John Linton ...at least they aren't looking good to Exetel.
We started the "NBN2 compatibility testing" yesterday - something we have never had to do with every other carrier we have ever connected to. Essentially (and I have made no attempt to understand what we are having to comply with) the testing is to ensure that a router that Exetel buys from Cisco can connect to a router that 'NBN2' buys from Cisco. To say that Exetel, or anyone else, would be 100% sure that such a test would be 100% successful and that the test itself would be completely unnecessary is a foregone conclusion. Why would an ISP using standard Cisco equipment NOT be able to connect to a carrier owned Cisco router? The first example of how a government monopoly adds unnecessary cost to providing a government owned service - it reminds me of doing business with a previously owned government owned communications monopoly.
If you read the pricing released so far here:
http://www.nbnco.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/main/site-base/main-areas/publications-and-announcements/publications/product-and-pricing-overview
you will get your first hints of how much more an 'NBN2' connection will cost the 'average' end user. This pricing is not 'final' and maybe the speed 'bands' are also not final but at the current pricing of an 'NBN2' 12 mbps service with 10 gbps (approximately what 60% of people on ADSL2 get in terms of download speed and use in terms of downloads the cost to the ISP is going to be something around $15.00 more than, say, Exetel currently pays for an ADSL2 connection from Optus. If you will never be able to get ADSL2 where you live/plan to live then you may well think this is a sensible step forward. If you are one of the people who already gets that speed it might start dawning on you that $A50 billion taxpayer dollars (which the 'majority' of you voted to make happen) are being spent to rip out your current internet structure and make you pay more for a service which will not deliver you your expected "100 mbps" speeds. Perhaps you see those figures meaning something else - I was never very good at reading government reports.
I only raise the issue because we at Exetel, and doubtless other people at other companies, have spent so much time since Krudd made his 'NBN1' election promise trying to work out how to maintain competitive broadband residential plans in the fiasco that emanated from that crass stupidity. Now that we are beginning to see how an 'NBN2' service would actually be charged we are not seeing anything we like and definitely not seeing anything our residential customers will like. If it wasn't for the condition that the government has demanded that Telstra most decommission the PSTN once an 'NBN2' service becomes available the 'NBN2' would never get a customer - which buyer, even one as stupid as a Labor voter in the last two federal elections, would choose to pay more for less?
Of course the actual ISP/RSP contract may well change over time to provide more realistic pricing/speed equations than those cited in the document I am quoting from. Maybe other much larger company's 'NBN2' contracts already contain different 'structures' - I would have no idea. However we are going to have to put some pricing in place in the near future, assuming we pass the current testing, and it is looking like a difficult piece of arithmetic from what I've seen to date. Perhaps it will turn out to be too difficult for us - that's the way it's looking right now - though we will meet with our current carrier providers during May to discuss what they may be able to offer.
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