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.