Broadband Nation 
Aug 11th, 2010
With the National Broadband Network being a major talking point during this election it’s got me thinking about the elements we need to make a future proofed Internet experience here in Australia. I think it really boils down to just four points:
- Ample Bandwidth for Growth
- Symmetrical Speed
- Reduced Latency
- Ubiquity
There’s some ugly terms there, so what the heck am I on about? Let’s take a look.
Ample Bandwidth for Growth
Whenever I head to the coast with the family, my mum loves to recollect the times when the Gold Coast highway was a single lane each way. Cars would be backed up for miles and it was a long/slow trip. Thank God someone saw a problem and decided to put in the eight lane highway we have now.
This is bandwidth. The single lane is equivalent to a low-bandwidth connection, where only so much information can travel down the “pipe” at any one time. If there is more traffic than the connection can take, things start backing up. Vice-versa, a high-bandwidth connection means that a lot more information can travel at any one time, meaning that most data can be transferred at top speed and even multiple sources (multiple lanes) can transfer information at any one time.
The problem we have right now, in Australia, is that the cables in the ground were laid before the Internet existed. ADSL was invented to utilise the existing telephone cables in a sneaky way so that we could get Internet without having to re-lay cables. It’s a very clever technology that suffices most people today.
But, the fact is that it’s not sustainable. We are already peaking the capability of the cables. In fact, while you’re probably paying for an ADSL2+ connection that claims to give you 24 megabits per second, if you head on over to speedtest.net, I’ll bet you don’t get anywhere near that speed.
The cables we have now weren’t designed for the Internet and they’re not designed to give us scalable speeds to meet our growing demand for bandwidth. We need to rethink the way we transfer information to homes.
We need A LOT more bandwidth - not just for the future, but even now!
Symmetrical Speeds
ADSL is an acronym that stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Notice the word “Asymmetric”. This means that while you theoretically get 24 megabits per second downloads, you will get a lot less in terms of upload speed. In fact, you’ll be lucky to get 1 megabit per second (again, check your speedtest.net score).
“But James, I just want my songs and YouTube videos to download as fast as possible, why do I care about upload speeds!?”
Well, let’s take Skype as an example. It’s a two way video conversation. You are both downloading the video and audio from the other person, while you are uploading audio and video to them. You are uploading and downloading equal amounts of information. And, the quality of the picture you download is dictated by how quick the other persons’ upload speed is.
Skype today works really well, because they’ve designed the software to optimise and adjust based on your connection. But, if you’ve ever been on a Skype video call, you’ll notice that you can barely make out any detail in the picture. It’s fairly choppy and pixelated - not well suited for showing off fine artwork to a buyer or checking out someone's new jacket.
At work we have an SHDSL connection - a true symmetrical Internet connection that gives us 20 Mbps uploads AND downloads. This single connection provides 120 people with faster Internet than they’d get at home, while also serving web-pages 16,000 times a month. Additionally, we use a commercial VoIP service that runs all our outgoing phone calls over that same Internet connection.
If you ponder that a moment - 120 people on one 20 Mbps connection, without missing a beat - you’ll get a feel for the benefits of a symmetrical connection. Upload speeds matter a lot, especially to businesses. Unfortunately, they currently cost anywhere between 10 and 20 times that of ADSL.
But, I think the most important thing to remember is that your upload speed effects other people’s download speeds.
Reduced Latency
If you’ve ever called a friend overseas or seen the news presenters answer questions live from another country, you’ll notice a little bit of lag between when a question is asked and when the other person responds. This is latency and it is something network engineers battle with a lot.
Here’s a screengrab of my own speedtest.net results. On the left is the connection at my house and the right is my iPhone’s Optus 3G connection:
Obviously, I’m a bit disappointed that my supposedly “ADSL2+” connection is so slow, but there’s one metric in there where the wired connection excels and that’s the “ping” time.
Imagine a Hyundai Getz and a Mac truck in a relay race on a 100 Metre track. Each vehicle needs to get from one end to the other as fast possible, turn around and repeat the trip 5 times back and forth. While both the Getz and the truck are capable of doing 100 Kilometres per hour, the Getz is going to win, because it takes less time to speed up and slow down and turn corners.
Essentially, the ping time gives us an idea of how long it takes for a download (or upload) to “get going”. Note that, in order for a phone call to “feel” like it’s real time, you need a ping to be about 100 ms or lower. On the Symmetrical connection at work, we get ping times to our ISP on the Gold Coast of around 30 ms - ten times less latency than the 3G network.
Skype works adequately on my Internet connection at home, because there’s reasonably low latency. But, it’s not a very enjoyable experience on the 3G network, because the latency is so high. This is the same reason why Apple’s new iPhone 4 will only do FaceTime calls over a Wireless connection at home.
Reduced latency means a much snappier experience and in a world that is quickly turning to VoIP and video calling (amongst other things), this is very important.
Ubiquity
I picked up a new iPhone 4 last week and of all the features I was keen to test, it’s taken me a week to finally try out FaceTime video calls. Why? Because FaceTime is currently only available on iPhone 4’s. I know one other person who got theirs on launch day, but this person has been so busy they haven’t had time to call. Another one of my friends got their phone just the other day and so we were both able to try out the new feature.
If all my friends had been able to buy an iPhone 4 on launch day or if FaceTime was already available on all other smart-phones I would have been able to see the benefit’s of this new feature straight away. The point is that in order for FaceTime to be a successful feature, more and more people need to have access to a FaceTime enabled device.
In a similar way, our super-fast Internet connection at work doesn’t give me any real advantage at home, because I only have a very slow ADSL connection here. I guess you could say that there’s a bit of a “lowest common denominator” problem with networks.
In order for Australian’s to see the real benefits of a National Broadband Network, we all need to be on High-Bandwidth, Symmetrical, and Low-Latency connections. It really is a case of “the more the merrier”.
Care to Compare
Both the Labor and Liberal party’s have National Broadband plans. Let’s do a quick look at what each propose to provide and see how they score against the four points I’ve touched on.
Australia Liberal Party
The Liberals recently announced that they will provide a $6B grant pool that Internet Service Providers can access to help fund an expansion of their networks. What they’ve highlighted and what I hope would come from a plan like this is that they will take care of the Ubiquity problem, by expanding networks to more of the population. They have estimated that 97% of Australian’s will have at least a 12 Mbps and up to a 100 Mbps download speed.
This is a good start. Ubiquity is a big issue and I can imagine that they will go far to improve Bandwidth and perhaps Latency. However, they have already made public statements that call into question whether they are aware of and have a plan to solve the Symmetry problem.
If you have a 100 Mbps download speed, but only a 2 Mbps upload speed we aren’t going to see as big a benefit as you might imagine - this remains to be seen and addressed by the Libs and you might notice that I’m a little skeptical having heard about some of the technologies they propose to deploy.
Labor Party
Labor are already 6 months into their NBN project, with deployments in Tasmania starting to come online as we speak. NBN Co is the company setup to design and build the network, headed by Mike Quigley who has a long history of large scale telecommunications deployments under his belt. The plan is big and budgeted at a whopping 28 to 43 Billion dollars.
They have already proven that they are aware of and concerned about Bandwidth, Symmetry and Latency by opting to deploy Optic Fibre to the majority of residence. However, 7% of Australian’s will end up with wireless and/or satellite coverage, which is known to be slow in terms of latency.
My personal concern is that at such a high cost, 7% of the population on a high latency and slower speed is a bit disappointing.
There’s no denying that even an optimistic $28B is a whoppa of a price tag and understandably a lot of people are going to baulk at the ballot box over Labor's NBN plan. But, as a tech-head I believe that it is a smart plan, headed up by people who know what they’re doing and based on their progress in Tasmania, I’m confident they can pull it off.
That said, I’m still undecided about who I’ll vote for. What are your thoughts about the NBN? Who’s plan do you think is the “smarter” one and why?
P.S. If the NBN debate interests you and you have an hour free, watch Stephen Conroy, Tony Smith and Scott Ludlam battle it out in a debate at the National Press Club recently.
P.P.S. IT News has a nice little table to compare different aspects of the two plans.
