Saturday, February 26, 2011

Deception Defined

As Malcolm Turnbull continues his ideology-based attack on the National Broadband Network, examples of the truth in his ramblings are growing harder to find. As the NBN is rolled out, and uptake rates skyrocket towards 90%, it’s becoming harder for the coalition to attack the NBN based on factual information. This has lead to the regular use of weasel words and vague statements to make readers assume that the coalition will deliver as good a practical outcome as the NBN, when the two policies are chalk and cheese.

You can find his latest opinion piece in the SMH here.


Let’s take a look at some of Turnbull’s statements this time around:
“Everybody loudly and emphatically agrees that all Australians should have access to fast broadband and at an affordable price.”

This is where talk and reality begin to part ways. You see, Turnbull’s definition of “fast” is 12Mbps. I kid you not. Just as the USA promise almost their entire population 100Mbps within 10 years, and South Korea raise the bar with an NBN-equivalent 1Gbps, the Liberal/National coalition policy is stuck at 1/100th of that speed. This is the speed that the Coalition have promised to deliver to 97% of Australian premises. The other 3% get no commitment at all.

In case you’re wondering where the figure of 12Mbps comes from, it’s the speed that a half-decent ADSL2+ connection will deliver. Why is that important? Because if Turnbull promised a universal speed any higher than 12Mbps, it would mean they would have to support the NBN (or something like it), because 12Mbps is the fastest practical speed that can be expected over the existing copper network.

So, while criticising the Government for “putting the cart before the horse”, that’s exactly what the coalition have done. Rather than asking “what broadband speeds will the World be moving towards over the next decade”, Turnbull and Co have asked “what is our current network reasonably capable of providing”, and worked backwards from there. It’s an incredibly stupid way to devise a policy.

Imagine if Formula 1 worked that way! Instead of looking at the other teams and seeing what speeds they’ll be getting next season, the Coalition F1 team would grab a 50-year-old engine, work out how fast it can make their car go, and decide that’s where they need to be. Meanwhile, the other teams have all bought new engines, which run 10-100 times faster than ours. It’s not hard to see how competitive we’ll be in this “global race”.

Turnbull continues:
"The right approach to our broadband needs should not be one size or one technology fits all. It should target under-serviced areas immediately and bring them up to the highest standards available in our cities."

Now this is a curious statement. What's more, it's a fantastic idea. Imagine if all Australians could access the same fast speeds available in parts of our cities! It’s the first time I’ve seen Turnbull write such a thing, and it’s directly at odds with the coalition policy. In fact, it sounds an awful lot like what the NBN will do.

You see, many areas of out cities can access HFC cable networks, which offer speeds of about 30Mbps. New estates often contain FTTP connections (like the NBN) at up to 100Mbps. If Turnbull is now saying that everyone should have access to these speeds, then I’d love to hear how he’s proposing it can be done, since the copper network doesn’t have a hope of delivering such speeds. In reality, what Turnbull has done is deceived the reader into thinking that the coalition policy would actually deliver what he has written, when it won’t, it can’t, and their policy admits as much.

Having warmed himself up, Turnbull now moves into deception overdrive:
"Right now 30 per cent of Australian homes are passed by the hybrid fibre coaxial pay TV cables of Telstra and Optus. These systems can, and in some places do, run at 100Mbps, the highest speed promised by the new network."

What misleading hogwash. Turnbull is using the average person’s lack of technical knowledge to promote misleading information on the HFC networks.

Deception #1: HFC network size:

Notice that Turnbull says the networks PASS properties, rather than saying the properties can actually TAKE UP a connection. It’s like saying there’s a freeway behind your house. Without an on-ramp, it doesn’t do you any good at all.

The financially disastrous rollouts of the HFC networks in the 1990s earned Optus and Telstra the nicknames of Mary and her little lamb. Because everywhere that Mary (Optus) went, the lamb (Telstra) was sure to go. The result was that we got two HFC networks that cover the same properties in a few Australian capital cities. Thanks to their deeper pockets, Telstra’s network is slightly larger (at 2.5 million homes) that Optus’ (at 2.2 million). Telstra won’t reveal how many of those homes passed can actually get a service, but Optus admit that only 1.4 million of their 2.2m (63%) are able to be connected to the network due to technical reasons.

Since there are about 10.3 million residential and business premises in Australia, at most the HFC networks are available to 24% of them (if we assume 100% availability from Telstra), and at worst about 15% (Transposing Optus’ 63% availability to the Telstra network).

Deception #2: HFC network speed:

Notice that Turnbull says the NETWORK can deliver 100Mbps, not that USERS can actually get that speed.

HFC is a shared network. It’s true that thanks to a recent upgrade, parts of some of the networks have a speed of 100Mbps. But that speed is per node of the network, not per user. Each node can have multiple connections, so the 100Mbps is divided by all the users on that node. Perhaps that’s why Telstra advise that their HFC network delivers 30Mbps,  while Optus are even worse, saying that “76% of Optus Cable customers can access average speeds of over 8Mbps.” Yep, that’s right. 
 
The network that Turnbull claims operates at 100Mbps is actually incapable of giving a quarter of subscribers even 8Mbps. And the rest might get 30Mbps, but there are no guarantees.


Deception #3: Maximum NBN speed:

This one is just an outright lie. Turnbull says that 100Mbps is the highest speed promised by the NBN. Bullshit. The NBN will offer speeds of up to 1Gbps, that is 1000Mbps. And Turnbull already knows this, because he’s mentioned it on his own blog.

 
It would seem that without any facts to support the Coalition position, Turnbull has decided that the only way to fight the NBN is with smear, lies and deceit, perhaps in the hope that the Australian public won’t understand the technology of which he speaks. 
 
It’s a dangerous gamble that will undoubtedly come back to bite him, as future generations either laugh at his statements, or rue the day their parents voted him into Government, sending Australia’s communications infrastructure hurtling back into the 1900s.