A week or so ago I was having a quiet drink with several pilot buddies at the Southport Flying Club on the Gold Coast. One of my very long-term acquaintances (a retired heavy jet-jockey) asked me how my fibre-optics occupations were progressing. “Fine” I said, and tried to talk of some of my recent experiences. I was cut short, as he launched into a tirade against “this bloody useless waste of taxpayers money”. “What’s wrong with your broadband connection now, can’t you download movies fast enough”… etc etc. Whoa! I backed off and joined another group around the bar.

Unfortunately I hear and read this all the time. I do my best to explain that copper has just about had it bandwidth-wise, and wireless won’t get us into the global network future. Only fibre has the almost limitless bandwidth capacity that Australia and New Zealand (in fact the world) will require in coming decades and beyond.

Then I saw an excellent article just written here in New Zealand by my friend Ernie Newman, CEO of TUANZ (Telecom Users Association of New Zealand).
I see and chat with Ernie frequently at meetings and conferences. Recently TUANZ and CFH (Crown Fibre Holdings) have teamed up to organise workshops in the major NZ centers to demonstrate to interested parties the evident advantages of the New Zealand UFB Network. (http://www.tuanz.org.nz/content/134e36d1-264e-4c26-afa7-d7a788b88b96.html)

Ernie’s logic applies equally to Australia’s NBN.

Ernie has allowed me to reproduce his article here which follows. Thanks mate!

Relax, says TUANZ chief executive Ernie Newman. NZ’s broadband policy is solid.
By Ernie Newman
4:00 AM Thursday Jul 29, 2010

Brian Fallow can relax – New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband policy is solid, widely acclaimed internationally, and a critical element in our remaining a first world economy into the 21st century.
Copper wire has been the cornerstone of telecommunications since Bell invented the technology for voice conversations.
Never could he have imagined that 140 years on users would expect the same copper to carry vast amounts of data – emails, videos, scientific content, and radiography images. Engineers have done a wonderful job in stretching its capability for the early years of the internet era.
But copper has done its dash. It can’t cope any longer with the relentless increases in bandwidth new applications demand.
Enter the picture, fibre optic cable with its almost limitless capacity. A fibre bundle the thickness of a broom handle can carry a voice call by everyone on earth simultaneously.

Fibre can ensure the kind of capacity the citizens of 2020 will need and demand to run services in the fields of education, health, energy conservation, and entertainment.
Are these uses here now? Of course not – first we need the connectivity with sufficient critical mass for them to become viable.
That was exactly the dilemma a century ago with the reticulation of electricity. Uptake was initially slow, but mushroomed dramatically during the 1920s as more appliances and uses were invented and commercialised.
Fortunately the leaders of the day had the vision and foresight to take the leap despite not knowing about the microwave, toaster, computer or electric toothbrush. If New Zealanders had waited until every service was available before reticulating electricity, the country would have been held back for decades.
Broadband has similar characteristics. Tomorrow’s families will routinely expect multiple streams of dense content coming into their homes simultaneously. These will include video and other resources from school websites, online medical diagnosis, lifelong education, home security and energy saving systems, and on-demand high-density interactive entertainment.
Businesses will expect productivity-enhancing applications, while government can look forward to major efficiencies in delivery of health and education services.
Such services will encourage more of the brightest and best young New Zealanders to make their lives here rather than migrate.
Fallow quotes liberally from the findings of the Institute for Competition and Regulation. While residing within Victoria University, the institute owes much of its funding and governance to a small cluster of utility companies that are the subject of regulatory controls because of their significant market power.
In 2006 the institute argued stridently against unbundling Telecom’s local loop. Fortunately for New Zealanders its conclusions were rejected by other reputable economists, both overseas and local. Rejected too, by Parliament, which went on to unbundle and thus remove Telecom’s monopoly to the benefit of other telecommunications suppliers and consumers.
That does not mean there is necessarily anything wrong with the institute’s mathematics – just that it fails to run a sanity check across its conclusions. Its work on ultra-fast broadband suffers from a similar weakness.
Economic tools like cost benefit analysis should be used in conjunction with vision and foresight, not as a substitute for them. If cost benefit had been the key determinant, the world might have waited far too long to reticulate electricity, while much exploration and innovation might never have taken place.
As Arthur Grimes has acknowledged in respect of the Motu research referenced in the article, research that is conducted too early for meaningful conclusions to be drawn about the productivity impact should be interpreted with care. Cost benefit analysis is a very blunt instrument where wide ranging strategic projects are involved, he cautioned.
From my observations, New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband project is recognised globally as world-class. The Government should just get on with the job; future generations will thank it copiously.
* Ernie Newman is chief executive of the Telecommunications Users Association (TUANZ).
By Ernie Newman

Paul who? Colin who?
Normally I don’t like talking about individuals, but sometimes I feel the uncontrollable urge to do so!
Paul Budde first. He is a very well known and “respected” expert in Telecoms, broadband, FTTH, NBN etc. He’s a Dutch-born Aussie living not too far from Sydney.
Paul has just issued a public declaration condemning overtly the Kiwi national fibre optic network project.
His argument is that the NZ Government has issued an invitation to tender for the network, but that “half” of the necessary information was missing from the tender document and that no company in their right mind would jump in under such circumstances.
I think that we have to give Paul some points for his criticism, BUT I also think that he should display some diplomacy in his declarations. Robust debate is healthy. We are fortunate to be able to speak freely in our system. If Paul lived in China, even today, he would probably be banished to a collective farm somewhere near Mongolia for such anti-government heresy. We would not want that to happen here of course.
I’ve had the pleasure to meet and converse with most of the MED (Ministry of Economic Development) guys behind the project. I’ve even had a long chat with the new Chair of the Crown Fibre Holdings company. These guys aren’t dills. But none of us have profound experience in this field: the challenge of creating a national high-speed broadband fibre optics network. Nobody has done it before. There are bound to be hiccups. And each country has its own specific parameters.
I’m not saying that Paul is wrong. But there is no point in being scathing when everybody is doing the best job they are able to.
Personally I have my own questions and doubts about the project. It is expressly limited to level one (of seven levels) in the networking stack. There is provision for some level two excursions, but only if justified. Level one is like semaphore or cables without any power. How on earth we can implement a national network at level one beats me. Fibre serves a radius of some 20 Km around each “exchange”, now called a “headend”. There has to be complex gear (read minimum $50-100k investment) in each headend. A 20 km radius is a big area, but many will be needed to cover the 75% of projected subscribers. Nothing to my knowledge has yet been promulgated on this subject here in New Zealand.
And which topology, which standard? P2P active Ethernet (most popular in Europe), GEPON (most popular in Asia), or GPON, (most popular in the USA and for typical residential clients, leaving the others for dead in most new areas).
A level one network in New Zealand just won’t do the trick. Applications are SO important. There is only so much finite space in the headend buildings for people to install their own hardware and solutions.
Anyway, let’s move on to Colin Goodwin.
Colin works for Ericsson in Melbourme, Australia. He, like Paul Budde has visited New Zealand on a number of occasions. He has climbed up on his soap box and made vast declarations about the New Zealand market and technologies. He has been challenged and proven wrong on more than one occasion. He challenged Telecom NZ’s policy on FTTN, dismissing it as useless in the ability to extend to FTTH. WRONG Colin! And you had to apologise publicly about this gaffe.
Now he has been back at work criticising FTTH Video overlay, or the ability to transmit all your current TV and digital radio stations and channels on a third fibre wavelength (1550 nanometres) to offload up to 10 Gbps from the fibre data link, AND the network backhaul capacity. Wrong again Colin! It turns out that Ericsson seems to have nothing to offer in the way of video overlay, so he is trying to destroy the credibility of this excellent option in FTTH. I personally had strong words with him on this very subject at the recent FTTH Council Asia-Pacific meeting in Auckland.
So what am I on about? I was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. I am an Aussie by birth. But I happen to live now in New Zealand. So I say to my cousins over the ditch, “go preach to your Parish, and don’t come and tell us we don’t know what we are doing”…
Yes we will make mistakes, as you have and will again in Australia. There are tons of excellent new technologies here in New Zealand. The new exciting breakthrough in cancer research announced by Auckland University yesterday is proof enough.
I am no longer an Aussie or a Kiwi, I’m a proud citizen of the world…
So let’s be a bit calm and kind, even if we have some valid comments or criticisms. Let’s be nice to each other. Don’t hide your strong beliefs, but express them in a way that does not bless. We are all in this together.

Tonight Google threw me this article, written only a few hours ago. I found it very logic and sensible. Who is Tom Worthington? Well as I found out, a pretty savvy and successful technical academic in Canberra. According to his website, he looks like this:

I tried to find a contact or email address on his website: nothing! So Tom, if you read this, don’t sue me for not asking authority to reproduce! Only one major criticism, no details on the delivery of TV. Just one vague mention about IPTV. It amazes me that nobody seems to know anything about the “3rd wavelength” for TV Broadcasting. Just pull TV off the data link. It doesn’t need to be there. In any case Foxtel, Austar and Sky TV aren’t at all ready to deliver anything over IPTV. Even if they were, why dump TV on the data link when you don’t have to?
Here we go, otherwise very sensible words to my mind! Particularly about level 1 and 2 services.

Friday, November 06, 2009
Designing the National Broadband Network
The Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) held a National Broadband Network Reference Model Forum in Sydney this morning (there will be another in Melbourne on 12 November 2009). Based on the morning’s discussion, my view is that a simpler internet model be used in place of the Communications Alliance model. This will be technically simpler to implement and will also avoid many difficult regulatory issues with telephone and broadcast services. In essence the NBN will be “an internet”, which will be part of “the Internet”. The NBN can carry many different services using internet protocols, including services which emulate the plain old telephone service (POTS), cable TV and broadcast TV, without being limited to only providing those services or providers.

Paul Brooks, Lead Consultant, NBN Project of Communications Alliance gave a detailed overview of the Communications Alliance High Level Architecture Options for the NBN in detail. His view is that it is likely that the NBN will use a passive optical network for Fibre to The Home (FTTH). This will provide considerable bandwidth to the home, but it is not clear how far this will extend through the network.

While NBN will own and install the connections to the home, there is no architectural distinction between NBN and non-NBN back end networks. The Communications Alliance model operates at level 2 . It is likely that IPv6 will be used or services such as VoIP at the higher layers of the model. Issues to be resolved include how many points should other providers be able to connect at (options range from 5 to 500).

At the home termination, it is not clear how the consumer will connect. Options range from a socket to which any equipment can be connected to an NBN supplied set top box. One issue which I raised early on the the NBN process was the need for operations in disasters during mains power failure. This seems to have been taken up with discussion of who provides the backup batteries.

Stepping back from the details, Paul Brooks pointed out a principle should be customer choice. Each service may be connected to different devices from different suppliers ad networks. The example given was a smart electricity meter provided by the energy company, which the householder has little control of but still has to have working over the NBN.

It occurs to me that in all this some points have been lost:

1. Its the Internet: The primary purpose for the NBN is to provide access to the Internet. It is likely the system will be implemented using internet protocols. The simplest way to provide Internet access via an internet network is with internet protocols. Therefore the the NBN should be designed as an internet. Much of the Communications Alliance model discussion seems to be about old fashioned connection based network design which is not needed and not relevant for an internet.
2. Layers aren’t real: While there s much discussion of Layer 1 and Layer 2, these are abstractions and so of little use for practical decision making. In the discussion it does not seem to be made clear even which multi-layer model is being discussed (the ISO OS model has seven layers, whereas IP has only five).

Peter Hitchiner, Australian Computer Society – Telecommunications Society of Australia, gave a more general overview as to what the NBN should do (similar to the ACS talk I gave to ATUG in Canberra). He pointed out that the nature of the NBN service is not clear, in particular is “layer 2″ access the preferred industry approach. A major question is will IPTV services be treated equally (a major policy question for the Federal Government).

At this point the forum moved into a discussion to explore some of these issues. This proved very interesting and useful. On the access issue Paul Brooks mentioned that the home access box might have four ports (presumably Ethernet copper cable ports), plus possibly a telephone and a TV port. It seemed that he envisioned each port would provide a distinct “service” from a separate “service provider”. In the subsequent discussion it became clear that the model the Communications Alliance’s proposing is to emulate a point to point service over the NBN, on top of an underlying IP network.

Stephen Wright, from Gibson Quai-AAS – Telecommunications Consultants (GQAAS) then talked about the network resilience required. Telstra provides about 99.90% reliability for telephony services (PSTN). Stephen suggested we should aim for 99.95% or higher for the NBN. My view is that it should be relatively simple and inexpensive to achieve this level of service for the NBN for telephony services. This assumes that the NBN is configured to provide different levels of reliability for different services, with emergency services having priority. As an example, the household is likely to want enough bandwidth to call an ambulance in an emergency, and will accept that this should take priority over being able to watch TV. With the NBN configured to provide enough bandwidth to provide TV most of the time, there should be enough capacity to handle lower bandwidth services, such as telephony almost all the time.

The Communications Alliance proposed model is not a good one, is not in the public interest and should not be adopted. Its complexity comes from trying to reproduce the restrictions of the old telecommunications system in order to support old business models. Instead I suggest accepting that the NBN will provide an Internet service. The model then becomes very much simpler, with an unlimited number of service providers able to provide services to the home over one Internet connection. Where a service provider needs a high level of security for their service, for example a telephone, smart meter or a TV set top box, they would need to ensure that the software or hardware they provide to the home has the needed security built in. There is then no need to worry about how many ports to provide or what types. Only one port is needed which can support all the services required.

This would be similar to the electrical sockets provided in the home. These are all wired in parallel and provide the same service. The householder can purchase their own devices to plug in. The householder can also purchase multiple adaptors to plug in. If the householder wants to plug in a refrigerator from a particular supplier, they do not need a special power point installed which only provides one brand of electricity.

The NBN will likely replace the current telephone, broadcast TV and cable TV services. I suggest replacements for these services be done in a way which does not limit the availability of new services. This would be a change in the previous government practice which has been to protect encumbent providers from competition from new services. As an example, the conversion to digital TV in Australia was designed so that the existing analog TV stations retained their oligopoly, even though the new digital technology did not require this.

There is a case for providing telephony and TV as part of the basic NBN service, but architecturally these can be simply services on top of the Internet. In this way the household will not be locked into a new monopoly unnecessarily. As an example, the householder would be able to pay a service provider to provide an ordinary telephone POTS type service from an Australian telecommunications provider. But the householder should be able to use the same NBN equipment to make free Internet calls and to sign up with several other telephone providers, including companies located anywhere in the world, if they wish.

Similarly, the house holder could use the NBN to watch Australian free to air TV and cable TV. However, the householder should be able to also access any other TV-like service available over the Internet from anywhere in the world. The fact that Foxtel might wish to provide a restricted pay TV service using NBN, should not stop other provision of TV like services for free by others.

The issues of telephony on the NBN are not technically complex, compared to the regulatory and public policy issues. TV type services over the NBN are slightly more complex technically, but are dwarfed by the complexity of the public policy issues. There is not sufficient time to work through all of the sectional interests involved in time to implement the NBN. With the current timetable, Australian will still not have transitioned completely from analogue to digital before it will be time to start replacing the digital TV broadcast service with the NBN.

I suggest the Australian Government take the opportunity to short circuit the process by setting some simple goals for the NBN in delivering services over an internet and then let the NBN company get on with the implementation. The NBN is not building a telephone network, nor a pay TV network, it is building a network which can be used for carrying such services.
Labels: ICT Policy, NBN, Telecommunications
posted by Tom Worthington at 1:11 PM