Do we even need a fibre National Broadband Network?

Tue Aug 17, 2010 1:27 am   

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:37:59 +1000, son of a bitch
<bitchin_2008_at_yahoo.com> wrote:


Yes but they could not build an INCREMENTAL bridge or Tunnel.

What we need now is better Broadband to the bad places but very little
change to the bulk of the big cities that are well served already.

And we certainly do not need to change ALL the plain old telephnes to
some complex Network temination device with back up battery etc etc at
each house.

John G.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 2:33 am   

keithr wrote:

I'm friends with the guy who ran the trial which made a world record
recently, 100Mbps over >70km, using Siemens Erikkson LTE equipment.
Want me to ask him what conditions are required for 1Gbps?

Tue Aug 17, 2010 4:01 am   

On 17/08/2010 9:16 PM, Clifford Heath wrote:

Go on then, remember that others have used unmodified wifi routers over
a distance of 125 miles, doesn't prove that its a practical disribution
system though. Come to that, I took part in a experiment that tracked a
20 watt transmitter from across the other side of the solar system
through the outer reaches of the sun and that was back in the 60s. That
did help prove something - parts of the theory of relativity.

None of this has anything to do with providing reliable high bandwidth
connections in an urban environment.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 5:36 am   

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:16:03 +1000, Clifford Heath wrote:


naah, Fist ask him how high he and the other end were?

Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:12 am   

On 17/08/2010 10:27 AM, John G wrote:

Your still thinking like a Liberal, the Internet is used for Email and
looking up STUFF!!

If you look back 10 years and what the Internet was doing then and
compare that to 10 years from now, that's the deal.

Apart from Email and Porn....
True Video Conferencing
Off-site Backups that doesn't take a week to do
Transferring Information and Data between Offices as easy
and fast as if your on the same Floor
Cable TV would become Obsolete, replaced with Live Streaming of
any Moofie for your Home Theatre. And possibly able to watch
any TV station live in the world.
More Retail shops become obsolete changing to Online Shops
More part-time Office workers working from home via remote access
Hospitals / Doctors could do live video training of procedures to
anywhere. And so on......

Tue Aug 17, 2010 8:43 am   

"son of a bitch" <bitchin_2008_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4c6a3675$1_at_dnews.tpgi.com.au...

Which doesn't need vastly increased speeds.


Which doesn't need taxpayer subsidies


Which doesn't need taxpayer subsidies


Which doesn't need taxpayer subsidies


Which doesn't need taxpayer subsidies


Which doesn't need taxpayer subsidies


Now THAT at least may save fuel, produce less CO2 and reduce road costs.


I particularly like the virtual doctors visits proposed by Gillard, followed
by the virtual undertakers visit and virtual priests visit, if it's at all
serious :-(

MrT.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 9:02 am   

On 17/08/2010 5:43 PM, Mr.T wrote:

Somebody has to Build and Own it.

If ProfitCom built it, it would just like the copper lines now with
respect to reselling , services and who's responsible for what.

If the Government Built it, even ProfitCom would have to Lease
usage from the Government for what they use, and they would be
responsible to maintain it like every other company leasing it.

And changing Providers would truly become competitive for the
first time since the very first telephone rang in Australia.

The main reason the Current Broadband is so outrageously overpriced
compared to other countries is ProfitCom still owns everything and
therefore dictates the base price to other providers. You can change
service providers, one way or another ProfitCom still gets a Cut.
That's not competition.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 10:42 am   

On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:34:37 +1000, Don McKenzie <5V_at_2.5A> wrote:

:
:Here is an interesting article that has picked up 485 reader responses already:
:
o we even need a fibre National Broadband Network?
:===================================================
:
:The following post is by Sean Kaye, a senior Australian IT executive. It first
appeared on his personal blog, Sean on
:IT, and is re-published here with his permission. Kaye also blogs at Startups
Down Under.
:
:opinion As someone who is very pro-technology and likes to be on the cutting
edge, I find myself staring at many of my
:colleagues and acquaintances in the industry with disbelief when the topic of
the National Broadband Network comes up.
:People I know (and some who just email or tweet me) ask if I’ve bumped my head
and forgotten what I do for a living. It
:even has had me re-thinking my views, but ultimately I keep coming to the same
place.
:
:Here’s what I think …
:
:First of all, $43 billion is a ridiculous sum of money to spend on anything. It
is even crazier when the country finds
:itself coming off a $22 billion surplus and staring down the barrel of $100
billion of debt. I don’t think this is at
:all right now about need, but is entirely about our ability to cover the cost
of such a thing.
:
:The full story and responses at the following URL:
:http://delimiter.com.au/2010/08/10/do-we-even-need-a-fibre-national-broadband-network/#commenting
:
:Cheers Don...


I haven't bothered to read al lthe various links referred to in this thread. I
see it in rather simple terms as follows.

Putting fibre into every home is akin to putting a 6" diameter water main into
every home. There is no way in the world a home could use the capacity of either
a 6" waer pipe, and similarly so for fibre. "That's ok", you might say, "you
don't need to pay for the full bandwidth capability of the fibre, just pay for
what you reckon you need." Sure, but that is still like having a 6" water pipe
but with a stop cock to regulate the amount of water you can pull out at any
given rate.

There is simply no way that 99% of households can justify needing 100Mbps let
alone 1Gbps. The only places which would justify fibre to the premises (dare I
say for the next 10 years or so) are businesses, educational/research and the
medical facilities. For the majority of households a guaranteed 20Mbps would be
more than adequate and this could easily be provided using a FTTN solution which
would cost around half as much as the FTTH. So, to my mind, fibre to the home is
largely a waste of money. I think the best solution currently would be fibre to
the node with the last 300m in copper. Perhaps later down the track FTTH would
be justified and then it would be even cheaper to connect individual homes.

The problem is that both political parties who are capable of forming government
have got themselves into a major bind because Telstra owns the existing copper
network and neither one wants to allow Telstra to own any part of the
infrastructure associated with a terestrial NBN, no matter what solution is
used. A FTTN NBN would mean that Telstra's competitors would have to install
their own fibre nodes (or pay Telstra to lease spare capacity on theirs), and
then also rely upon Telstra copper for the last 300m, and that is a big no-no as
far as they, and the libs and labor are concerned. That is the real reason we
have this FTTH NBN proposal in the first place - it is pure pig-headedness on
the part of the government of the day (whichever) which has put the nation where
we are today with regard to a modern NBN.

It is possible that if labor gets in again and pays Telstra $11B for their ducts
as they say they will, they could then change their minds and go for a FTTN
solution, but somehow I can't see that happening.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 11:20 am   

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:12:51 +1000, son of a bitch wrote:



I nominate this use as the flying car of the computer world.
Backups will always max out the capacity of the system.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 12:38 pm   

On 17/08/2010 6:20 PM, terryc wrote:

Sure, and even those piss-fart netbooks now have 250Gig Drives
and a Lot of Notebooks now have 500Gig Drives.

It just makes good cents to have a Off-site Backup that's are
so simple to implement and not reliant on their owners to do
anything. The most unreliable thing in a backup system are People.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 3:41 pm   

On 18/08/2010 12:09 AM, terryc wrote:

With a Fibre Link you are looking at LAN speed
With ADSL2 10Meg Down and either 512K or 1Meg Up
Uploading 10Gig takes foreever, so much so that by the time it's
finished files are already out of date.

Using a Online Service is Quite reasonable as long as you don't use
an Aussie One or you will screwed over on the Bangs per Buck.

But with Fibre, if your a Business with more than one Office you
can back one site onto the other site. The only cost is the cost
of the Internet Connection.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 5:09 pm   

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:38:59 +1000, son of a bitch wrote:


Which takes how long to backup?
And costs how much to get there?

and not controlled by them?


Yes.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 5:20 pm   

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:42:35 +0800, Ross Herbert wrote:



The real problem with a 6" water main is that we do not have the capacity
(water towers) to put the water down the pipe in any significant
continuous flow.

OTOH, FTTH doesn't rely on a single source of data. You use it or not.

The positive way to think about putting FO to every home (well 93%,
maybe) is that you are really replacing the now limited copper with
something that, hopefully, will be sufficient for data demands for
decades.

The real limitation is going to be the $30/month access charge (what %
can afford that?), plus the $/Gb costs.

Tue Aug 17, 2010 6:53 pm   

terryc wrote

More fool you, plenty have been offering that service for a long time now.


Thanks for that completely superfluous proof of why you are completely unemployable.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 5:26 am   

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:41:18 +1000, son of a bitch wrote:



Um, do I need coffee or drugs or did you just twice self contradict?

1) back up OS to avoid $AUS/Gb charges (which you are going to have to
pay to get it OS anyway), and

2) send it between Aussie offices on Australian lines to avoid $AUS/Gb
data charges.