Australia’s communications dystopia

With things coming to a head regarding NBN speeds, Shaun Prescott wonders: will other providers join Telstra in giving out refunds?

“FTTN connections — which typically use existing copper phone wiring from a neighbourhood ‘node’ to the customer’s premises, rather than connecting to their dwelling directly — will not likely exceed an average of around 68Mbps.”

Got NBN? Most will answer “No”, but for those who have been graced with the infrastructure, there’s a fair chance you’re not be happy with it. Murmurs have circulated for quite some time now, usually in online discussion boards, but now the issue of speeds has come to head: Telstra has offered to refund nearly 8,000 NBN customers whose connections fail to meet the advertised specs.

It’s a pretty common olive branch: if you’re not getting what you paid for, then one can only expect recompense. But it shines a light on an NBN situation which, while always fraught, is getting even more tangled. Remember all that discussion on whether fibre to the node (FTTN) or fibre to the premises (FTTP) should be used? Well, as many expected, the hybrid approach settled upon has lead to some wildly differing results and has thus proven a headache — for both the end user and providers.

Those lucky enough to have NBN coverage will likely have chosen between four speed tiers, ranging from 12Mbps through to 100Mbps. Resellers have sometimes been advertising these as the ‘maximum possible speed’ rather than the speed you can expect day in, day out. And that’s the rub: because a provider advertises these rates as a kind of artificial limitation, based on what you pay, it doesn’t take into account what a connection can feasibly achieve depending on whether it’s FTTP, FTTN or some other hybrid connection.

NBN boss Bill Morrow told The New Daily last month that FTTN connections — which typically use existing copper phone wiring from a neighbourhood ‘node’ to the customer’s premises, rather than connecting to their dwelling directly — will not likely exceed an average of around 68Mbps. “FTTN by itself, with the copper loop lengths that we are building with, will not give you gigabit speeds,” he said.

If you’re told you can achieve 100Mbps on a FTTN connection, sadly, you’re being fibbed to. And this is what has prompted Telstra to offer refunds. At the time of writing, Optus hasn’t yet offered to do the same.

The problem was highlighted in a recent report by the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network. “We often hear from consumers who are disconnected or have unusable services for long periods of time,” the organisation’s chief executive Teresa Corbin told Choice. “Consumers need to be given clear information about who is responsible for fixing faults, and NBN and the telcos must act quickly to rectify issues when they arise.”

Whatever the case, if you’re on a ‘100Mbps’ FTTN connection and want to reach the speeds that you’ve been promised, your only real option is to pay for an FTTP connection to your premises out of your own pocket. And the cost of such an installation can range from anywhere between $1,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars. So welcome to Australia’s ‘modern communications’ dystopia, everyone...