[jiggawatts]

I love being ripped off because I'm renting, so instead of having a direct relationship with my service providers, they are legally allowed to sign binding contracts with the building manager who I'm sure in no shape way or form receives a kick-back.

So I'm stuck with an energy provider that is too incompetent to figure out how to bill me correctly, but puts a markup on what I'd pay as a home owner, and I don't even get the NBN despite having fibre to the premises!

No IPv6, no gigabit Internet, no free solar electricity.

[inkyoto]

> […] they are legally allowed to sign binding contracts with the building manager […]

The embedded networks collude with the builders and offer them the installation of wiring, air-conditioning, gas, hot water, and sometimes the internet – usually for free – and that happens before the strata comes into the picture. The strata is left with no choice but to inherit a fixed-term contract (typically 3-5 years), after which it can switch to… another embedded network.

The builders accept offers from embedded networks because it reduces their overall costs.

The NSW government has enacted the first tranche of regulations for embedded networks from the 1st of July this year, with the embedded networks price caps being introduced in early 2027 (that is the promise, anyway). If you live in NSW, IPART is the government body in charge of the regulation, and it is accepting submissions until the end of this month. Prepare and make your own submission whilst you can, as I have done.

[nikcub]

> The embedded networks collude with the builders and offer them the installation

I got into a dispute with my embedded provider because of a bad meter and came to discover through friends and family in the construction industry as well as speaking to a former sales person in the industry that there is a lot of additional corruption in the process with straight up payments being made to win installs with developers.

When it came time to switch providers in our building, strata was promised electric vehicle chargers as part of signing a new deal with a new provider. They never delivered because they found an escape clause because of fire safety approval.

We're now locked in for years (again) and they've already increased rates once in the first year.

Nobody in the entire chain works in the interests of residents or owners. It's a completely broken system and a thorn in the side of otherwise advanced and progressive Australian energy policy. It needs to be abolished ASAP.

I still pay more for my single apartment living alone in electricity than what family and friends do in full large homes with air conditioning, 4-6 residents, heated pools, etc. It's astonishing.

[inkyoto]

«Mates rates» is a big problem in Australia, indeed. At best, it is collusion, but typically it is corruption.

I have recently gone through the entire chain of complaints, the ombudsman including, and I have gained plenty of insight into how insidious the current scheme is.

NSW has set out to do something about it, with price caps being introduced in 2027. If you live in NSW, make your submission to the regulator (IPART) ASAP – submissions are closing at the end of July.

[BLKNSLVR]

What is the limiting factor in getting NBN? Getting fiber to the premises is that hard part, and that's already done.

[jiggawatts]

The contract that the building manager signed.

[BLKNSLVR]

So how do you get Internet? Is it provided as a shared wifi service for the building or something, like in a hotel? (so the building manager is essentially running a mini-ISP re-selling a single NBN service?)

HTP!

[jiggawatts]

Fibre to the apartment, but it is only “lit up” by a non-NBN provider.

[tialaramex]

These are things where policy is set by government and so could be moved by your elected representatives. If you already have a preferred flavour of representative, try to get them to want to do this. If you don't, here's an issue that could make you prefer one over another, make sure they know that.

[inkyoto]

No, technically it can't. An individual writing to an MP is rarely sufficient by itself.

Australia’s embedded network landscape is a peculiarly intricate tangle of nuance, complexity and regulatory optimism. Note that the embedded networks are distinctly unique and different from retail utility providers.

Please bear with my lengthy explanation for a few rather long moments.

Embedded networks are private distribution systems sitting behind a single connection to the public grid (shopping malls, apartment blocks, retirement villages, camp and caravan sites etc). They all have, effectively, a single wire going into the site.

Originally, they were designed for incidental on-selling by site managers, and they are a regulatory exception allowing the operator to on-sell electricity and other services without becoming a fully authorised energy retailer or licenced distributor. The embedded networks typically bundle: 1) electricity, 2) centralised hot water, 3) cold water, 4) gas, 5) heating / cooling (air-conditioning) and 6) fibre to the premises (sometimes, not always). All those things are governed by separate statutes.

In theory as well as occasionally in practice, they should be cheaper for consumers because they are able to negotiate lower wholesale rates from the upstream supplier and because the customer churn is non-existent (the customer is locked into the network and has nowhere to go). In some cases, that is indeed true, but because the current legislation explicitly excludes the embedded networks from the government reporting, many embedded network operators have resorted to the insidious exploitation of their customers, and the government is clueless because the operators' imposed pricing is opaque.

Natiaonally, Australia does not have a single federal embedded-network statute. The principal framework is a cooperative national scheme comprising 7 government bodies (Australian Energy Market Commission, AER, Australian Energy Market Operator, National Electricity Law and Rules, National Energy Retail Law and Rules, Australian Consumer Law and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission).

At the state level – so far – only Victoria has largely banned new embedded networks, with the remaining states either participating or not participating in the National Energy Customer Framework. Overall, NSW, Victoria, Western Australia and the national regulators are tightening the rules but they still have a way to go.

For a reform such as embedded-network regulation, the path looks closer to:

  Voters ↝ political parties ↝ MP's ↝ ministers ↝ departments ↝ intergovernmental bodies ↝ regulators ↝ consultation processes ↝ rule-making bodies ↝ implementation.

An MP may understand: «Residents in apartment towers are getting poor outcomes». They are highly unlikely to understand: a) market settlement arrangements, b) metering identifiers, c) distribution-loss factors, d) retailer-of-last-resort frameworks, e) exemption classes, f) embedded-network-manager functions, or g)interactions between state strata law and national electricity law.

Unsurprisingly and consequently, politicians become heavily dependent on: a) departmental advice, b) regulator advice, c) industry submissions, d) consultant reports, and e) lobby groups.

The people who understand the system – and especially those one who know how to work the system to their benefit – therefore acquire disproportionate influence over how the system evolves. That does not necessarily imply corruption, it is a structural feature of technical governance. Customers, however, refer to it as «rent seeking», even if they own an apartment.

Despite all that, elected representatives still do remain one of the few machineries capable of changing the underlying legal framework. The deeper issue is that modern regulatory states are neither pure democracies nor pure technocracies – they are hybrids. Formal authority remains democratic, but practical power is distributed among elected officials, bureaucracies, regulators, courts, industry participants, consultants, lobbyists and organised interest groups.

I have recently gone down the rabbit hole of the embedded networks and learned a bewildering number of things hence the fulmination.

[pixl97]

Jeesh, these embedded networks sounds like something that was once a good idea to serve more marginalized customers, but has drifted into revenue generation because of a change in information available to those providing it.

[throwaway2037]

Ok, this post has to be a Top 10 HN of all time for me. Massively informative. Thank you. +9000

Plus, extra Internet points for using this Unicode char that I didn't know about: ↝

[jiggawatts]

I knew the situation was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad. What an illuminating comment indeed!

[LoganDark]

Single customers having these issues don't really have any power to convince representatives. Historically, the only real way to enact change in this way is to have thousands of people contacting their representatives about it.

[tialaramex]

Unless I misunderstood them, this is a common problem so there's no reason that wouldn't happen though.

[LoganDark]

If it's a common problem then change will happen without you. A difference of one is no difference at all.

[throwaway2037]

    > I don't even get the NBN despite having fibre to the premises!

Woah, this is crazy. Personally, I have read so much about the Aussie NBN (The Australian National Broadband Network) [1]. (Dear nerds: If you don't know about it, I highly recommend you read about it!) I am utterly jealous that you lot pulled it off! (Not perfect, but pretty damn good.) Can you share more details about why the building does not have high quality NBN connections? The whole dream sold to nerds about NBN was basically 1Gbit fibre for everyone in a big/mid-sized city (and suburbs) and "decent" Internet (100MBit+) for everyone else in the bush.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

[Nursie]

At least part of the story is a cautionary tale about electing the LNP. The NBN was originally going to be as you describe, but then Tony Abbot came along, under instruction from his pal Rupert Murdoch, and threw a major spanner in the works.

He decided it was waaaaay too expensive and big-governmenty to do that and besides, Uncle Rupert had a satellite tv business to defend, we don't want him to have to compete with the likes of Netflix now do we? So he told Australia that it was too much money for a "glorified video delivery service" and that 25Mbit was enough for anyone for the foreseeable, and threw out the original plans.

The plan was downgraded to "Fibre in some places, we'll reuse copper where possible". This ended up taking longer and costing more than the original plan, delivered worse service, and we're only now getting towards where we should have been under the first plan. A lot of the work has had to be repeated due to the initial poor rollout and then needing to upgrade as that 25Mbit started looking woefully inadequate. Just last year a further $5 billion was pledged to replace more FTTN/Copper with FTTP.

It's still more expensive than other markets I'm aware of, a lot of people who aren't far from cities and major towns are on wireless connections (theoretical 400Mbit, actual ~150), and the real bush "Sky Muster" system tops at 100/5 (actual ~55-83) and is having its lunch eaten by starlink.

tl;dr the Liberal (conservative) party got in and fucked it up.

[inkyoto]

> […] why the building does not have high quality NBN connections?

Because their place of residence is connected to an embedded network that has eschewed the NBN Co and chosen to connect to a private fibre operator who sits outside the NBN. They probably also pay more compared to NBN for the same speed.

Not every embedded network supplies fibre, but some do, and that appears to be the case in their situation.

By the way, NBN has recently upgraded the network to 2Gbps, with 10 Gbps having been trialled but no availability date set as of yet.