Having been excluded from the NBN Telstra has been positioning a view of "unconcern" claiming they don't need the NBN, they can deliver the outcome with their HFC and wireless assets.
Today they've announced plans to upgrade their HFC which has at least one commentator, Stephen Bartholomeusz, convinced that this move is "diabolically timed and conceived".
Well, not really. A couple of stand out obvious facts. The first is that the 100M speed on HFC is, just like wireless, a shared speed and not guaranteed to any user. Secondly, the problem with HFC remains that there isn't a lead-in already to most premises - which is the stand out reason for both Telstra and Optus preferring DSL connections for broadband.
Far more significantly if this was a killer blow at the relatively low cost it would have been done either before now and certainly for more than Melbourne. In the language of strategy this is a desparate attempt to make the option into a "credible threat". Bad news is that it fails for all but the media and the stock analysts - real telcos and hopefully policy analysts aren't convinced.
They sufer the same weakness on the wireless capability - no matter how many Guiness World Records hey get awarded they have diddly squat speed as a wireless network. Their peak speeds fall away once shared, and unlike the WiMAX operator don't have the spectrum to serve significant customer numbers.
Good try Telstra - but you need to do more than that!
1 comment:
I'm also sceptical about Telstra's claims of 70-100Mbps in reality, most of the time. So I asked Mick Rocca. He claims Telstra is installing another 100 nodes in the Melbourne HFC network and it should deliver at least 70Mbps if around 80 percent of the subs on any give coax cable run are online at the same time . (Until they are watching the same movie at the same time!) Stuart C
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