Tag: NBN

Monthly average losses to NBN scams almost triple in 2019

Australians are losing more money to NBN scams, with reported losses in 2019 already higher than the total of last year’s losses, according to the ACCC.

Consumers lost an average of more than $110,000 each month between January and May this year, compared with around $38,500 in monthly average losses throughout 2018 – an increase of nearly 300 per cent.  

“People aged over 65 are particularly vulnerable, making the most reports and losing more than $330,000 this year. That’s more than 60 per cent of the current losses,” ACCC Acting Chair Delia Rickard said.

“Scammers are increasingly using trusted brands like ‘NBN’ to trick unsuspecting consumers into parting with their money or personal information.”

Common types of NBN scams include:

  • Someone pretending to be from NBN Co or an internet provider calls a victim and claims there is a problem with their phone or internet connection, which requires remote access to fix. The scammer can then install malware or steal valuable personal information, including banking details.
  • Scammers pretending to be the NBN attempting to sell NBN services, often at a discount, or equipment to you over the phone.
  • Scammers may also call or visit people at their homes to sign them up to the NBN, get them a better deal or test the speed of their connection. They may ask people to provide personal details such as their name, address, date of birth, and Medicare number or ask for payment through gift cards.
  • Scammers calling you during a blackout offering you the ability to stay connected during a blackout for an extra fee.

It is important to remember NBN Co is a wholesale-only company and does not sell services directly to consumers.

“We will never make unsolicited calls or door knock to sell broadband services to the public. People need to contact their preferred phone and internet service provider to make the switch,” NBN Co Chief Security Officer Darren Kane said. 

“We will never request remote access to a resident’s computer and we will never make unsolicited requests for payment or financial information.”

“If someone claiming to work ‘for the NBN’ tries to sell you an internet or phone service and you are unsure, ask for their details, hang up, and call your service provider to check if they’re legitimate. Do a Google search or check the phone book to get your service provider’s number, don’t use contact details provided by the sales person,” Ms Rickard said.

“Never give an unsolicited caller remote access to your computer, and never give out your personal, credit card or online account details to anyone you don’t know – in person or over the phone – unless you made the contact.”

“It’s also important to know that NBN does not make automated calls to tell you that you will be disconnected. If you get a call like this just hang up.”

“If you think a scammer has gained access to your personal information, such as bank account details, contact your financial institution immediately.”

Should You Pay For A Paper Bill?

Interesting consultation from the Treasury of the impact of digital migration of consumer bills, and the emerging trend to charge for a paper version, which may adversely be impacting those unable or unwilling to go digital.  They suggest 1.2 million households are digitally excluded.

NBN Co forecasts that 94 per cent of households will have internet access by 2020, and 100 per cent by 2030. However, there is still a sizeable minority – 1.3 million households as of 2015 – who do not have access to the internet. These consumers currently have no practical way to transition to digital billing.

Individuals surveyed provided a variety of reasons for not accessing the internet. Many of the reasons provided do not suggest that the individuals fall into disadvantaged groups. However many cite a lack confidence or knowledge to access the internet or cost as the main reason for not accessing the internet. Based on the number of households who indicated cost or knowledge as their reason for not accessing the internet, Treasury estimates there are approximately 1.2 million Australians who do not have internet access at home because they either cannot afford it or because they believe they do not have sufficient technical skills. Given the relatively low cost and large benefits associated with having internet access, Treasury assumes a majority of the consumers who indicated cost as coming from one of the disadvantaged groups described. Additionally, in digital inclusion suggest many consumers who indicated lack of knowledge as a reason not to access the internet also likely come from one of the disadvantaged groups identified above.

In addition to those with no internet access there are also many Australians who lack the technical skills or appropriate technology to enable them to pay bills online. Digital inclusion is a measure of groups and individuals ability to access and use information and provides some insight into the makeup of this group.

Digital inclusion tends to decline with age and is lower among Australians with a disability and Indigenous Australians. Additionally, one in five Australians only has access to the internet through a mobile device. Modern mobile devices allow users to complete a majority of tasks that previously required a laptop or desktop, however some users may have difficulty reviewing their bills on a three to five inch screen. Mobile only internet access has been linked with socioeconomic factors including low income and low education levels.

Consumers who elect to receive paper bills and pay fees due to fear of online scams are an important subset of this group, although paper bills may also lead to identity fraud through mailbox theft. Unfamiliarity with the internet has been raised by many stakeholders as key reason why consumers do not want to transition to digital billing and justification for opposing paper billing fees.

Some consumers with lower levels of digital inclusion will still chose to receive digital bills. However a subset of this group will face significant barriers that may prevent them from accessing bills online and will instead pay paper billing fees. This suggests that there are likely disadvantaged consumers who have access to the internet, but still have no choice but to pay paper billing fees.

The provision of bills in a digital format, when compared to paper billing is often seen as a simpler, lower-cost and more environmentally friendly option for businesses and a more convenient option for consumers. Digital bills can also be integrated with other digital services and information such as electronic reminders or notifications, access to previous billing information, and online changes to personal details. For these reasons, it is viewed by some as being in the interest of business and the broader community to transition customers to digital bills. Paper billing fees – a charge for customers who elect to receive a paper bill – are a common mechanism used to encourage consumers to make the change to digital bills.

While many consumers may have the option to transition to digital bills, but choose to pay paper billing fees due to personal preference, there is a concern that this is not the case for all consumers. These consumers may pay paper billing fees out of necessity, because they do not have the ability to access digital bills.

There may be scope for the Government to take action to protect these consumers.

The policy options analysed in this RIS are:

  • Option 1 — the status quo, with an industry led consumer education campaign;
  • Option 2 — prohibition (ban) on paper billing fees;
  • Option 3 — prohibiting essential service providers from charging consumers to receive paper bills;
  • Option 4 — limiting paper billing fees to a cost recovery basis;
  • Option 5 – promoting exemptions through behavioural approaches.

Further evidence on the likely impact of all options is required to conduct an informed evaluation of the options and to determine which approach should be pursued. The views of stakeholders will inform a final, Decision Making Council of Australian Governments (COAG) RIS.

 

The experts agree, Turnbull’s NBN is ‘a national tragedy’

From The NewDaily.

The disastrous rollout of Australia’s NBN is a national tragedy, according to new research by one of the country’s most respected engineers.

Professor Rodney Tucker, of Melbourne University, argues that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s fateful decision as Communications Minister to opt for Fibre to the Node (FTTN), has been an extremely costly disaster.

 

While the rest of the world is opting for Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), Australia is embracing an obsolete technology.

Professor Tucker’s paper, The Tragedy of Australia’s National Broadband Network, just published in the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and Digital Technology, argues that a worldwide tipping point has been reached.

Globally, the majority of connections are now through FTTP. Australia is one of the very few countries using mass deployment of FTTN, with poor results.

Professor Tucker concludes: “This situation is nothing short of a national tragedy and a classic example of failed infrastructure policy that will have long-term ramifications for Australia’s digital economy.”

The news comes after reports that Australia has slower internet speeds than Kenya or Latvia – and is continuing to sink dramatically down the world rankings.

America now has 250 “gigabit” cities using FTTP, proving a boon for local economies. Australia has none.

Professor Tucker told The New Daily: “The NBN is a great loss of opportunity. We are becoming a broadband backwater. It will have profound effects.”

Associate Professor Mark Gregory, of RMIT University in Melbourne, was equally scathing when he spoke to The New Daily.

“Every Australian expert could see what was happening with technology,” he said. “The economic case used by the Coalition government was nonsense from the outset.

“This is the largest single waste of public funds in Australia’s history. Turnbull must take ownership of this mess. The cost to the taxpayer is currently at $49.5 billion and there is every indication the government will have to tip in another $5-10 billion.”

Paddy Manning, author of the Turnbull biography Born to Rule, told The New Daily that Malcolm Turnbull had been sceptical of the NBN from day one.

A tangle of copper wires in a puddle of stagnant water sums up the NBN, experts say A tangle of copper wires in a puddle of stagnant water sums up the NBN, experts say.

“In the 1990s Turnbull made a fortune from the internet, more than $40 million,” Mr Manning said. “Unfortunately he drew the wrong lessons from his experience. He thought there would not be enough demand for superfast broadband.

“There was also a knee-jerk ideological wariness of government enterprise and an unwillingness to embark on genuine long term nation building infrastructure projects.

“The Coalition has to shoulder the blame for FTTN. It is a mistake. It will prove an even bigger mistake when we have to find an untold amount of money to upgrade it.”

Chief Executive of Internet Australia Annie Hurley told The New Daily the government urgently needed to rethink the failed NBN. She advocated a bipartisan approach, bringing together the finest engineering minds in the country, including Professor Tucker, to plan a way forward.

“We have turned a vision into a quagmire,” she said. “There is sufficient evidence from around the globe that FTTN is an obsolete technology, yet it continues to be rolled out. We are throwing all this money at it, and we are going to have to come around and do it all again. That is the tragedy.”

Andrew Johnson, chief executive of professional association the Australian Computer Society told The New Daily: “We further reiterate that the reach, speed and quality of an NBN is critical to Australia’s future economic prosperity.”

A spokeswoman for the NBN did not respond to Professor Tucker’s criticisms.

The need for speed: there’s still time to fix Australia’s NBN

From The Conversation.

A National Broadband Network (NBN) based on Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) was, and still is, the right answer for Australia’s broadband needs.

Compared to the original FTTP-based NBN, we are currently on the way to a much poorer performing broadband network with a mix of FTTP, fibre to the node (FTTN) and other technologies. It will entail increased long-term costs and be completed at about the same time as the original project would have been completed.

Around the world, the direction in which new builds of fixed broadband networks are headed has become clear. The world is increasingly moving towards FTTP. As a consequence, advances are being made in FTTP technology that make it cheaper and easier to deploy.

These developments, which have taken place in the last few years, have only reinforced the rationale for basing Australia’s NBN on FTTP.

Not too late to change

It is not too late to change the current direction of the NBN, but that change would need to be made in a controlled and managed way to ensure the project is not subject to another major disruption.

Why has it been so hard to get at the facts regarding the costs and timing of the FTTP-based NBN? The answer, as we all know, is that the NBN project has been from its inception a contentious political issue.

Initiated by the Labor party back in 2009, it was a good example of a government being courageous enough to initiate a large and complex project for the public good.

The original NBN was a visionary project and would have created a valuable asset for the Australian public. It didn’t take long, though, for the attacks on the project to start.

But the fact – confirmed this week – remains that over the past three years, Australia’s world ranking for average peak connection speeds dropped from 30th to 60th. We shouldn’t have been happy with being ranked 30th in the first place.

Yet the drivers of faster speeds and capacities for fixed broadband have not abated. Quite the contrary.

The latest Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows internet usage has been increasing over the years, from 191,839 terabytes downloaded in the month of December 2010 to 1,714,922 terabytes in December 2015. That’s nearly a ninefold increase in five years.

Internet

What’s more, Cisco is forecasting that global broadband speeds will nearly double between 2015 and 2020.

From megabits to gigabits

That’s why the debate in the United States and Asia is about gigabit per second speeds, not about whether 25MBps or 50Mbps is sufficient.

It is a bit surprising that we continue to hear the argument that nobody is buying a 1Gbps service today, so why build a network that can deliver that much speed? 25Mbps to 50Mbps is more than enough.

This has been a mantra for the Coalition, and it was supported in the view by the Vertigan committee, which was set up to review the NBN. In its final report, the committee assumed that the median household would require only 15Mb/s by 2023.

It seems especially curious that a government that styles itself as the innovation and infrastructure government should argue this. Because this argument betrays a complete lack of understanding of what the original FTTP NBN was all about.

It was about providing the vital infrastructure that Australia needs in order to remain competitive internationally in the 21st century.

It is arguable that, today, most homes and businesses can get by with speeds of up to 50Mbps. But already there are many home-based businesses that can’t and are demanding 100Mbps or more.

Gigabit services are just starting to emerge elsewhere in the world, so the applications that can take advantage of this type of speed are in their infancy. But we all know they are coming.

To spend billions of dollars on building a major piece of national infrastructure that just about meets demand today, but doesn’t allow for any significant growth over the next ten or 20 years is incredibly short-sighted.

It is such a pity that so much time and effort has been spent on trying to discredit and destroy the original FTTP-based NBN plan. Equally, it’s a pity the Coalition has put its faith in what has turned out to be a short-sighted, expensive and backward looking multi-technology mix (MTM) plan based on copper.

The nation is going to be bearing the consequences of those decisions for years to come – in higher costs and poorer performance in an area that is critical to its long-term future. Betting tens of billions of taxpayers dollars at this time on copper access technologies, as the Coalition has done, is a huge miscalculation.

The number of telcos still focussed on squeezing out the last bit of value from their old copper networks continues to decrease every year. Even the UK’s BT, which has been the poster child for FTTN, is now planning to increase its FTTP deployment, in part as a response to pressure from the UK regulator, Ofcom.

Come the election

No matter what the outcome of the upcoming election, the original vision of a broadband network built largely on a future-proof FTTP solution is now going to happen over a longer period and at a greater cost to taxpayers.

The Coalition is likely to continue with the FTTN and Hybrid fiber-coaxial (HFC) deployments and the peak funding is likely to be in the range of A$49 billion to A$56 billion. It will take a “heroic” effort, as NBN Co’s chairman Ziggy Switkowski has said, to have the network completed by the end of 2020.

Just when the FTTN equipment will need to be upgraded to provide higher speeds is an unknown but given what is happening overseas, it is unlikely to be very long. No one has yet made public the estimated costs of this upgrade.

Should the Labor party win the election, we can expect a managed transition from FTTN to FTTP, increasing the number of premises served by FTTP by about two million.

Given what we now know about the deployment costs of FTTP versus FTTN, I would not expect this transition to FTTP to make a big difference to deployment costs or timing of completing the NBN. It will result, however, in a network that is a step closer to the desired end state.

While it is impossible to turn back the clock on the MTM, it is still possible to make changes to the current direction, without introducing another major disruption. Changes that will get us closer to building the right network for the long term.

It is becoming increasingly obvious, especially to customers, that an NBN based on FTTP is a much better network than an MTM-based NBN from every angle – speed and capacity delivery, maintenance costs, reliability, longevity and upgrade costs.

An FTTP network would be a much more valuable public asset and could generate greater cash flows for the government due to lower maintenance, higher revenues and almost no upgrade costs. And it would be vastly superior in driving growth through the wider economy.

So it is a great pity that before making the shift to the MTM, the Coalition did not heed the words re-quoted by the then independent MP for New England, Tony Windsor: “Do it right, do it once, do it with fibre.”

Author: Adjunct Professor in the School of Computing and Communications, University of Technology Sydney (Mike Quigley was affiliated with NBN Co for the period from July 2009 to September 2013. He was NBN Co’s CEO during this time.)

How do Labor and the Coalition differ on NBN policy?

From The Conversation.

As hinted in earlier announcements by Shadow Communications Minister, Jason Clare, Labor’s much-anticipated policy for the National Broadband Network released Monday commits the party – if elected – to move away from the Coalition’s fibre to the node (FTTN) network and transition back to a roll-out of fibre to the premises (FTTP). This was the central pillar of Labor’s original NBN.

The FTTN roll-out will be phased out as soon as current design and construction contracts are completed.

This is a major shift away from the Coalition’s focus on FTTN technologies, which was a key part of their election platform in 2013. After a number of delays, FTTN equipment is now being rolled out around Australia.

Labor will continue with the Coalition’s plans to deliver NBN services on upgraded versions of Telstra and Optus’ hybrid fibre coax (HFC) infrastructure. No doubt Labor would like to move away from HFC, but the contracts for the HFC network are already signed, and it is probably too late to remove HFC from the NBN.

Apart from a commitment to deliver FTTP rather than satellite services to western Tasmania, there are no significant changes to the fixed wireless and satellite parts of the network.

Labor forecasts that its revamped NBN will be completed by June 2022, with FTTP being available to 2 million more homes and businesses than would have been the case under the Coalition’s current plans. At the completion of Labor’s NBN rollout, approximately 39% or around 5 million homes and businesses will have access to FTTP, compared to 20%, or 2.5 million, under the Coalition.

A 39% FTTP coverage is considerably less than the 93% target in Labor’s original NBN plan. But in a significant longer-term policy initiative, Labor has promised to commission Infrastructure Australia to develop a plan to upgrade the 2.5 million premises served by FTTN to FTTP. This will mean that all fixed-line connections in Australia will eventually be either FTTP or HFC.

Labor’s new policy recognises the possibility that new fibre-to-the-distribution-point (FTTdP) technologies might become attractive in the future, but has reserved judgement on FTTdP until the technology is more mature. NBN Co is already looking at this technology.

Significantly, FTTdP is compatible with FTTP and offers a straightforward upgrade path to FTTP.

Can NBN Co deliver Labor’s new network?

Labor has pointed out that NBN Co has an in-house FTTP design and construction capability as well as the IT systems necessary to manage FTTP. In addition, legal agreements in place with Telstra to provide access to Telstra’s ducts and pits.

In fact, in recent months, NBN Co has been rolling out FTTP (including fibre to the basement in multi-dwelling units) at a rate of about 10,000 premises per week. This has been underway at a time when NBN Co has been focusing on ramping up its FTTN and HFC rollout.

With a shift away from FTTN construction, and a shift of resources to FTTP design and installation, it is entirely feasible that NBN Co could double the rollout rate to around 20,000 premises per week. This would be more than enough to serve the 5 million premises targeted over the five-year time-frame of Labor’s roll-out plan.

Are Labor’s costings sound?

Labor has not published a detailed budget for its NBN plan. But the total estimated cost ($49 billion to $57 billion compared to the Coalition’s budget of $46 billion to $56 billion) appears to be plausible.

There are a few key factors that support this:

  • The cost of installing FTTP has decreased significantly over recent years, aided by new efficient construction techniques and new fibre cables with smaller diameter.
  • The ongoing operational expenditure needed to keep an FTTP running is considerably lower than for FTTN.
  • FTTP will remove the need to be repair and maintain Telstra’s ageing copper network, a cost that NBN Co currently bears.
  • As the demand for higher-speed services over FTTP grows, NBN Co will receive higher revenues from its FTTP network than its FTTN network. Labor claims this will increase the rate of return on the NBN investment from 2.7% under the Coalition to 3.9% under Labor.

What will be the impact of Labor’s policy?

Many critics have highlighted the severe limitations of the Coalition’s slow-speed FTTN network and its relative inability to drive digital innovation.

The pace of FTTP roll-outs around the globe is increasing as other countries recognise the critical importance of super-fast broadband to economic growth.

AT&T, a major United States telco has essentially stopped constructing FTTN networks, and has announced a major increase in FTTP deployments in response to customer demands for higher speed.

In Australia, the Coalition’s FTTN exacerbates the “digital divide”, the gap between broadband haves and have-nots. Here’s how.

  • Those homes and businesses lucky enough to be served by FTTP can access very-high-speed internet now and even higher speeds in the future. Meanwhile, those premises stuck with FTTN will struggle with lower speeds and find that their connection is obsolete within a few years.
  • For those customers with FTTN connections, the speed of their service will be affected by their distance from the node. The greater the distance, the lower the speed.
  • The Coalition’s technology choice program enables FTTN customers to pay for an upgrade to FTTP, but at a cost depending on the distance from the node. A business that needs FTTP and is some distance from the node may have to pay $5,000 or more for an upgrade, while another business close to the node would pay considerably less.

The NBN has been a key issue in the past two elections, so will Labor’s new policy be a vote winner? The policy to move back to FTTP provides a clear differentiation from the Coalition’s FTTN-centric strategy.

Many Australians recognise the importance of super-fast broadband as a driver of innovation in the digital economy, and will no doubt think of this on July 2.

Author: Rod Tucker, Laureate Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne

How the NBN could boost Australia’s GDP by 2%

From The Conversation.

The National Broadband Network (NBN) can boost Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by about 2% in the long term and, more importantly, add to our national welfare by improving real household consumption by 1.4%.

These results, based on our recent research on the NBN’s economic benefit, mean the NBN will produce a step-change in Australia’ economic activity. If the future that we have modelled comes to pass, Australia will be better off with the NBN than it would have been without it.

With the NBN, valuable services are potentially more widely available than they would be without the NBN. We have been careful to attribute to the NBN only the value of increased availability of online services.

The services we have considered are ones that have documented evidence of their economic benefit. The six service categories included in our study were: cloud computing for small business; electronic commerce for small business and government; a hybrid form of online higher education; several forms of telehealth practice; teleworking; and entertainment services. Of these, telehealth and teleworking stand out as the most valuable contributors to the Australian economy with the NBN.

There is much uncertainty over what network capabilities are truly required to deliver the expected benefits from these services. We have therefore modelled two scenarios: one in which the services exploit advanced broadband capabilities; and one in which only modest capabilities are needed.

The difference between modest and fast

In the first scenario, we have assumed that most services require 10-25 Mbps downstream access speeds, with higher education and telehealth requiring only 2.5-10 Mbps. (The NBN was originally planned to provide 25 Mbps downstream.) The required upstream access speeds for most services were assumed to be at least 2.5 Mbps. This scenario produces a step-change in GDP in the long term – after the NBN is deployed – of 1.8%. Real household consumption increases by 2.0%, but this is reduced to 1.4% when the necessity of paying off the cost of the NBN is taken into account.

The second scenario is based on today’s applications and considering the low end of the possible range of access speeds. We have assumed relatively modest 2.5 Mbps downstream and 256 Kbps (0.256 Mbps) upstream access speeds are needed in most cases, with 10-25 Mbps downstream required to support streaming video and entertainment services. In this case, there is a modest rise in GDP (less than 0.2%) but real household consumption falls by about 0.4%. This clearly shows that an NBN built solely for entertainment is not economically worthwhile.

For our model of the Australian economy, we have used TERM, The Enormous Regional Model, from the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University. TERM has been used previously for studies related to environmental economics and other matters. We have modified it to include the NBN and to take account of the cost of building the network. We have assumed that the cost of the NBN is ultimately reflected in greater foreign debt, which must be paid for through higher export volumes.

We have been careful to compare like with like when we consider Australia with and without the NBN. In particular, we have assumed that without the NBN there would still be improvement in network access speeds. The primary delivery mechanism for broadband today is DSL, Digital Subscriber Line. We have assumed that all current and currently planned DSL deployments would be upgraded to ADSL2+, the highest speed variant available today. We have not assumed any expansion in Fibre to the Premises or HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coax) footprint.

For the NBN itself, we have used the technologies described in the NBN Strategic Review in December 2013. After this review, currently planned deployments of fibre-to-the-premises will continue – we have used the published plans from nbn co.

The existing HFC networks will be used with some fill-in of blackspots – in these circumstances we have mapped the existing HFC networks and modelled the effect of adding 900,000 premises to the HFC footprint. Fixed wireless will be deployed in less densely populated areas – in these areas we have used the published plans. We have assumed that the remainder of the NBN fixed-line footprint, after these other technologies have been taken into account, will be covered with fibre-to-the-node. Actual plans for fibre-to-the-node have not yet been published.

For the NBN capabilities, we have assumed that the network will deliver what has been foreshadowed. Specifically, this means downstream and upstream speeds of 25-100 Mbps for fibre-to-the-premises and HFC; 25-100 Mbps downstream and 2.5-10 Mbps (nominally 5 Mbps) upstream for fibre-to-the-node; and 10-25 Mbps downstream and 2.5-10 Mbps (nominally 4 Mbps) upstream for fixed wireless. We have excluded the satellite footprint from our study.

Our estimated benefits to the Australian economy are clearly conservative. They show the potential of the NBN but will only be realised if Australians and Australian industry embrace the opportunities provided by the NBN.

 

Authors: Leith Campbel, Honorary Fellow, Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne; Sascha Suessspec, Economist and Ph.D. Electronic and Electrical Engineering student, University of Melbourne.