Letter to Federal Member re NBNCo issues Part 2

Mr J. Leeser MP
Member for Berowra
Level 11, 423 Pennant Hills Road
Pennant Hills NSW 2110

re: “NBNCo refuses to engage with our community” 13/4/2023 12:34pm

cc michelle.rowland@aph.gov.au, media@nbnco.com.au, complaints@aussiebroadband.com.au

NBNCo ref #nnnnnnnn and #mmmmmmmm
Aussie Broadband ref #kkkkkkkk

Dear Mr Leeser,

My name is Andrew { REDACTED }. I am a constituent in the Berowra electorate who lives in { REDACTED }. I am writing to you today to update my earlier correspondence re NBNCo’s refusal to engage with the community in your electorate.

Since I last wrote to you, and following my letter to The Hon Michelle Rowland MP, the NBNCo media contact address and the Aussie Broadband complaints team on 13/4/2023 4:10pm, I was contacted by Mr { REDACTED }, a Resolution Manager in the High-Risk Complaints Team – Managed Customer Interface – Customer Engagement – Operations (NBNCo ref #mmmmmmmm) within NBNCo.

After several weeks of discussions and escalations within NBNCo to try and address my questions:

1. Why did my service fail for two days? What was the root cause of the failure and what corrective actions occurred to resolve it? NBNCo must have the telemetry and audit trails to answer this. NBNCo have not provided any of the requested information.
2. What plans and actions does NBNCo have in place to ensure a fault of this nature does not reoccur?
3. Why will NBNCo not provision a FttP service to my premises?

Mr { REDACTED } was able to provide the following verbal response:

1. NBNCo is unable to determine the cause of the service failure to my house.
2. Due to the lack of information for the cause, NBNCo cannot answer this question.
3. NBNCo is unable to provision FttP upgrades to my house because the owners of the power poles in our street have not given NBNCo permission to install additional equipment on the poles. NBNCo does not have a timeframe available for when this issue will be resolved.

Mr { REDACTED } was gracious enough to provide me with his personal mobile number for further contact. He has also agreed to make himself available for a follow-up enquiry in three months to determine what progress NBNCo has made in resolving this issue. I will continue to monitor the situation and report progress to you.

Following my conversations with Mr { REDACTED }, I performed a visual assessment of the NBNCo infrastructure deployed around my house. This assessment is by no means comprehensive, however the results are concerning.

Based on the numbers I have collected; it appears as though approximately 53% of houses within my immediate area are not eligible to upgrade to the faster more reliable FttP service from NBNCo. I include the numbers below for your reference.

Obviously, an ineligibility rate of 53% is very high. What is more concerning is that NBNCo has known about this issue since at least 2019 when the FttC services were installed. NBNCo is now placing advertising into the market (which im sure is not cheap) about their investments into making Australian houses able to upgrade to FttP (ref https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xeTDlRIvRU). Of note about these advertisements is that they do not contain any warning that homeowners houses may not be eligible. One would think that if ~50% of current NBNCo connections are not eligible that that might mean NBNCo may choose a different marketing tactic. At worse, NBNCo’s advertising of this upgrade capability is misleading.

I will also re-iterate that NBNCo has not responded to my question about the permits it has for field technicians to climb power poles. NBNCo has stated that it does not have a permit for the installation of new equipment on the power poles. Does it have a permit for the technicians to perform work on the existing equipment?

When you couple the ineligibility rates for FttP upgrades and lack of clarity with regards to work permits for field technicians, it very much appears as though NBNCo does not have the credibility to deliver the promised FttP upgrades it is so keen to advertise.

I think that both of these matters are worthy of questions in Parliament, and I hope you will endeavour to raise the matter in Parliament at the earliest opportunity.

My next steps will be to draft a community flyer for the houses surrounding me. In this flyer I will be making the neighbourhood aware of the situation the owners are in with regards to FttP upgrade eligibility. The flyers will include a call-to-action for the neighbourhood to contact your office, The Hon Michelle Rowland MP’s office and the NBNCo media mailbox.

As always, I am open to discussing this matter and what i’m sure are its broader effects on the larger electorate, with you, face to face or on the phone. I can be reached on 04{ REDACTED }.

Regards
Andrew { REDACTED }

Street Name	Lots connected via aerial DPU	Total Lots	Affected %age
{ REDACTED } Ave*	6	41	15%
{ REDACTED } Way	0	10	0%
{ REDACTED } Close	23	23	100%
{ REDACTED } Close	0	18	0%
{ REDACTED } Drive	7	22	32%
{ REDACTED } Place	5	5	100%
{ REDACTED } Road	11	11	100%
{ REDACTED } Place	20	21	95%
{ REDACTED } Road	10	26	38%
{ REDACTED } Crescent	25	25	100%
——	——	—-	—-
Totals	107	202	53%

* Note re { REDACTED } Ave. After about house numbers 54/41, no power poles are present in the street. Only houses with poles in the street are included in the count.

Letter to Federal Member re NBNCo issues

Mr J. Leeser MP
Member for Berowra
Level 11, 423 Pennant Hills Road
Pennant Hills NSW 2110

Dear Mr Leeser,

My name is Andrew {REDACTED}. I am a constituent in the Berowra electorate who lives in {REDACTED}. I am writing to you today regarding the state of NBNCo’s services in our suburb and the organisation’s unwillingness to act in the interests of the community.

I apologise for the length of this letter. It is important I feel though that I convey the entirety of the experience to date.

In about June 2019, the part of {REDACTED} I live in had NBNCo’s Fibre to the Curb (sic) (FttC) infrastructure installed. FttC is an interim broadband capability for service providers that are looking to deploy a service as cheaply and quickly as possible. Over the following 10 months 8 faults were raised with my Retail Service Provider (RSP) regarding dropouts and unreliability of the service. In February 2020, we had a tree fall down at the front of our property. This brought down the power and telephone lines attached to our home. The electrician that repaired the electricity also repaired the phone line. A new copper line was installed from the pole in the street to the telephone wall socket.

Ever since the copper line was replaced our FttC service has been stable and reliable. The intermittent problems, dropouts and unreliability issues that occured previously had stopped. This reliability served us well all through the pandemic which started soon after the tree fell. With three children relying on the internet for their school classes and my heavy usage of our internet connection for my work, we were very fortunate to have such a reliable service.

The neighbours around me though were not so fortunate. I have spoken to them recently about their experiences. The majority have all reported the frequent drop outs and unreliability of their FttC services. Initially, most raised faults with their RSP’s. After time though, most have given up trying. They expressed to me a very real sense of frustration and sadness about the issues, particularly those with children that had to have their kids attend online school classes during lockdown. Some agreed that their childrens education had suffered because they could not reliably engage with class discussions via video confrences.

Now, in April 2023, the unreliability of our FttC has returned. Over the course of two days, 29th and 30th March, our internet service was essentially unusable. The service would drop out 50-60 times per day. With my continuing to work-from-home on a full time basis, this had a significant impact on my employment.

A fault was raised with my RSP and basic troubleshooting was performed. The service would operate fine for a short while and then fail again. This behaviour continued for two days. After a couple of false starts, the RSP was able to raise an issue with NBNCo in such a way that NBNCo agreed there was a fault and booked a technican to attend my premises on Monday 3rd April. The technician attended at the advised time and was unable to diagnose the issue. The fault had stopped occuring on about 31st March. The technician confirmed that the weather cover on the NBNCO equipment attached to the power pole had come loose and was blowing open and closed in the breeze. The weather cover was re-secured by the technician.

At this point, the technican asked me why I had not switched over to a Fibre-to-the-Premises service since our area is eligible for the swap over at zero-cost to the consumer. I was aware this was a fact. I had checked my premises for eligibility with NBNCo and my RSP. Both had said my premises was not eligible. No explanation for the ineligibility was given. The technician advised me that I should contact my RSP and request they order a switch over of my premises to FttP regardless of the eligibility stated by NBNCo.

Since that time, my RSP has been moving mountains to try and resolve this issue. My goals, as stated to my RSP are:

1. Why did my service fail for two days? What was the root cause of the failure and what corrective actions occured to resolve it? NBNCo must have the telemetry and audit trails to answer this. NBNCo have not provided any of the requested information.
2. What plans and actions does NBNCo have in place to ensure a fault of this nature does not reoccur?
3. Why will NBNCo not provision a FttP service to my premises?

So far, in response to these questions, NBNCo has:

a) Closed a complaint case, with no action and a terse response, that my RSP raised with NBNCo (NBN case ref# {REDACTED})
b) Stated to my RSP (date Wed 12th April PM) that FttP is not available because NBNCo does not have the necessary permits in place to be able to do work on the power poles in my street.
c) Following that initial statement, the same afternoon or the next morning, NBNCo stated that FttP is not available because NBNCo does not have an approved design for the installation of FttP to my premises.

The responses from NBNCo do not make sense to a reasonable person for these reasons:

b) NBN technicans regularly climb ladders up power poles to perform work on NBNCo equipment. The technican that attended my property on April 3rd did exactly this. It would be logical to assume that NBNCo has permits to perform this sort of work. If they do not, and NBNCo technicans are climbing power poles without the necessary permits then this is a serious matter that NBNCo must resolve immediatly.
c) NBN DOES have an approved design for aerial FttP deployments. Paragraph 1, page 25 of the NBNCo network design rules describe the design. ref: https://www1.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbn/documents/sell/sau/network-design-rules-20220630.pdf

For aerial deployment, the LFN is a factory installed termination system (FITS) that utilises factory installed splice closures, referred to as overmoulds or NAPs (Network Access Points), to present either a multi-fibre or single fibre connector(s) at each required location. The Splitter MPTs and DPUs are then connected in a similar manner as the underground method.

I would like to ask you Mr Leeser, as part of your ongoing community campaign to address telecommunications within your electorate, to raise these matters with NBNCo and the Federal Minister for Communications, The Hon. Michelle Rowland MP. I am seeking answers to my questions of NBNCo and a statement from NBNCo as to their plans for providing FttP services for consumers with aerial FttC services.

I am more than happy to meet with you, either in our street or on the phone to discuss this matter further.

I look forward to receiving your reply.

Regards
Andrew {REDACTED}
{REDACTED}
{REDACTED} NSW {REDACTED}

04{REDACTED}

Edit 16:15 20230413 – An adjusted version of this letter was emailed to The Hon Michelle Rowland MP (Michelle.Rowland.MP@aph.gov.au). CC copies were also sent to julian.leeser.mp@aph.gov.au, media@nbnco.com.au, complaints@aussiebroadband.com.au.

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Letter to Federal Member re NBNCo TCP Quote

Mr J. Leeser MP – Julian.Leeser.MP@aph.gov.au
423 Pennant Hills Rd,
Pennant Hills NSW 2120

CC:
Ms Michelle Rowland MP – Michelle.Rowland.MP@aph.gov.au
Shadow Minister for Communications
230 Prospect Highway
Seven Hills, NSW, 2147

Dear Mr Leeser,

My name is Andrew XXX and I am a resident of your electorate in XXXX NSW. I am writing to seek your assistance to resolve a matter relating to NBNCo services in our street.

NBNCo services were made available to my house in early June 2019. Six months after the date advised by NBNCo and six months after most other residents in the street had their NBNCo service made available (ref: my letter to you 25/2/2019 12:37 Subject: Delayed NBN Services in Mt Colah).

Our NBNCo services are provided using the Fibre-to-the-Curb (FttC) technology as part of the Coalitions Multi-Technology-Mix strategy (MTM). This type of technology uses fibre optic cable strung along the power lines in the street and terminated on the pole. A device then connects my house to the fibre via the existing copper line into individual premises.

Myself and four of my neighbours have engaged with NBNCo (as a group) under their Technology Choice Program (TCP) (Technology choice application # XXXX-XXXXX) and requested a quote for the installation of a full Fibre-To-The-Premises (FttP) service into our five houses.

NBNCo have completed their quote and supplied it to us. The total price to convert the five houses to a full fibre optic service is just shy of $30,000 or $6000 per house. The validity of this quote ends 22nd September 2019 and after this date we will be forced to request a new quote from NBNCo and pay the quote fee of $330 each again. The justification for this high price is unavailable. It is this residents group’s view that this price is excessive and unreasonable for the reasons below.

NBNCo is unwilling to justify the price
Upon discussion with the NBNCo team that manages the quotes, they were unable to provide an itemised statement that allows me to determine what the contributing costs are to this price. The only advise I was provided with (verbally) was that the high cost is due to “civil works”. There is no mechanism of appeal for NBNCo customers to challenge this quote if they feel the price is unreasonable.

From this, my understanding is that NBNCo are directly passing on the equipment and labour costs for the installation of new underground conduits and pits into our street. Our street currently has no existing infrastructure in place for underground services.

We are being forced to pay for NBNCo’s shortsightedness
Due to the lack of underground infrastructure for telecommunications services in our street, when NBNCo designed and built the FttC infrastructure in XXXXX, all cabling and equipment was deployed via the existing power lines. NBNCo made a choice to not build the underground infrastructure in our street. Other streets in XXXXX that do have the underground infrastructure available have their FttC cables and equipment installed underground.

NBNCo network rules allow for aerial installations
According to NBNCo documents in the public domain which relate to network design rules, NBNCo has the option to deploy FttC and FttP using aerial solutions. Why has the design team in NBNCo now chosen to ignore these rules when producing our quote? Obviously the design team was able to use the aerial deployment methods during the design and build of the FttC solution.

NBNCO network rules allow for customers upgrading to FttP
The same public domain network design rules also illustrate that the NBNCo designers fully expected customers would be interested in upgrading their FttC connections to the FttP solution. The NBNCo network rules specifically describe this scenario. It does not make sense then that NBNCo designers would now essentially install a second NBNCo network in our street (in pits and pipes) just to service our five houses. This makes no sense, either commercially or practically.

The Government policy is flawed
On 9th April 2013, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Communications Minister Malcom Turnbull announced the Coalition’s Broadband Policy. The Policy announced the MTM Strategy and that customers would be able to pay “a few thousands dollars” and upgrade to the full FttP solution. The new MTM Strategy was “very flexible” and allowed customers that wanted the faster speeds (a work from home architect was a described use case in the press conference) to pay for an upgrade to FttP connection.

Our experience has now shown that this was not in-fact the case and that NBNCo has no willingness to actually deliver this part of the MTM Strategy. $6000 per house is not “a few thousand dollars”. NBNCo designed flexibility in the MTM as required but now appear unprepared or unwilling to actually allow this to happen.

There is a long history of NBNCo charging unreasonable fees to consumers for their switch over to an FttP service. There is a large representative sample of data available from https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS4A3OuN9GCIInzbaWr9OOl0dEUUyPgIuWT2zousCS8dSEAbFdFBaQB5P3pSGpfKEBH1ue7T6Baemvu/pubhtml

We would welcome the chance to meet with you in XXXX and have a conversation about our experiences and what may be a reasonable path forward. It would be beneficial to also have an NBNCo representative in attendance who is familiar with our TCP application.

I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter since NBNCo has given us till the 22nd September to respond to their quote. After that time our application will be closed and we would need to re-apply and re-pay the quote fees to start this process again.

Regards
XXXX

Aussie Broadband IPv6 and Synology SRM

EDIT 20190725 – A word of warning. I may have identified an issue with the device and its handling of IPv6 services. This may impact the reliability of the Internet connection you use with the device. I will update this article again once I have more certainty about whats going on.

EDIT 20190802 – I think the reliability problems have now been resolved. That’s a long story I may write about another time. In the meantime, ensure your Synology RT2600ac is running SRM 1.2.3 (announcement, download) before you follow the steps below.

I want to share with people how I went about configuring my Synology RT2600ac to work with IPv6 on Aussie Broadband.

This article is not about why you SHOULD enable IPv6. There are many other sites out there that make the case for why you should enable IPv6.

Aussie Broadband offer native IPv6 to their subscribers as a beta product. They don’t have any official information about the service available. Instead it is up to the community over at Whirlpool to try it out, support it, report any problems and help others get it going.

My Synology RT2600ac wireless router has built in native support for IPv6, as all good devices should in this day and age.

The steps to get the AussieBB IPv6 service running with my device were as follows.

First, configure your AussieBB service for IPv6.

1. Activate IPv6 on your AussieBB profile using the page here. That may take a few minutes to find its way through to your service. Be patient. Its a layer-3 thing so you shouldn’t need to reset your NBN device.
2. Make a note of the Client IPv6 Prefix (IA-PD) address range the page will display. You will need to know this later when configuring the Synology.

Next, configure your Synology router.

1. Log in to your Synology’s admin interface. The address to use is the same as you used to set it up.
2. Open the Network Center app.
3. Select the Internet menu and click the IPv6 setup button.
4. In the IPv6 setup: field, select the DHCPv6-PD option.
5. Press Okay to apply the settings and close the window.

Now it’s time to configure the internal network IPv6 configuration.

1. In the Network Center, click on Local Network.
2. Select IPv6 at the top.
3. And tick the Enable IPv6 tick box.
4. Now you need to select which Prefix to use on your internal network. Click the dropdown to select the prefix from the two available. Ensure you select the network range you noted above labelled Client IPv6 Prefix (IA-PD).
5. Ensure Stateless mode is selected.
6. Press Apply and you’re done.

IPv6 capable devices on your home network (wired or wireless) will start assigning themselves IPv6 addresses.

You can test the status of your IPv6 connectivity via https://ipv6-test.com/.

 

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