copper phobia the big drag on nbn

Copper phobia the big drag on NBN

by: Tony Brown
From: The Australian
June 07, 2013 12:00AM


PERHAPS the greatest irony of the asbestos problems plaguing the National Broadband Network is that the government has spent much of the past couple of months unwittingly making it harder for NBN Co to find a solution.

For two months it has savaged opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull's rival NBN policy - a mostly fibre-to-the-node concept using the existing copper networks for the last-mile connection.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd labelled it "fraudband", Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese called Turnbull the "minister for the copper economy" and senator Doug Cameron derisively referred to Turnbull as "Mr Copper". The message being conveyed is copper = bad, fibre = good, as the government sticks to its pledge of delivering fibre-to-the-premises to 12.2 million premises nationwide.

Unfortunately, this also has made it very difficult for NBN Co to find a way around the asbestos problem.

In a normal broadband rollout the network builder would want as many options as possible to resolve the asbestos problem while minimising delays.

In NBN Co's case this would include investigating the use of the existing copper in areas where problems with asbestos in Telstra pits are particularly acute and might take a very long time to fix.

Such a move would require further payments to Telstra for access to its last-mile copper network but would allow NBN Co to avoid much - but not all - of the disturbances that can spark asbestos problems, especially in older parts of the network.

However, given that the government has spent the past two months rubbishing copper and insisting that only fibre-to-the-premises is acceptable, this choice is not open to NBN Co.

This is another reminder of the dangers not only of placing all of your chips on a single access technology, as the government has done, but of technology choices being driven by politics rather than cold, rational analysis to find the most suitable solution for different areas.

In the four years since the NBN was announced, copper technologies have moved along at an extraordinary rate, and leading telcos - especially in Europe and North America - are realising that they need to use both new fibre and existing copper to roll out high-speed broadband quickly and cost effectively.

This is because copper lines have the crucial advantage of already having been deployed into subscribers' homes, so operators are building fibre close to homes - 100m to 200m in some cases - and using emerging technologies such as vectoring or G.Fast to offer extremely high speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second across the existing copper network.

Not only does this mean there is less interference at the customer's home - reducing the likelihood of causing asbestos disturbances - but it also makes for a much smoother deployment of the network from an administrative viewpoint.

Some European telcos report that up to 30 per cent of newly signed FTTP subscribers dump their subscription before installation when they realise that a technician must enter their residence to connect the service.

As a result, European operators are planning self-installation models where subscribers buy their modems at retail outlets and don't require a technician to activate their high-speed broadband service - because the copper connection is already there.

Huawei is releasing a fibre-to-the-door solution that allows operators to offer ultra-fast broadband without entering a premises by leaving the final few metres of copper in place.

However, unlike virtually any other telco on the planet, NBN Co is not allowed to adjust its network design according to changes of events or technological advances.

While the Coalition was rightly castigated at the 2010 federal election for its lamentable broadband policy, which failed to acknowledge the changed technology landscape, there is a real danger that the government could find itself in a similar position unless it adopts a more flexible technological approach.

The copper phobia on display from the government and its insistence that every piece of copper be driven from the network is making an already extremely hard network rollout even more difficult.

Canberra should end its dogmatic commitment to universal FTTP and look at the range of emerging options at its disposal - but the looming election means it will not.

Tony Brown is a senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/copper-phobia-the-big-drag-on-nbn/story-e6frgd0x-1226658953643