Do we need FTTN ?

I think a real question the broadband / telco industry should be asking itself right now is “Do we need FTTN” ?

The implications of FTTN are favoured by both sides, you can imagine being in Optus at the moment, with the G9 project possibly coming ahead, and all that fat profit that they’ll get from having the monopoly on fixed line services moved to them!

FTTN has many good and bad points. With FTTN, we’ll be ready for future speeds, and a future deployment of FTTH. It NEARLY guarantees our FTTH future.

The problem is, it’s not being done for those reasons by anyone.

If done, it’s done out of a misconception that speeds Australians have access to in metro areas are ‘slow’ and ‘a disgrace’.
This is fuelled by a OECD reports, which show the takeup of services, and many users are taking up the crap 256/64 service Bigpond market through the nose as broadband.

If we legislate that an Australian defines broadband as 1.5Mbit and higher, our OECD rating would skyrocket, because Bigpond would be forced to stop marketing crap as broadband.

The other issue is Bigpond’s advertising budget.

No ISP spends that much on advertising, simply because the spend would be greater than 30% + of the yearly profit, and neither would Bigpond, if it didn’t have the greed of Telstra behind it.

Do we need FTTN? Yes, but not under the current excuses to implement it.
They are just that, excuses to get a monopoly. Telstra’s reasoning for this is to cut off all ADSL2+ DSLAMs at exchanges (Telstra is responding to competition), G9 are responding to the threat introduced, which is that Telstra plan to cut off their customers with FTTN.

So the strategy immediately came to light, we could say we don’t need faster speeds, or we can one up Telstra and show them up, offer FTTN, offer it cheaper.

And now we have where we are now. Investment stalled due to FTTN, PIPE networks deciding not to invest into regional areas until they can find out if there will be DSLAMs to connect or not, and providers not investing due to lack of backhaul and complete uncertainty.

The solution is part in OPEL, but completely by focusing our efforts on what we need, which is the stop of Telstra and Bigpond marketing CRAP as BROADBAND.

It’s not broadband, its crap. That’s why our OECD ranking is low, because Australian’s are being sold crap from an Australian monopoly giant, who seems to not see that advertising budgets should not exceed a large percentage of the profits made. If they cut Bigpond right away from Telstra, right from the beginning, they’d not survive!

Enjoy!