When I covered Exetel and Internode’s NBN pricing last week, I mentioned that the ACCC has warned advertised NBN speeds must be what the customer actually gets. But Internode’s higher prices had some wondering if its network will be stronger somehow. Exetel CEO, John Linton, rejects that notion outright, blogging that “every end user customer connected to the NBN Co network will have the identical experience.”
“NO ISP can influence, in any way at all, the ‘performance’ of an NBN Co service from the customer’s home location to the hand off point between the NBN Co network and the ISP network in, currenty, a capital city data centre…
All an ISP can do to negatively or positively affect the performance of an NBNCo service is to under provision the CVC (the cross connect between NBNCo and the ISP) or the IP bandwidth made available to the NBNCo services which only the truly paranoid would consider possible. Why paranoid? Because it would be so obvious that it is being done that no-one would use such an ISP’s service.
That’s what Exetel claims, anyway. I’ll be watching to see if things pan out that way. Meanwhile, NBN Co switches on its NBN trial in Kiama this Friday. Lifehacker is heading down to test it out, and Giz will let you know how it goes. [John Linton via Delimiter]
More:
- NBN Prices: Why Is Everyone Already Freaking Out?
- Exetel’s 100Mbps NBN Starts At $50: Enter The Budget ISPs
- What Happened With The NBN This Week?
- Internode’s NBN Pricing: 100Mbps Speeds Start At $100 Per Month
Joe Magic
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:12 PMI did a google image search for John Linton. I always pictured him as looking like Mark Zuckerberg. I was pretty shocked to find that he actually looks like a fatter version of the Dad from Frasier.
Greg
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:29 PMSo, the crux of the article contradicts the title of the article:
“
All an ISP can do to negatively or positively affect the performance of an NBNCo service is to under provision the CVC (the cross connect between NBNCo and the ISP) or the IP bandwidth made available to the NBNCo services which only the truly paranoid would consider possible.
”
That is *exactly* where the ISP will influence the throughput of connections. To say that all ISPs will perform identically on the NBN is naive and plain ridiculous.
Nicholas Wilson
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:42 PMYou get what you pay for. John clearly stated that it matters about under provisioning the CVC.
What kind of contention do you think Dodo/Exetel run compared to Internode?
It also is not just about how congested the link to the ISP is because I don’t spend much of my time on internode.on.net or dodo.com.au. I use google, I use hotmail, I use facebook.
Whose network has dedicated links into these providers?
Internode connect with over 30 times more peers than Dodo and over 10 times more than Exetel. Internode connect over IPv6 with 120 more peers than Exetel’s and Dodo’s 0 IPv6 Peers.
MisterH
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 8:19 PMExetel and Dodo should not be mentioned in the same sentence.
While Dodo’s prices are cheap, if you were to document every complaint about the speed of their service, you’d need a roll of paper several hundred miles long.
Their network is extremely congested.
Exetel’s speeds have been fine ever since they stopped deprioritizing P2P.
If you’re the kind of person that only rings support for billing issues, Exetel are perfect.
Joker1973
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:44 PMExetel will shape no matter what. This is their business model, attract the masses with cheap prices but if the masses actually use their service for anything more than surfing they will be shaped. Do not bother trying to call them either as their is no number available.
Adam
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 8:04 PMAbsolute crock… I should know, I’ve spent a bit of time on the phone (actually talking to people, not on hold) recently. Their tech support number is on the website if you care to look, and you can actually talk to their provisioning people too.
Rob H
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 4:54 PM“All an ISP can do to negatively or positively affect the performance of an NBNCo service is to under provision the CVC (the cross connect between NBNCo and the ISP) or the IP bandwidth made available to the NBNCo services which only the truly paranoid would consider possible.”
- in other words, yes the access network is the same, but absolutely the choices that an ISP makes about CVC bandwidth, backhaul network and international bandwidth will absolutely affect experience and end user price
StevoTheDevo
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 5:05 PMSo service will depend on the provisioning of backhaul from Points of Interconnect by the ISP?
That’s what I understand from the CVC comment…
Therefore, isn’t that quite contradictory to his “performance will be identical” statement?
Sure there will be less control over the level of service, but not no control at all!
Jon
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 5:46 PMMy understanding is that users could end up with very different experiences with different ISPs.
A budget ISP operating only a single domain name server in Canberra, for instance, would mean all their customers data would be routed by Canberra regardless of whether they lived in Perth in Sydney. This would result in increased latency on the network.
A premium ISP however has domain name servers in every capital city. As such a customer in Perth will their data routed through the Perth DNS then onto the appropriate destination. Same goes for a customer in Sydney. The result is less latency on the premium ISPs network.
nicky
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 6:36 PMawesome…i read all the comments before mine, and the way i understand is that all these people will pay more to go to other ISP’s leaving me with more choice when i pick my NBN plan based on price…sweeeet!
“you get what you pay for” is EXACTLY what they want you to think…their marketing people should get bonuses :)
Adam
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 6:54 PMJoker1973 What are you on? Exetel communication is great, you can ring anytime of the day or night and speak to either their Australian Call Centre or their overseas one with your own choice, no problem at all. Happy Exetel customer for 15 years.
trk
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 6:56 PMEvery time there is an ISP related post on Gizm… actually, anywhere on the internet… there is a flood of Internode fanboys ready to justify how great their choice of ISP is, and why its worth the premium price tag.
Why is that? :\
Ollie
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 7:36 AMmaybe because they have excellent customer service, and always do the best they can for their customers? like their range of unmetered content? FetchTV, VoIP, NodePhone, server farm, Steam content server… GoN… get the idea?
trk
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 8:31 PMMy experience with Internode was vastly different to what you describe.
Glad youre happy. Not sure why you need to crow about it from the roof tops mind you. Its nothing special unless you’ve spent your pre-Internode days with Dodo.
vandozza
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 7:39 PMWhile this may be true, I’ve always understood that it’s the next
“hop” where ISPs will distinguish themselves between excellent and poor.
ie. While local traffic is all the same, it’s their overseas links that matter (given that the vast majority of our Internet data is going/coming to/from overseas.)
charliem
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 7:55 PMI work as a telecoms engineer for a vendor supplying equipment very similar to the kit that won the tender, and I can confirm that it is quite literally an impossible task to alter the service level agreement between the OLT card (the DSLAM equivalent for fibre), and the ONT (the ADSL modem equivalent for fibre), without first hacking into NBNCo’s systems.
NBNCo will have total control over the service provisioning on the fibre. They will provide to the RSP, access to the data path to the customer, and possibly a few of the counters and alarms to track user behavior, but the control of the system itself is entirely internal to NBNCo.
Jim Kellett
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 9:39 AMWhat you say is true, but with respect I don’t feel this is the topic being debated. The topic is “can an ISP influence the end user performance through the NBN?”
And of course they can – by dimensioning of the CVC, dimensioning of backhaul, the IP network (transit/peering/national/international capacity), shaping & prioritisation, location & performance of the various content services, etc, etc.
The broadband market currently supports the different value propositions of Exetel & Internode at the moment; it’s actually kind of good that the market will support both in the future.
(disclaimer : I work at Internode & am also a telecoms engineer)
Brendan
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 9:20 PMI have a naive question.
What will differentiate all these providers?
james_whatsit
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 9:27 PMinternode also has their own international cable
Ollie
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 7:33 AMErrr… I spose everyone’s ignored the fact that once NBNCo enable IP Multicast you can run FetchTV etc across NBN with no impact on your download quota? (only available on ADSL2+ atm).
Internode have free access to a multitude of other services? You get what you pay for.
It’s why I’ve been with Internode for long time, and will continue to do so.
Danny Allen
Thursday, July 28, 2011 at 10:15 PMCan you elaborate on your point here?