Published on the 20/07/2018 | Written by Pat Pilcher

Grizzles about NBN abound and now 5G is threatening to disrupt things again…

Australia’s beleaguered NBN project is facing a potential new threat, this time from 5G. Last year, NBN co-chief executive Bill Morrow was concerned enough that he proposed a levy on mobile broadband. The idea was, thankfully, rejected by PM Malcolm Turnbull.

So, what exactly will 5G offer for customers? Will it complement or kill NBN?

Pick up almost any Australian technology publication, and the odds are strong that you will see at least one story decrying the woeful price/performance equation of NBN. With gigabit fibre now an increasingly common broadband option for New Zealanders, many Australians are asking what went wrong?

“With gigabit fibre now an increasingly common broadband option for New Zealanders, many Australians are asking what went wrong?”

As with so many situations, politics played a part. The Abbott Coalition government came to power with a promise to change Labour’s fibre to the premises (FTTP) network, providing fibre all the way to the building, to what was positioned as a less-expensive fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) offering, taking fibre to a curbside cabinet and then copper to the home. Election time NBN conversations by Abbott’s flunkies were liberally peppered with a three-word slogan: “Fast. Affordable. Sooner.”

Looking at international developments such as New Zealand’s UFB fibre network, which is FTTP, it is apparent that the Coalition’s NBN vision has not provided adequate bandwidth, is not any more affordable and is taking almost as long to deploy as the FTTP solution promised by labour.

Back in 2009, Internet speed bench testers, Ookla rated Australia as having the 39th fastest broadband in the world. Since then, Ookla data shows that Australia’s international ranking has slumped to 54th place. Analysts and telecommunications experts have expressed concerns that FTTN technology cannot deliver enough bandwidth to meet future Australian broadband consumer needs. Some commentators are speculating that Australia’s Ookla broadband rankings could drop to as low as 100th by 2020.

Can the NBN mess be fixed? While Australia’s political environment is not conducive to a government-sponsored FTTP investment along similar lines to New Zealand’s UFB programme any time soon, next-generation cellular technologies might provide a partial fix.

Every decade a new cellular communications standard gets approved. Each new iteration is typically able to move more data faster than the previous standard. The next version has been nicknamed ‘5G’ as it’s the fifth generation of cellular data standards.

It’s predecessor, 4G, already offers near fixed-line broadband performance able to send/receive data at 50-100mbps. Now 5G, which is due to become available in 2020, is expected to deliver speeds of between 1gbps and 10gbps, which is similar performance to FTTP broadband.

The other significant technical leap talked up by network equipment suppliers and telcos is 5G’s ultra-low latency. This refers to the delay between data being sent and received. A garden hose provides an ideal analogy. Lag is the equivalent of how long it takes from when the tap gets turned on until water comes out. While 4G is often seen by many as being fast enough to act as an impromptu broadband substitute, its latency renders tasks such as video games unplayable.

While it is possible that 5G may provide a wireless sidestep to frustrated Australians fed up with NBN performance, there are more than a few pitfalls for the unwary.

Delivering high data speeds and low latency involves a few compromises. These take the form of using higher radio frequencies, and many more cellular base stations placed more closely together. The 5G base cellular stations are likely to be situated every 250 meters, instead of the 1 km to 5 km that is typical with the likes of 4G.

Installing many cellular base stations impacts the economics of delivering 5G. While competitive bids by players such as Huawei may help reduce base station costs (assuming Huawei do not get barred from bidding on 5G builds in Australia), the economics are still challenging when competing with NBN.

Because small 5G cellular base stations are likely to be deployed on lamp posts, consent and planning costs are a cost consideration. Fat fibre data pipes, known as backhaul are also needed to connect the base stations back to the telco’s network. Fibre backhaul is required, and it is not cheap, especially when most lampposts do not have fibre running to them. Even if there is fibre nearby, splicing links and trenching fibre over the last 50-100m will still be costly. Cheaper options such as digital microwave uplinks do not have the capacity, and no one wants unsightly parabolic microwave antennas attached to every fourth or fifth lamppost on his or her street.

Because of the substantial investment needed to build out 5G, it is not expected to compare favourably price-wise with NBN initially, even though its cost could improve over time. At a practical level, this means that just like with 4G mobile networks, streaming HD or Ultra HD video and other bandwidth-hungry applications will most likely be more expensive over 5G than on the NBN.

Performance issues are also likely. Even if 5G gets offered by mobile providers as an NBN substitute, factors such as data speed, and quality of service will need to be comparable, or preferably better, than NBN if customers are to embrace it. While most pundits assume 5G will be blisteringly fast, caveats still apply.

Supplying enough backhaul capacity is going to be critical to delivering anything approaching the gigabit speeds touted for 5G. Equally the number of people in a given area using 5G as their home or office broadband, as well as what they’re using it for, will play a significant role in performance. Offering IoT, data and voice services over a 5G network to large numbers of users concentrated in a single location (such as your suburb) could see providers running out of capacity. Called contention, this is why it takes so long to send a photo or video over 4G at a concert. The upshot is that under some real-world conditions, 5G might not only be less price competitive compared to NBN, but it may also offer less than optimal performance.

The other issue facing both the NBN and 5G is Australia’s unique geography and population spread. While densely populated cities have the infrastructure and population make installing 5G economically feasible, fibre networks and lamp posts are few and far between in Australia’s sparsely populated outback. Australia’s geography remains a big issue for building mobile networks says Telstra’s Group managing director of networks, Mike Wright: “The environment creates radio coverage challenges that stand out as vastly different to anywhere else in the world.”

While it is not impossible to build 5G networks out to rural Australia, low populations and massive costs mean it is not an economically feasible option. Because of this, rural users are likely to remain stuck with slow 3G or 4G connections or costly satellite broadband for the foreseeable future.