Has FTTN paid for itself?

I will analyse Communication Minister Fletcher's recent claim that NBN's FTTN has paid for itself. FTTN is the poor cousin to FTTP, the gold standard of broadband. Where FTTP is capable of terabits per second (10 ^ 12 bps), but twice as expensive as FTTN to install ($4000 vs $2000),  in contrast, FTTN suffers from degradation over distance from the fibre at the node, so 1/3 get very fast (<500m; up to 100Mbps and a bit more), 1/3 fast (500-750m; up to 50Mbps) and 1/3 slow (>750m; less than 50Mbps). NBN's plans in 2020 include enhancing half of NBN's FTTN footprint with fibre on demand, and upgrading FTTC and HFC to gigabit speeds, giving 75% of NBN's fixed line customers access to gigabit speeds.

 

Background

FTTN is one of the fixed line technologies, NBN (the National Broadband Network) uses to deliver broadband to Australian homes. It is part of Australia's MTM (multi-technology mix) approach that aims to deliver broadband to Australians at lowest cost to the Government and as early as possible, ensuring that nearly all Australians were ready to connect with broadband when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in 2020. In contrast, Australia's prior government envisioned an NBN with largely FTTP broadband delivery, which is more expensive to install, but capable of very high speeds over potentially future decades. 

FTTN uses copper phone lines to deliver the last stretch of broadband, while FTTP takes fibre right into the house. The longer the copper, the more the interference through the medium and the slower the broadband speeds to the user. NBN Co reported in its Corporate Report 2021 that FTTN users fell into one of three categories; 1. 1.2M who could get 100Mbps; 2. 1.9M who could get 50Mbps, and 3. 1.0M who could only get the baseline 25Mbps. FTTP in contrast currently enables 1000Mbps, with some countries now activating 10,000Mbps access speeds over fibre. 

Australia's current government argues that most households are satisfied with their current access speeds, but are providing a way forward, as households demand higher speeds. NBN for instance launched cheaper 250Mbps and 1000Mbps services in May 2020, which attracted a few thousand new subscribers to these high speeds, and may have caused a 25% uptick in Australia's average broadband download speed.

Upgrades Corp Plan 2021-24

Following NBN Co's completion of the volume rollout in 2020 (99% complete, with 100,000 more difficult premises to finish), its Sept 2020 three year Corporate Plan announced investment to lift Australian broadband performance. To that point, NBN's goal in its Statement of Expectations was to provide all premises with at least 25Mbps by 2020, and 90% of fixed line premises with 50Mbps (as soon as possible). The Corporate Plan announced several investment strands, including:

- business zones where businesses could get fibre services connected for $nil upfront on committing to a service

- upgrade to HFC and FTTC technologies to gigabit service levels

- upgrade of 50% of FTTN footprint to enable fibre on demand, when customer demands a fast service, which its FTTN can not provide, for $0 install cost to customer.

Minster Fletcher

In announcing the NBN Co Corporate Plan and committed investment, Minster Fletcher stated:

"By 2023, the FTTN network will have generated $9 billion in revenues, cost $7.3 billion to build and $1 billion to operate. FTTN will have effectively paid for itself - and will continue to provide a very good service to millions of premises for many years, generating cashflows well into the future". CommsDay Speech, 27.10.2020. 

Let's look at the "paid for itself" claim. 

Assessing the claim

The claim consists of three parts;

- FTTN has generated $9 billion in revenue - I agree

- FTTN has cost $7.3 billion to build - my estimate $11 billion

- FTTN has cost $1 billion to operate - my estimate $2 billion, but full costs add another $20 billion.

Revenue

The NBN has generated $10 billion in revenue in the last five years (2016 - 2020); NBN Co Annual Report 2020, p.56. Over the next three years, NBN is budgetted to generate another $15.6 billion (Corporate Plan 2021, p.54). NBN revenue can be prorated by the types of technologies to apportion their revenue by technology type. At 2020, FTTN/B has 3.1 million activated premises from a total of 7.3M active connections - 42% of connections. By 2023, FTTN drops to 36% of connections as another 1.5M premises are activated but very few are FTTN (less than 10%). A first cut estimate of FTTN revenue is 43% of pre 2020 revenue, and 36% of post 2020 revenue; equating to about $9.6 billion. So close to Fletcher's claim.

Build Cost

NBN reports cost per premise (CPP) by technology. Per NBN Corporate Report 2020, NBN had 4.7M homes serviced by FTTN/B as CPP of $2340 (NBN Corporate Plan 2020, p.52). This gives total Build Cost for FTTN of about $11 billion. Added to this should be a proportional share of common CAPEX. The 2020 Annual Result presentation shows Commons CAPEX at only around 10% of total CAPEX, so would only make a minor difference. The NBN Annual Report does not break down Network assets by network technology type, nor identify levels of common capex. But NBN shows on their books a network worth $42.5 billion less $9 billion depreciation, for 11.7M premises ready to connect - an overall average of around $3600 per premise. So, overall the Minister's claim of FTTN costing $7B to build seems low compared to my $11B estimate.

Cost to Operate

In 2020, NBN reported Direct Network Costs of $641M, about 30% of total Operating Costs ($2.0B) NBN Operating Result Presentation 2020, p.11. From 2016 - 2020, NBN reports Operating expenses totalling $9.4B (NBN Annual Report 2020, p.56). Using the 42% share of revenue as above, the FTTN share of Operating Expenses would be around $4B, and likely direct network costs at 30% of $1.2B. For 2021 - 2023, Operating Expense can be calculated as Revenue - Subscriber Payments - EBITDA or ($15.6B - $1.4B - $8.6B = ) $5.6B. The FTTN share at 36% would be close to $2.0B, with Direct Network Costs (30%) around $0.6B. So my estimate of total Direct FTTN Network costs of ($1.2B + $0.6B) around $1.8B, close to double Minister's Fletcher's estimate.

However,  how much of non-direct Operating Expenses should be attributed to FTTN. Should it include employee costs (around 30% of operating expenses), subscriber acquisitions costs (close to $10B). Addition of these costs would increase FTTN related expenses to $2B (employee costs) and roughly $4B for related subscriber costs). There is also depreciation and interest cost incurred by NBN, which in 2016 - 20 are in the order of $15 billion. A share of FTTN would add another $6B to FTTN's bill. Thus total expenses related to FTTN would be closer to $14B (2016 - 20) while the direct costs to operate, I estimate are around $2B (2016 - 23). To add the 2021 - 23 portion of FTTN costs, would add another $2B of employee expenses and 3/5 of depreciation/interest, so close to $3.5B. Grand Total Expenses: $21.5B  Thus the $1B FTTN Cost to Operate is extremely light on in excluding employee costs, subscriber acquisition costs, depreciation and interest, understating total costs by close to $20 billion over 2016 - 23.

Conclusion

Thus I would argue that FTTN has not paid for itself. Even with a narrow view of network operation costs, margin earned by FTTN services has contributed around $7 billion to NBN operating funds, while I estimate build costs at $11 billion. A fully expensed costs of FTTN is closer to $20 billion for 2016 - 23, including employee costs, depreciation and share of subscriber costs.

To Gigabit or not to Gigabit

As the NBN rolls past its completion date, the Government is strangely silent choosing not to mark the occasion. Perhaps remaining quiet before this weekends by election. A new report out in the last few days is titled “ the gigabit gap “ argues for Australia’s weak international ranking on gigabit aspiration.

• Gigabit is 40 X the mandatory speed promise for all. (25 Mbps)
• Gigabit is 10 X the previous top speed available widely. There were business plans ($800/mth) and 250 plans availed on FTTP, which makes up about 20% of the NBN.
• Gigabit is on the roadmap for 50% of NBN, inc FTTP, HFC and FTTC.
• NBN has committed that all HFC will have access to 250 Mbps by June 2021. But at release of new high speed plans (end May) only some 7% of HFC could get gigabit speeds. Home Superfast (250 Mbps) was available to 32% of NBN ready to connect, NBN said, inc up to 70% of the HFC footprint.

What’s in a name?

NBN calls fast 100Mbps, Superfast 250 Mbps, and Ultrafast 500-1000Mbps.

But ACCC called Superfast when referring to 25Mbps.

NBN calls a 25Mbps service, Home Basic.

The NBN SOE aims for universal very fast broadband - “ The Government is committed to completing the network and ensuring that all Australians have access to very fast broadband as soon as possible, at affordable prices, and at least cost to taxpayers. The Government expects the network will provide peak wholesale download data rates (and proportionate upload rates) of at least 25 megabits per second to all premises, and at least 50 megabits per second to 90 per cent of fixed line premises as soon as possible.”

I would agree that 250 Mbps is very fast, beyond fast, and so the NBN according to the SOE should be pursuing universal access to this service AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. So for now Australia has universal basic broadband, and we are still waiting for universal very fast broadband.

“The Statutory Infrastructure Provider (SIP) obligations ensure that all Australian premises are able to access superfast broadband services (25 Megabits per second (Mbps) or better).” Dept of Communications

“Our priority is to help deliver high speed broadband to premises across Australia and, as we complete the initial volume build to 11.5 million premises⁷, we are starting to unleash higher speed tiers on a phased basis,” said Brad Whitcomb. “Launching the three new higher wholesale speed tiers is the next step in our network evolution and we will continue to upgrade the network to offer higher speed services to more customers over time.”, NBN said.

The future of the NBN (7); Inquiry into the business case of the NBN

In October 2019, the Parliamentary body overseeing the NBN - the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN, launched an Inquiry into the Business Case for the NBN and the experiences of Small Business.  Submissions were due a couple of weeks ago (17 Jan), and my submission (#16) went public this week. Data is at Figshare. I previously responded to a similar Inquiry in 2018 (Data) with a model to calculate the value of the NBN. On 25 Feb, I will talk on this topic at Telsoc. Slides now available at: Slideshare.

Committee Focus

The Committee were interested in "the rollout of the [NBN] and the performance of nbn co", particularly:

a.the economics of the NBN, including key operational and financial performance forecasts in the Corporate Plan 2020-23;
b.current pricing structures, including wholesale pricing, affordability and take-up, particularly as they relate to low-income and rural and regional customers;
c.network coverage issues; including reporting of outages planned and unplanned
d.the delivery of the business segment strategy, including to enterprise and government customers, and small to medium businesses;
e.the experiences of small and medium business in relation to the utilisation, accessibility, customer service and affordability of the NBN;
f.compliance with the NBN Statement of Expectations and adequacy of that Statement
g.any other related matters. Source: Parliament of Australia

Australia vs OECD and Top 10 Trading Partners

I presented the material from the future of the NBN posts (1-6), especially NBN speeds vs OECD, but narrowed that down to Australia's Top 10 Trading Partners (Source; OEC - Observatory of Economic Complexity), which are an interesting mix of countries, including:

• China | United States | Singapore
• South Korea | Japan | New Zealand
• Thailand | India | Germany | United Kingdom.

Australia per OECD (2018) was close to the bottom (see Figure 2 below), but post-build NBN, we come back to middle of the pack. An Appendix shows the NBN plans for each of these countries (Table 1). The Broadband Commission produced a nice summary graphic (Figure 1) comparing NBN target speeds and coverage for UK, EU, USA, South Korea, NZ and DE (plus others).

Figure 1. Broadband Commission summary of NBN Plans; Australian and Top 10 Trading Partners highlighted. Broadband Commission: The State of Broadband (2018), p.37.

Figure 2. Appendix 2 of Ferrers (2020) Submission. Australia Broadband speeds vs OECD (2018). Source: OECD 2018. Raw data (OECD xls).

Summary of Australia's Top 10 Trading Partners - NBN Plans - Appendix 1 - Submission

Country	Target	Speed (Mbps)	Year
Australia	90%	50	2020
Australia	100%	25	2020
China	50%	100	2020
China	70%	50	2020
China	some	1000	2020
India	100%	50	2022
India	Villages	1000	2020
India	Villages	>1000	2022
Japan	98%	Fibre	Now
New Zealand	75%	Fibre 100	2019
New Zealand	87%	Fibre 100	2022
Germany	100%	50	2018
Germany	Regional	1000	2025
Singapore	?? oops left it out - in error
South Korea	99%	Fibre	now
South Korea	50%	>1000	2022
Thailand	Cities	100	2020
Thailand	95%	broadband	2020
United Kingdom	15M(55%)	Fibre	2025
United Kingdom	100%	Fibre	2033
United States	100M(80%)	100	2020
United States	extensive	wireless	2020

Table 1: Comparing Australia's and Top 10 Trading Partners - NBNs.
Source UNESCO/ITU Broadband Commission | List of Plans (NZ: Wikipedia)(South Korea, Japan International Broadband Scorecard, Ofcom)

Fast Broadband (at/over 100Mbps) - Australian and Selected Top 10 Trading Partners

What was really interesting, and surprising, was China has rolled out an NBN since 2013, and now has 250M fast broadband connections (77% of fibre users; which are 93% of internet users; Future of NBN 6), compared to US 30M fast broadband users, where fast is at or over 100Mbps. Both countries report coverage of 90% for access to fast broadband services. US reports about 10 subs (of fast broadband) per 100 people, whereas China has close to double, around 20 subs per 100 people.

Figure 3.  Figure 1b. in Ferrers (2020) Submission. Millions of fast Broadband Subscribers. Australia and selected Top 10 Trading Partners. NB: Japan, South Korea did not report in OECD 2018.

I also looked at more recent data from Ookla, which reports average speeds by country of its Speedtest service. Australia does not fare well on this metrics. Australia rates near the bottom of our Top 10 Trading Partners (Figure 4).

Figure 4. Appendix 4 in Ferrers (2020) Submission. Download Average Speeds - Australia and Selected Top 10 Trading Partners. Ookla Global Index 2018, 2019.

What I realised (in Figure 2 - gold bars), was that other countries have a lot of fast (over 100Mbps) connections whereas Australia does not.  In 2018, we reported 0% fast broadband to OECD. In the Ookla graph from mid-2019, we showed close to 0% at or over 100Mbps. This year (around May 2020), NBN will release more affordable gigabit services for around 50% of users (FTTP, FTTC, HFC). I argued in my submission that even small percentages using gigiabit will have a significant impact on Australia's average speeds (which is often complained about). New Zealand currently has about 10% gigabit users, so this level of takeup seems quite possible for Australia too, if the price is affordable. So I am optimistic that Australia can increase its national download performance, if affordable prices can be set for gigiabit services.

Scenario	Average Speed	Ranking against Top 10 Trading Partners
OECD 2018	21mbps	10th
NBN post-build	50mbps	10th
5% gigabit	98mbps	7th
10% gigabit	145mbps	3rd
20% gigabit	240mbps	1st

Table 2: Adding Gigabit substantially raises Australia's national average broadband speed, relative to Top 10 Trading Partners
Source: Appendix 5, Ferrers (2020) Submission.

Overall my recommendations in my submission (data at Figshare) were:

1. Encourage NBN gigabit services at affordable prices.
2. Update NBN Co's Statement of Expectations to upgrade the network (preferably bi-partisan), and guide how NBN Co will spend cash NBN will generate on debt repayment, dividends and network improvement.
3. Focus NBN Co on encouraging use of the NBN (so we are more like China - heavily used, than US - accessible but less used at fastest speeds).
4. NBN Co publish customer satisfaction results with the network by major customer categories eg business, consumer, FTTP, FTTN, FTTC etc. (bearing in mind that satisfaction comes from more than just speed eg ITU/UNESCO 2025 Broadband Goals), and lastly
5. NBN Co include in its Corporate Plans a section on how Australia compares to other countries, along key performance metrics, and particularly the Top 10 Trading Partners. Ongoing NBN performance targets should reflect shareholder preference for Australia's performance relative to our major trading partners.

Afterword
 In contrast, and we should not forget, Australia has come a long way, with NBN and broadband from ten years ago. In 2009, nearly everyone had less than 25mbps, and about 30% had less than 2Mbps. Going back to 2006 (from ABS Internet 8153.0 Usage), some 45% of Australia was on dialup. In 2009, those still on dialup (1M users) were downloading 10Mb per month. The average in 2009 across all users was 4Gb per month. NBN recently (at end 2019) reported NBN users were using 250Gb per month). Extraordinary growth in download consumption.

 

Figure 5: NBN Speeds 2009, 2018, post-build. Source: ABS, OECD 2018, NBN Co. | Tweet

Update: China reports (p.11,12) 2020 Internet development -
As of December 2019, the number of FTTH/O (home/office) 2019 users had reached 417 million, accounting for 92.9% of all fixed Internet broadband subscribers. The number of subscribers at/over 100Mbps reaches 85% of all fixed broadband users (up from 77% in 2019).