Internet connectivity

[stylofone]

There's a delay in connecting the NBN to my new house, so I'm living on a 4G hotspot. It's going pretty well. I have 600 gigabytes of data available because my unused data accumulates every month and I've been hoarding it. Now I'm thinking, is it worth the trouble to even get on the NBN?

On balance I plan to stick with the plan and get the NBN installed. There could be pressure on the mobile network when all the tourists roll in for summer. Also, there are times when I gorge on data, and that would increase the cost of mobile internet.

But it's a conundrum for the NBN, all that effort and political noise to create a thing which, potentially, duplicates a service which most people also access to. If 4G/5G can add just a bit more data to their plans, it could beat the NBN.

[Irrev-Black]

We've been fibre-to-home for years now, and can't comment on the service FTTN people are getting, but ours is quite satisfactory.

[joele]

This is part of the problem with the mess the Turnbull and Abbot made of the NBN.

NZ's equivalent is super fast and cheaper (for end users). FTTP is very reliable for me but lot's of people still don't have access to that, and another problem is it is only doing 250/25mbps, 1000/50 is just way too expensive, but I know people in NZ have 300/100 for less than we pay for 50/20mbps. Also NZ offer downloads in some areas as fast as 8000mbps which kills mobile but so far from available here.

I think the big difference between FTTP even at the crappy slow Australian speeds and 4g/5g is reliability and congestion.. If we were all on mobile data the system would not cope, even when I go into the city now (with reduced numbers still in city) the congestion is unbearable and you are lucky to get 5mbps even on Telstra 5G.

You can see in the table below, average broadband speeds in Australia are terrible by world standards, and also shows our Mobile data speeds are HIGHER on average than broadband speeds which is rare in many countries (who have decent broadband).

https://worldpopulationreview.com/count ... by-country

[stevebrooks]

I think the big difference between FTTP even at the crappy slow Australian speeds and 4g/5g is reliability and congestion..

Yep, in the end the speed you get on mobile depends on the number of users in the area. While that does apply in a similar fashion for fixed, ISP's adjust available bandwidth depending on the number of users in the area, and that only changes slowly and under their control. But mobile? I can only give an example of a concert I once went to, no connectivity at all as the system was flooded, and since that depends on the local 4g/5g towers, it would also apply to locals living in the area, and you can't just throw up a new tower, even installing temporary towers, which can be done, is expensive and for a one day concert they aren't going to do that.

So fixed and mobile both have their use cases, once every house in Australia is connected to fixed NBN that's now a static investment, it doesn't need a huge investment to keep it running and cost and bandwidth requirements per residence is easily predicted, new housing is just a minor added cost that's often absorbed by the builders in new estates, or should be anyway. Mobile on the other hand? The number of users varies depending on time of day, for instance in the city during the day, a lot of users, during the night, very few, big events can attract crowds that cause issues so you have large changes in usage figures and bandwidth costs.

Then politics gets involved and fucks the entire thing up!

[stylofone]

Getting the NBN connected has been so frustrating that I have decided to give up, it's not worth the grief. I went to the Officeworks website and ordered a 4G router. They debited my account, sent an email acknowledging the order, then sent another email canceling it, presumably because they don't like my privacy-focused email domain. They said they'd refunded the money but the refund didn't go through - even though the debit was immediate.

So now I've also decided never to order anything online ever again. At this rate I will be back to subsistence farming soon as every business refuses to deal with me. It'll be like "Want food? Download our app and agree to our Faustian TOS. Then you can eat.!"