FTTN in Canberra

Alexandra Back at the Canberra Times newspaper asked me about the VDSL2 upgrade iiNet is offering in Canberra. This is an upgrade to the more than decade old Transact Fiber to the Node (FTTN) system, with faster modems. It is similar to the FTTN system proposed for the NBN by the current government, but the Canberra system is superior as the copper cable used was laid especially for FTTN and is not old telephone cable.

 "ANU adjunct lecturer Tom Worthington says the Canberra system has the advantage because there is new cable installed to homes, whereas for the NBN the plan is to re-use old phone cables". From  "iiNet offering VDSL2 in Canberra to compete with NBN", by Alexandra Back, Sydney Morning Herald and Canberra Times, December 29, 2015

The Lexus and the Broadband Network

Political commentators in Australia are struggling to explain the difference between ALP and Collation broadband proposals to the voters in nontechnical language. The ALP proposes continued roll-out of Fiber To The Premises (FTTP) for the National Broadband Network (NBN), whereas the Collation wants to use mostly Fiber To The Node (FTTN). My suggested analogy is: Should you buy a new car or fix up the old one, or "The Lexus and the Broadband Network".

The Lexus and the Broadband Network

The ALP FTTP proposal is like the car salesman offering you a new Lexus: sure it is expensive but it will be fast and reliable and last a long time. The Collation's custom auto centre says your ten year old Toyota Camry (copper cable) is mechanically sound, it just needs some new parts (FTTN) and will be much cheaper. Your kids say they don't want an uncool Lexus, or an old Camry, they want a cool Italian Scooter (Wireless Internet). You tell them they will grow out of the scooter in a few years and then want a real car, to which they reply "Whatever". ;-)

ps: In my view, if the government, whoever they are, want to save money, they could prioritize fibre roll-out in greenfield sites and areas with no, or poor broadband.

We have had TFFN in Canberra for just over a decade, with the Transact system. If you have power poles handy, and the citizens don't mind more overhead wires, it is a cost effective system. Also it works okay in new buildings. My apartment building has a fibre optic node in the basement and twisted pair copper to each unit. But if you are going to the trouble of putting new cables underground, then they might as well be fiber-optic, as most of the cost is in digging the trenches.

The areas with copper phone and Pay TV cable could be left for last, where it is working okay. This would be a slight change to the current government's NBN FTTP to achieve cost savings proposed by the opposition. Installing new FTTN should only be done on a limited scale, where the copper cable is new enough to be kept, but so far from the exchange that higher broadband speeds are not possible. The FTTN should be done so it can be upgraded to FTTP later.

Electrical Saftey in Battery Cars

Greetings from the Australian National University, where Professor Peter Zeller from Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, is speaking on "Safety Aspects of Renewable Energy and Electrical Cars". The problem is that an electric car has a battery pack producing 100 V to 500 V which can deliver 10 to 20 kWh of energy. Rescue services may need to cut into a vehicle to after an accident, with the risk of electrocution or explosion of the battery. In addition the battery power is DC, not the AC which electrical engineers are used to controlling.

Simulating Short Circuits on Electric Cars

The Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences simulated the effect of a short circuit in an electric car, resulted in electrical arcing. Professor Zeller pointed out that such a high temperature arc will soon burn through the insinuation between the battery pack and the passenger compartment of a car.

There may be a very large fuse in the car, but this will offer limited protection. In theory a switch can be used to disconnect the battery, but the design of such a switch is problematic, due to the very high current involved. It occurred to me that for a safety switch a linear shaped charge might be used (explosives are already used in airbags and pretensioning seat belts).

An interesting point Professor Zeller made was that even the 48 volt systems used in new internal combustion cars are causing problems due to arcing and the problem is much worse with 100 to 300 volts in an electric car.

Photo-voltaic panel safety

There are similar problems with photo-voltaic panels on homes, with many electrical connectors exposed to the elements (as with the recent Queensland floods). Reports indicate that up to 80% of the solar panels installed on homes in Australia have faults.

Smart Batteries and Solar Panels

Professor Zeller's analysis is based on the assumption that the battery or solar panel creating the high voltage and current is "dumb". That is the cells are simply connected together in series to create a large battery (or solar array), which is then switched off as one unit. The other option would be to use an electronic switch on each battery, so that one large switch is not needed. This can be done easily where each voltage source has its own regulator (as for example where each panel converts low voltage DC to high voltage AC with a micro-inverter). If AC is used then the switching problem is much less.

Safety of Electric Cars

Professor Peter Zeller from Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences, will speak on "Safety Aspects of Renewable Energy and Electrical Cars", in the Ian Ross Seminar Room, Ian Ross Building, the Australian National University, North Road, Canberra, 3pm, 21 July 2011.

Future of Telecommunications in Canberra

Australian Computer Society Telecommunications Special Interest Group (T-SIG) held its first Canberra meeting on Thursday. TSIG was formed from a merger of the Telecommunications Society of Australia (TSA) and ACS. The TSA is much older than ACS, being founded as the Telegraph Electrical Society in 1874. The merger recognises convergence between telecommunications and computing into IT.

The speaker for the first meeting was David Parkes, General Manager Retail for Transact on "TransACT – Past and Future". He detailed Transact's origins as a broadband, telephone and digital TV provider in Canberra and parts of Victoria. Transact was a pioneers of fibre to the curb in Australia (there is a Transact fibre optic node in the basement of my apartment building). They were an early provider of digital TV.

Transact is now installing Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) underground in to Canberra suburbs. The company installs a metal box on the outside of the house, similar in appearance to an electrical meter box. This houses the fibre termination, Ethernet and telephone interfaces and, importantly, a battery backup. The backup lasts for up to eight hours and maintains voice communications as a priority, first dropping d-TV, then Internet, to save power. While I and others, have advocated that battery backup should be part of the new NBN service, it is not c;ear this will be done and so Transact's service is superior in this respect. During Canberra's fire-storms, the service continued to operate across the city despite power brownouts (apart from the suburbs where the infrastructure was destroyed by the fire).

David provided an excellent overview of Transact's history. What was less clear was where Transact will go in the future. As he pointed out FTTP provides so much bandwidth that the current decentralised computing model can be rethought. Computing services can be centralised, with the desktop computers becoming essentially smart terminals (or thin clients). There will also be new ways to provide TV and other content. However, with the arrival of the National Broadband Network (NBN) it is not clear where Transact will find a business in this.

Transact has for years provided for Canberra, and parts of Victoria, what the NBN aspires to do for all of Australia: provide a reliable, high speed digital network to homes, with telephony, Internet, digital TV and other services. The ACT Government, who are a part owner of Transact and businesses have invested heavily in providing broadband for Canberra: what will happen to this investment with the arrival of the NBN, which has a mandate to connect all Australian homes?

Daivd outlined some of Transact's thinking of how they intend to prosper in the NBn era. Part of this is to maintain their customers and the service they provide: Transact have a functioning network and years of experience in supporting customers, whereas the NBN is still learning what to do.

No doubt Transact are also lobbying government to ensure that its investment will not be rendered worthless by NBN. It would be unfortunate of the debacle where Telestra and Optus wasted billions of dollars duplicating hybrid pay TV cable down the same streets of Sydney and Melbourne. There is no pressing reason for NBN to duplicate Transact's cabling in Canberra. NBN should cable the suburbs which Transact has not covered.

The likely future is that Transact will continue to provide services over their network to existing customers. Transact will also aim to become an NBN Retail Service Provider, delivering services to customers who use the NBN network.

Less clear are new areas with "The Cloud". David outlined how Transact were looking to resell Google Apps and Microsoft cloud based services, branded as "Storm Cloud". The servers will not be based in Australia and as David pointed out, this imposes legal limitations for commercial and particularly government customers. Smaller cloud service providers also offer locally based services from servers located in Transact's own data centre.

David also hinted at Transact providing virtual services for small business and home users. With this arrangement a virtual PC s provided on a shared server in a data centre. The customer using a think client computer, or an application running on a PC, to access it. The customer needs not worry about backing up or installing applications, as this is done for them.

While cloud and virtual PCs are interesting possibilities, these are new areas and ones Transact does not have any particular advantage in the market with. I suggest the area Transact does have an advantage in is being local to Canberra.

Australian government agencies, companies supporting them and companies providing services to the public are limited in their ability to use overseas based cloud services. Australian privacy legislation and security requirements limit the practicality and legality of hosting data on a cloud service located in another country. This, I suggest, provides a business opportunity for Transact. As a partly government owned entity which already meets Australian telecommunications legislation and has a data centre in Canberra, Transact could provide government and private customers a level of comfort their data is not ending up in some foreign location.

Transact could offer a vertical bundle, where they provide a server with the software and thin client computers (about the size of a paperback book and costing $200). Companies and smaller government agencies could afford to have a thin client desktop computer in the office and one at home for each staff member. As this could would only be used for work purposes, it would make security much simpler. The Defence project for thin clients could provide a good model for this which would overcome security objections. Transact could configure their network to separate the communications to these computers from other traffic, thus providing a level of security superior to that on the Internet.

One problem is educating clients as to what is possible. Google is doing some of this by having released some Chrome thin client computers ("Battle of the Chromebooks: Acer vs. Samsung",
By Melanie Pinola , PCWorld May 12, 2011 2:34 PM). Goggle's offerings are not that attractively priced and have severe technical limitations, making it relatively easy for Transact to say "like Google but better and cheaper".

In terms of government customers, the ACT Government is an obvious place to start. The ACT Government has recently decided to restructure itself from being a state government, to a large city council. As part of this, the ACT Government could decide to outsource its computing function and also adopt the IT standards of the federal government. Along with the servers, an external provided could provide email, applications and electronic records management. Staff would get a small thin client box to replace their desktop computer, to be plugged into their existing screen, keyboard and mouse. They could also have one to take home.

The application provided would be standardised across the ACT Government and be based on those of the federal government. This same service could then be offered to federal agencies.