After an electrical storm on Wednesday, 8 December 2021, Lane Cove Chat by ITC was flooded with people stating their NBN was out.
In Lane Cove, the NBN is connected to our houses by Fibre to the Curb (FTTC). This means that Fibre runs to the edge of the property and then connects to homes via the existing copper wire (used for landlines).
NBN Co has admitted that FTTC customers experience more issues during electrical storms.
NBN advised the Senate Estimates Committee that:
“NBN Co has replaced a total of 47,700 FTTC’ modems’ between November 2020 to March 2021 where we had severe weather events (including lightning strikes and floods).”
The NBN Co chief executive, Stephen Rue, told a Senate estimates hearing in March 2021 the following:
“Over the last few months, through some significant storm events, we saw higher-than-expected fault numbers on our FTTC network in particular geographies.
“We quickly set up a group within our engineering team to investigate, and we also retrieved damaged devices for analysis. What we are finding is that this is a complex issue; it is not a simple case of lightning travelling down a wire and tripping a fuse.”
“Our suppliers have said to us that the components in this scenario fail in a safe way, but that this also means the broadband connection to the home is lost,”
“It is not a simple case of lightning travelling down a wire and tripping a fuse. There can be multiple ways that lightning can affect any equipment, but a common cause in these cases appears to be what’s called earth potential rise”.
“This is a complex electrical issue. When lightning hits the ground, it creates a potential difference between the ground and the neutral power connections in premises connected to an NBN distribution point unit. Many of the compromised NBN devices appear to contain components that fail when subjected to these particular conditions.”
How Do I Know My Modem is Not Working?
Affected residents will see a light on their modem flash red and hear a clicking noise. To get a new modem, residents have to call their internet provider – which lodges the problem with NBN Co.
During a storm, NBN Co has also advised customers to unplug all connections to their NBN network connection device, including power, telephone cable, and Wi-Fi gateway.
What Can Be Done?
ITC wrote to our local federal member Trent Zimmerman and asked him to raise this issue and advocate for better NBN coverage in Lane Cove.
Trent Zimmerman responded as follows:
“I have spoken to NBN about this, and they have advised around 140 premises were impacted during the storms as a result of failed FTTC Network Connection Devices (NCDs) – the boxes in people’s homes – which can be vulnerable to a lightning strike in certain circumstances. This is an uncommon event.
NBN have advised me that it has begun replacing NCDs with units that are much less likely to fail in these conditions and is improving its fault rectification process to rapidly detect devices that fail and is implementing a ‘fast-track’ solution that aims to deliver a replacement device directly to affected customers within 24 hours.
More broadly, NBN has started a $4.5 billion upgrade of the system, which includes parts of the North Sydney electorate in the first tranche. I will be raising this with the Minister to advocate for areas like Lane Cove to be included in the first stages of the program.”
NBN Co advised ITC:
“We are currently investigating approximately 140 incidents in the St Leonard’s area following Wednesday night’s storms, but at this stage, it is unclear how many relate to a previously identified issue with a component in some of our Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) Network Connection Devices (NCDs).
The issue causes some devices to fail under certain conditions in areas prone to lightning and which have high resistance to earth due to the local geology.
The affected devices meet the relevant Australian Standards associated with this equipment. Testing by nbn’s supplier confirms that the devices fail in a safe way. However, it does cause the home broadband connection to be lost, which is leading to a poor customer experience for some people in these areas.
Having identified the component issue earlier this year, we began deploying a strengthened NCD that is much less likely to fail in these conditions.
Where customers do experience outages, the first step is always is to contact their internet provider.”
ITC is not so sure that is an uncommon event as numerous people posted on ITC Lane Cove Chat that they have had to replace their NBN Modem several times.
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