be small business.

Where next for the NBN – ABC Nightlife technology

With a change of government, Australia’s troubled National Broadband Network is facing big changes

The National Broadband Network has always been a hot political issue in Australian politics and with the election of the new Federal government the often delayed project is being reviewed.

What does this mean for communities and businesses struggling with inadequate internet connections? Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank from 10pm, October 17 on ABC Local Radio across Australia.

If you missed the program, you can listen to it as a podcast through the ABC Tony Delroy’s Nightlife page.

Some of the questions Tony and Paul be covering include;

Why did we need the NBN in the first place?
What’s happened to the NBN since the new government was elected?
Why are we are we having political arguments about an infrastructure upgrade?
What are the differences between fibre to the node versus fibre to premises?
Why is the NBN running so late?
How will the coalition’s change the slow rollout?
Australia’s come in around 40th on an international survey on Internet use. Is this because of the NBN?

We’ll also be looking at some other topics such a Google’s new advertising plan and how to drop out of it.

We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia. If you’re outside the broadcasting area, you can stream the program through the ABC website.

What if you built a broadband network and nobody used it?

Broadband internet can only drive economic growth if society and business can embrace change

The assertion that internet connectivity drives economic growth is largely taken for granted although getting the maximum benefit from a broadband network investment may require more than stringing fibre cables or building wireless base stations.

A key document that supports the link between economic growth and broadband penetration is the International Telecommunication Union’s 2012 Impact of Broadband on the Economy report.

While the reports authors aren’t wholly convinced of the direct links between economic growth and broadband penetration, they do see a clear correlation between the two factors.

ITU Impact of broadband on the economy report 2012

One of the areas that disturbed the ITU report editors were the business, government and cultural attitudes towards innovation.

The economic impact of broadband is higher when promotion of the technology is combined with stimulus of innovative businesses that are tied to new applications. In other words, the impact of broadband is neither automatic nor homogeneous across the economic system.

For South Korea, internet innovation is a problem as the New York Times reports. Restrictions on mapping technologies, curfews on school age children and the requirement for all South Koreans to use their real names on the net are all cited as factors in stifling local innovation.

In reading the New York Times article, it’s hard not to suspect the South Korean government is engaging in some digital protectionism, which is ironic seeing the benefits the country has reaped from globalised manufacturing over the last thirty years.

The problem for South Korea is that rolling out high speed broadband networks are of little use if local laws, culture or business practices impede adoption of the services. It’s as if the US or Germany built their high speed roads but insisted that cars have a flag waver walking in front of them.

Indeed it may well be that South Korea’s broadband networks are as useful to economic growth as Pyongyang’s broad boulevards just over the border.

Similar problems face other countries with Google’s high speed broadband network in the US so far not attracting the expected business take up and innovation, although it is early days yet and there are some encouraging signs among the Kansas City startup community.

In Australia, the troubled National Broadband Network has struggled to articulate the business uses for the service beyond 1990s mantras about remote workplaces and telehealth – much of the reason for that has been the failure of Australian businesses to think about how broadband can change their industries.

Like Japan’s bridges to nowhere, big infrastructure projects look good but the poorly planned ones – particularly those no-one knows how to use – are a spectacular waste of money.

Hopefully the fibre networks being rolled out won’t be a waste of money, but unless industries start using the web properly then much of the investment will be wasted.

Telling the broadband story – the government makes its case

The minister’s office replies to my NBN criticisms and illustrates how the broadband story isn’t being told

Further to yesterday’s post about NBNCo’s inability to tell a story, I received a polite message from the long suffering staff at the Minister’s office that pointed me to some of the resources that NBNCo and the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital economy have posted.

Here’s the list of case studies and videos;

http://www.nbn.gov.au/nbn-advertising/nbn-case-studies/

http://www.nbnco.com.au/nbn-for-business/case-studies.html

http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-study/noella-babui-business/

http://www.nbn.gov.au/case-study/seren-trump-small-home-based-business-owner/

All of these case studies are nice, but they illustrate the problem – they’re nice, standard government issue media releases. The original CNet story that triggered yesterday’s story tells real stories that are more than just sanitised government PR.

It also begs the question of where the hell are all these people successfully using the NBN when I ask around about them?

What’s even more frustrating is the Sydney Morning Herald seems to get spoon fed these type of stories.

The really irritating thing with stories like yesterday’s SMH piece is that it’s intended to promote the Digital Rural Futures Conference on the future of farming being held by the University of New England.

Now this is something I’d would have gone to had I known about it and I’d have paid my own fares and accommodation. Yet the first I know about this conference is an article on a Saturday four days out from the event. That’s not what you’d call good PR.

The poor public relations strategies of the Digital Rural Futures Conference is a symptom of the National Broadband’s Network’s proponents’ inability to get their message out the wider public.

When we look back at the debacle that was the debate about Australia’s role in the 21st Century, it’s hard not to think the failure to articulate the importance of modernising the nation’s communications systems will be one of the key studies in how we blew it.

Despite the best efforts of a few switched on people in Senator Conroy’s office, a lot more effort is needed to make the case for a national broadband and national investment in today’s technologies which are going to define the future.

NBNCo’s storytelling failure

Why Australia’s National Broadband Network gets bad press

One of the baffling things in reporting the Australian tech and business scene is how the National Broadband Network project manages to get such bad press.

Part of the answer is in this story about Google Fiber sparking a startup scene in Kansas City.

Marguerite Reardon’s story for CNet is terrific – it covers the tech and looks at the human angles with some great anecdotes about some of the individuals using Google Fiber to build Kansas City’s startup community.

This is the story that should have been written in Australia about the National Broadband Network.

I’ve tried.

Failing to tell the story

Earlier this year I travelled to Tasmania to speak to the businesses using the NBN and came back empty handed.

In Melbourne, I finally made it to the Hungry Birds Cafe – vaunted by the government as the first cafe connected to the NBN – to find they do a delicious bacon roll and offer fast WiFi to customers but the owners don’t have a website and do nothing on the net that they couldn’t do with a 56k modem.

I’ve found the same thing when I’ve tried to find businesses connected to the NBN – nil, nothing, nada, nyet. The closest story you’ll find to Cnet’s article are a handful of lame-arsed stories like this Seven Sunrise segment which talks about families sending videos to each other, something which strengthens the critic’s arguments that high speed broadband is just a toy.

Businesses need not apply

This failure to articulate the real business benefits of high speed broadband after four years of rolling out the project is a symptom of a project that has gone off the rails.

It’s not surprising that businesses aren’t connecting to the new network as NBNCo and its resellers have continued the grand Australian tradition of ripping off small businesses. Fellow tech blogger Renai LeMay has quite rightly lambasted the overpriced business fibre broadband plans.

Even when small business want to connect, they find it’s difficult to do. The Public House blog describes how a country pub was told the cost of a business NBN account be so high, the sales consultant would be embarrassed to reveal the price.

“The cost for exactly the same connection (and exactly the same useage) is so much higher for a business that you wouldn’t be interested.”

The whole point of the National Broadband Network is to modernise Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure and give regional areas the same opportunities as well connected inner city suburbs.

Failing objectives

If businesses can’t connect, or find it too expensive, then the project is failing those objectives. So it’s no surprise that NBNCo’s communications team can’t tell a story like Kansas City’s because there are no stories to tell.

Apologists for the poor performance of NBNCo say it’s a huge project and we’re only in the early stages. In fact we’re now four years into a ten year project and we still aren’t hearing stories like those from Kansas City.

Telling the story should be the easy part for those charged with building the National Broadband Network, that they fail in this should mean it’s no surprise they are struggling with the really hard work of building the thing.

Can Huawei come in from the cold?

Can the Chinese communications technology vendor come in from the cold?

Last Friday the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Broadband Committee met in Sydney, I’ll have a story on this in tomorrow’s Business Spectator.

An interesting exchange during the meeting was between the committee’s chair Rob Oakeshott and Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBNCo.

Rob Oakeshott: “You have advice that either as a department or a statutory body that says there are certain companies that should not be involved with the National Broadband Network build? If so, is that advice still in place?”

Mike Quigley: “Well chair, we work very closely with the appropriate government agencies in this area, obviously there are things we can and things we can’t say, but we have a very close working relationship with those entities and we obviously take their advice on things we should and shouldn’t do.”

“Their advice is still in place and we’re following it.”

I’m going to be in Melbourne tomorrow attending the Australian Davos Committee’s China Forum where, among other luminaries, the Prime Minister and various key people in the Australian-Chinese relationship will be talking.

The company in question is Chinese communications vendor Huawei and their banning from Australian contracts adds an interesting dimension to the discussion on trade relations between the two countries.

Australia has followed the US lead in blocking the Chinese communication hardware company from key contracts like the NBN on security grounds and it’s hard to see how this doesn’t test the patience of the PRC.

We’ll see how this issue plays out as it’s one that seems to be largely overlooked when we discuss trade ties and relationships with Chinese companies.

More National Broadband woes

Australia’s National Broadband Network project hits a hiccup with installation contracts.

This is not good for the National Broadband Network project; contractor Service Stream announced it was handing back the Northern Territory rollout contracts to the Australian Security Exchange this morning.

It raises serious questions about the timetable of the project.

Service Stream advises that Syntheo, a 50/50 joint venture with Lend Lease, has reached agreement with

NBN Co to hand back the remainder of its design and construction activities in the Northern Territory. Syntheo is committed to working with NBN Co to complete its work in Western Australia and South Australia.

Given NBNCo abandoned its construction tender in April 2011 amidst hints of price fixing by contractors, this is a worrying development that indicates those ‘overpriced quotes’ may have been closer to the money after all.

I’ll be writing something up later today for IT News.