Summed up in one sentence:

QUOTE: After a series of roll-out miscalculations, what will be delivered on completion next year will be an expensive, sub-standard product incorporating a mix of retrograde technologies with higher running costs that, ultimately, will require a great deal more investment.

And still nothing from NBN...

and I quote from Telstra

QUOTE:
I have called the NBN team and they have no update on the system in regards to appointment.

They were unable to clarify what is delaying the order.

They have promised to contact you via email and phone in 48hrs with an update.

Nothing happened, as you'd expect. Still waiting.

Meanwhile, out at the other place, I got a call from a NBN guy to say he's replacing the faulty cable. So at least something is happening. It looks like the hardest place to work on will be the first one finished.

A call from NBN !! Oh, it's for the other place. They will be there on the 20th, and hopefully this time it will succeed.

I don't have a tone phone there though, just a lot of pulse touchphones in their boxes, unfortunately useless. So I'll take the one from here to there on the day, just to make sure the service works.

They will be there on the 20th

I'm thinking that there are now four kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, statistics and NBN appointment dates.

Another call from NBN !! It's for this place too. The plan is they will arrive next Friday in the afternoon, and (in theory) do all the cabling and other work required, and switch me over.

Wish me luck

Well, guess what? I'm on NBN here!! Unfortunately they cut off the ADSL.

One down, one to go (next Tuesday).

I'm now advised by the NBN that I can be hooked up.
There is no FTTP offered, its fibre to the "node" (node could be miles away, not specified) and then via the PMG copper line, then from the street to the NBN cable box on my wall.
Well whoopee doo, 10 years too late boys!

I'm not going to bother.
I have two mobile G4 internet devices, one a dongle for my PC and the other my smart phone.
We hardly use the home phone anymore its just a legacy thing and the copper line ADSL keeps dropping out and is down to 1.8/.6 MBS.
When Telstra is forced to cut the copper line that was put in service by the PMG just after the war (!) and has not been updated, I'll just see Telstra and put in a wireless G5 hub and update all my devices and the NBN can go and do whatever they do.

The last tech that knew what he was doing in the Toongabbie area, showed me the crackly paper insulated lead covered cable in the main street pit (about a foot in diameter with godknowshowmany pairs) , that feeds 20 pairs into my subdivision (now down to about 8 pairs ). Alongside that is the fibre optic cable that was laid in somewhere about 1995 when the PMG (Telecom?) was starting to replace all the copper system with F/O. City central was connected to Penrith and the F/O went at least to Springwood. I know this because I went to re-union of employees at Springwood exchange in 1994 and marvelled at the high tech F/O signals on equipment about 1% the size of the old mechanical system.
The intention was to simply upgrade the whole of Sydney with F/O so what the hell went wrong with that???

Any comments?

Fred.

The fibre was limited to trunk lines because at one stage Telstra did offer to fund fibre for everyone (over a period of time) and I am sure they would have charged accordingly if it went ahead but government interference got in the road in 2007/8 and the rest is history.

At the moment, I use 4G for Internet access. I don't have any plans on upgrading to 5G as it is too early in the game. Current 5G speeds have been reported to be 200Mbit, which is twice the pace of a maxed out NBN plan but there's also reports of instability, call dropouts, etc. 4G can support 4K video and just about everything else so there is no hurry as far as I am concerned.

The cable networks run FTTN topology. Why the government didn't just allow Telstra and Optus to slowly replace the coax portion of their cable networks (the last mile) with fibre over time, in the capital cities and conduct further rollouts of the same infrastructure in provincial cities and rural towns has got me beat. It all had a lot to do with Kevin Rudd's ego. He wanted his name on the plaque but at the same time, things didn't get any better because the Coalition didn't let go of it either.

I have an old Tandy AM radio next to my bed, and when I wake up I'll turn it on to listen to the news on 2GB. This morning there was a slow chug-chug sound in the background, in fact it's all over the band. This, I presume, is the legacy of NBN.

Thanks Brad, i'll just leave the G4 packages as they are and wait for the ADSL and oldphone to die.
Probably next year if ever...……….
Then i'll see how the G5 hubs are going, or maybe i'll be in the old folks home with my underpants on the outside clutching my 20 year old laptop and wont have to worry!

I never caught up with the exchange guys about what happened to the system, I remember Gillard spruiking on about how every home would have instant access to a doctor or some such crap. I thought the engineers were still in charge of engineering things but was too busy with other engineering fields to check! Last election I voted for the engineering party. Maybe we should all do that and get rid of the Gillards and Rudds and Abotts and that monkey idiot in charge at the moment.
Fred.

I remember Gillard spruiking on about how every home would have instant access to a doctor or some such crap.

I remember Gillard talking rubbish about a lot of things like that. She was well out of her depth. The irony is that you can't even ring 000 when there is a blackout from an NBN-enabled phone unless you have a UPS feeding the modem and any other gear that is required, depending on connection type.

And, because we have non-engineer types ruling the power grid roost as well, the said blackouts are likely to happen more often too.

One thing I forgot to mention with the installation here, is the white box and the enclosed filter had been sitting in the sun all that time since this thread was started 2.5 years ago. All that had to be replaced, because the white box had grown fragile under the unforgiving sun, and the "TV Filter" was corroded and useless.

Something to think about when your NBN gets slower over time.

Light coloured plastics can be attacked by UV light. Fluorescent starters and tombstones were once made with black plastic. They lasted pretty much forever. These days they are made of while plastic and tend to crumble when globes and starters need changing.

This is also why insulated cables that are intended to be used for aerial cabling must, by law, be black. Sunlight can't destroy it.

Well the NBN is marching on in Perth hills and come next Thursday (Aug 22nd) we hope to migrate our ADSL service to NBN.

This is for a Community Radio station and we have to resort to sending our L & R stereo via the Internet to get to the transmitter site some 3.5kms away as a normal STL radio link just cannot reach our studios which are in a hollow.
We use a couple of Tieline Bridge-It Codecs tied into the IP Addresses at each end.

Our IT guru and myself spent many hours last Friday inserting all the settings into the new VOIP router and we have our fingers crossed that we have got them all correct.

The time frame for the cutover is anytime between 7am and 1pm and as we do not want to be off air for long periods I have cobbled together a work around to keep the stereo circuit up and going so no matter what NBN do we will remain on air for as long as the link is down.
Given how some customers have waited for days for NBN issues to get resolved we do not want that to happen to us.

We recently secured funding to purchase a ViA OB box from Tieline people here in Perth which allows us to setup an OB anywhere we have mobile phone coverage.
Since the purchase we have used it to cover 6 outside broadcast events and it is an absolute dream to use as all one has to do to connect to the studio Codec for OB's is to setup the Studio IP Address in the ViA and then press "Connect" and within 30 secs one hears the L & R audio from the studio in the headphones so you know the link is up and wait for the Cue to cross over and start talking etc.
It provides 2 x L& R 15kHz streams ..one each way and the overall quality is excellent. It is a great Aussie success story as designed and made right here in Perth and sold worldwide.

The plan is to log into the Studio IP Address on Thursday at the transmitter site and then disconnect the L & R XLR leads to the Multiplexor from the normal Codec and plug them into the Output XLR's on the Via unit. Already tested out and proven it works OK and the quality is VG and with a data card loaded with enough data to cover 4 days which is about 24Gb NBN can fart about as much as they wish and we will NOT be going off air apart from a short break as the XLR's are swapped over.

IF NBN REALLY Mess things up we simply keep going by topping up the data card as required In addition we might have issues ourselves in getting the new router settings spot on as neither Router is similar and they name functions differently.

This will be a test of how good we are at getting router settings moved over as the next step will be to migrate the Studio end over and that is VERY Messy so not looking forward to that one but again we will use the ViA Box to keep the links up and going while we sort that end out.

Lindsay