Copper loop length revealed

Cliff Gibson of GQI Consultancy made a stunning revelation at the CommsDay conference in Melbourne yesterday: that 80 percent of premises in Australia are with 500 metres of one of the existing pillars in Telstra’s telephone network.

 What this means is that a fibre to the node network with fibre to the locations of those pillars and VDSL2 technology installed in those locations will enable that 80 percent of premises to get broadband and speeds in excess of 80Mbps, well above what the Coalition has been promising.

What’s really curious about this revelation is the timing. Had this information been available earlier it would have contributed much clarity the FTTH v FTTN debate, fuelled as it was by the polarised views of the major political parties.

However, as I wrote in this blog back in May, the answer to this question appeared to be known only to Telstra, although Coalition figures Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Fletcher had cited average loop lengths of around 800 metres.

Most curious was the comment by Fletcher, in his book Wired Brown Land, that Telstra had been talking about average loop lengths of 800 metres and, he said, that this figure represented a significant reduction from the 1.5kms in Telstra’s first FFTN proposal in 2005.

Now the loop length clearly did not change. Fletcher’s explanation was that Telstra had fudged the figures. “The most likely explanation is that Telstra did not really change its plans at all; it merely changed what it disclosed publicly.”

I also consulted Brian Beckor, founder and CEO of Callpoint Spatial, a company that has provided advice to numerous telcos on the topology of the telephone network. He explained how he had tried to make an estimate of the average loop length but had been unable to do so not being privy to details of the network that Telstra keeps close to its chest.

He explained how an estimate could be made, which on my reading of the CommsDay report appears to be how GQI did it. He said that information on the boundaries of all distribution areas is available and every one must have at least one pillar. So if he were to assume one pillar at the centre of each distribution area, it would be possible to calculate a figure for the mean and median distance to premises in that area.

However he questioned Malcolm Turnbull’s claim that he would need only about 50,000 nodes to deliver is promised speeds with FTTN. Beckor pointed out that there are 72,322 distribution areas in the country, which means at least 73,322 pillars. That figure ties in reasonably well with the 71,000 quoted by Gibson.

So if it's 71,000 not 50,000 nodes. That’s going to hike the budget of the Coalition’s FTTN network significantly. I’m going to ask a few questions and will report my findings in due course.