Telstra signal intent for NBN migration deal

Positive news today. Both Telstra and the federal government (representing NBN), announced that they have formalised an agreement of intent which will see Telstra progressively migrate their copper based services onto the NBN as suburbs are rolled-out. The agreement also includes arrangements to transition Telstra ducts and backhaul infrastructure to NBN Co. This is just the beginning of what will be a long and complex journey though.

NBN–From problems to solutions

Yesterday I summarised the three primary public concerns, as I saw them, around the planned NBN Co. deployment. Today Andrew Colley summarised pretty much the same key points, so maybe it’s time to look at how NBN Co. may be able to address them. Just to re-iterate, the areas of concern are:

1. Pricing: or more importantly price flexibility,
2. Connectivity: or more importantly connection flexibility and
3. Openness: open interfaces, open databases, open standards.

I’m not going to document a complete architecture here to address everything, rather I intend to simply highlight each of these areas with some specific examples that were discussed at the Realising our Broadband Future Forum and possible solution paths for resolving them. As always, if you disagree with anything I say, please add a comment.

Since this is a large post, I have broken it up into several pages to make it easier to follow.

—Page 1— —Page 2— —Page 3— —Page 4—

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Realising our Broadband Future

Just last week, Thursday and Friday to be more precise, the Australian Government held an open industry forum, “Realising our Broadband Future“, to brainstorm services and applications that the forthcoming NBN (National Broadband Network) may potentially enable. As the forum was heavily over-subscribed, many people, myself included, virtually attended via the live stream broadcasts and participated via the online wiki services and twitter. This is my summary of the event, with a particular focus on the areas that I believe are important strategically for the future of communication services in Australia.

First, what is the Australian NBN?
Before embarking on a more detailed analysis, it may help to highlight some of the key characteristics that make the NBN more than just another FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) network deployment. Chief among these are:

• The NBN will provide broadband services to 100% of the Australian population. This complete elimination of the digital divide alone is fairly key–when broadband penetration is so total,one of the primary blocks to service deployments vanishes. You can always assume access capability and hence business cases become merely a function of utility versus cost.
• 90% of Australians will receive a minimum 100Mbps access capability via G-PON and the remaining 10% a minimum 12Mbps access capability via satellite or other wireless. These are committed minimum’s only–in time they will most likely increase with demand and technology. Whilst some consumers are able to leverage and utilise greater capacity, it is very likely that these minimum capacity limits will offer significant utility for quite some time.
• The NBN will only provide wholesale service capabilities. These wholesale services will be available to any access-seeker at open and fair prices–it is anticipated that this combination will stimulate a vibrant and competitive retail market place for value-added services and solutions.

So, keep in mind that this is a truly ubiquitous broadband network that aims to deliver network access services, in an open fashion, to every Australian citizen. This is regardless of whether they live in the center of the city or out on a rural property, potentially 100’s of kilometers away from their nearest neighbours.

A little history …

I often hear the likes of Google calling for “net neutrality” and ‘flatrate pricing’, yet their business models of true spot-pricing for web advertising really makes me think they are being just a little hypocritical. So how can IP carriers support “net neutrality” and preserve market-pricing at the same time?

Well, the following is a small excerpt, originally written for TotalTelecom, that attempts to address some industry confusion around the interpretation and implementation of “Net Neutrality”. In effect this post summarises material from an earlier article I wrote, which was published in the IEC Annual Review of Broadband Communications Vol 3, (Communications Vol. 60), on NGN’s, technology choices and their subsequent business model impacts. That article, “Which Takes Precedence: Your New NGN or Your Current Business Model“, examined just one of the many key business implications that results as carrier networks migrate away from the multiple overlay networks of yesteryear towards the single, fully integrated all-IP network of tomorrow.

Excerpt :

Hello world!

Well, I’ve finally succumbed and now have an online blog: so welcome to my blog — “Elegance in Complexity”.

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