Is Brisbane’s sewer broadband a crock of …?
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Broadband through the sewers? Obvious jokes aside, does Brisbane’s plan to roll out its own fibre rather than wait for the National Broadband Network prove Australia’s need for speed? Or does the cheaper cost per home of the UK-based i3 Group’s patented “FS System” technique prove that the NBN is over-priced? The devil is in the detail. Running optical fibre down the sewers isn’t a new idea, despite Fairfax’s easily shocked Ellen Lutton calling it a “shock new broadband scheme”. i3 was pimping its Fibrecity projects in Bournemouth, Dundee and Northampton in January 2008, when the company was still called H2O Networks. Even then, technology news site The Register acknowledged that the idea had been “sloshing around the networking business for years”. At first glance it makes sense to go down the sewers to the end of the street, and from there lay fibre to individual premises using “microtrenching”, a slot only a few centimetres wide. According to the NBN Implementation Study, about 70% of the network build cost is “civil works”. Using existing “passive infrastructure” such as sewers rather than building your own ducts represents a massive cost saving. Indeed that’s why NBN Co’s deal to use Telstra’s ducts knocks billions off the NBN’s price tag. And unlike copper cables, which must be kept pressurised with gas to keep them dry, fibre can cope with the, erm, moist environment. i3 Group CEO Elfed Thomas, speaking on this week’s A Series of Tubes podcast, claims they’ve been doing this for five years, and they can lay 400 metres of fibre a day compared with a mere 30-40 metres per day if you have to construct your own ducts. Thomas also says that in Brisbane they’ll be providing not one fibre to each home and business but two — for redundancy, for double the speed, or so premises can be served by two competing retailers — all for a cost of $600 per home compared with the NBN’s thousands. But those details … Doubling up the fibre is no big deal. The NBN Implementation Study reckons that the physical fibre represents just 3% of the total cost. The key difference is that, unlike the NBN, i3 is only building a dark fibre network, merely running cable to the outside of the premises. It’ll be up to the retail telcos to install the customer premises equipment at $400 or $500 a pop, plus the equipment at the exchange, plus backhaul links. Building in the city and suburbs will always be cheaper than outer metropolitan and rural areas. The NBN is all about the higher-value metropolitan markets cross-subsidising the rural areas so there’s equal pricing for everyone. And, of course, the project still has to come together. Despite Thomas’ claims to have been doing this for five years, according to the Fibrecity website Dundee is still rolling out but Northhampton seems to have vanished. In Bournemouth, as reported two months ago, i3’s sewer deal with Wessex Water has fallen through, citing contractual and technical issues. Bournemouth will use more traditional methods, presumably at higher cost. Everything else — including roll-outs in Derby, Halton, Nottingham, Plymouth, York, Ireland and even Iceland as well as Brisbane — is still just talk. Should Brisbane’s network go ahead, the question will be whether NBN Co still builds its own fibre there. Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy has indicated the government might force private network operators to meet NBN technical standards, effectively letting them build sections of the NBN and prevent duplication. We shall see. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 is expected to hit Parliament this week. |
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8 Comments
And of course the politics - the Liberal Party (or one of its many iterations) runs BCC. What a fillip for Campbell Newman if he can manifest the Libs multi-provider broadband plan before the rival NBN gets going. Not a small consideration.
Sounds like a stunt. It certainly smells like a stunt.
I love it that, after being told that Telstra was inefficient, the idea that the city subsidises the country so that all people have the same services for the same cost (hence you paid a set fee for installation, whether you lived right next to the exchange or whether you lived 20000 kms from it), is a good one. It helps business (if set up is the same, then why not go to a large regional centre), it helps residents, it helps everyone.
Of course, Queensland, being suspicious of the rest of the coutnry, wants to do it ‘better’, yet somehow it’s worse…
Love the front page graphic - so Brisvegas.
It is a stunt. The SMH reports the sewer option is not an option. It is LNP pooh bear stuff. Meanwhile the stupidity of M Turnbull becomes more evident as he appears to attempting to have the NBN to a committee for anylisis and discussion. Sure Mal, I was under the impression listening to you and your Liberal mates you knew all about the NBN and hate it and want to remain in the dark ages with a mix of copper wire and whatever. Its political clap trap and simply delaying the enevitable, it’s doubtful Mals little scheme of obstruction will get past first base. What used to be a leader of a political party appears to have ,since the Gretch Affair, slowly sunk into the same unhinged depths as his current leader.
Oh The Mayor…Check out what ‘was’ his biggest, most saturated - coverage-wise, recently acclaimed project, The Clem 7 Tunnel…As an average family, residing in the suburbs of north Brissy, it was ‘all’ we heard about from it’s inception clear through to the “wonderfully early delivery” of his masterpiece!
As for Mr Tech-head Turnbull, do he and his Abbott-led cohorts really expect the Australian electorate to be delivered anything short of a “Ute-Gate’ scandal or similar, as is all this Coalition know how to do, as they seek to decend into their ‘old politics’ when the Government seeks to implement sound public policy, which benefits all Australians, as opposed to the opposition’s only policy directive, being agreeing only to policy designed to benefit the top-end of town only?!
It is a stunt alright, as was the ‘two proxy-state elections’ they just held in the guise of the Federal Election.
So when I pay my rates (sewerage levy) and pay my broadband account, I will be paying BCC twice for the same conduit network. Huh, nice gig - if you can get it.
Its a stunt that if it unfortunately comes to pass the ratepayers of Brisbane will be saddled with for years.
The system is only leased - not purchased so at some point in the future the lease will have to be re-negotiated. Newman’s Clem7 tunnel is going to go broke next September assuming the traffic flows don’t pick up from the third of the expected volume they are currently experiencing. The Go-Between toll bridge (100 metres or so from another bridge) is doing slightly better but still some 10000 vehicles a week below the so called pessimistic revised estimates and Newman has bought some land in an inner southwestern suburb, will sell it to a developer at cost, the developer will build a bus depot and lease it back to the BCC at a profit of something like $90MILLION over 50 years.
Newman and his dirty little mates have to go.