".. that which is adequately explained by stupidity". - Robert J. Hanlon.

If you get your information about the National Broadband Network from the mainstream media, you couldn't really be blamed for thinking that the sky is falling in.  A lot existing media companies, including television and newspapers, have had their industry turned on its head by the internet, and as high speed communications becomes ubiquitous this is only going to get worse for them.  They are struggling, just like the music industry did in the 1990s and 2000s.

However that isn't what this blog post is about!  Sometimes you find someone who is well intentioned, but just doesn't do their research!  This article from the 22 May 2011 edition of the Launceston Examiner is a perfect example.

Tasmania faces long NBN wait

BY MATT MALONEY

22 May, 2011

To start with, the premise of the article flawed...

LAUNCESTON could have to wait until 2021 to be connected to the National Broadband Network.
[...]
... the company has not identified towns and cities to be connected to the network beyond last week's announcement on the project's first and second stages.

This is easily refuted by this press release from Stephen Conroy's office which was published over a year ago.

Also note the end date of 2021 - this appears to have been calculated by adding the ten year build time onto this year - ignoring the fact that construction started about a year and a half ago.

There are also comments such as:

"Tasmanian NBN users have told The Sunday Examiner that communication with internet users with a lower digital bandwidth was much slower than the one-gigabyte-a-second promised."

Gold. Confused by two different things in one sentence! The maximum connection speed of an NBN connection at present is 100 megabits per second, not 1000 - which, although it is within the network capabilities, it is not available to residential customers as yet.  He then fails on the difference between megabits per second and megabytes per second.  Easily confusing to the lay person, but someone educating the public should be better informed.  For those playing at home, a 100 megabit per second connection should result in a throughput of around 12 megabytes a second.

One Smithton business owner, Brett Dawes, said from his six months' experience, internet users must be on the same bandwidth for the network to work properly.

"There is not much point having a patch connected here and a patch connected there - it's all or nothing," he said.

Poorly worded, but I see the point he is trying to make... however, it ignores the fact that people in one house could be using the single FTTH connection to use several different services!  You could have someone watching ABC iView on their laptop, someone else streaming a movie in the lounge room, a third person one a video chat with the grandparents in another part of the house, and the teenager playing online games in his bedroom.  All with enough bandwidth left over for general web browsing and making phone calls!  Not to mention - a lot of the time the "other end" will not be another end user, but a data centre with huge pipes to the outside world!

There is enough misinformation about the NBN floating around in the media - from other news sources and opposing political parties - without errenous articles such as this one!

Just a note on the Hanlon quote at the top - I'm not suggesting stupidity in this case - just lack of research! 

• Postscript: Andrew from Digital Tasmania is in the process of contacting said journo, to offer advice in future instances!

• Three months after activation, the number of homes connected in Tasmania is 262. Including homes that have requested a service but connecting is pending, it is 436.
• The number of households passed with the fibre is reported between 3000 and 4000 in difference sources. (Note: The source that said "4000" was from The Australian)

• Dial-up internet had been around since 1994;
• In November 1998 (four years later), 13% of households in regional Australia had internet access.

• FTTH over NBN has been around since July 2010;
• In October 2010 (three months later), 10-14% of households in regional Australia had signed up for a service.

Well, it has been quite an eventful few days in the world of Australian politics. Noone really knows who our Prime Minister will be. All the analysts are currently saying that the coalition will have 73 seats to Labor's 72. On first glance this points to a coalition victory, but it isn't as simple as that!

Enter the independents - or more technically correct, the crossbenchers! Three of them - Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - are sitting independent MPs from regional seats in Queensland and New South Wales who have be re-elected by their elecorate. They are all from rather conservative National Party backgrounds. The other two (Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie - noting Wilkie's position is not confirmed) - are from a different background - both representing urban seats in Melbourne and Hobart, and both from the left side of politics - Bandt being the first Greens representative in the lower house, and Wilkie being a former Green member.

On face value it could be assumed the first three would side with the coalition and the last two with Labor. It is never that simple! After all you would assume that the four independents are no longer members of their party for a reason.

Which brings me to what I personally believe was the only policy in the election that clearly separated the two major parties - telecommunications.

While watching the television coverage over the weekend, as expected there were live crosses all over the nation including the three conservative members. And a picture spoke a thousand words - or rather, no picture. The live crosses were just a still image with audio provided by a grainy mobile phone call. Even though the members pointed out that telecommunications was a big issue in their electorate, the fact that the current situation was being clearly demonstrated only served to reinforce this!

The Greens and Wilkie also ran on a platform of supporting the National Broadband Network so it could be assumed they would side with Labor in this regard - not to mention the fact that the Greens and Liberals are polar opposite ends of the spectrum.

The other factor that gives hope to Labor is that the crossbenchers have indicated that they want to support a stable government. It is not in their interest to see the country go to another election in six months time. These comments have made specific reference to the Senate. After the massive surge to the Greens - their number of Senators will increase from 4 to 9 - perhaps the independents think that a conservative government would not work with a left leaning upper house? It is worth mentioning that the Senate does not change until 1 July 2011. Until then, a Labor Government will need the approval of either the Coalition, or all Greens senators, Family First senator Steve Fielding, and Independent Nick Xenaphon, to pass legislation. After the new senate term starts, only the Greens will need to be appeased. Probably not an issue for a Labor government but it could be a challenge should the Liberals form government.

(As I write this, news has come to light that Wilkie may be not as likely to win Denison as first thought. If it did go Labors way, it may put it at 73-73 for the major parties. That's probably a sign that I should stop writing this, every few hours there is something new!)

There have been a couple of news tidbits about the National Broadband Network and general Tassie broadband news over the last week ...

By the way, this is my first post on the "broadband" category of this blog - it only took 2 1/2 months! I recognise that some readers are not technically inclined so I'm happy to answer questions in the comments if anyone has any!

The first one is the announcement of the locations for stage 3 of the NBN.  Where stage 1 and 2 were basically a few towns, stage 3 covers many suburbs in the major cities.

Unfortunately for us, the suburbs listed do not include Lenah Valley!  (They do include Glenorchy, but I wouldn't expect anything to be live until at least mid-2011, by which time we will - hopefully - be close to moving.)


View NBN locations - Stage 3 in a larger map

Areas in Hobart to miss out include anywhere north of Berriedale on the western shore, anywhere north of Geilston Bay on the eastern shore, anywhere east of Mornington/Howrah, the Moonah/New Town/Lenah Valley area, and anywhere south of the city (except for Kingston) 

The good news is that Internode's DSLAM deployment is well on track - most of them are live or pretty much ready to go live - a lot of their deployments here have been external to the exchange (i.e. the green cabinets that you see on the nature strip). people on Whirlpool have been sneaking up to them to see if they are making noise! Internode has 3 outages scheduled for the early hours of Tuesday and Wednesday morning this week related to Tasmania so the consensus is that it can't be far away.

As a comparison to the NBN map above, see below for an example (my estimates only!) of the coverage area of the central Hobart exchanges that Internode has their equipment in. (The others are located in Kingston, Launceston and Devonport.) I would have thought the NBN would target areas such as Austins Ferry/Granton, Lower Sandy Bay/Taroona, Old Beach/Otago, which are NOT covered by the upcoming DSLAM deployments!


View Internode DSLAMs in a larger map

Note - I know this doesn't include northern cities, or Kingston, or Netspace DSLAMs - sorry, a bit of systemic bias!

The third interesting bit of news is a combination of these two - Internode, iiNet and iPrimus have announced they will be partnering with the NBN to provide internet access over the new network when it goes live to homes in Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point in July. The best bit is this quote - "The ISP [Internode] will offer existing FTTH products on Tasmania’s NBN. Prices start at $49.95 per month for 5GB of quota. Internode also supports 100Mbps services geared towards business users starting from $99.99 per month." This is a pretty good sign that the retail plans available to residents of FTTH estates on the mainland will be the ones available via the NBN. The rest of the plans are available at Internode's website.

Of course I can't finish my first post about broadband without a plug for Digital Tasmania - a consumer action group, created "to give a voice to the views and needs of Tasmanian consumers in the digital age". Check the site for information on the groups aims!

Are you a Tasmanian with an opinion? Specifically, a Tasmanian who uses the internet to post your opinion on the upcoming state election?

Be careful - since 6pm tonight (Friday, February 19), any online commentary about the state election must include your full name and address.  This is according to section 191 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act.

This is a completely impractical situation.  The law covers all kinds of internet activity including Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.  For obvious reasons, many people are not comfortable with their full home address being linked publicly to either of these accounts.  Some reasons, such as privacy and risk of stalking or assault are obvious, but there are also some less obvious reasons.

Digital Tasmania, supported by groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation, has written to the electoral commissioner requesting to not enforce this particular law, and for the leaders of the political parties to review the legislation when parliament next resumes after the election.  (Media coverage: ABC, iTWire, The Examiner)

The lack of practicality of this law was demonstrated by (or lack of) by iBleeter on Twitter who has started a drinking game - take a drink each time you see an example of the law being broken.  He was probably off his face after the first couple of hours, after breaches were spotted on the Facebook or Twitter feeds of David O'Byrne, Lisa Singh, Daniel Hulme, Will Hodgman, Jeremy Rockliff, ABC News Tasmania, The Mercury, Kim and Dave, Bob Brown, Forestry Tasmania, David Bartlett and Nick McKim.  Clearly if the Electoral Commission don't want to have a mockery made of this law they should prosecute all of the above.

Lisa Singh's breach is particularly amusing as she was on Stateline tonight - along with Cassy O'Connor and Brett Whiteley -where they were asked about the s191 law, and all of them supported it in its current form.

Even Mercury cartoonist Jon Kudelka has stated he will not be publishing his cartoons online until after the election.

One Western Australian has come to our rescue - just enter anything you want at his site at http://s191.org and he will automatically generate an authorisation for you - with his address way over in WA attached to the end.  No risk of vigilantes who disagree with your stance on the pulp mill, the Polytechnic, or water reforms egging your house!

And on that note - http://s191.org/56.