NBN: Like The Classic Castrol Commercial Where Oils Aint Oils, NBN Aint Necessarily NBN Either.

The Most Asked About Topic: The NBN

As we quickly approach the end of 2015and the first half year of the highly successful Digital Enterprise Program that I have spoken about often in this blog, my co facilitator and

course design Trent Rebeiro and I were recently reviewing the year as a whole and discussing what areas of discussion have been the most talked about and requested by the

majority of attendees to the workshops and the coaching sessions alike. Without much doubt one of the most talked about if not the most talked about topic has been that of:

The NBN. There have been many questions but here is a summary of the main ones that keep being asked from workshop to workshop.

What is the NBN?

The NBN stands for the National Broadband Network and represents the name for the proposed and improved national broadband set up that would provide all Australians access to quick internet speeds that would provide obvious advantages to all internet users whether they be businesses or just normal everyday users.

How fast would this new system be compared to what we have now?

Obviously if we are going to go to the trouble of sending all the money to develop the costly and time consuming infrastructure necessary to support this new system, the improvement in

operating speeds would need to be significant. Well here's where it gets a little murky.

Under the original plans that the former Government were basing its costings around, the system that would have been bought in was the:  Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) NBN which is the gold standard and probably the system you will have seen overseas if you have been lucky enough to already see it in action. This version of the NBN would deliver around 72Mbps (Mega Bits per Second).

To put this into context ADSL (or Asymmetric digital subscriber line) which many people reading this will be currently using even now only provides  somewhere between 8 to 12 Mbps.

The problem however is that the current discussions by the Government today is that the form of NBN being discussed is not the: Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) NBN but the largely outdated and much slower version of: Fibre To The Node (FTTN) NBN which has been around for over ten years and only delivers a relatively modest 24 Mbps speed or one third of that of the FTTP option.

Now this speed is admittedly double the speed of existing ADSL speeds but a fraction of what it could be with an optimal setup.

How do the costs compare between FTTP and FTTN?

Again I'm reminded of another famous TV ad for Johnny Walker where the liquor store owner asks: "would you rather have the scotch you'd rather pay for or the one you'd rather drink?"

It's a little bit like that in that in absolute terms the FTTN is certainly cheaper in raw dollars at around thirty five billion dollars whereas the FTTP would be double the cost but would provide triple the speed at a more cost effective price per Mbps received.

What is the best option moving forward?

Ultimately this question will be discussed, debated and in time decided by our political leaders, but from a purely factual basis the FTTP is not only the most cost effective option, but more importantly represents the network of the future that can be used and scaled up for years to come. Those nations that previously invested in the FTTN model have now been forced to pretty much treat the investment as a sunk cost and pay the full amount to upgrade to the required FTTP level, to be competitive with out areas that have it and the advantages that it delivers. Sadly the reality is that having FTTN is not a stepping stone to the FFP. It is a completely different system that cannot be refitted and updated using the same infra-structure and consequently represents wasted funding that in no way lessens the future investment in FTTP.  Ultimately time will tell what Australia end up doing and we will have to watch this space to see.

And as always if you'd like to learn more about the NBN or any other aspect of social media just sign up for a free Digital Enterprise Workshop here on:  www.vecci.org.au/dep/workshops and sign up for any of the seven free workshops which will also qualify you for a free four hour coaching session specifically focused on your business needs.

So until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Regards,

Daniele.