National Broadband Network explained

I have just finished listening to the latest podcast from BNET on the National Broadband network announcement. For those of you who don’t have time to listen, here are the key highlights from the podcast.

Why did the Australian Government choose to build their own separate infrastructure instead of fixing Telstra’s existing fixed network?

• With the privatization of Telstra, the retail and wholesale arms were sold together but should of been sold separately. This left a situation where Telstra had a monopoly by owning and operating the core infrastructure providing telecommunications services to Australians.
• Telstra is known to traditionally give preference to it’s retail arm instead of other wholesale providers. This is biased and not good for Australian citizens.
• Telstra is charging $30 per month to rent the copper wire being used by DSLAMs that are being rolled out by Internode, iiNet etc. Most ISPs think that this rental price should be halved.

What is a DSLAM and why have ISPs been rolling them out?

DSLAMs are a device that communicates with your modem in your home or office, to relay data back and forward across the Telstra owned copper line.

DSLAMs are a feature of the competitive landscape for broadband in Australia, as they can deliver speeds up to 24mbps over the existing copper wire network. Speeds are highly dependent on your distance from the phone exchange. Resistance on the copper wire increases over distance, and in reality if you don’t live within a 1km radius of the exchange then the best you’ll get is 8mbps. If you are 5km away, you’ll only ever achieve 256kb/s which is only 5 times faster with the old 56k dialup connections. Speed is why the government’s announcement for a national broadband network is so significant, and many assumed that the government’s announcement would be using Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) technology.

What is Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN)?

FTTN effectively brings the phone exchange closer to your home. Thousands of cabinets/nodes are placed along the streets. A high speed fibre link brings data quickly from the exchange to the nodes, closer to your home. From each node, copper wire then connects to your house. Because fibre has less resistance, and the distance of copper wire is much shorter, speeds will be much higher.

FTTN didn’t end up being the solution the government went with, they instead chose to go with Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP). This allowed the government to avoid tampering with Telstra’s existing copper wire network, which would effectively place a road block in front of their plans to roll out their own separate national broadband network.

What is Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP)?

Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) has the capability to delivery 100mbps internet connections. FTTP bypasses the old copper wire network and is a fibre connection laid from the exchange directly to your home.

What will happen to existing network infrastructure?

WIth the new Fibre to the home national broadband network, all existing networks will remain intact. Telstra’s copper wire network will continue to be in place as well as the DSLAMs that have been built by other ISPs.

This situation has brought upon a much more competitive environment in the Australian broadband industry. It has motivated Telstra to make two significant announcements. One recent announcement is the speed upgrade to it’s Telstra Next G network making it the equal-fastest 3G mobile network globally. The 2nd announcement was its plans to ramp up their cable broadband network to 100mbps in Melbourne.

I hope these notes help you understand some of the technicalities in behind the government’s national broadband network announcement. Keep checking our blog for more updates and national broadband network news.

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