He worked for NBN and struggled to get high-speed internet. So what hope do we have?

Updated

Even for a former NBN contractor, getting a fibre connection to the network can be a slow and frustrating process.

Key points: NBN Co encourages groups of neighbours to jointly apply for FTTP connections, so they can share costs that could otherwise be prohibitive

However, only four groups of neighbours have done so across Australia

The lead applicant for a one group said NBN Co made the process difficult and it was unsurprising so few groups were applying.

NBN Co says it will put more resources into supporting such applications

"There were a few times where I felt like giving up," said Nicholas Gillett.

The telecommunications engineer spent more than a year getting a group of neighbours together to share the costs of fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) NBN — which is faster than the NBN's standard fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) connections.

While he was successful in the end, it took him hundreds of hours of work — everything from researching phone line infrastructure to answering his neighbours' questions.

People who want a FTTP connection are encouraged by NBN Co to team up with their neighbours to bring down the cost of installation.

But figures released to the ABC show just four groups of neighbours have done this anywhere in the country.

It represents 20 homes in all — half of which are Mr Gillett's group, in the Melbourne suburb of Williamstown.

Mr Gillett is not surprised there are so few group FTTP applications, and has criticised the NBN for making the process so hard.

"It's not really geared towards your average person. They make it sound simple online, but it's certainly not that simple," he said.

"They often ignored my calls, weren't forthcoming with the quotation.

"It seemed like a lot of the people I dealt with didn't care."

How it works

Getting group together not easy

NBN Co has been criticised for the prices it is quoting people to upgrade from slower NBN services to FTTP — in some cases more than $1 million.

On its website and in the media, NBN Co tells people who want an FTTP connection, but cannot afford to pay for it individually, to get together in a group and submit an application.

However, Mr Gillett said his experience showed it was far from easy.

Mr Gillett's neighbourhood has only been slated to receive fibre to the node, which means individuals need to pay for some infrastructure themselves if they want FTTP.

In late 2016, he decided he wanted to upgrade in order to get faster speeds, and set about to getting a group together after realising the cost of going it alone would be prohibitive.

At the time, he was working on a nine-month contract for NBN Co, in a separate part of the business.

As he worked in the industry, he knew it was logical to share costs with households in the same phone line distribution area as his home, as it would be those homes that would share the same NBN fibre line.

"If you target homes not in the same [distribution] area, it inflates the cost," Mr Gillett explained.

However, NBN Co refused to tell him which homes were in his distribution area because of privacy reasons.

So he got creative and requested "dial before you dig" maps for his area, which showed the arrangement of the Telstra pits and distribution networks in his neighbourhood.

He knew NBN Co would roughly follow the same distribution networks as Telstra, so he targeted those 30 neighbours, knocking on their doors and dropping leaflets in their mailboxes.

Do you know more about this story? Email vicindepth@abc.net.au

Being the neighbourhood tech advisor

By March 2017, 16 people had got back to Mr Gillett to say they were interested — and that's where the real work began.

Mr Gillett then became the middle man between his neighbours and NBN Co, answering all their technical questions and trying to get quotes from the NBN.

"People sometimes asked tech questions that I didn't know the answers to straight away and I'd have to go back and read the design documents," he said.

"Also, NBN is really hard to get hold of. It's a bit of an ivory tower. If you call the call centre, they say 'we don't have any answers for you'.

"It's only until you're on the inside that you start getting some answers."

Neighbours were indecisive about joining, meaning Mr Gillett had to submit two quote applications to the NBN for costings of different scenarios.

In another hack, he even got Telstra to remediate an old asbestos pit in his street that NBN Co had wanted to charge his group to do.

In the end, 10 households decided to proceed at a total cost of $27,180, or $2,718 per house.

Once they committed, the process was very quick.

The build commenced in late February of this year and the NBN was connected in March. It was activated at the end of April.

"The speed is really good. We used to have drop outs … if it rained it would drop out, we often couldn't use the landline. Now the reliability is heaps better," he said.

"Everyone [in the group] I've spoken to says it's amazing."

He laughed when told there were only four group FTTP connections like his that have been built in the country.

"That's surprising, because the way NBN had explained it to me, there were lots of other groups," he said.

"I sort of feel a bit annoyed about that — I was trying to convince them to give us a good rate 'cause it'd be good for their numbers.

"Hearing only four groups went ahead, I feel like, 'Hold on guys, you should have treated me a bit better'."

NBN Co flags changes

A spokesperson for NBN Co said it regretted if its customer service was not up to standard.

"NBN Co does endeavour to respond to applicant queries as quickly as possible but unfortunately the volume of correspondence can make this difficult on occasions," the spokesperson said.

"NBN Co has now moved to address this issue by allocating more dedicated administrative resources to handle correspondence from applicants."

NBN Co said it was also changing its structures to give more support to a group's lead applicant — people like Mr Gillett.

The corporation expected the numbers of group applications to grow as a result.

Despite all the work, Mr Gillett said he would do it all again, and is even now putting together another group application for FTTP for his investment property and surrounding neighbours.

"The benefit is definitely worth it," he said.

Topics: telecommunications, industry, internet-technology, internet-culture, information-and-communication, williamstown-3016, melbourne-3000, vic

First posted