Australia's apparent internet woes

I'm on broadband via ADSL connection and it's really frustrating. For ordinary purposes its okay, but uploading can sometimes be difficult while downloading outages while watching TV on line - something I do a fair bit off when catching up while cleaning, cooking or eating - can be very frustrating.

 On 26 June 2016, the Australian media carried reports from networking firm Akamai Technologies that Australia now ranked 56th in the world for internet download speeds. Then yesterday, a Financial Review report quoted figures from the telecommunications industry consumer group the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, suggesting that roughly 1.8 million homes have no access to adequate broadband services with a third of those due to existing exchanges being full to capacity.

If I interpret the story correctly, part of the problem lies in the mismatch between NBN and commercial plans, part the chops and changes made to NBN, part lags in the NBN roll-out. Its not just country areas, but also metro localities that you would expect to have good coverage.

We now have two quite different problems. One is trying to improve Australia's connection speeds, a second just making connection available. It all strikes me as a bit of a mess!

NBN and the Vertigan Report - economic modelling gone silly

Wednesday! Where has the first part of the week gone? Tonight, just the national Broadband Network.

Communications Minister Turnbull has released (part released; some of the content is redacted) his cost benefit study into the NBN. I haven’t had time to read it yet. I do want to comment, however, on some of the reporting.

As I write, my local area network connection shows a nominal download speed of 100 Mbps. As we all know, actual speeds are always lower than nominal speeds. I am on 100 MBps because I have my computer plugged directly into the wall socket. If I go though the modem, my nominal download speed drops to 50 mbps. That’s with one user.

I am on an ADSL connection over copper. Working via the modem, the connection speeds are sometimes so slow, not always, that I cannot watch a You Tube video, properly download some software. If I were to really set the house up in the way I want with the main computer in the front office plus wireless connectivity that would accommodate visiting friends  or another device of my own, my connection speeds are likely to drop to blazes.

I mention this now because the Vertigan report is based on some modelling by Communications Chambers. It is that modelling or more specifically some of the underlying conclusions that I want to address. Now before going on, I want to quote some of the reported conclusions from Communications Chambers (CC). I am quoting reports. I am happy to accept corrections.

Subject to that qualification, it seems that according to CC:

• in ten years’ time, only 5% of Australian households will demand internet speeds of 43Mbps or more
• The 2023 household median demand will be just 15 Mbps. CC reckons that this low demand needs to be seen in the context of the continuing benefits of video compression and the fact that 58% of households only contain one person
• The growth in the number of households who use (the internet?, broadband?) had risen from 64% to 83% from 2007 to 2014, but this growth was driven by older single-person households who place significantly less demand on the networks than families.
• At the busiest time of the evening, the average connection was used to just 1.7% of its capacity.

Sorry CC and Vertigan, you have really annoyed me. Let’s leave aside the question of what demand might be like if the bandwidth was there at the right price and just focus on me as a user, one who already has to pay a considerable price and cannot do all the things he wants when he wants at current connection speeds even though his nominal 

Now this single person older household demand driver is, just at the moment, writing this post. The email connection is on, one just arrived, but but my bandwidth usage is very low. Silly me, bringing down the average. Even when I post in a few minutes, my usage will be low. You see, what is relevant to me is not the average but the peak, and there I am already in a degree of trouble.

Our blogging friend AC has been in Poland. Poland has quite good bandwidth, apparently better than Australia in terms of top speeds, real connections over 100 Mbps. To save money, AC went for a 25 Mbps connection while she was there, then found that that 25Mbps did not work when it came to Skype video conference or even phone connections. The low bandwidth made for very poor quality, especially in reproduction.

This is 2013, not 2023. I am not getting value for money at the moment on my phone/broadband connection. I can’t upgrade the service to meet my peak needs because the pipes aren’t there, and I’m in a densely populated part of Sydney. Think what it’s like elsewhere.

None of this means that the NBN is the best solution. But economic modelling carried out to support a case does not help. That may be unfair. Perhaps the modelling is simply bad.

As I read this stuff, I thought what planet are these people on? The Vertigan report appears to give me a 2023 solution based on a 2103 reality that already makes me unhappy. Thoughts of tar, feathers, sharp poles with splinters came to mind! Not happy, Jan. 

Postscript

A brief follow up now that I have had  chance to at least skim the underlying reports.

We are all influenced by our own experiences.

I am clearly not a typical internet user, nor are most people I know. I use the internet quite heavily for a mix of personal and professional reasons. So do they.

I am on a notional 50 Mbps download ASDSL broad band connection. That puts me already on Mr Turnbull’s notional target speed connection.

As of this morning, speed test shows a 6.34 Mbps actual down load speed, an 0.71  Mbps upload speed.  In a previous discussion, commenters explained the reason for the divergence between rated and actual speed. I won’t revisit that discussion at this point.

In broad terms, I generally don’t have a download problem, although this does get very slow from time to time. I do have a recurring and sometimes frustrating upload problem because I use photographs. Yes, I  can compress the photos, but sometimes I require high res and, in general, it’s just easier to use the photos as is.

The new things that I would like to do centre on upload. I wish to develop and upload new material. To do this, I have to learn new skills and will probably require new kit. However, once I have all this, it is nor clear to me that I can do what to do with my current upload speeds. I don’t think that I can.

Herein lies the rub with all these arguments. They rely on averages. They just don’t dig down deeply enough to find a Jim who already finds the 2023 projected usage patterns inadequate.

Sunday Essay – slogans, politics and the misuse of language

Following up on the discussion on Problems with Team Tony, this morning’s short Sunday Essay takes these words from Tony Blair as an entry point:

The way in which information is exchanged so quickly has forever changed the way in which people want to consume information.They demand that things be condensed into 20-second sound bites. With complex problems, this is exceedingly difficult, but to be an effective communicator and leader you need to be able to condense complex items down to the core and be able to do this quickly.” – Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister.

I found Mr Blair’s words to be deeply condescending because they seem to imply that I need to be spoon-fed, to be given my information on a spoon in the way my mother gave me medicine as a child. The discussion that threw up this quote dealt in part with the need for simplification. Winton Bates even tried his hand at twitterising the Gettysburg address! 

There is no doubt that short phrases or sentences can be powerful. “Not happy, Jan” entered the Australian language from a TV ad because it so aptly captured that feeling of discontent that we all feel from time to time. In the newspaper press, the role of a good sub-editor is to create the headline that will both capture the essence of a story and persuade people to read it. This is a highly skilled craft form. It is also one in which the two objectives, capturing the essence while persuading people to read, can conflict. We have all seen dramatic headlines that do not properly reflect the content, We have also seen headlines that are influenced by a third factor as well, the campaigns or particular political stances that the paper happens to be pursuing at the time.

In politics, Mr Abbott’s “Stop the Boats” is effective because it both plays to prejudice and succinctly captures a Government objective. Interestingly, people were actually surprised at the fervour with which the Government pursued this objective to the exclusion of other considerations. It appears that many of us reacted as though it were just a slogan rather than a Government objective writ in stone that must be delivered no matter the cost.

In the religious arena, “love thy neighbour as thyself” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” are powerful phrases because they capture the essential message of Christianity.

Sadly, we live in a world where Mr Blair’s views have come to occupy the high ground. That is the way we are all treated. If I am to be fed on a diet of slogans and simplified messages, then I appear to have reached a position once defined by Adolf Hitler: All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach. I am in no way equating Adolf Hitler and Mr Blair, but Mr Blair’s views as quoted above would seem in many ways to carry something of the same message as expressed by Hitler those years before.

Things tend to correct themselves, although there is a price to be paid for that correction. We live in an age today where every initiative, every policy statement, every new business cost cutting measure  has to have a title attached to it, to be expressed in a particular visual form, to have its own communications strategy. As with so many things, communications strategies have become de rigueur because communications itself has become so poor that people have largely tuned out. The price we pay is to be served unadulterated pap. A further price is that things that are important can actually be concealed, can escape attention.

I, for one, would like to have less communications and more information, less communications and more analysis. I want to be given time to think about things, to understand.

Australian Treasury Secretary Parkinson talks about the increasing difficulty of bringing about “reform”, contrasting the present period with Bob Hawke’s time. I think that he is fundamentally wrong in one important respect. Presently, Australians (and others) live in a world of constant change, of constant calls for reform all constantly packaged and re-presented. How do Australians (and others) identify what is important when the goal posts and rules shift so often that nobody can understand just what game is actually being played?

That’s the nub of it. We don’t have a communications problem as such. We have an approach problem in which “communications” itself has become part of the problem. 

In addition to being the Sunday Essay, this post also acts as the Monday Forum post.