Doubts over NBN procurement of fixed wire technology

The National Broadband Network (NBN) has declined to say what levels of latency can be expected from the wireless technology it will use to service a small percentage of Australia that will not be covered by fibre-optic cable.

It comes after concerns the technology might be a step backward from what is currently offered by ADSL2+ fixed broadband.

In a response to the issue, an NBN Co spokesperson said the company was still in the process of finalising its procurement process for the fixed wireless technology.

The issue came to the fore after Tasmanian technology activist group Digital Tasmania said last week that some Tasmanians with ADSL2+ were worried NBN Co’s wireless network – which will cover up to seven percent of Australian premises with a minimum of 12Mbps speeds – might not be up to spec compared with ADSL2+, despite the fact that in wireless areas, the existing copper network providing ADSL broadband will also be maintained for a decade once the NBN is rolled out.

There usually certain technical advantages to fixed ADSL over wireless services — with one historically having been being better latency (or response time to the broader internet), and another often being throughput, or speed.

For example, tests of the fixed wireless network operated by vividwireless have shown latency was not on par with that offered by ADSL broadband.

Latency is important for some internet applications, such as gaming or any activity which requires a quick response time to online servers.

Terry Walsh – wireless director for the Australian division of global networking giant Huawei, said applications which required less than 50 milliseconds latency were considered ‘real-time’ and could be affected by latency issues.

“The lower the latency, the better the user experience,” he said.

“Examples include video chat, online gaming, online role-play games, and shooter games where the faster a player can shoot means better odds versus another player who has slow latency.”

“We will need to finalise the solution and enter a testing mode before discussing network performance in more detail,” a NBN spokesperson said.

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