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The Australian Labor Party has raised doubts about the reliability of the Telstra HFC cable network after it was reported that Foxtel would not be using HFC for transmission any more, but moving to satellite.
Labor shadow communications minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement that Foxtel was planning to ditch what she described as "(Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull's HFC network" due to concerns about reliability.
She cited a report from Mumbrella while making this claim. The news was first reported by the website EFTM.
Last month, as iTWire reported, there was said to have been a bid within the NBN Co, the company rolling out the national broadband network, to minimise the use of HFC because some signals from Foxtel channels were causing interference with NBN broadband data transmissions.
{loadposition sam08}In November last year, NBN Co said that network issues affecting the HFC network suspended HFC connections and said they would be delayed by anything from six to nine months.
And in December, two network experts — Dermot Cox, an HFC expert and business consultant, and Damien Ivereigh, chief executive of Tasmanian ISP Launtel — told iTWire that there were a number of issues that needed to be sorted out before HFC connections could be resumed.
One of the conditions under which the NBN Co signed a deal with Telstra to use its HFC network is that maintenance of the network would be the responsibility of the broadband company.
NBN Co is paying Telstra $5 billion in infrastructure payments, $4 billion in disconnection payments and $2 billion in Commonwealth agreements for the HFC network.
At the moment, the Telstra HFC network is used by NBN Co, Foxtel and Telstra itself. The NBN signal travels at a low frequency, the other two at higher frequencies. Apparently, at lower frequencies the signal does not travel all that well.
Rowland also pointed to information disclosed to the Senate which said that use of HFC resulted in 29% more downtime than in the case of fibre.
“Malcolm Turnbull thought he would stroll into government and switch on the HFC network like it was a toaster,” she said.
“Malcolm Turnbull’s second-rate NBN is $20 billion over budget and four years behind schedule – with over a million HFC consumers still in limbo.”
