Yamba still in the NBN twilight zone

Akamai 2016 State of the Internet

The National Broadband Network (nbn) was established on 9 April 2009 to design, build and operate Australia's new broadband network.

By June 2017 it should reach the halfway mark in its build.

The cost of this national network is expected to reach $29.5 billion before the end of 2017 and require an est. $20 billion more to complete.

In 2011 58% of homes in the Clarence Valley local government area and 55% of homes in Yamba had a broadband internet connection.

The official population of Yamba as of the 30th June 2015 was 6,344 and this roughly doubles during peak holiday seasons.

By now over 1,744 homes are without decent upload/download speeds for their existing Internet connections - as well all the businesses internet connections in the two shopping/accommodation/dining precincts and small industrial area in this popular tourist destination.

Yet the given date for commencement of the rollout and current rate of progress, NBN connection for this town is still years away.

In fact, if the completion date of 2020 holds then Yamba is well and truly near the end of the queue.

National Broadband Network status for Yamba NSW 2464:

The rollout of the nbn™ network is planned in this area

Planned availability: Jan-Jun 2019*.

*This is an estimate and could change.

*The speeds actually experienced by end-users via fibre, fixed wireless or satellite will depend on a number of factors including the retail broadband plan they choose, their equipment and their in premises connection.

Given the way the build has been managed so far the extra money may run out before the NBN reaches Yamba and the town may yet have to buy shares in tin cans and string to compensate for the erratic performance of current Internet connections.

Australian internet speeds improving at snail's pace

My Broadband v Reality has been running a State of the Internet online survey here.

On 24 November 2016 the organisers tweeted some interim survey results:

Which ISP do you use?

Telstra 26.2%

iiNet 14.7%

Internode 11.7%

TPG 10.4%

Optus 9.2%

Skymesh 6.7%

These are the five most common Internet service providers named by survey respondents

What type of Internet connection?

ADSL 54.9%

Satellite 10.4%

FttP 9.4%

HFC 8.1%

FttN 6.1%

Median download speed of the 400 survey respondents was 11Mbps.

Average download speed was 22.9Mbps

Average cost of Internet plan : $84.34 per month

To place these preliminary results in perspective here are the April-June 2016 Top 10 average connectivity rankings found in Akamai Technologies latest State of the Internet report:

https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/akamai-q2-2016-internet-connectivity-executive-review.pdf

Here is how Australia officially compares with some of its trading partners:

https://www.akamai.com/us/en/our-thinking/state-of-the-internet-report/state-of-the-internet-connectivity-visualization.jsp

Labor's plan to rescue the National Broadband Network and scale up rollout of fibre-to-the-premises

For everyone tired of the debacle that is the Abbott-Turnbull Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout, there may be some hope……..

http://www.100positivepolicies.org.au/

Labor Candidate For Page Janelle Saffin, media release, 13 June 2016:

An incoming Shorten Labor Government will direct NBN Co. to prioritise the rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises NBN to homes and businesses across the electorate of Page. 

In the entire electorate of Page, not a single existing home or business will get Malcolm Turnbull’s second rate Fibre-to-the-Node network by 2016 as initially promised. Not one…

Janelle Saffin said that there was a lot of dissatisfaction in the region about Turnbull’s flawed NBN.

“Stephen and I spoke to Keda Ley and her family today to find out why the NBN matters so much to them,” Ms Saffin said.

“She is a mum of three who works and studies from home and she needs a strong, reliable Internet connection to make this happen.

“There are families just like the Ley family across the region; in the 21st century they need first-rate Internet services.

“Of course it isn’t just households who stand to benefit from Labor’s plan. Small business owners can’t compete if they are constantly being held back by an inferior broadband connection. 

“The NBN build has not even started in Grafton, Lismore, Alstonville, Casino, Evans Head, Woolgoolga and Yamba. These areas deserve better and Labor will deliver for them......

So who destroyed any credibility left to NBN Co. and the Australian Federal Police?

On 19 May 2016 it was reported that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) used warrants to search an electorate office occupied by former Communications Minister and current Shadow Minister for Defence Senator Stephen Conroy and the home of one of Shadow Minister for Communications Jason Clare’s staffers looking for evidence of a whistleblower involved in leaking NBN Co. documents, which outlined cost blowouts as well as planning and delivery failures in the rollout of Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull’s faster, cheaper, sooner national broadband network.

The ABC sighted a warrant and reported that it named Labor Senator Stephen Conroy, staffers, technology bloggers, and four major media organisations including the ABC and that It required the people subject to the warrant to hand over all documents relating to those people and organisations.

A number of NBN employees were also interviewed in relation to this matter on 19 May according to the AFP.

This is a redacted copy of the letter sent to AFP Manager Crimes Operations after the raid on Conroy's Melbourne office and the Brunswick home of a Labor staffer:

Letter (1) by Orietta

So who was this mysterious civilian “seconded assistant” who apparently snapped over 30 images of documents over which parliamentary privilege had been claimed and, sent them on to various employees of NBN Co?

An un-redacted screenshot was displayed on Twitter in the early evening of 20 May for those who missed the hint In The Australian the first time around:

On the same day this set tongues wagging on Twitter:

So the cat is allegedly out of the bag and it is rumoured that the man at the centre of the political furore at the end of Week Two of the federal election campaign is a former Frankston detective senior constable, former partner in a furniture business, former head of security at a casino and current works in security at NBN Co.

However, this rumour remains unconfirmed because neither Team Turnbull, NBN Co. nor the federal police are about to name names. Transparency and accountability are not concepts that would normally be associated with these three.

The AFP stated in a 20 May 2016 media release that the federal government and opposition were appropriately notified and advised of operational activity regarding this matter after it commenced yesterday.

The current Minister for Communications and Senator for Victoria Mitch Fifield has admitted that he knew about the complaint to the AFP and the subsequent investigation but denies knowing of the warrants or tipping off the media to the night raids.

Sky News reported that Malcolm Turnbull said he first became aware of the raids when notified by Justice Minister Michael Keenan on Thursday, after the minister had been briefed by the AFP chief.

To date Attorney-General George Brandis is not on the record as to what he knew.

As the raids on both Steven Conroy and one of two Labor staffers were filmed by mainstream media there remains a suspicion that a person within government or police circles told the media about the when and where of these searches (second raid seen in this video).

When it comes to the exact type and status of those documents allegedly improperly distributed by the AFP/”Mr.Steere”, one will have to wait and see what any post-federal election Senate inquiry on the parliamentary privilege claim reveals or if Labor makes a formal complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman or commences legal action.

UPDATE

First leaked 12 page document from NBN Co titled Overbuilding Optus and marked Commercial Confidential,second leaked 12 page power point presentation CTO Briefing: Fibre to the distribution point and marked Internal Use and Scale the Deployment Program – Fttx Design and Construction. Copy of NBN Corporate Plan 2013 not yet found.

1617 Warrant - redacted Australian Federal Police warrant to search premises dated 18 May 2016 by clarencegirl

The Register, 22 May 2016:

The staffer has been identified as Simon Lee-Steere, nbnTM's general manager for security investigations, although in the only public document (below) his name has been redacted…..

Later, in defense of the staffer's actions, nbnTM corporate communications executive Karina Keisler Tweeted that the company's staffer was acting with the authorisation, and under the instruction, of AFP officers.

Business Insider, 23 May 2016:

NBN Co has stood down two of its employees over alleged involvement in the leaking of documents which resulted in last week’s AFP raids on Labor offices.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed that two employees had been stood aside while the AFP investigation was taking place. NBN Co did not name the employees or wish to comment further.

This news follows a dramatic few days for the government and the NBN, after police raided the offices of Labor senator Stephen Conroy, the homes of Andy Byrne and Ryan Hamilton as well as two staffers of shadow communications minister Jason Clare…..

The Australian Federal Police no longer have access to seized documents after the Labor party claimed parliamentary privilege.

AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin confirmed that the documents seized have now been sealed, and can’t be accessed until the matter goes before the Senate….

Australian Federal Election 2016: State of the Internet

By February 2016 NBN Co was 65,268 "construction completions" short of its planned budgeted target of 94,273 fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) installations and behind by 740,000 
premises connections, with connection costs to each house or business also blowing out according to an internal company report obtained by Fairfax Media:

"The report, which was never intended for public disclosure, reveals the extent to which the more than $46 billion project has drifted off course, mainly during the time when Mr Turnbull was in direct control as communications minister - the portfolio he held before replacing Tony Abbott as Prime Minister in September……

Under the heading "Commercial in Confidence: Scale the Deployment Program", the report outlines a plethora of faults, including that delays in power approvals and construction are being caused by electricity companies which account for 38,537 premises or 59 per cent of overall slippages against the target.

Another 30 per cent of delays are down to material shortages and a further 11 per cent are attributed to completion reviews.

"Construction completions currently sits at 29K against the corporate budget of 94K," the report states.

"Gap-to-target has increased from 49,183 to 65,268 at week ending February 12.

"Construction completions gap can be attributed to 3 main issues: power, supply, and completions under review."

Also noted in the report is  a rise in the cost per connection of design and construction, which has now reached $1366, compared with the target price of $1114 - a 23 per cent increase."  

Image of Telstra communications pit (Sydney) from Delimiter, 1 March 2016

By now I imagine we are all used to images of aging sections of Telstra's copper network (such as the one above) when people discuss Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's new and 'innovative' National Broadband Network (NBN).

What we are not accustomed to are images of NBN's actual blunders with Fibre To The Node (FTTN). Planning and operational blunders which appear to be at least a partial cause of the treacle-slow roll out of Malcolm's ill-thought out hybrid scheme.

Examples in South Australia sent to North Coast Voices by a resident of that state. All comments under images are his:

 "The houses near these nodes all have underground power and phone lines. It would have been quicker and cheaper to run fibre."

"NBN running kilometres of new conduit and 200 pair 4 gauge copper cable (left) and nodes side by side with another 190 metres away."

"There is a node to the left of this pillar. This is all 200 pair copper cable. Cheaper, faster sooner. BULLSHIT."

"Generator​ at Murray Bridge, close to power"

"Strathalbyn​​ - Power on both sides of the road and they were running a generator hired from Able Hire many months.The tower was laying in the grass for six months so why wasn't the power ready to connect from day one?" 

As for those NBN costings:

A cable with 4 fibre optic fibres costs 70 cents per metre if bought in large quantities. A cable with 4 fibre cores costs $2.00 per metre in small quantities. These prices are easily verified.
Householders have to pay for the whole footpath, the whole gutter, half the road, sewer, water-main and fire points, gas pipe, storm-water pipes, telephone wires and conduits and power poles and lines or underground power. This is an enormous cost. Contrast this with a relatively small piece of fibre optic cable that is only going a short distance to the Optical Splitter that connects blocks of 32 houses, the cost per connection would be minor, only the cost of a few metres of fibre cable to connect between streets. You would soon have a town or suburb connected for minimal cost.
Currently, when connections are made using copper wire, these copper wires that go from a house to an exchange may be up to eight kilometres in length, which is sixteen kilometres of copper for the two wires. This is a massive cost compared to fibre optic cable.
Landowners with large properties have run their own copper phone lines on top of fences in the past, but distance can be a significant problem with copper. Fibre optic cables can be reliably run 200 kilometres without amplifiers. Also electric fences can cause interference on nearby copper lines. Fibre optic cables are not affected in this way. I have been assured by Peter Ferris of NBNCo that large property holders will be able to cheaply obtain and run their own fibre cables and then easily obtain a connection to the network. [South Australian resident, 2010]

A South Australian resident just seven kilometres by line of sight from the Adelaide central business district has been quoted $150,000 to upgrade to a National Broadband Network fibre connection. Read more: 
http://www.itnews.com.au/news/first-nbn-fibre-extension-comes-in-150000-312027#ixzz42fHnUN24

The NBN access lucky dip:

After attending a Community meeting yesterday, we were advised that it appears likely we would not be included in the Fibre rollout, as it appears to finish at the council border, not extending to the end of the road (a distance of about 1km).

They (NBN Community meeting people) happily advised that we would receive Fixed Wireless coverage when it was installed.

The problem with the Wireless solution is that none of the properties have direct LoS to any tower where the Wireless would be installed…..

What's left?

NBN Satellite. To be within sight of the CBD (~7km as the crow flies) and have to resort to using a Satellite service for broadband is just crazy.

FTTN would even be better, as the Node would be at most 1km from the last property (if installed at the end of the planned Fibre rollout on the affected road), however, I dont believe FTTN is an option being considered by NBNCo. Read more: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1959073

Hills dwellers are not strangers to the vagaries of technology – thanks to the terrain we find so beautiful.
Many residents have tales of having to stand out on the verandah in the cold in order to make mobile phone calls.
Then there are those Cudlee Creek residents who live 15 minutes from Tea Tree Plaza but can't watch the local news because they were relegated to a satellite service at the digital television switch over.
But this region might discover just how off the grid some of its population might be when the NBN Co finishes rolling out the national superfast broadband infrastructure program.
The difference between the "haves" (fibre to the node) and the "have a fraction of what's available" (wireless or satellite) might be the difference of only 100m, depending on where your home is located in this region.
That might not seem so important now but in the future, when reliable access to superfast broadband is considered the norm and the copper wire system is obsolete, residents might find themselves severely disadvantaged.
If you lived in Andamooka in remote SA, you might be more willing to accept that you can only have access to satellite.
But if you live at Piccadilly like Stephen Birrell, and you did your homework before you moved your international business into the Hills, you wouldn't be happy to learn that fibre to the node is too difficult, contrary to initial advice.
Mr Birrell has the means to buy the technology he needs to make his business work, or he can move his company to the US.
His argument is that access to the NBN is being paid for by taxpayers as a basic infrastructure service but a disproportionately high number of taxpayers will receive a significantly slower and more expensive mode of broadband delivery based on geography.
It's why he and his neighbors have started the action group Gully Road Digital Divide to effect change in the NBN roll-out.
Whether the group brings about change in Mayo in an election year remains to be seen.

The cost and complexity of fixed services are prohibitive in some areas but if Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wants Australia to be the country of innovation, perhaps the criteria need to be revisited or at least debated by the community. [The Courier, 9 March 2016]

Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Wellend Health, Adelaide, Australia

All this paints a poor picture of Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's grand plan for an 'innovative and agile' nation with citizens and corporations connected to each other and the world.

The situation is all the more frustrating when one realizes that NBN Co. has been sitting on an alternative to the optic fibre currently in use - skinny fibre.

Of the skinny fibre trials conducted so far CEO of NBN Bill Morrow has stated: 

The findings are encouraging. Relative to cost, we were able to reduce the cost per premises by roughly $450 per premise. And while this is early, it's still significant. And relative to time, we also believe that we could shave four weeks off the time of the build.

Although to date the roll out remit given to NBN Co. by Malcolm Turnbull apparently would not allow it the flexibility to do so.

Is it any wonder that the internal company nickname for the roll  out of the NBN Mark II is Operation Clusterf*ck.

Which leads to another potential problem - the Coalition's Fibre To The Node (FTTN) apparently continues the current ADSL status quo for many Internet users, which is an electricity dependent Internet connection.

What happens to these FTTN connections (and phone connections consumers are/will be paying for in their home or business plans via their Internet Provider) during scheduled and unplanned power outages¹?

NBN Co. obligingly informed us in 2014 that we would need to order its Power Supply Unit Battery Backup Service (which includes a standard battery type used in many different systems) because we will not be able to even dial 000 in a power outage.

Which is definitely a retrograde step, because currently if an ADSL connection is knocked out by a power cut at least the landline phone still functions normally.

This question about power outages was asked in March 2016 by that South Australian resident who commented:

“I made several calls to NBN Co to finally realise that I know more about their technology than the help consultants.

Will my phone and internet work if the power goes out? No, you will need to have a charged mobile phone if there's a power blackout.

I then asked the question about why they have batteries in the nodes, if the 'phones are not going to work in a power failure and was told that they hope that they will work.

What rot.

I also asked why the FTTN system will be running slower for the first 18 months and they couldn't tell me.

I know that you can't have the ADSL and VSDL systems working at full power because one system is interfering with the other. The VSDL interferes with ADSL.
Please see: http://blog.jxeeno.com/nbn-fttn-limited-to-121-mbps-during-transition/”

Footnote

1. Examples of electricity blackouts in 2015:

January  Geelong region storm cause power outages across city ...

February Power outages leave northwest Victoria in the dark ...

March  Wildlife causes power outage…1,455 customers

April  55,000 homes in the Hunter still without power

May  Power restored after outages affect 23,000 homes in ... - ABC

June  Newport crash triggers power outage, house fire, traffic ...

July Carnarvon planned outages in July 2015 - outages will occur from 9 July- 16 July across multiple locations

August Power outage leaves 2500 north Canberra homes in the dark

September Power outage affects 30000 homes and businesses ... - ABC

Lightning, hail and damaging wind hit Brisbane as severe ...affecting more than 1,000 homes and businesses

October Brisbane power cut: Fire causes outages | The Courier-Mail

November Power outage hits thousands in northeast Brisbane suburbs ...

December Power outage in Kurnell: NSW State Emergency Service ...

This was Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's NBN promise to the Australian people during the 2013 federal election campaign

This was then Australian Communications Minister Malcom Bligh Turnbull’s promise to voters during the 2013 federal election campaign:

https://youtu.be/MzSDAGDIn44

On 12 December 2013, less than three months after the Liberal-Nationals Coalition won government, ITnews reported:

The Coalition is already predicting an $11.5 billion blowout to the cost of building its version of the national broadband network, but says it will still cost less than Labor's scheme….

the Coalition's own pre-election pledges proved overly optimistic, with costs expected to come in at "around" $41 billion rather than the promised $29.5 billion.

The 2016 forecast to bring 25 Mbps to all Australians has also been canned. Instead, the Coalition predicts it will be able to bring download speeds of up to 25 Mbps to 43 percent of premises in Australia's fixed-line footprint by that time.

The Coalition's approach "should also be able to deliver access to wholesale speeds of up to 50 Mbps to 90 percent of Australia's fixed-line footprint and wholesale speeds of up to 100 Mbps to 65-75 percent by 2019".

The Coalition will only guarantee these speeds to NBN Co's wholesale customers — internet service providers. There will no longer be a guarantee of what each end user will see in terms of speeds delivered to the home.

On 25 August 2015, almost two years after Abbott & Co formed government, itWire reported the deteriorating NBN situation thus:

It’s official. The Coalition version of the NBN, with its inferior copper technology, will cost as much as Labor’s all-fibre version – on the Government’s own figures.

In February last year – 18 months ago – I sat in a room full of IT journalists and heard Malcolm Turnbull’s deputy, Paul Fletcher, admit that the Coalition’s costings of Labor’s planned NBN had been exaggerated.

Before the September 2013 election Turnbull and Fletcher and Abbott and the rest of the Coalition, when they weren’t chanting ‘Stop the Boats!’ and ‘Axe the Tax’, were endlessly repeating the unsubstantiated talking point that Labor’s NBN would cost $90 billion, more than twice ALP Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s estimate of $39 billion.

Then Fletcher, in February 2014 said in a public forum, in a direct response to my question, and in front of dozens of witnesses, that NBN Co’s internal review of Labor’s NBN had costed it at $56 billion, much closer to Labor’s figure than the inflated estimate the Coalition took to the election.

When I quizzed him on the disparity between the Coalition’s $90 billion estimate of a FTTP network and the much lower NBN Co estimate (made by the management team the Coalition had put into place) of $56 billion, the best Fletcher could say was that the Coalition estimate “may have been a little high”.

Now it seems its estimate of its cut-down version of the NBN ‘may have been a little low’. The big advantage of the Coalition’s ‘multi technology mix’ model, in which millions of households will receive fibre-to-the-node rather than fibre-to-the-home, was supposed to be that it would be a lot cheaper.

Now the CEO of NBN Co, at the briefing accompanying the release of the company’s annual financial figures, has said that the Coalition’s ‘multi technology mix’ NBN will cost at least $46 billion and may cost as much as $56 billion – EXACTLY the same figure that Malcolm Turnbull’s handpicked experts had estimated the Labor FTTH NBN would cost…

That same day The Sydney Morning Herald ran with this:

A $15 billion blowout in the cost of building the national broadband network, partly caused by the slow rollout of key broadband services, could make the internet more expensive for Australians, M2 Group chief executive Geoff Horth said.

NBN on Monday revealed that the cost of building the project would increase by as much as 36.6 per cent to $56 billion up from the $41 billion previously forecast.

By 14 September 2015 The Sydney Morning Herald was reporting:

It is taking Telstra longer overall to repair phone lines damaged during extreme weather than previous years, leaving some consumers and businesses without service and ineligible for compensation.

However, the cost of fixing copper network outages in the street will soon transfer to the government-owned NBN Co, under a rewritten multibillion-dollar deal with Telstra…..

What many people do not realise is that if NBN Co were to announce this week it was rolling out fibre-to-the-node [FTTN] internet in Punchbowl, it would become responsible for making sure Mr Patane's mud-soaked copper wires were good enough for a 50 megabit per second service.

"If it's an area designated to receive FTTN, and the copper in the street needs to be remediated and can be remediated, then we will remediate it," an NBN Co spokesman said.

"If the copper cannot be remediated, then we will use one of the other technologies we have at our disposal to provide them with a service."

NBN Co becomes responsible for maintaining the copper lines between nodes and premises. Its latest corporate plan was full of warnings that degraded copper connections could delay the roll out and increase overall costs.

"The quality of this [copper] network is not fully known as there has been limited opportunity to evaluate the physical infrastructure at significant scale," it states.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow also revealed Telstra did not release any information about the copper network until after the $11 billion deal was renegotiated.

"If there is a case to where the copper is just in such poor condition that we can't offer the speeds that the government has made us commit to, then we won't use copper in that area. If it means pulling in fibre or fixed wireless towers, that's what we'll do," he said on August 24.

Unlike the NBN started under Labor, which planned to replace the copper connections with end-to-end fibre at 93 per cent of premises, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has asked NBN Co to redesign the network to include the copper connection at millions of premises. About 4 million households and businesses would now get a boosted copper connection, while the remainder getting fibre, cable, satellite or fixed wireless.

As at 3 March 2016, almost two and a half years after the Liberals and Nationals introduced their supposedly ‘new, improved and cheaper’ National Broadband Network (NBN) the three-year construction plan for Angourie, Freeburn Island, Iluka, Wooloweyah and Yamba is seemingly no longer relevant and there appears to be no plan to connect most of the Northern Rivers to NBN via Fibre To The Node in the foreseeable future.

Given the aging population on the NSW Far North Coast, many of us may die still waiting for Malcolm Turnbull’s 'innovative' version of the NBN.

Australian Prime Minster Malcolm Turnbull's NBN Broadband: Noely tells it like it is

Excerpt from My Broadband v Reality, Punters don’t know any better and that is just the way PM Turnbull likes it, 14 January 2016…….

For those of you who think the NBN has nothing to do with you, think about these scenarios:

How will you feel in years to come when your investment property is not valued as highly as similar properties in the neighbourhood just because punters finally wised up to the fact that they need to rent/buy a property that had fast, stable internet access and sadly due to circumstances beyond your control, you got the Thunderbox version of the NBN instead of the Indoor Throne like the other homes - there goes the extra for your pension?

How will you feel watching your child wait in emergency at the rural hospital for the specialist in the closest capital city to look at the scans and advise the local doctors what to do? Waiting, waiting, waiting... Not because the specialist is not around, but because the scans have failed to send over the line a few times because the weather is really bad? I have been in this scenario and don’t wish it upon any parent, ever!

How will you feel watching your oldest child stress over their final assignment drafts they are trying to email their teacher, that has to be received by said teacher by that particular date or they will lose points on the assignment, but, gee, the net is playing silly buggers and email with attachment (ie the assignment) keeps stalling? It’s only your child’s future at stake?

Your second child has just turned two and you really want to get back into the workforce (and your mortgage needs it), of course jobs are scarce, so you decide, well, Government is offering initiatives to set up home-based business, I’ll do that. Just a bit of a bugger that you didn’t realise you would need decent internet speeds & bandwidth to even access those fancy Government sites telling you of incentives; communicating with your clients online; doing your BAS & tax, the list goes on... Of course when you hit up your provider for better access, they tell you that it will either cost you a squillion – which makes your home business untenable – or sorry lady, just bad luck you live in an area that hasn’t been upgraded, yet, and well, ummm sorry, we don’t have you on our future plan at the moment either, maybe in a few years we can help you?

There are many scenarios like the above, they are real life results of the NBN being decimated. Next time you hear someone say something along the lines of “Who cares about internet access, just so a few youngsters can stream movies”, tell them NO and give them a REAL life scenario to ponder.