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The original plan was killed by the ACCC. You are thinking of the Rod Sims ACCC "engineered" plan written by the big 4 telcos (expanding the network to 121 POIs, preventing NBN from competing against fibre backhaul providers, generally making it hell for small players to compete), that would deliver FTTH but not the capacity or competition to make it viable. And we would still be undertaking the physical roll out.

The LNP made the last mile worse by some metrics, but they vastly improved the economics. Its a testament to how bad their PR is that they have failed to capitalise on it politically.

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BLKNSLVR 2 days ago | parent [-]

Strongly disagree that they improved the economics at all.

I will say that, if they did improve the economics, then I agree that 'something' failed in getting that point across. They did crow about how bad the original economics was, but really just using scare tactics by quoting the large number that out's of the range of reasonable comparison by the average citizen. Most information I read was that they wasted additional money including paying for a lot, like a lot lot, of copper for last mile connections, including paying Telstra for some of their existing copper infrastructure - the dilapidated state of which was part of the reason that FTTH was the proposed solution for 9x% of the Australian population.

In fact, it's almost impossible that improved economics making changes and causing the (decade+ in some cases) delay of the rollout of FTTH.

One of my favourite pieces of graffiti: https://gadgetguy-assets.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/wor...

I'm happy to be told I'm wrong, along with explanations, or if there are mitigating factors to anything I've written above.

Edited to add: My rant may be on a different interpretation of 'economics' than which you're referring to. Mine's purely based on the cost of the project - not how it's been charged to ISPs or Customers.

Edited to add post-reply below: Thanks for the detailed reply, that's very interesting information that I had read peripheral information around, but was less intimate with. Thanks for taking the time, two thumbs up.

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protocolture 2 days ago | parent [-]

When I refer to the economics, I refer to the market that the NBN act creates. This is largely divorced from political spending, like purchasing the Optus HFC network to which you refer.

The original labor approved cost for accessing the network made it unreasonable to purchase enough CVC to provide services for customers.

Bevan Slattery used to discuss this alot, but NBN had the capability, and in one case threatened to use that capability, to cut off any wholesalers they like. So Bevan was the only one in a place to really publicly criticise them. A gentleman I know wrote a whitepaper about how bad the NBN Fixed Wireless service was and his employer forced him to scour it from the internet after threats from NBN Co.

So as to publicly allowed criticism of NBN Co you dont get much other than that.

I will see if I can dredge up the numbers.

Under labors watch, they assigned engineers and specialists to design a fibre network. It was over engineered (should have been ULL with no active hardware) but we didnt get that. It was to consist of 21 points of interconnect and effectively would have provided an alternative to buying backhaul from Telstra/AAPT etc.

The ACCC, after prompting from the big 4, changed the plan to include 121 points of interconnect. NBN co also mandated that Wholesalers be able to reach a very large number of them before they could connect to the system (with a plan for all 121).

What they didnt do was change the pricing structure. So now to play ball, you now need 100 more points of presence on your network (very expensive) and you are paying a quite hefty fee for an extremely small amount of CVC. NBN Expected that more CVC would be purchased by providers, but as it worked out, this did not occur. Some providers purchased more CVC just to get started, and then phased it out. Others didnt bother. Ultimately, CVC proved to be lossmaking for ISPs, who at best had a dollar after the customers monthly sub with which to find Support/Hardware/all their other costs. This lead to a significant number of user complaints, regardless of last mile tech.

LNP pops in, and they are looking for any way they can "fix labors mistake". ISP lobbying finally makes an impact and NBN starts bundling in CVC. The LNP also mostly stop talking about the NBN becoming a return on investment in x years, which takes pressure off of NBNCo to needle ISPs. This is where people with fibre connections started going from just having less dropouts, to having very significant speed increases versus other technology types. ISPs gained a very small amount of breathing room (still heaps of room for improvement) and the economics were somewhat improved.

The thing is, the LNP didnt market this success. They went and fiddled around with the rest of the project, bought the optus network etc and campaigned on that nonsense instead. Really if they wanted to they should have done more to highlight and correct the actual failures of the NBN rather than the issues their donors had but w/e.

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hilbert42 a day ago | parent [-]

"A gentleman I know wrote a whitepaper about how bad the NBN Fixed Wireless service was and his employer forced him to scour it from the internet after threats from NBN Co."

I know, this bullying and like threats are just part of a much bigger problem. As I've said in my post to this story, that's just part of a much bigger problem with Australian communications and communications policy. When it comes to Australian governments and communications what we end up with is inevitably some sort of major fuck-up, and often it's monumental.

If I were an alien I'd draw the conclusion that Australian people have a congenital abnormality that makes them lose all sense and reason when they hear strings that contain words like 'communications'. What else could it be, the fuck-ups are continuous and span over a century?

Methinks, some grad student could likely get a PhD sorting this out and pinning the blame. Oh, but what a horrible job!

	▲	protocolture 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the Australian disease is an addiction to the great big national solution. If 1 state is falling behind, they strip all the states of the responsibility and push ONE MASSIVE SOLUTION to everything. NDIS? We had years of disabled people complaining that their state benefits were better, or lost completely after the NDIS rollout before they got their nonsense together. Now its always new and interesting ways the scheme is failing. NBN? You could hand pit and pipe to local councils to rent out, but nah we need another failed monopoly. Housing? Make sure states are meeting their land release obligations? Nope needs a massive funding splash from the federal government. Education? We used to use the US as an example of poor education policy. Standardised tests? Nope those force teachers to teach the test rather than teach the child. Suddenly, national curriculum and standardised tests. Genius.