Finder to the Node: NBN fibre overtakes DSL while Aussie Broadband suffers rare weekend outage
Australians are slowly shifting over to fibre NBN services, while Aussie Broadband's reputation for service takes a hit in our round-up of all the week's NBN news.
Fibre takes second place over DSL as Australians migrate to NBN
The National Broadband Network project was largely intended to replace ageing DSL infrastructure with more flexible fibre connections.
As we enter the end stages of the primary NBN build, you might reasonably expect that fibre connections would rapidly overtake DSL as the preferred connection method of choice for broadband in Australia as we all switch to the NBN.
It's certainly happening, but not as fast as NBN Co might like. Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics through to June 2018 show that fibre connections have finally overtaken DSL.
Specifically, some 3.64 million broadband subscribers in Australia are now on fibre connections, compared to 3.2 million DSL subscribers. Those fibre numbers have jumped up a solid 69.8% since last year, while DSL subscribers have dipped by 23.6%.
Fibre will be the reality for most NBN users, but it still lags significantly behind mobile broadband connections. The ABS lists mobile broadband subscriber numbers at 6.1 million, well above fixed line fibre, although there are almost certainly consumers and businesses with the need for mobility subscribing to both in those figures.
Aussie Broadband comes clean on weekend outage
Aussie Broadband has a reputation for quality NBN services, but over the weekend, it suffered a significant outage on its network. Many providers would try to quietly sweep that kind of problem under the carpet, but as ZDNet reports, Aussie went the other way, posting a comprehensive outage report to enthusiast forum Whirlpool that detailed exactly what happened.
At 11:05am on Saturday morning, Aussie Broadband's VoIP server was hit with "a large number of failed connection attempts", which caused the firewall to collapse, taking most of Aussie's services with it.
Aussie Broadband's report is quite comprehensive and honest, with Aussie Broadband's Phil Britt noting that "we have too many eggs in the one basket. The server components of the network and firewall systems were designed 4 years ago prior to our national expansion. Our focus has been on building network and connecting to POIs and the server infrastructure and its supporting systems have been on the backburner."
Finder to the Node is a weekly round-up of all the latest news surrounding Australia's complex National Broadband Network.
