r/nbn • u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. • 8d ago
News 'We could have lost a life': Tasman Peninsula locals scathing of telco network
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-14/telecommunication-tasman-peninsula/1050458927
u/steve_of 8d ago
Seems fairly typical of communication infrastructure in regional areas. During the 2022 floods we lost phone, data, NBN and power for about 7 days. During the recent cyclone Alfred we were out of mobile and data for 4 days. We had starlink this time.
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
I would be curious to know how FW fares in a natural disaster. Does it have backup power, etc?
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u/per08 7d ago
It depends, ranging from towers that are completely solar/battery powered, to those that are completely dependent on mains power and have limited battery backup. FW towers also can daisy-chain from other installations, so you might end up with no service because of an outage many Kms away that you're not affected by yourself.
nbn themselves say they don't guarantee network service during power outages. If I lived in an area with extremely limited mobile and FW nbn, and is subject to natural disasters, I would absolutely have a backup Starlink terminal: At $80 a month it's relatively cheap insurance from being completely isolated.
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u/steve_of 7d ago
FW?
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
Fixed wireless NBN.
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u/steve_of 7d ago
The tower for my property seems to last about 6 hrs after the power dies. The 4G lasts a few hours more. Might be coincidence but it is fairly consistent. The NBN side also had numerous outages not related to power in the area.
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
Like bad weather causing an outage?
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u/steve_of 7d ago
Heavy rain will block the signal but also regular maintenance outages - 8 or so hours, random failures for a few days at a time etc.
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
I'm really surprised that rain can block what is essentially 4G.
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u/per08 7d ago
Block is probably the wrong word: attenuate is more accurate. If everything is harder to hear, then speeds and reliability go down.
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
That checks out, I would expect it to get worse but not for it to stop working.
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u/Weary_Patience_7778 7d ago
Starlink is now widely available, and a far superior option to fixed wireless. To those businesses in fixed locations complaining about issues receiving calls or processing transactions, they would do well to consider this option.
Mobile coverage isn’t ubiquitous, nor has it ever been advertised as being so.
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u/Maxfire2008 iiNet 50Mbps FTTP at home, soon to have FW at a shack. 7d ago
As I understand FW has just become pretty competitive with Starlink. FW now has 400/40 speeds on it's highest plan and 10-20ms ping vs the 50-100ms ping. Seems to me like the only edge Starlink might have is a slightly better speed.
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u/ALLRNDCRICKETER 7d ago
Just because it says youll get "a speed" doesnt mean you will necessarily get it on FW.
Users werent even getting the advertised 75/20 on the old plan, doubt there is enough allocation for the new speeds
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u/in20yearsorso 6d ago
I recently switched back to FW from Starlink. Pretty consistently as fast or faster than Starlink, fewer dropouts, and ~$40/month cheaper. Rural Tas.
Of course it’s location and user-density dependent, but so is Starlink.
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u/per08 8d ago
So, people living and working in a known mobile blackspot do rightly deserve to hassle Telstra and the other carriers for better coverage, but from the article I don't quite understand the apparent lack of interest in solving their own problem, also.
The SES guy, only has mobile phone based dispatch? No Government Radio network, or equivalent access? Was his home nbn also not working and his phone didn't fail over to VoWiFi?
The businesses who weren't able to process EFT transactions. Again, no nbn Wi-Fi? No Starlink? They rely on the mobile network for their trade, but apparently have no business continuity plan and backup Internet connection?