NBN is just another government failure

Menacing letters about my imminent “migration” to the national broadband network show that like many great government plans, it’s yet another slow-speed trainwreck, writes Margaret Wenham.

I got a letter the other day from my home internet provider’s “NBN migration team” that was prefaced with a highlighted, dire warning that I must immediately change my connection to the National Broadband Network.

“Your service is due for disconnection on 08/02/2019,” the letter from my ISP, iPrimus, shouted, providing a list of equipment that could be affected by the imminent disconnection.

On the list was my landline home phone, my current ADSL2 broadband connection, plus other devices which I don’t have, but others might depend on, including medical alarms and emergency call systems and monitored home security and fire alarm systems.

Well, today’s the 12th and I haven’t been disconnected. Not surprisingly I knew the claim was a barefaced lie because the constant stream of mail arriving from the NBN for the past six months has been telling me I have until September to changeover.

But the lie letter at least prompted me to contact iPrimus, with whom I’ve been for years and long without any “lock-in contract” to find out what’s involved in changing over to the Coalition Government’s dog’s breakfast hybrid version of the NBN (costing, so far, somewhere in the vicinity of $60 billion, though who really knows), the rates, and whether I might actually get a faster service than my current top speed of about 6.3 mbps.

My call was taken by a heavily accented, difficult to understand bloke (in the Philippines it turned out) who was dead keen and able to “transition” me, but not so keen and able to answer some of my pesky questions.

These included, most saliently, why would I want to pay the same or, most likely, more for a lesser service?

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Trying to make sense of what the NBN actually offers is frustrating. Picture: iStock.

Instead of my existing $68 per month deal with unlimited downloads and a home phone service that includes all local, mobile and national calls and roughly 6.3mpbs, I was offered a “basic” package for $60 per month which would give me just 100gb worth of downloads, no home phone call inclusions and an ostensible speed of “up to” 12mbps. (Pretty unimpressive for $60 billion I’d have thought.) On top of that I’d have to pay $100 for a modem and $15 delivery. If I locked in for two years, I’d get local and STD calls included and wouldn’t have to pay for the modem.

An alternate “supercharged” package for $70 per month would give me, again, no home phone inclusions and still a $100 bill for the modem, but unlimited downloads with an ostensible speed of “up to” 50mpbs.

Now, I’ve used the term “ostensible” wisely because the horror stories are well documented and, besides, NBN Co advised me, in response to a detailed email I sent them, that it will be delivered to my place not by fibre optic cable to the premises, which might provide a fighting chance of any promised download speeds being delivered, but by hybrid fibre coaxial cable — from the “nearest available fibre node”.

My follow up email to the NBN pressing to know where the “nearest available” fibre node is has so far gone unanswered. But I reckon I know the answer — it’s the same telephone exchange 3 kilometres away.

On Saturday night, I was chewing this over with neighbourhood friends, together with an excellently-cooked-on-the-Weber leg of lamb they’d invited me to share.

They live a dozen or so houses up the road and they’ve already got the NBN connected through Optus, using the same HFC cable that’ll be used to connect my house.

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The rollout of the NBN has fallen far short its promises. Picture: supplied

They’d signed up for a 20mpbs service. But, my friend grumbled, it was hopelessly slow at times and she was going to switch to an upgraded package touted as delivering 40mpbs.

We did a speed test. It read 6mpbs.

Sunday morning, I texted to ask them to do another speed test. That read 10.1.

Why, I queried, would they bother upgrading and pay more in the process when it seemed evident there was no possibility of anywhere near any of the speeds being touted being met?

(For the record, the HFC cabling, laid for pay TV services, was not designed to deliver the internet. It certainly wasn’t designed to deliver internet services to 100 per cent of properties in an area. So capacity, when everyone is finally bludgeoned into switching over, is likely to loom as a major issue.)

I could easily conjure a mental picture of Telco execs crossing all their fingers and toes, desperately hoping that in peak times the whole thing doesn’t fall over because they care about their customers and are concerned about the reliability of the hodgepodge system with which they have to work.

Except that, oh wait, these are the same people presumably authorising letters to go out containing lies about disconnection dates. And these are the same companies selling packages the speeds associated with which often cannot be met by the aforementioned dog’s breakfast, hybrid version of the NBN the Coalition Government cooked up that we’re now all being force fed, and never mind the increased oversight by the ACCC.

It’s difficult to think of another sector so beset by either or both private enterprise chicanery and federal government chumpery. Well, apart from, I suppose, the banking and finance sector, and aged care, and energy, and private health insurance, and vocational education …

Margaret Wenham is a columnist for The Courier-Mail.