THE NBN (Australia's National Broadband Network)

As most people know the NBN is now in Australia and yes it does allow for faster downloads but there is a lot on bad parts to it that most down know.

The best parts is;

1. Higher speed downloads for 90% of Australia's

The worst parts are;

1. No hard wired phone
2. No direct hard wired links
3. no backwards compatibility at all

What does any of this mean.

There are 6 types of NBN (Clicking on one of the 6 bellow will open a new window with info from NBN Co),

1. (FTTP) Fibre To The Premises.
2. (FTTN) Fibre To The Node.
3. (FTTB) Fibre To The Building.
4. (HFC) Hybrid Fibre Coaxial.
5. (FW) Fixed Wireless.
6. (Satellite) Satellite (called Sky Muster).

People who can only get "Fixed Wireless" & "Satelight" will not have most of these problems bellow but that depends on the exchange in the area and if there is any FTTN's connected to it, but this can be changed too at any time.

ALSO any one that uses 3G &/or 4G for phone &/or Internet this does not apply too.

NBN is not your internet provider, Most Providers (Telstra, Optus, Iinet, Dodo, ......) the one your might be with now are what deal with you internet.

MOST house's (Out side of the Capital Cities that don't have poll supplied Cable TV) will have (FTTN) Fibre To The Node, this means the NBN will be connected to the old phone line to your house BUT there will be no hard wired (pots) phone to use at all,
(this will also include most high rise buildings which will have (FTTB) installed no mater where they are).

(FTTN) & (FTTB) use all most the same technology as ADSL, its called VDSL most homes will have to upgrade there modem as the older modems don't support VDSL.

Note: (FTTB) Fibre To The Building is the same as (FTTN) Fibre To The Node, the Node which is the new green boxes installed on the street, its equipment inside it is installed inside the building comm's room.

Any one that has equipment like, Home Phone, FAX, Hard wired Alarms, anything reliable on the old phone at all will lose out.

When FTTN is turned on in the neighbourhood EVERY home that wants Phone &/or Internet MUST move across to the NBN (With in about 18 months) but people that only use phones and don't want internet will have to have internet to have a phone or no phone at all, that's right NO PHONE with out internet as the phone will have to be switched to VOIP.

Then there is business (eg; every Bank, Post-office, supermarket, service stations ...... the list goes on) they have to move to the NBN too and that means thousands of dollars spent per site to up grade them to the NBN if they even can as most have direct secure links between the sites and main data office, this means there could be less safety in some ways and more cost passed onto the customers too.

Sites like the Post-office for a example use a direct link to a provider (eg there head office) over that the link is encrypted, then there is another level of encryption between sites, then another one for things like Eftpos which is all ready encrypted 3 times in its device that's just on the old link with out thinking of NBN.

BUT most large business will not be forced across like homes YET but by all the information they still will have to move across soon.

But then we come to Lifts, Fire Alarms and a lot of every day things that use the hard wired phone system, a example is the Lifts in most buildings the phone &/or 2way emergency system in then will not work when the NBN is turned on unless they upgrade which cost big dollars too, these services will have to move to ether a 'ip based service running on NBN' &/or '3G Mobile service'

Yes I am having a rant a bit but it's a bit understandable.

They state on there site at "emergencies and outages"
"Equipment connected over the NBN network will not work during a power blackout" *

They also states in "what services will be switched off" that the services bellow will also go but later.

These services are the first to go on the NBN

In the Cites that have Cable Internet from Optus & Telstra to the house, NBN is taking control of these services and making the customers move across to NBN HFC if they have not installed a FTTN in the area, but then large apartments will also be forced to go to FTTB as they will stop there services for cable to the building (The only services not effected yet are the cable TV but NBN does want them to move across too later).

And the worst part...

If you have 2 numbers on the same line (Eg duet and other types) then every time your ISP puts in a application for NBN and to port you number it will come back as rejected due to complex services.

The ISP clams first up you can port all the numbers across as they have been told too, But they are wrong, only the main number to a fixed line or a CDNO (Call Divert Number Only) can be done, and CDNO Cost to create &/or port across.

Personal Business Problems with NBN

I was told the day my NBN node was to become live, and its been over 2 months since then and still NBN has not sent out the package they are required, and its not just for my place, the hole town is the same.

It came live on the Friday and I my self put a order in on Monday and Wednesday came back 'Rejected', Thursday spent 1/2 the day talking to my ISP and the Phone company and by 7:30pm all was so call fixed, Friday the ISP resubmitted it and Monday its come back again 'Rejected', after a lot of calls I found the problem and there was only one way to fix it, I had to remove the service but would not pay the Phone company to create the service on other as the cost was not worth it, once the services was removed I had to weight 7 days before the ISP could get approval to be able to move the service, then it took another another month to have a NBN tech to enable the service.

I was told the NBN tech was going to contact me on the day when they was going to setup the link, but lucky I monitored the link and saw the tech working on the line, once the line was enabled which only took 10 min my NBN link was up and running, but it took another 5 days for my main line phone number to be ported across to my ISP. The service is fully up and running now and after I had to fix some problems on the ISP's end that they could not figure out my service has been up and more reliability then the ADSL service but at typing this there is only 30 customers out of the 1000 that will be linked to the unit.

Then the worst the outages, it does not mater what type but if its in the NBN system it will take a long time to be fixed.
I my self had one outage and it took 15 hours to come back on line, and there is no one we can complain to as the NBN is currently Government owned.
One of the latest outages the provider was told it will be down for 10 min, try over 4 hours.

And a BIG warning, most ISP will port you home number across for free as part of the NBN but some can not port at all and others charge, then comes you old provider, like Telstra that now charge for any porting away from them no mater who the company is with or uses, if you don't use Telstra for your NBN when you move across then they charge you.

* = Some equipment will have battery backup if installed with it but it does not work if the network its connected to does not too.

I am not affiliated with the NBN in any way its just EVERY customer I deal with wants to know what the NBN will do so I have stated in MOST of my own words but also parts listed from the NBN Co's website.