John Linton One of the obvious generalisations about the 'NBN2' would have been that it's long 'roll out' would mean that the owners of ADSL 'netorks' would cease to add new locations and would become very sparing in their 'maintenance and upgrading' of their current DSLAMs and back hauls. The unshakable logic would be that as parts of the 'NBN2' got closer to being turned on no fiscally responsible ADSL network owner in those locations would be adding back haul or new ports or even upgrading software and firmware in them. So, as an example, you couldn't expect, for instance, Telstra to be adding to back haul in, say, Armidale for the past few months and certainly not from this day forward.
There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that decision as, generally speaking, you would expect some percentage (unknown) of current ADSL users in Armidale to move to the 'NBN2' once it became available for several reasons - none of which are either logical or sensible but then a fair percentage of buyers in any residential market place seldom exhibit such characteristics. If you believe Stupid Stephen, Don Quigley and the other shills within the ALP then you would expect a huge percentage of Armidale ADSL users to move to the 'NBN2' as soon as it becomes available. While those ludicrous claims will shortly be tested by what actually happens there is little doubt that the obvious scenario is already happening.
Again, there is nothing wrong with any commercially constricted entity seeing a possibly dramatic change in any particular marketplace (in this case geographical) and ceasing investing in their infrastructures there because they believe that the number of customers in those areas will decline because of new circumstances. One scenario where that would not be appropriate would be if you are continuing to run customer acquisition campaigns to GROW your user base in such locations while also deciding you will NOT increase capacity to provide adequate services for those increased user numbers.
So there is some sort of disconnect in what is almost certainly happening around Australia at the moment with several large companies trying to increase their ADSL customer base while simultaneously deciding not to increase capacity to provide services to that increased user base. How would you know whether or not that is happening? Well a 'tell tale' would be looking at, say, Telstra's published list of exchanges they state as being congested. If that list is growing in numbers and the 'age' of the listing is also growing then that could be an indication. If you visit some general or ISP specific 'forums' and see a growing number of speed complaints then that would be another 'tell tale'. That would only be necessary if you didn't accept that such scenarios are an inevitability of an 'NBN2' scenario in any industry.
I haven't bothered to check on the current estimates of how long it will actually take for the 'NBN2' to become widely available to most likely users but one thing appears certain - many current ADSL users will see their speeds and reliability decrease from (before) now until they finally are forced to move to the 'NBN2'. In case you are one of those 'frogs' who believe monopolies are good for anyone this is a sobering read for frogs who welcomed the Heron King:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/nbn-rivals-should-be-blocked-labor-20110317-1byrf.html
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