August 3, 2024 • 26 mins
Can you imagine a world where every household device is seamlessly connected and your internet speed is never a concern? Join us as we sit down with Robert Joyce, Head of Customer Strategy and Innovation at NBN, to uncover the incredible journey of fibre and connectivity evolution in Australia. From Robert's intriguing background in telecom—rooted in a family history with British Telecom—to his pivotal role at NBN, this episode is packed with insights into the massive growth of connected devices in homes over the last decade and how NBN has been the backbone of this revolution.
Venture into the transformative impact that the National Broadband Network has had across both rural and urban landscapes of Australia. With internet speeds skyrocketing from a mere 384 kilobits per second to a blazing one gigabit per second, activities like 4K streaming, remote work, and gaming have become effortlessly accessible. Robert provides a visionary outlook on the expected shift of broadcast TV to streaming platforms, underscoring how this evolution will redefine video delivery and spectrum usage. We also highlight the ever-growing number of connected devices in the average household and the implications for future connectivity demands.
Finally, we delve into the significant advantages that fibre optics hold over traditional copper networks. Robert sheds light on how fibre is not only a faster and more reliable option but also a greener, more environmentally friendly choice that saves energy by eliminating the need for repeaters. We also touch on the complexities of deploying such advanced infrastructure across Australia's diverse terrain and the importance of modern in-home Wi-Fi setups to truly harness the power of high-speed connectivity. Don't miss part two of our conversation with Robert Joyce next week as we continue exploring the future landscape of telecommunications.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael van Rooyen (00:00):
My discussion with my guest today
was so interesting we had tobreak it into two parts.
Here is part one of thatinterview.
Robert Joyce (00:07):
In the last 10 years we've seen a tenfold
increase in traffic on the NBNand we've gone from houses that
used to have seven connecteddevices to houses today that on
average have 22 connecteddevices and, by the end of the
decade, 35 connected devices.
Michael van Rooyen (00:22):
Today I have the pleasure in interviewing
Rob Joyce, who is the Head ofCustomer Strategy and Innovation
at NBN.
We're going to be talking allthings NBN connectivity, fiber
and all things related to howpeople work, live and play using
the NBN.
Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Hi there, Hi, Michael, Beforewe get started, do you mind
sharing a little bit about yourbackground in the industry and
(00:42):
what led you to your currentrole as head of customer
strategy at Innovation of MBN?
Yeah, sure, how long have wegot.
Robert Joyce (00:48):
It's a long story, it's funny enough.
I was a son of a telecomsengineer, oh wow.
So my dad was a telecomsengineer in BT and from the
earliest memory I used toremember going around the
exchanges and seeing these oldmechanical switches wearing away
, click, click, click.
And my granddad, he was acleaner there.
They had a fallout shelter inthe basement with rations and it
was proper old school.
(01:08):
I guess it was a GPO that hadevolved to become British
Telecom.
But I pretty much understoodtelecoms from a really early age
because of that sort ofgrounding with my dad and it'd
show me how, when you again alot of people won't remember but
the rotary dials on a telephone, when you did this you saw the
actual switch move and itconnected through physically, a
physical path, through a copperexchange.
(01:29):
So telecoms from an early age.
I went to university, studiedtelecoms and during uni I got
sponsored by Marconi.
So, marconi, it was the end ofthe 80s, it was still pretty
much the end of the Cold War.
But I went to Marconi,torpedoes and mines, all sorts
of things.
But a guy there said to me youdon't want to be here, mate,
cold War's coming to an end.
Telecoms is where it's at andmobile phones where it's at and
(01:51):
I said mobile phones as in thosebig bricks that you carry
around.
He said yeah.
He said that's the future.
So I took his word and I wentinto researching 2G evolution.
So it was putting data for thefirst time on GSM and then that
sort of opened the world to 2G,3g, 4g, 5g and that's really
been the career, mainly mobile,but always with an eye on,
(02:11):
obviously, backhaul of mobilesites is typically fiber.
So when an opportunity came tobroaden my portfolio and work
back in a fiber company, I tookthe opportunity.
So I joined MBN about a yearago as their customer, head of
innovation and strategy and sortof all good things that fiber
can deliver.
That's my bag.
Michael van Rooyen (02:30):
Yeah, wow, wow, Look.
I must say that's a couple ofthings on history.
There's incredible history.
I don't think I've had anyoneon the show that has actually a
heritage of family being, if Ithink about that, three
generations, right.
Your grandfather worked there,your father worked there and
then obviously that reallyattracted you, and certainly
being able to see those machinesin the way they used to operate
would be fascinating comparedto today with such digital
(02:51):
access.
Right, and certainly the nameMarconi that's a name I haven't
heard for a long time, right,but that's fantastic.
And you touched on 5G.
I saw that you've spent a lotof time building 5G networks,
testing for not just 5G but allthe lead up to that, so that's
an interesting space.
I've been talking to a fewcustomers more recently about
private LTE and 5G.
Where do you think that's goingfrom a holistic point of view?
(03:12):
I?
Robert Joyce (03:12):
looked at that.
When I was the CTO at Nokia, wewere obviously big at pushing
private 5G.
Nokia's portfolio includes.
The challenge is alwaysspectrum.
If you can't get spectrumeither on loan from an operator
who holds most of it, or thegovernment's got some pieces
that it can auction, then you'repretty scuppered.
You can, of course, useunlicensed bands, but then
(03:33):
you're subject to interferenceand limitations.
So for me it's all aboutspectrum and the Australian
government is getting there, butthey're not as advanced as, say
, the Germans.
The Germans took a portion ofthe 5G band and they assigned
that for industrial use.
So in Germany there's lots offactories now that have private
5G because of the sort of Germanforesight.
So yeah, spectrum is the key,but certainly we're seeing all
(03:56):
sorts of novel use cases acrossthe industry.
Obviously we're deliveringconnectivity nowadays at NBN,
but certainly a lot of connectedfarms are looking at private 4G
and 5G to enable automatedcherry pickers or weed killers
with lasers, etc.
It's an amazing space.
Michael van Rooyen (04:11):
Yeah, the use cases just continue to come
up with edge computing, butcontinue to be more powerful and
also connectivity right, beingable to drive a lot of those
services.
It's just phenomenal Talkingabout NBN, because you're
obviously attracted frombuilding wireless networks to
this big carrier network.
People know about the NBN, butdo you mind just spending a
couple of minutes of justreclarifying what the NBN is,
(04:32):
what its mission is for thosepeople, because there'll be a
lot of consumers or peoplelistening to this might think of
NBN in a particular way.
But maybe you can just solidifyit a bit further for us.
Robert Joyce (04:39):
Yeah, I mean, let's go back to my history, the
copper lines and the oldexchanges.
Once upon a time here inAustralia it was even the post
office back here before itbecame Telstra.
But Telstra built this networkprobably starting in the 1930s
where you'd have thesemechanical switches in the
exchange and before that you'dhave the old switchboard
operators that would switch thelines but to your house you
(05:00):
would have a twisted copper lineAgain.
It's probably still in mosthouses but that copper line was
great for voice telephonythrough the 80s.
Even though we digitized theswitch back at the exchange, the
copper line was still to yourhouse and it was fine till the
90s, until dial-up came.
Dial-up was cool and we allremember the whizzy-wurry sounds
(05:20):
on dial-up.
But as we moved through the 14.4, the 28.8, the 56, and we went
to ADSL where we got to about amegabit per second, we started
to come to the limit, especiallyon long copper lines.
Some of these exchange tohousehold runs can be 30
kilometers.
Then getting a megabit downthere is a problem because what
happens is the again, if we'regoing to talk physics, the
(05:43):
square waveform starts gettingdistorted because of the length
of the copper.
You then struggle todifferentiate between ones and
zeros the digital internet andthen you become limited or you
get errors.
So we needed to do somethingabout upgrading that copper line
, and really that's what NBN isformed to do it's to uplift
(06:03):
Australia's digital internetexperience by replacing that
copper.
For us, fiber is the the keydelivery mechanism of the future
, yes, and so we're busyupgrading many of our customers
now um to fiber so that we cangive them a gigabit today and we
can.
Michael van Rooyen (06:18):
We can go well, well beyond that in the
future yeah, it's the, it's theright, it's the right footprint
right.
I mean, for those technologistsand myself, starting with fiber
, I think that was obviously theambitious intent of what NBN
obviously pivoted a little bitduring the rollout, but
certainly the amount of fiberthat's being rolled out is
really the real key that's goingto drive us forward.
Right.
You really remove bandwidthconstraints.
(06:39):
The upgradability is easy.
You just change the CP on bothends and then you've got much
more capacity without needing tohaul new cables.
Robert Joyce (06:45):
Exactly yeah, and it's something that we can't do
overnight.
So and again, I'm not going toget into the politics because
I've not been here long enoughbut certainly we can't deliver
fiber to every householdovernight, and, in fact, there's
households in the outback thatwe never will get fiber to, and
we'll come on to thosealternative methods of
connectivity.
But what happened here inAustralia originally was we ran
(07:06):
fiber to a point, let's say, inthe street, and then we used the
copper line, so now the copperline was much shorter.
So, as I said before, we don'thave that length limitation, so
we can now pump 100 megabitsdown pretty much the limit 50
megs, 100 megs down that shortcopper line.
The trouble with copper as well,though, is it's metallic, so
it's in the ground, it's gettingwet, it's getting hot, cold, it
(07:28):
expands, and so, eventually, itdegrades, and our rule of thumb
is about 4% a year.
So if you had a 50 meg serviceon copper, every year, that
copper typically degrades, so wecan see there's a ticking bomb
on the copper lines.
We need to replace them, and weneed to replace them as well,
because it costs us a lot ofmoney to go out to street
cabinets that are copper-based,that get flooded.
(07:49):
So there's an interest for usnot only to upgrade to fiber for
speed and for what users need,but also to reduce our OPEX
costs in terms of servicing thenetwork infrastructure.
Going back to the history, yeah, we got fiber to the node and
fiber to the curb, but now we'regoing the full hog.
We're now doing what we callfiber to the premise or fiber to
the home.
So that's a fiber from theexchange all the way through to
(08:13):
your house.
So you'll have what we call anetwork termination box on your
wall.
The fiber will come into thereand then, typically, you'd have
a 10-gig port that you'd pluginto and then you'd go Wi-Fi
into your house from there.
Michael van Rooyen (08:25):
I thought it was brilliant.
Obviously there would have beena lot of assessment done at the
time of the build of what's theright NT to put on the wall.
If you just look at theautomation even behind that
being able to switch carriersyou guys are obviously the
underlie to all that, or theunderlying network that supports
multiple carriers sitting ontop of it, and I think the ease
of that integration is actuallyquite brilliant.
I don't think people realizehow far we've come, even just
(08:45):
commissioning a new service.
Robert Joyce (08:46):
That's right.
I mean, you're right, we're thewholesaler, so we don't sell
direct to the customer.
We enable the likes of Telstra,optus, leaptel, aussie
Broadband those guys to sell tothe customers, but they all sit
on our infrastructure and, asyou say, it's interesting People
can change their internetservice provider overnight if
they want.
They could change them everymonth, of course.
So we geared up to be able todo that.
(09:08):
So we don't just run thenetwork.
We also have to integrate with,as I say, over 100 different
ISPs in order to be able toprovision billing provision,
service provision, assurance,etc.
It's not as simple as justrunning copper in the ground or
running fiber in the ground.
There's this whole IT backendthat is also very complex.
Michael van Rooyen (09:28):
Sign significant, and the intent was
also to provide kind of parityright, so that we're trying to
get to a point of parity.
Yes, of course there's distancein some areas but realistically
, being the underlay of everyone, most people should experience
the same sort of quality, speed,performance.
Yeah, exactly.
Robert Joyce (09:44):
As I said before, if we think about the Outback
we're tasked with, what could wedo for those long copper lines
where we can't get more than amegabit?
So there were two alternativesand we implemented both.
The first is what we call fixedwireless access.
So it's a type of 4G 5G network, but it's dedicated for
Internet service provision.
So there's no mobiles on there.
So we can more easily controlthe amount of bandwidth that we
(10:06):
provide our users.
There's no fluctuation duringthe day on that.
So we have a network of 2,000sites providing 4G and 5G fixed
wireless access.
So that's how we connect anumber of our customers.
And then, beyond the fiber andthe fixed wireless footprint, we
have our satellite service.
So we have a service calledSkyMuster, nbn SkyMuster it
covers the whole of Australia,including the islands as well,
(10:29):
so it's the only nationalsovereign 100 coverage network
in australia.
Um.
So we are the biggest network,but don't tell telstra that um
and that has been in place since2016 and that's delivering
speeds of up to 100 megabits.
So you know, imagine if youwere a farmstead, you were on
this copper line, you were notgetting more than a megabit per
second.
Overnight you upgrade toSkyMuster all of a sudden 100
(10:53):
megabits per second.
You can watch Netflix, youtubeand of course, we'll come on to
the change in landscape ofsatellite, but in 2016, that was
pioneering.
Michael van Rooyen (11:02):
That is.
I mean, a lot of people arethinking about what it is today,
but that's an interesting fact,and so they heard the SkyMuster
terminology being thrown aroundover many years and we've done
some work with it.
I think about remote schoollearning, where we've had
SkyMuster delivered to educationdepartments, et cetera.
But reflecting that it isactually a sovereign state
end-to-end network is somethingthat probably people miss that
data point on them.
(11:22):
I think it's a very bespokesolution, but that's a great
point.
So, off the back of that beingthe underlying network, there's
no doubt that the NBIN hasreally significantly impacted
Australia from a connectivitypoint of view.
Can you discuss some of themost transformative changes that
NBIN has brought to some ofthose rural and urban areas?
Robert Joyce (11:39):
Yeah, I mean, as I say, without more than a
megabit per second you're notgoing to be able to do a lot
with the internet, not anymore.
I mean it's funny.
I mean I remember getting 384kilobits per second on 3G and we
thought that was fast.
I mean, imagine getting thattoday, so certainly delivering
100 megs.
Or on the fixed wirelessnetwork we can now go up to 400
megs and on the fiber we can goto a gig.
(12:00):
And this is as of today.
Obviously in the future weexpect to expand those a lot
further.
But certainly it has deliveredparity across Australia there to
expand those a lot further, butcertainly it has delivered
parity across Australia.
There's no one in Australiathat says I cannot connect
anymore.
You can connect at least 100megabits per second, and 100
megabits per second it's enoughfor, as I say, 4k Netflix.
It's for multiple video streams, it's enough for working from
(12:23):
home downloading big gamepatches.
I mean I don't know whether youknew that it's game patches
that cause the peak on ournetworks.
No really Every couple ofFridays there's a Fortnite or a
Call of Duty patch and thesethings are like 100.
Gigs and gigs yeah 20 gigs to100 gigs and, yeah, typically we
see the peak on a Friday night,oh, wow.
(12:44):
And it's interesting becauseI've got three kids and they
love Fortnite and we've got aone gig service at home.
So one gig you can get down thepatch in pretty much about 20
minutes.
All right, and I don't knowwhether you've got kids, but
they're on Twitch and they'retalking to the mates and you can
(13:04):
hear the lads or the girls thathave got 50 meg service,
because you hear the dad come inthe room about nine o'clock and
go.
No, johnny, you know it'sbedtime now.
Oh, but I'm halfway through thedownload Dad, you know, Joyce
has got it down.
It's like, yeah, we've got itdown because you know we're on a
gig and, yeah, you don't need agig all the time, Of course,
but you do need a gig in themoments that matter, and that
(13:25):
could be downloading thatNetflix movie On a gig.
Netflix is down pretty much in.
A movie is down in less than aminute, whereas 50 megs.
Your Uber's going to beclocking the meter while you're
waiting to download.
So it's certainly the momentsthat you need these higher
speeds and again, we'll come onto future services in a bit and
we can talk about what mightneed more than a gig.
Michael van Rooyen (13:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's a fascinatingdata point.
Obviously, there'll be patchTuesday.
That's a very, very interestingdata point and I think the
other point you're making is,besides, in been making parity
availability for connectivity,there's just this expectation
Everyone expects a higher speed.
Everyone sees these newservices and even if I see the
IPTV world changing right to somany people even not even all of
(14:07):
their antennas there for forhome, a lot of them are just
streaming the nines, the sevens,the tens all.
Robert Joyce (14:11):
yeah, yeah, I mean , that's a key fact we've been
seeing.
You know that more and more thebroadcast tv is is now
diminishing.
55 percent of our traffic onthe nbn is video wow, wow, and
typically on a an evening thatpeaks around nine o'clock,
people are, like you say, arewatching live tv streamed.
Nowadays on the apps they're'rewatching Netflix and basically
video's driven the growth on thenetwork We've seen in the last
(14:33):
10 years.
We've seen a tenfold increasein traffic on the NBN and we've
gone from houses that used tohave seven connected devices to
houses today that on averagehave 22 connected devices and by
the end of the decade 35connected devices.
But, as I say, a lot of thathas been driven by the streamers
.
The average Aussie watches 300minutes of video a day, which is
five hours, which is a lot.
(14:54):
Already, half of that is now onstreamed rather than broadcast
and we're seeing more and moreof the broadcast ebbing away
onto apps and you may have seenthat the free-to-air broadcast
is quite keen to get their appsfront and centre on the new TV.
So there's a bit of lobbyinggoing on there, but what we
eventually see and it's in ourinterest to keep an eye on this
(15:15):
is all of that.
Live broadcast TV will come ontoour network and it'll come onto
our network and we need tothink about how we carry that,
how we ensure quality of service.
We need to think, or thebroadcasters and the country
need to think about what do theydo with the old towers, the old
spectrum?
I mean, I can imagine thatTelstra and Optus and TPG are
rubbing their hands at gettinghold of some of that low-bound
(15:35):
spectrum, but there's no reasonthat you have three delivery
mechanisms for video anymore.
The minute we've got satelliteand Foxtel, we've got broadcast
and then we've got streamed andI can well imagine that in 10
years' time that that broadcastis done away with and we'll need
to think about.
Yeah, there will be somestragglers that we need to bring
along and that might meandelivering them a satellite dish
(16:00):
or connecting them via thefixed line, the NBN.
But certainly I do see a worldwhere broadcast TV is no longer
here in probably 10 years' time.
Michael van Rooyen (16:05):
Yeah, look, I completely agree If I think
about the transition, even fromthe analogue to digital that
came along.
We forced people to switch overfor many, many reasons.
But even if I look at the timethat I spent working in the pay
TV business, we went from MMDStower delivered to signal to
when we migrated to satellite.
So it's just this evolution,right, and I think, much better
than I would.
But overseas delivering of IPTVhas been a big thing for many,
(16:27):
many years.
Right, they've been pushingthat for a very long time.
But, interestingly, it would beinteresting to see the graphs
that you would see that have thetransition of data.
The 56% of a big network ofvideo is a lot of video, right,
it's a lot of video and continueto grow yeah.
And everyone wants it to be HD,Everyone wants it to be 4K and
again that's an interestingpoint about what does 4K need.
Robert Joyce (16:47):
Again, I won't name any names, but you go on
some websites and you look atwhat they recommend for needing
4K and they'll say 25 megs, 25megs.
Sometimes it's 35 megs.
Now I don't know whether you'veever tried, and we do this in
our labs and the DiscoveryCenter here.
We limit the bandwidth and thenwe see the performance of those
streaming services.
(17:08):
A couple of them.
If limit the bandwidth and thenwe see the performance of those
streaming services.
A couple of them.
If you click play, they won'tjust stop at 25 megs, they'll go
all the way up to about 120megs to download enough to fill
the buffer.
And then, once you startscrolling at 100 megs and you
let go, it's instant.
It's not like you don't see thered circle anymore or whatever.
Michael van Rooyen (17:26):
I've noticed that.
Robert Joyce (17:30):
Yeah, if you're on 100 meg plus, you don't see the
red circle and that's quite anice experience.
It's a bit like again when wewent from analog to digital tv,
when you used to change thechannel on digital tv it's
sometimes it'd take a second tochange and you're like what's
this?
You flick through channels onthe digital tv.
You had to wait and then on thedigital tv you might remember
if you had one of the early tvsyou would hear the football
cheer next door before you'dhear it on your TV because of
(17:51):
the lag.
So yeah, so it's a bit like thatwith streaming services
nowadays Until you'veexperienced bufferless playback,
you don't know what you'remissing.
But once you've experienced it,it's like well, why would I
ever go back?
There's been a lot written inthe press recently about what do
you need, but we're seeing nowthat at least 100 meg is a
(18:12):
hygiene factor for decent video.
Michael van Rooyen (18:13):
4k videos bufferless playback, wow.
And you touched on your labsand no doubt you have lots of
skunkworks and labs and buildingand testing.
Out of that, what are someinnovations that we can expect
in the near future from NB andhow are those advancements going
to help with the digitallandscape of Australia?
Robert Joyce (18:29):
We talked about one gig services.
So our fixed line technology,whether that's hybrid fiber or
full fiber, now delivers amaximum of one gig residential
and actually 10 gigs enterpriseethernet.
But we're looking at movingthat now, moving that to two
gigs, initially on theresidential side.
So there's consultation out.
Obviously we can't just flip aswitch because we've got all
(18:51):
these ISPs RSPs connected to asretail service providers.
They need to be ready, theyneed to get their billing
systems, their IT systems ready.
So it's a long process.
But certainly our network'sready for two gig and in fact
it's ready for 10 gig and infact we showed recently it's
ready for 100 gig.
Recently we set the world'sGPON record.
(19:11):
So GPON is Gigabit PassiveOptical Network.
It's the technology that theNBN is based upon.
We, together with Nokia, set aspeed record of 80 gigabits per
second using the fiber that goesto your house, the fiber that
goes to my house.
So we showed that, as you saidbefore, as we upgrade the
electronics at the exchange andat the CPE in the home, the
(19:32):
fiber is good for the future.
In fact I recently went toNokia Bell Labs in the home.
The fibre's good for the future.
In fact I recently went toNokia Bell Labs in the States
and they were showing me 400gigabits on a single fibre.
So our network is already fitfor the future.
And it's funny because when Iwas at university I remember a
lecturer saying to me.
He said once we get fibre to ahouse, he said that's it
infinite bandwidth?
Now I doubted him at the timeand yeah, it's probably not
(19:54):
infinite bandwidth, butcertainly from where we are
today, one gig.
To say we're going to move to400 gig and beyond is amazing.
Michael van Rooyen (20:02):
Look at this .
I've been doing I call itdigital plumbing for many, many
years and I'm a big fan and lovedigital plumbing, right,
because it really is theunderpinning of everything we do
.
And I remember a frame relay,atm circuits, 155 meg.
It was like incredible.
And now you just think aboutthe mobility and what you can
get out of a 5G network.
It's just, it's very excitingand just again that those use
cases that are coming.
(20:24):
We've been talking a bit aboutspeeds and feeds for home,
residential, what are the kindof plays around the commercial
space enterprises, same sort ofthing as really RSP.
You provide the fibreunderground, just to distinct
the two because people mightthink NBN's really residential
related.
Of course you underpin thewhole of the digital economy for
Australia.
Can you just touch on a bitabout the business side of the
play.
Robert Joyce (20:44):
Yeah, on the business side we offer two types
of services.
We offer what we call businessfibre and that's based upon the
technology that comes to ourhouses, so it's based upon the
GPON network.
So that is good for, say, a gigtoday and two gigs in the
future and many small businesses.
That's more than adequate.
But then we also have what wecall our enterprise Ethernet
service, which is a dedicatedfiber.
(21:05):
So we will deploy a dedicatedfiber to a building or to an
enterprise and that's good forup to 10 gigabits per second
today.
And again we see a roadmapwhere we can take that to 25, 50
, 100 plus.
So certainly you know we coverboth the resi and the business.
There's a bit more competitionin the business space.
Because it's bigger business,people are willing to deploy
(21:28):
their own fibers in that space.
Yes, but I think in theresidential space and the
business fiber space it's prettymuch ours to have.
Michael van Rooyen (21:34):
Yeah, and when I reflect on the build of
NBN, it's so widespread.
I mean, Australia is such alarge continent and, unlike the
US where there's lots ofdifferent fibre we were talking
earlier about lots of othervendors of the US, for example,
that deploy fibre in maybe itmight be citywide, it might be
statewide You're building anetwork for the nation statewide
(21:56):
of you're building a networkfor the nation.
What have been some of thehardest and biggest challenges
that you guys have faced frominception and kind of how have
you addressed these to providethis widespread connectivity?
Robert Joyce (22:02):
Yeah, it's interesting because I thought
about this last night and itstruck me that your mobile phone
is probably very similar tomine and it's got a SIM card and
it just works, whereas yourhouse is completely different to
mine.
So where you have the fibertermination point and where I
have the fiber term, it'stotally different.
So the challenge, one of thechallenges that we really have,
is each and every house isdifferent.
(22:23):
Sometimes it can take us anhour to do the upgrade.
Sometimes it can take us twodays because we have to find
where the copper line is.
Can we use the old duct thatthe copper line went?
No, this house has been alteredsince then, and so that's the
difference that use the old ductthat the copper line went.
No, this house has been alteredsince then, and and so that's
the difference.
That's the challenge.
The challenge for us is peopledon't realize how complicated
and how bespoke each and everyhouse is.
(22:44):
A good point, and so be it.
And then the other thing thatalso makes our life challenging
is that we we may upgrade ahouse to fiber and we may have
to, rather than we can'tobviously dig under the house,
but we may have to rather thanwe can't obviously dig under the
house, but we may have to putthe fiber on the first or the
second room we come to or thefirst wall, whereas the old
copper line that was put inthere before the house was
renovated or rebuilt mightterminate in the middle of the
(23:07):
house, so that typically iswhere they may have their Wi-Fi
router today.
So when we terminate on anoutside wall and we say, now you
need to think about yourin-home Wi-Fi, what a lot of
people do is they take that oldWi-Fi router they've had for
five or ten years, plug it intothis bedroom socket and then
wonder why the back of the housenow has lost connectivity.
And then we end up struggling toexplain that well, you
(23:28):
certainly do have 100 megabitsto the house, it's just that you
also need to upgrade your Wi-Fi.
It just that you also need toupgrade your Wi-Fi.
It's a bit like putting craptires on a Ferrari.
You need to think about it.
So nowadays we're trying toeducate, together with the RSPs,
people to think about theirin-home setup.
The Nest solutions that we seeand the mesh solutions these are
what we need if we're going tocover the whole houses.
And don't forget we talkedabout bit rates Because bit
(23:51):
rates are now the hygiene factoris 100 meg.
It's no good just getting 5 megto the corner of the room.
If you want a good experience,you need to get 100 meg.
So you need potentially moreWi-Fi access points than you did
in the past.
There are main challenges atthe moment.
Michael van Rooyen (24:06):
It's a good, interesting perspective on the
challenges, right, so youwouldn't think about that and
it's a great point around.
Everyone's premise is different.
People just assume we can justinstall it easily.
Robert Joyce (24:16):
And it's interesting, in the Discovery
Center, our exhibition labupstairs, one of the displays is
exactly that the topology ofthe NBN, and it's amazing to see
where the fibers go in thestreet, how each and every house
is connected, which streets arestill on copper, which streets
have gone half and half.
And if you think, one of theother challenges we have is we
can't force migrate people fromcopper.
(24:37):
We're offering them an upgradeso they can upgrade to fiber, so
we still maintain streets thathave 50% copper lines, 50% fiber
lines.
And obviously eventually we'regoing to need to think about how
we convince the lager to moveforward because, as I say, the
copper line will degrade Justthinking about that from a
connectivity for, for the strata.
Michael van Rooyen (24:57):
We touched on how you're trying to bring
parity, connectivity andbenefits of the internet and and
those to to all consumers.
How's, how's n been working tobridge that digital divide and
and promote that connectivityand and inclusivity?
Robert Joyce (25:10):
one of the um inclusive uh schemes we've had
is what we call the SchoolStudent Broadband Initiative,
and so there we're looking atunderprivileged families and
we've offered 30,000 familiesfree internet for a year.
So if they've got a schoolstudent at home and they're
below a certain threshold andthey can talk to the agencies to
get the application in, thenwe're now providing free
(25:33):
broadband for these families.
And, as as we've said, we'venot touched on the pandemic yet,
but certainly we have realizedjust how important the, the
internet, is and how importantconnectivity is.
You know, we went from maybeoften working at home and maybe
kids never schooled at home, youknow to overnight to hey,
listen, we need you and I needto be working from home, we need
(25:53):
to be on Zoom calls, team,calls the kids.
I mean, again, I can rememberthree kids in my house
homeschooling Thank goodness wehad laptops for them and then
also mum's watching Netflix whenshe's not homeschooling.
So again, it was a massive jumpon society, a massive jump on
the network.
We saw a 20% traffic increaseovernight and that's not gone
(26:14):
away.
So the point I was trying tomake was we're still there.
You often hear it.
We did five years evolution inabout two years in terms of
digital connectivity and yeah,that's not gone away.
So, again, brings me to thepoint on fiber.
Fiber is eight times morereliable than copper.
Eventually, people will see thelight, so to speak, down in
(26:36):
fibre.
They will see the light, and Ioften say this fibre's faster.
In fact, fibre's greener.
It actually consumes a lot lesspower, of course, because we
don't have repeaters in thestreets as we do with the
copper-based network, andbasically it's the future.
Michael van Rooyen (26:52):
I hope you enjoyed part one of my
discussion with Robert Joyce.
Listen in next week for parttwo.
My discussion with my guest today
was so interesting we had tobreak it into two parts.
Here is part one of thatinterview.
Robert Joyce (00:07):
In the last 10 years we've seen a tenfold
increase in traffic on the NBNand we've gone from houses that
used to have seven connecteddevices to houses today that on
average have 22 connecteddevices and, by the end of the
decade, 35 connected devices.
Michael van Rooyen (00:22):
Today I have the pleasure in interviewing
Rob Joyce, who is the Head ofCustomer Strategy and Innovation
at NBN.
We're going to be talking allthings NBN connectivity, fiber
and all things related to howpeople work, live and play using
the NBN.
Rob, welcome to the podcast.
Hi there, Hi, Michael, Beforewe get started, do you mind
sharing a little bit about yourbackground in the industry and
(00:42):
what led you to your currentrole as head of customer
strategy at Innovation of MBN?
Yeah, sure, how long have wegot.
Robert Joyce (00:48):
It's a long story, it's funny enough.
I was a son of a telecomsengineer, oh wow.
So my dad was a telecomsengineer in BT and from the
earliest memory I used toremember going around the
exchanges and seeing these oldmechanical switches wearing away
, click, click, click.
And my granddad, he was acleaner there.
They had a fallout shelter inthe basement with rations and it
was proper old school.
(01:08):
I guess it was a GPO that hadevolved to become British
Telecom.
But I pretty much understoodtelecoms from a really early age
because of that sort ofgrounding with my dad and it'd
show me how, when you again alot of people won't remember but
the rotary dials on a telephone, when you did this you saw the
actual switch move and itconnected through physically, a
physical path, through a copperexchange.
(01:29):
So telecoms from an early age.
I went to university, studiedtelecoms and during uni I got
sponsored by Marconi.
So, marconi, it was the end ofthe 80s, it was still pretty
much the end of the Cold War.
But I went to Marconi,torpedoes and mines, all sorts
of things.
But a guy there said to me youdon't want to be here, mate,
cold War's coming to an end.
Telecoms is where it's at andmobile phones where it's at and
(01:51):
I said mobile phones as in thosebig bricks that you carry
around.
He said yeah.
He said that's the future.
So I took his word and I wentinto researching 2G evolution.
So it was putting data for thefirst time on GSM and then that
sort of opened the world to 2G,3g, 4g, 5g and that's really
been the career, mainly mobile,but always with an eye on,
(02:11):
obviously, backhaul of mobilesites is typically fiber.
So when an opportunity came tobroaden my portfolio and work
back in a fiber company, I tookthe opportunity.
So I joined MBN about a yearago as their customer, head of
innovation and strategy and sortof all good things that fiber
can deliver.
That's my bag.
Michael van Rooyen (02:30):
Yeah, wow, wow, Look.
I must say that's a couple ofthings on history.
There's incredible history.
I don't think I've had anyoneon the show that has actually a
heritage of family being, if Ithink about that, three
generations, right.
Your grandfather worked there,your father worked there and
then obviously that reallyattracted you, and certainly
being able to see those machinesin the way they used to operate
would be fascinating comparedto today with such digital
(02:51):
access.
Right, and certainly the nameMarconi that's a name I haven't
heard for a long time, right,but that's fantastic.
And you touched on 5G.
I saw that you've spent a lotof time building 5G networks,
testing for not just 5G but allthe lead up to that, so that's
an interesting space.
I've been talking to a fewcustomers more recently about
private LTE and 5G.
Where do you think that's goingfrom a holistic point of view?
(03:12):
I?
Robert Joyce (03:12):
looked at that.
When I was the CTO at Nokia, wewere obviously big at pushing
private 5G.
Nokia's portfolio includes.
The challenge is alwaysspectrum.
If you can't get spectrumeither on loan from an operator
who holds most of it, or thegovernment's got some pieces
that it can auction, then you'repretty scuppered.
You can, of course, useunlicensed bands, but then
(03:33):
you're subject to interferenceand limitations.
So for me it's all aboutspectrum and the Australian
government is getting there, butthey're not as advanced as, say
, the Germans.
The Germans took a portion ofthe 5G band and they assigned
that for industrial use.
So in Germany there's lots offactories now that have private
5G because of the sort of Germanforesight.
So yeah, spectrum is the key,but certainly we're seeing all
(03:56):
sorts of novel use cases acrossthe industry.
Obviously we're deliveringconnectivity nowadays at NBN,
but certainly a lot of connectedfarms are looking at private 4G
and 5G to enable automatedcherry pickers or weed killers
with lasers, etc.
It's an amazing space.
Michael van Rooyen (04:11):
Yeah, the use cases just continue to come
up with edge computing, butcontinue to be more powerful and
also connectivity right, beingable to drive a lot of those
services.
It's just phenomenal Talkingabout NBN, because you're
obviously attracted frombuilding wireless networks to
this big carrier network.
People know about the NBN, butdo you mind just spending a
couple of minutes of justreclarifying what the NBN is,
(04:32):
what its mission is for thosepeople, because there'll be a
lot of consumers or peoplelistening to this might think of
NBN in a particular way.
But maybe you can just solidifyit a bit further for us.
Robert Joyce (04:39):
Yeah, I mean, let's go back to my history, the
copper lines and the oldexchanges.
Once upon a time here inAustralia it was even the post
office back here before itbecame Telstra.
But Telstra built this networkprobably starting in the 1930s
where you'd have thesemechanical switches in the
exchange and before that you'dhave the old switchboard
operators that would switch thelines but to your house you
(05:00):
would have a twisted copper lineAgain.
It's probably still in mosthouses but that copper line was
great for voice telephonythrough the 80s.
Even though we digitized theswitch back at the exchange, the
copper line was still to yourhouse and it was fine till the
90s, until dial-up came.
Dial-up was cool and we allremember the whizzy-wurry sounds
(05:20):
on dial-up.
But as we moved through the 14.4, the 28.8, the 56, and we went
to ADSL where we got to about amegabit per second, we started
to come to the limit, especiallyon long copper lines.
Some of these exchange tohousehold runs can be 30
kilometers.
Then getting a megabit downthere is a problem because what
happens is the again, if we'regoing to talk physics, the
(05:43):
square waveform starts gettingdistorted because of the length
of the copper.
You then struggle todifferentiate between ones and
zeros the digital internet andthen you become limited or you
get errors.
So we needed to do somethingabout upgrading that copper line
, and really that's what NBN isformed to do it's to uplift
(06:03):
Australia's digital internetexperience by replacing that
copper.
For us, fiber is the the keydelivery mechanism of the future
, yes, and so we're busyupgrading many of our customers
now um to fiber so that we cangive them a gigabit today and we
can.
Michael van Rooyen (06:18):
We can go well, well beyond that in the
future yeah, it's the, it's theright, it's the right footprint
right.
I mean, for those technologistsand myself, starting with fiber
, I think that was obviously theambitious intent of what NBN
obviously pivoted a little bitduring the rollout, but
certainly the amount of fiberthat's being rolled out is
really the real key that's goingto drive us forward.
Right.
You really remove bandwidthconstraints.
(06:39):
The upgradability is easy.
You just change the CP on bothends and then you've got much
more capacity without needing tohaul new cables.
Robert Joyce (06:45):
Exactly yeah, and it's something that we can't do
overnight.
So and again, I'm not going toget into the politics because
I've not been here long enoughbut certainly we can't deliver
fiber to every householdovernight, and, in fact, there's
households in the outback thatwe never will get fiber to, and
we'll come on to thosealternative methods of
connectivity.
But what happened here inAustralia originally was we ran
(07:06):
fiber to a point, let's say, inthe street, and then we used the
copper line, so now the copperline was much shorter.
So, as I said before, we don'thave that length limitation, so
we can now pump 100 megabitsdown pretty much the limit 50
megs, 100 megs down that shortcopper line.
The trouble with copper as well,though, is it's metallic, so
it's in the ground, it's gettingwet, it's getting hot, cold, it
(07:28):
expands, and so, eventually, itdegrades, and our rule of thumb
is about 4% a year.
So if you had a 50 meg serviceon copper, every year, that
copper typically degrades, so wecan see there's a ticking bomb
on the copper lines.
We need to replace them, and weneed to replace them as well,
because it costs us a lot ofmoney to go out to street
cabinets that are copper-based,that get flooded.
(07:49):
So there's an interest for usnot only to upgrade to fiber for
speed and for what users need,but also to reduce our OPEX
costs in terms of servicing thenetwork infrastructure.
Going back to the history, yeah, we got fiber to the node and
fiber to the curb, but now we'regoing the full hog.
We're now doing what we callfiber to the premise or fiber to
the home.
So that's a fiber from theexchange all the way through to
(08:13):
your house.
So you'll have what we call anetwork termination box on your
wall.
The fiber will come into thereand then, typically, you'd have
a 10-gig port that you'd pluginto and then you'd go Wi-Fi
into your house from there.
Michael van Rooyen (08:25):
I thought it was brilliant.
Obviously there would have beena lot of assessment done at the
time of the build of what's theright NT to put on the wall.
If you just look at theautomation even behind that
being able to switch carriersyou guys are obviously the
underlie to all that, or theunderlying network that supports
multiple carriers sitting ontop of it, and I think the ease
of that integration is actuallyquite brilliant.
I don't think people realizehow far we've come, even just
(08:45):
commissioning a new service.
Robert Joyce (08:46):
That's right.
I mean, you're right, we're thewholesaler, so we don't sell
direct to the customer.
We enable the likes of Telstra,optus, leaptel, aussie
Broadband those guys to sell tothe customers, but they all sit
on our infrastructure and, asyou say, it's interesting People
can change their internetservice provider overnight if
they want.
They could change them everymonth, of course.
So we geared up to be able todo that.
(09:08):
So we don't just run thenetwork.
We also have to integrate with,as I say, over 100 different
ISPs in order to be able toprovision billing provision,
service provision, assurance,etc.
It's not as simple as justrunning copper in the ground or
running fiber in the ground.
There's this whole IT backendthat is also very complex.
Michael van Rooyen (09:28):
Sign significant, and the intent was
also to provide kind of parityright, so that we're trying to
get to a point of parity.
Yes, of course there's distancein some areas but realistically
, being the underlay of everyone, most people should experience
the same sort of quality, speed,performance.
Yeah, exactly.
Robert Joyce (09:44):
As I said before, if we think about the Outback
we're tasked with, what could wedo for those long copper lines
where we can't get more than amegabit?
So there were two alternativesand we implemented both.
The first is what we call fixedwireless access.
So it's a type of 4G 5G network, but it's dedicated for
Internet service provision.
So there's no mobiles on there.
So we can more easily controlthe amount of bandwidth that we
(10:06):
provide our users.
There's no fluctuation duringthe day on that.
So we have a network of 2,000sites providing 4G and 5G fixed
wireless access.
So that's how we connect anumber of our customers.
And then, beyond the fiber andthe fixed wireless footprint, we
have our satellite service.
So we have a service calledSkyMuster, nbn SkyMuster it
covers the whole of Australia,including the islands as well,
(10:29):
so it's the only nationalsovereign 100 coverage network
in australia.
Um.
So we are the biggest network,but don't tell telstra that um
and that has been in place since2016 and that's delivering
speeds of up to 100 megabits.
So you know, imagine if youwere a farmstead, you were on
this copper line, you were notgetting more than a megabit per
second.
Overnight you upgrade toSkyMuster all of a sudden 100
(10:53):
megabits per second.
You can watch Netflix, youtubeand of course, we'll come on to
the change in landscape ofsatellite, but in 2016, that was
pioneering.
Michael van Rooyen (11:02):
That is.
I mean, a lot of people arethinking about what it is today,
but that's an interesting fact,and so they heard the SkyMuster
terminology being thrown aroundover many years and we've done
some work with it.
I think about remote schoollearning, where we've had
SkyMuster delivered to educationdepartments, et cetera.
But reflecting that it isactually a sovereign state
end-to-end network is somethingthat probably people miss that
data point on them.
(11:22):
I think it's a very bespokesolution, but that's a great
point.
So, off the back of that beingthe underlying network, there's
no doubt that the NBIN hasreally significantly impacted
Australia from a connectivitypoint of view.
Can you discuss some of themost transformative changes that
NBIN has brought to some ofthose rural and urban areas?
Robert Joyce (11:39):
Yeah, I mean, as I say, without more than a
megabit per second you're notgoing to be able to do a lot
with the internet, not anymore.
I mean it's funny.
I mean I remember getting 384kilobits per second on 3G and we
thought that was fast.
I mean, imagine getting thattoday, so certainly delivering
100 megs.
Or on the fixed wirelessnetwork we can now go up to 400
megs and on the fiber we can goto a gig.
(12:00):
And this is as of today.
Obviously in the future weexpect to expand those a lot
further.
But certainly it has deliveredparity across Australia there to
expand those a lot further, butcertainly it has delivered
parity across Australia.
There's no one in Australiathat says I cannot connect
anymore.
You can connect at least 100megabits per second, and 100
megabits per second it's enoughfor, as I say, 4k Netflix.
It's for multiple video streams, it's enough for working from
(12:23):
home downloading big gamepatches.
I mean I don't know whether youknew that it's game patches
that cause the peak on ournetworks.
No really Every couple ofFridays there's a Fortnite or a
Call of Duty patch and thesethings are like 100.
Gigs and gigs yeah 20 gigs to100 gigs and, yeah, typically we
see the peak on a Friday night,oh, wow.
(12:44):
And it's interesting becauseI've got three kids and they
love Fortnite and we've got aone gig service at home.
So one gig you can get down thepatch in pretty much about 20
minutes.
All right, and I don't knowwhether you've got kids, but
they're on Twitch and they'retalking to the mates and you can
(13:04):
hear the lads or the girls thathave got 50 meg service,
because you hear the dad come inthe room about nine o'clock and
go.
No, johnny, you know it'sbedtime now.
Oh, but I'm halfway through thedownload Dad, you know, Joyce
has got it down.
It's like, yeah, we've got itdown because you know we're on a
gig and, yeah, you don't need agig all the time, Of course,
but you do need a gig in themoments that matter, and that
(13:25):
could be downloading thatNetflix movie On a gig.
Netflix is down pretty much in.
A movie is down in less than aminute, whereas 50 megs.
Your Uber's going to beclocking the meter while you're
waiting to download.
So it's certainly the momentsthat you need these higher
speeds and again, we'll come onto future services in a bit and
we can talk about what mightneed more than a gig.
Michael van Rooyen (13:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's a fascinatingdata point.
Obviously, there'll be patchTuesday.
That's a very, very interestingdata point and I think the
other point you're making is,besides, in been making parity
availability for connectivity,there's just this expectation
Everyone expects a higher speed.
Everyone sees these newservices and even if I see the
IPTV world changing right to somany people even not even all of
(14:07):
their antennas there for forhome, a lot of them are just
streaming the nines, the sevens,the tens all.
Robert Joyce (14:11):
yeah, yeah, I mean , that's a key fact we've been
seeing.
You know that more and more thebroadcast tv is is now
diminishing.
55 percent of our traffic onthe nbn is video wow, wow, and
typically on a an evening thatpeaks around nine o'clock,
people are, like you say, arewatching live tv streamed.
Nowadays on the apps they're'rewatching Netflix and basically
video's driven the growth on thenetwork We've seen in the last
(14:33):
10 years.
We've seen a tenfold increasein traffic on the NBN and we've
gone from houses that used tohave seven connected devices to
houses today that on averagehave 22 connected devices and by
the end of the decade 35connected devices.
But, as I say, a lot of thathas been driven by the streamers
.
The average Aussie watches 300minutes of video a day, which is
five hours, which is a lot.
(14:54):
Already, half of that is now onstreamed rather than broadcast
and we're seeing more and moreof the broadcast ebbing away
onto apps and you may have seenthat the free-to-air broadcast
is quite keen to get their appsfront and centre on the new TV.
So there's a bit of lobbyinggoing on there, but what we
eventually see and it's in ourinterest to keep an eye on this
(15:15):
is all of that.
Live broadcast TV will come ontoour network and it'll come onto
our network and we need tothink about how we carry that,
how we ensure quality of service.
We need to think, or thebroadcasters and the country
need to think about what do theydo with the old towers, the old
spectrum?
I mean, I can imagine thatTelstra and Optus and TPG are
rubbing their hands at gettinghold of some of that low-bound
(15:35):
spectrum, but there's no reasonthat you have three delivery
mechanisms for video anymore.
The minute we've got satelliteand Foxtel, we've got broadcast
and then we've got streamed andI can well imagine that in 10
years' time that that broadcastis done away with and we'll need
to think about.
Yeah, there will be somestragglers that we need to bring
along and that might meandelivering them a satellite dish
(16:00):
or connecting them via thefixed line, the NBN.
But certainly I do see a worldwhere broadcast TV is no longer
here in probably 10 years' time.
Michael van Rooyen (16:05):
Yeah, look, I completely agree If I think
about the transition, even fromthe analogue to digital that
came along.
We forced people to switch overfor many, many reasons.
But even if I look at the timethat I spent working in the pay
TV business, we went from MMDStower delivered to signal to
when we migrated to satellite.
So it's just this evolution,right, and I think, much better
than I would.
But overseas delivering of IPTVhas been a big thing for many,
(16:27):
many years.
Right, they've been pushingthat for a very long time.
But, interestingly, it would beinteresting to see the graphs
that you would see that have thetransition of data.
The 56% of a big network ofvideo is a lot of video, right,
it's a lot of video and continueto grow yeah.
And everyone wants it to be HD,Everyone wants it to be 4K and
again that's an interestingpoint about what does 4K need.
Robert Joyce (16:47):
Again, I won't name any names, but you go on
some websites and you look atwhat they recommend for needing
4K and they'll say 25 megs, 25megs.
Sometimes it's 35 megs.
Now I don't know whether you'veever tried, and we do this in
our labs and the DiscoveryCenter here.
We limit the bandwidth and thenwe see the performance of those
streaming services.
(17:08):
A couple of them.
If limit the bandwidth and thenwe see the performance of those
streaming services.
A couple of them.
If you click play, they won'tjust stop at 25 megs, they'll go
all the way up to about 120megs to download enough to fill
the buffer.
And then, once you startscrolling at 100 megs and you
let go, it's instant.
It's not like you don't see thered circle anymore or whatever.
Michael van Rooyen (17:26):
I've noticed that.
Robert Joyce (17:30):
Yeah, if you're on 100 meg plus, you don't see the
red circle and that's quite anice experience.
It's a bit like again when wewent from analog to digital tv,
when you used to change thechannel on digital tv it's
sometimes it'd take a second tochange and you're like what's
this?
You flick through channels onthe digital tv.
You had to wait and then on thedigital tv you might remember
if you had one of the early tvsyou would hear the football
cheer next door before you'dhear it on your TV because of
(17:51):
the lag.
So yeah, so it's a bit like thatwith streaming services
nowadays Until you'veexperienced bufferless playback,
you don't know what you'remissing.
But once you've experienced it,it's like well, why would I
ever go back?
There's been a lot written inthe press recently about what do
you need, but we're seeing nowthat at least 100 meg is a
(18:12):
hygiene factor for decent video.
Michael van Rooyen (18:13):
4k videos bufferless playback, wow.
And you touched on your labsand no doubt you have lots of
skunkworks and labs and buildingand testing.
Out of that, what are someinnovations that we can expect
in the near future from NB andhow are those advancements going
to help with the digitallandscape of Australia?
Robert Joyce (18:29):
We talked about one gig services.
So our fixed line technology,whether that's hybrid fiber or
full fiber, now delivers amaximum of one gig residential
and actually 10 gigs enterpriseethernet.
But we're looking at movingthat now, moving that to two
gigs, initially on theresidential side.
So there's consultation out.
Obviously we can't just flip aswitch because we've got all
(18:51):
these ISPs RSPs connected to asretail service providers.
They need to be ready, theyneed to get their billing
systems, their IT systems ready.
So it's a long process.
But certainly our network'sready for two gig and in fact
it's ready for 10 gig and infact we showed recently it's
ready for 100 gig.
Recently we set the world'sGPON record.
(19:11):
So GPON is Gigabit PassiveOptical Network.
It's the technology that theNBN is based upon.
We, together with Nokia, set aspeed record of 80 gigabits per
second using the fiber that goesto your house, the fiber that
goes to my house.
So we showed that, as you saidbefore, as we upgrade the
electronics at the exchange andat the CPE in the home, the
(19:32):
fiber is good for the future.
In fact I recently went toNokia Bell Labs in the home.
The fibre's good for the future.
In fact I recently went toNokia Bell Labs in the States
and they were showing me 400gigabits on a single fibre.
So our network is already fitfor the future.
And it's funny because when Iwas at university I remember a
lecturer saying to me.
He said once we get fibre to ahouse, he said that's it
infinite bandwidth?
Now I doubted him at the timeand yeah, it's probably not
(19:54):
infinite bandwidth, butcertainly from where we are
today, one gig.
To say we're going to move to400 gig and beyond is amazing.
Michael van Rooyen (20:02):
Look at this .
I've been doing I call itdigital plumbing for many, many
years and I'm a big fan and lovedigital plumbing, right,
because it really is theunderpinning of everything we do
.
And I remember a frame relay,atm circuits, 155 meg.
It was like incredible.
And now you just think aboutthe mobility and what you can
get out of a 5G network.
It's just, it's very excitingand just again that those use
cases that are coming.
(20:24):
We've been talking a bit aboutspeeds and feeds for home,
residential, what are the kindof plays around the commercial
space enterprises, same sort ofthing as really RSP.
You provide the fibreunderground, just to distinct
the two because people mightthink NBN's really residential
related.
Of course you underpin thewhole of the digital economy for
Australia.
Can you just touch on a bitabout the business side of the
play.
Robert Joyce (20:44):
Yeah, on the business side we offer two types
of services.
We offer what we call businessfibre and that's based upon the
technology that comes to ourhouses, so it's based upon the
GPON network.
So that is good for, say, a gigtoday and two gigs in the
future and many small businesses.
That's more than adequate.
But then we also have what wecall our enterprise Ethernet
service, which is a dedicatedfiber.
(21:05):
So we will deploy a dedicatedfiber to a building or to an
enterprise and that's good forup to 10 gigabits per second
today.
And again we see a roadmapwhere we can take that to 25, 50
, 100 plus.
So certainly you know we coverboth the resi and the business.
There's a bit more competitionin the business space.
Because it's bigger business,people are willing to deploy
(21:28):
their own fibers in that space.
Yes, but I think in theresidential space and the
business fiber space it's prettymuch ours to have.
Michael van Rooyen (21:34):
Yeah, and when I reflect on the build of
NBN, it's so widespread.
I mean, Australia is such alarge continent and, unlike the
US where there's lots ofdifferent fibre we were talking
earlier about lots of othervendors of the US, for example,
that deploy fibre in maybe itmight be citywide, it might be
statewide You're building anetwork for the nation statewide
(21:56):
of you're building a networkfor the nation.
What have been some of thehardest and biggest challenges
that you guys have faced frominception and kind of how have
you addressed these to providethis widespread connectivity?
Robert Joyce (22:02):
Yeah, it's interesting because I thought
about this last night and itstruck me that your mobile phone
is probably very similar tomine and it's got a SIM card and
it just works, whereas yourhouse is completely different to
mine.
So where you have the fibertermination point and where I
have the fiber term, it'stotally different.
So the challenge, one of thechallenges that we really have,
is each and every house isdifferent.
(22:23):
Sometimes it can take us anhour to do the upgrade.
Sometimes it can take us twodays because we have to find
where the copper line is.
Can we use the old duct thatthe copper line went?
No, this house has been alteredsince then, and so that's the
difference that use the old ductthat the copper line went.
No, this house has been alteredsince then, and and so that's
the difference.
That's the challenge.
The challenge for us is peopledon't realize how complicated
and how bespoke each and everyhouse is.
(22:44):
A good point, and so be it.
And then the other thing thatalso makes our life challenging
is that we we may upgrade ahouse to fiber and we may have
to, rather than we can'tobviously dig under the house,
but we may have to rather thanwe can't obviously dig under the
house, but we may have to putthe fiber on the first or the
second room we come to or thefirst wall, whereas the old
copper line that was put inthere before the house was
renovated or rebuilt mightterminate in the middle of the
(23:07):
house, so that typically iswhere they may have their Wi-Fi
router today.
So when we terminate on anoutside wall and we say, now you
need to think about yourin-home Wi-Fi, what a lot of
people do is they take that oldWi-Fi router they've had for
five or ten years, plug it intothis bedroom socket and then
wonder why the back of the housenow has lost connectivity.
And then we end up struggling toexplain that well, you
(23:28):
certainly do have 100 megabitsto the house, it's just that you
also need to upgrade your Wi-Fi.
It just that you also need toupgrade your Wi-Fi.
It's a bit like putting craptires on a Ferrari.
You need to think about it.
So nowadays we're trying toeducate, together with the RSPs,
people to think about theirin-home setup.
The Nest solutions that we seeand the mesh solutions these are
what we need if we're going tocover the whole houses.
And don't forget we talkedabout bit rates Because bit
(23:51):
rates are now the hygiene factoris 100 meg.
It's no good just getting 5 megto the corner of the room.
If you want a good experience,you need to get 100 meg.
So you need potentially moreWi-Fi access points than you did
in the past.
There are main challenges atthe moment.
Michael van Rooyen (24:06):
It's a good, interesting perspective on the
challenges, right, so youwouldn't think about that and
it's a great point around.
Everyone's premise is different.
People just assume we can justinstall it easily.
Robert Joyce (24:16):
And it's interesting, in the Discovery
Center, our exhibition labupstairs, one of the displays is
exactly that the topology ofthe NBN, and it's amazing to see
where the fibers go in thestreet, how each and every house
is connected, which streets arestill on copper, which streets
have gone half and half.
And if you think, one of theother challenges we have is we
can't force migrate people fromcopper.
(24:37):
We're offering them an upgradeso they can upgrade to fiber, so
we still maintain streets thathave 50% copper lines, 50% fiber
lines.
And obviously eventually we'regoing to need to think about how
we convince the lager to moveforward because, as I say, the
copper line will degrade Justthinking about that from a
connectivity for, for the strata.
Michael van Rooyen (24:57):
We touched on how you're trying to bring
parity, connectivity andbenefits of the internet and and
those to to all consumers.
How's, how's n been working tobridge that digital divide and
and promote that connectivityand and inclusivity?
Robert Joyce (25:10):
one of the um inclusive uh schemes we've had
is what we call the SchoolStudent Broadband Initiative,
and so there we're looking atunderprivileged families and
we've offered 30,000 familiesfree internet for a year.
So if they've got a schoolstudent at home and they're
below a certain threshold andthey can talk to the agencies to
get the application in, thenwe're now providing free
(25:33):
broadband for these families.
And, as as we've said, we'venot touched on the pandemic yet,
but certainly we have realizedjust how important the, the
internet, is and how importantconnectivity is.
You know, we went from maybeoften working at home and maybe
kids never schooled at home, youknow to overnight to hey,
listen, we need you and I needto be working from home, we need
(25:53):
to be on Zoom calls, team,calls the kids.
I mean, again, I can rememberthree kids in my house
homeschooling Thank goodness wehad laptops for them and then
also mum's watching Netflix whenshe's not homeschooling.
So again, it was a massive jumpon society, a massive jump on
the network.
We saw a 20% traffic increaseovernight and that's not gone
(26:14):
away.
So the point I was trying tomake was we're still there.
You often hear it.
We did five years evolution inabout two years in terms of
digital connectivity and yeah,that's not gone away.
So, again, brings me to thepoint on fiber.
Fiber is eight times morereliable than copper.
Eventually, people will see thelight, so to speak, down in
(26:36):
fibre.
They will see the light, and Ioften say this fibre's faster.
In fact, fibre's greener.
It actually consumes a lot lesspower, of course, because we
don't have repeaters in thestreets as we do with the
copper-based network, andbasically it's the future.
Michael van Rooyen (26:52):
I hope you enjoyed part one of my
discussion with Robert Joyce.
Listen in next week for parttwo.
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