Review of NBN Co Wholesale Bitstream Products engagement

In December 2009, NBN Co released a wholesale products consultation paper (NBN001) to the public as part of a planned and ongoing, open industry engagement process. In their own words, they noted that:

NBN Co’s role is to realise the Australian Government’s vision for the development of a next generation national broadband network. To do this successfully, we need to consult widely to ensure our plans for the network meet the current and future needs of our wholesale customers and the wider Australian community.

Interested parties were invited to return submissions back to NBN Co for review by mid February 2010. In the meantime, NBN Co held two open industry briefing sessions, one in Sydney and the other in Melbourne, the latter of which was recorded and published online. In late March 2010, NBN Co released their summary of the collective open industry feedback and published a subset of the responses onto their website. This post is my review and summary of those submissions, or at least the subset that engaged in an open fashion and allowed their submissions to be made available to the public, for open review, against NBN Co’s own summary review.

ZDNet Twisted Wire – What will the NBN look like?

I was recently interviewed by Phil Dobbie, along with Geof Heydon and Paul Brooks, for ZDNet’s Twisted Wire podcast on “What will the NBN look like?“. Apart from providing a very approachable summary of the terminology used when discussing the Australian NBN; Phil also highlights some of the areas of current debate, namely retail versus wholesale discussions and the confusion around local versus aggregated PoI locations.

Well worth setting twenty minutes aside to listen to.

Network pricing strategies: tiered vs spot vs flat

This is intended to be a fairly exhaustive overview of the various options available to a next generation telecommunications carrier for pricing its products and services into a market. Managing pricing is increasingly important as telco operators around the world consolidate their multiple (legacy) infrastructure platforms into a single (next-generation network) platform (typically utilising IP/Ethernet/MPLS/D-WDM). I’ll also highlight some of the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis) associated with each approach. I intend to keep this analysis at a reasonably high level to make it more easily approachable and digestible. In reality, I could quite easily write an entire textbook on this subject alone (any publishers interested?). Thus I will not be including all the technical proofs or justifications for each condition or approach here (you can pressure me directly for those if you really desire them). So, without further ado, let’s embark upon our quest.

Telstra stalling on NBN migration deal

This is all to be expected, yet it’s still tiring to watch. Telstra, NBN Co and the Government have stalled in their negotiations over ‘just compensation’ for Telstra’s copper access infrastructure. I use the term ‘just’ quite deliberately and this is my value-add to the media reporting.

What we are witnessing here, as passive bystanders, are commercial game theorists at their best. In the red corner we have Telstra and in the blue corner we have NBN Co. In the middle we have a market place of knowns and unknowns (influenced very heavily by end-users and the Government). Now the two main players are trying to position themselves optimally based on second-guessing the position the other player will adopt. And each party makes assumptions about just how capable, how smart and how much the other party may (or may not) know. Unfortunately, it is not enough for NBN Co to simply represent itself as a purely independent competitive player, as they are not!

FTTH Worlds best practice: NZ Wholesale Broadband

The intention of these posts is to encourage a more critical evaluation of existing business and industry practices. It would be somewhat presumptuous to expect that we have perfected everything already. Thus to ensure delivery of the best outcome possible, we need to learn how to effectively adopt, adapt, improve and innovate; not just replicate. I highlighted in my last two posts, which looked at BT Openreach and Singapore Nucleus Connect, why we need to be mindful of the diversionary tactics many industry professionals can resort to in order to supposedly minimise business risk–when in actual fact they are simply minimising their own exposure. There are lessons yet to be learnt within the still developing and embryonic ‘open wholesale’ broadband telecommunications market. Taking the time to learn these lessons and then innovating on top with our newly acquired knowledge, will ensure the best possible FTTH outcome is achieved in Australia.

FTTH Worlds best practice: SG Nucleus Connect

As I stated in yesterday’s critical examination of BT’s Openreach FTTH, we should always be mindful of the strong temptation to merely follow in someone else’s footsteps; especially when the trailblazers are well recognised, well regarded and hence have substantial market credibility. It is also crucially important that we are vigilant to recognise and quickly deflect arguments based on ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt‘, that may be put forward as justifications for why we should ‘just do it‘ some particular way. Today I’ll delve into the details (or as much as I can based on the very limited publicly available information) of Singapore’s Nucleus Connect FTTH network. In particular by looking at some of the approaches they are adopting to resolve the aforementioned intricacies involved in effectively wholesaling broadband access.

FTTH Worlds best practice: BT Openreach

There is always a temptation to merely follow in someone else’s footsteps, especially when you are unsure of the consequences particular decisions may have. It is always safer to transfer responsibility for a decision onto someone else, rather than to take the risk on yourself. This is especially true in cases where the trailblazers are well recognised, well regarded and hence have substantial market credibility. In fact, in some cases the temptation to blindly follow can be so overwhelming–that we will do so, despite possibly clear indications and warnings to the contrary.

Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM equipment

For this reason alone, I feel it is worth taking a critical look at what some of the other early movers in wholesale FTTH access networks are doing; and whether or not it is necessarily right for Australia to follow. Today, I’ll start with British Telecom’s Next Generation Access company, Openreach (BT NGA Openreach). In particular by looking at some of the approaches they are adopting to resolve many of the intricacies involved in wholesaling broadband access.