NBN Fixed wireless, experiences?

[VK5PJ]

Hi,
recently I was made aware that the NBN was "coming to town" or in my case, the country. A few new towers have bobbed up and things started to appear on the NBNco.com.au web site.

Last week my area went LIVE and I subscribed to it via a major ISP that I used before Satellite was installed here.

Okay the NBN sub contactor shows up, late as expected (4pm for a 1pm appointment) as he had been doing foxtel installs earlier in the day. (should that be ringing alarm bells for me?)

After spending 30 minutes on his IPAD he tells me he thinks there will be no signal as there are trees in the way (tower is easily visible between the trees).

Okay the gear goes in with all the usual bending of roof iron, I am never sure why these people cannot work out how to walk on a corrugate iron roof, he just looks at me and shrugs his shoulders like its my fault. (black mark #1)

Every stage is followed up by a photograph on his ipad and I am supposed to sign these off without knowing what I am signing for, gee thanks for that mate (sarcasm)

The gear is up and running, signal strength is perfect (he shrugs his shoulders again), so now we go through all the online testing phase.

we wait, wait wait, he makes phone calls (its 6pm by now) and wait some more, he gets an OK message on his ipad and he bolts for the exit.. I ask what am I supposed to do now, he replies call your ISP and some one will come out, pffft not likely I say.

Which port do I plug into on the NBN interface? his reply, any of the four ports will work (I know this is wrong as I read the fact sheet which says only port 1 is live) so now all I see is his tail lights going down the drive. I look back in the shed and see the NBN mode light flickering and cannot but feel totally under whelmed and let down by the lack of useful information. (back mark #2)

In my signup with the ISP, they say I need one o their routers to make it work as it is too hard to use my existing router, okay so be it, I accept the router but it gets lost in transit (a whole other story about country life) so being an IT worker, I thought to give one of my existing spare routers a go ( have been collecting noisy ones in the hope of finding a quiet one).

Dlink DIR-320 nope, would not work for me, Cisco SRP-547, nope be buggered if I can make that work either. Now did not sacrifice my TPlink router as it is on the satellite link and then I would have no net connection at all.

Finally the bundled router shows up and true to their word, it was just a case of plug it in and we were on the air, so now I have to work out what the secret is by reverse engineering the ISP supplied router settings. (no RFI checks yet, fingers crossed its okay)

So how did your NBN experience go? I am still washing out the bitter taste but I must admit it is FAST compare to every thing else we have had here.

Regards,

[VK3BA]

G'day Peter,

I've got an NBN Fibre connection - so I can't comment on the Fixed Wireless solution. Although a mate of mine near Ballarat has had an NBN Fixed Wireless (via a major Telco/ISP) for about 18 months. He also uses it for his IRLP node. All with no issues thus far.

Anyway, back to my NBN Fibre... I've had it for about 18 months now also. Two plumbers (yes, qualified plumbers) came and installed the lead-in fibre, the Premises Connection Device (where lead-in fibre terminates), the Network Terminating Device (the active box in my garage) and battery-backed power supply. The install workmanship was all a bit rough as guts, but I guess rough enough is good enough to some, as long as it works. I've since straightened a few items up to make it look half decent. This was their last job as they were going back to plumbing full time, as plumbing pays much better and NBN work in the Geelong area was drying up.

Then a week later, a tech from my Telco/ISP rocked up at 7.45am after being given an 8am appointment - hey, miracles do happen! He installed a ISP-supplied router and in 15 mins it was a working service.

It's been fine since the install rate, except the NBN battery died about three months after install. I've since jettisoned the battery to the bin and killed the periodical batt fail alarm. The battery only backs up the voice port which I don't have, pay for or use anyway - I have zero use for a fixed phone these days. I was initially on a 12/1 plan but now on a 25/5 plan which seems to maintain about 24.8Mb/s (download) most times. Although lately I have noticed the odd delayed response since Netflex came to this country a few months ago.

I hear and see all sorts of NBN related stories and it's about 50/50 each way. Some good, some bad. At the end of the day, some of the blokes involved care as much about the job as much as their contract manager likes paying them per job. Pay peanuts.... I've seen the same workmanship (or lack of) with many Foxtel installs. And with the rubbish that's served up on Foxtel, why would anyone bother with it anyway.

Anyway, Peter, sorry for drifting slightly off-topic, but that's how I've seen from this side of town. FYI, I'm in a greenfield area at Bannockburn - a small town about 15mins west of Geelong.

Cheers,

[VK2LK]

Sounds like the Labor governments' wet dream has been realised - billions of tax payers dollars going straight to a bunch of numbskull installers who have no clue about the technology they are installing.

[VK5ZLR]

A number of interesting protuberances appeared on the old water tower in Waikerie, and flyers appeared in the local Rag proclaiming the arrival of the nbn (sic).

Perhaps a bloke could get a job as an installer......

[VK2DVZ]

Had NBN installed on 11-11-14 after less than 1 week wait after having placing my order with a major ISP.

Installer arrived within suggested time frame for attendance - he had driven up from Newcastle to do install, but had a 'lightning struck' replacement to install before he got to my place. (He wondered why local installers were not used). He installed it with about 2.5m of NBN type LAN cable, but in doing so installed the antenna above the guttering on the 'shaded side of the house' below the roof line of tile roof with foil sarking under. I would have preferred the antenna in the clear but it was installed hidden from the tower. The tower is about 1.6km from my location.

I too had to get a modem from my ISP, so in a few days all was working well upon power-up of modem.

I have a 25/5 speed plan, but of late 50/20 is being trialled, but my ISP seems to be only providing the increased upload speed increase with no change in download speed.

Yes there are more very slow periods of late, but generally my measured speed is about 23mbps down and about 15 or so mbps upload during the current trial period. (My normal 25/5 plan usually gives about 23/4.8mbps).

I was generally happy with my installer apart from his choice of external antenna install location, but in amateur terms....the shorter the feed line the less losses (at 2.4GHz) - so I haven't got much to complain about..... and as other have indicated, the increased speed is far better than on the 6+ km of copper wire on the former ADSL system.

[VK5PJ]

Hi Ross,

I was generally happy with my installer apart from his choice of external antenna install location, but in amateur terms....the shorter the feed line the less losses (at 2.4GHz) - so I haven't got much to complain about..... and as other have indicated, the increased speed is far better than on the 6+ km of copper wire on the former ADSL system.

The cable from the NTU (white box) to the panel antenna is CAT 5 so no RF losses involved in that part of the chain. They use the industry standard POE (Power Over Ethernet) to get volts up to the panel antenna. They seem to have a well defined min signal level that they must adhere to so you should be okay signal level wise.

So far my speed tests have all been quite outstanding here, showing a repeated 50MBit link to the multiple testing servers so I am one happy chook so far, much better than the delay plagued satellite link.

Regards,
Peter,

[VK3JUG]

Our NBN is not far off, the water tower in the centre of town has been busy with new cable trays and bit's n bob's appearing appearing everywhere, along with a new padlock and alarm system. The clubs 2m repeater has been on this site for well over 30yrs rent free and now we have been locked out until we sign an "antenna" agreement with the water board, agreeing to pay them $700 /yr as a "volunteer/community"group. They must have smelt a dollar to be made with the installation of NBN on their tower. If an agreement cannot be reached NBN, will mean the loss of our main repeater until another suitable site is found as our small club cannot sustain a yearly cost like that for long.

[VK4TI]

Some of the installs are poor (a given). no consideration given to location and quality although if lucky an old style installer may appear and usually will locate the antenna out of site from the street and making things appar well considered , I have seen some great installs but the nbn company are profit based and pay poorly , and we all know the saying about paying peanuts , personally I don't need it being within site of the local exchange with excellent existing speeds . If the belief is held that the install is faulty or badly done then there is an appeal and inspection process although it's quite likely you will get the same person back to fix it

[VK5TM]

Hi Peter.

I've had mine for some months now.

The installer came from down on the Fleurieu Peninsular somewhere (3 or 4 hour drive I think he said). Mine was also the first one he had ever done.
Install went smooth enough, but he did manage to drill through the existing Cat5 cable to my original wireless connection, which put me off the internet for three days (didn't find out until after he had left).

Lack of notification from my ISP that the service was active was the biggest problem and despite them saying I needed a new modem, my old one works fine.

Also have the free trial of the upgraded speed until September, but quite honestly, don't notice a great deal of difference most of the time.

[VK4KAY]

Peter

I have had my fixed wireless NBN for around 7months now. The installer was very good (old timer) and appreciated my preparation for his installation (eg. powerpoint, place on the wall for device, easiest place for cable run, location of antenna etc)
Made his job easy and the result is extremely neat. He was able to finish it in good time which allowed us to talk about radio, frequencies, antennas etc and share a few
stories. That side of things is fine and connection (rf signal) to the tower is not a problem. However equipment in the various exchanges is letting the service down with outages happening fairly regularly - which also means no telephone. No problems with the speed or other gripe.

I think a battery back up device (an uninterruptible power supply - ups) would be a valuable investment since - from experience - and was told by the tech, the power supplies do burn out especially when they go on-off due to brownouts. In my previous work router and access point power supplies - 5v 2a switchmode plug pack type - would always burn out when the power went on-off, once they were in service for a time and never turned off.

Andru
vk4kay

[VK2JDH]

So how did your NBN experience go? I am still washing out the bitter taste but I must admit it is FAST compare to every thing else we have had here.

Regards,

The NBN installation process is in two stages. NBN install the gear upto the demarcation point. They only provide the infrastructure. The installer has no knowledge or interest in who your ISP (RSP) is. The NBN is a wholesale network. They do not sell anything to customers.

Your ISP does the configuration and coordination with NBN to provision your service. The port on the NBN NTU is selected by the ISP. They can use any one. Infact you can have a two ISP's , each on it's own port.

[VK4VIP]

We are getting both fixed wireless and fibre in my area (Biloela 120km west of Gladstone), Fixed wireless for the out of town areas and fibre for areas in the town. NBN Co has surveyed a block of dirt on the same hill as our clubs repeaters but down the hill a bit near the Optus Microwave Back-haul tower.
We have been told out here it could be up to another 5 years as the NBN tower has not been built only surveyed and they are still slowly laying fibre.
Doesn't worry me i had some issues after Cyclone Marcia with slow internet been 900kbps down and 50kbps up which was water in the pits arcing the connection, but now i get a nice 15-18mbps down and 900kbps up on my ADSL2+.