NBN - Put Simply, will it cope?

Small Biz Matters – a half hour program each week where you can work ON your business rather than IN it.
with Alexi Boyd, broadcaster, advocate and small business owner.
Date: 24 March 2020

It’s the question on every business owner, the workforce and student’s lips across the country. Will the NBN infrastructure cope?…. Is it an essential service by definition so we can be assured of service when setting up? And what are some practical strategies we can implement at home to keep it running at the highest possible capacity?

With literally everyone accessing online everything we need the reassurance that the NBN will stand up to the test. This week we welcome on Small Biz Matters Paul Tyler the Chief Customer Officer for Business at nbn Australia who will talk us through the strategies already in place to support small businesses to connect and stay connected to the NBN in these challenging times.

Welcome to the show Paul.

Topics we’ll be covering:

• In a nutshell, is our internet Infrastructure ready for millions of Australian workers and students to start to use the internet all at once? Are there going to be certain geographical areas experiencing more issues?
  • Please supply stats on increase in bandwidth load, the max capacity of the network

• What contingencies are NBN putting in place as demand increases? What is nbn business broadband, how does it work? Can you get it at home?
• Have you seen more people racing to get connected? Is the NBN considered an essential service? So, if I have technician booked to connect me to the NBN can I be assured there will be enough skilled workers to get me up and running?
• Upload speed starts to become a bigger factor as we work at home. We are no longer just receiving data as we stream content but also need to send lots of data between home and work (For example a video production company will be uploading gigs rather than megabytes between locations) and of course a whole lot more live-streaming from everyone everywhere… how will this be managed, can upload speeds be increased beyond what is currently available?
• You may have seen Telstra CEO Andy Penn say last week on 7.30 advised not having everyone stuck at home using the internet at the same time. Given that things have ramped up and now everyone is working & studying from home, are there any realistic practical ways we can limit our impact all at once?
• Given this radical and very fast change in how we use our network, does this change how the NBN plans for the future?
  • Is it worth adding fibre to the premises rather than fttn to increase speed, and whether ISPs are limiting bandwidth for commercial reasons eg contention ratios

To find out more go to their website: https://www.nbnco.com.au/business