"Outspoken"

Why cant I get ADSL Broadband in many new suburbs?.
(written 18 Jan 2003)

It amuses me to see Telstra spending millions of dollars advertising their Bigpond Broadband services (both ADSL and Cable), when their are plenty of people out there that want it, but can't get it because of the way their houses connect to the Telstra network.

I live in an estate in Wanneroo, which is only a few years old (released in 2000). When Telstra wired up this estate, they chose to use a system know as "RIM" (remote integrated multiplexer) to keep their costs down. This system works as follows: In older suburbs, each house has discrete pairs of wires which run all the way back to the exchange, resulting in massive cables and junction boxes, but the pairs can be "plugged in" to ADSL enabled ports at the exchange (known as the DSL 'head-end' device or DSLAM) allowing ADSL services to the home, providing that the total cable distance from the exchange is less than a pre-determined amount (usually about 4.5K). With a RIM system, a high performance fibre optic cable is run from the exchange to the "RIM", which usually sits in a large green metal cabinet, roadside near the houses. This RIM then decodes the data, and sends the signals down relatively short cables to nearby houses.

The problem is that the RIMs do not support ADSL. They do support ISDN, but this is very slow compared to ADSL (64 / 128Kbps), is still too expensive, and very few ISP's (apart from Telstra) offer ISDN plans. Another side effect of running through a RIM, is that even modem speeds suffer, due to the encoding / decoding of the audio into digital bit streams. I can only get 26.4Kbps from my high quality modem, and in fact the highest speed of any nearby houses is only 28Kpbs. So even modem speed is unacceptably slow.

There is also another wiring type called "Pair Gain" which is also not ADSL compatible. I do not know how the pair gain system works. Sometimes, Telstra can find an alternate route for the signals to travel down to reach your house and hence provide ADSL compatibility, although the feedback that I am getting is that the success rate for this is very low.

So, what about cable? You guessed it! There is no cable in our estate either, and Telstra have no plans on installing it. For Foxtel pay TV, they are installing satellite dishes instead. Even if we did have cable in our estate, then we get very little choices of ISP, with Telstra Bigpond often being the only choice. Plans are more expensive than ADSL, but speed is generally good, subject to data congestion in your area (download speed is often uncapped, and can often be higher than 1mbps.)

So, what are Telstra going to do about it? New RIM equipment has been developed called "CMUX" units (which are basically miniature DSLAM units, and get installed into the RIM boxes in the streets), and Telstra has said that it is going to be rolling out this gear to fix the problem. However, in my dozens of attempts to get information from Telstra about the rollout schedule, I have had not a single positive response - no idea whatsoever when it will happen in my area, or indeed, if it will ever happen in my area. Telstra release a "Demand register" for ADSL, but when you visit this site, it is purely to gage which exchanges have the most demand for ADSL, which is no good to people behind RIMs, as most of us are already connected to ADSL enabled exchanges!

I really think that Telstra have a lot to answer for. A decade ago the I.T. industry was foreseeing the huge increase in demand of data services to both business and residential areas, and so why did Telstra not take notice? Why does Telstra continue to not provide answers to us about upgrade schedules etc? It seems that they have earned their reputation of being "unprofessional".

I also feel that the Wholesale divisions responsible for providing other ISP's with ADSL services to resell, have a lot to answer for as well. I have had extensive dealings with other ISP's and they are also all starved of information. Even things like ADSL line activation schedules are often inaccurate, sometimes being days out, resulting in massive inconveniences to clients, and embarrassment to the ISP's. Why should the ISP's reputations be eroded by Telstra's incompetency.

I have been in I.T. for a long time, and I actually predicted great things from Telstra with the advent of ADSL. This was a major reason why I bough Telstra shares. Even I did not predict how badly Telstra were going to managed the ADSL infrastructure in Australia, which I feel is a major factor in the poor performance of these shares, which continue to hover at about 75% of their purchase price.

Update - 6 Aug 2004...

I have just been connected to ADSL. Perhaps my barrage of applications through several ISP' s ultimately accelerated the process. I assume that Telstra probably record statistics of areas that are receiving ADSL applications, and perhaps bias their priority based on demand. Either way, I noticed a dramatic increase in my dial up modem connect speed from 26k to 48k a few days before the ADSL went live, and so I assume that a new line was run from my area to the exchange, therefore bypassing the RIM. I guess that is process is the part that Telstra referred to when they said a "Line Transposition" was taking place.

 These pages were last updated on 6 Aug 2004.