[LINK] ADSL to reign in Australia

[Glen Turner]

Ross Kelso wrote:
> 
> Don't bother reading this article - it's clearly a Yankee perspective
> generalised to Australia - but the generalisation fails!

I'm glad I wasn't the only person feeling this way.

I can't for the life of me see why an ISP would run their own
metro optical network and then terminate it with ADSL rather
than doing the customer access with eyesafe optical or VDSL
over category 5 cable.  There seems to be no possible business
model in what the analyst was suggesting.

ADSL is really only useful when operating from an exchange
and re-using the telephone copper.  And then the range is
limited to about 3Km (and that at only 1.5Mbps) and may
not be available to half the people within a suburban
area due to poor cable connections or Remote Integrated
Multiplexors.

IHMO the future is in replacing the customer access network
with an optical network that takes optics as far as economic
to the customer door, and then allows for customers to pay for
an upgrade to optical to the door.  The business model is to
obtain the customer's entire telecommunications spend: TV,
Internet, fixed phone, mobile.  And by "Internet" I mean
at least 20Mbps, something where you can run multiple video
streams.

You can see the start of this in Canberra.  Note that this
also changes the economics: the first-in company has a
significant chance of obtaining a regional monopoly.
Given this, it makes some sense for local government to
regulate and/or participate in the telco industry.

-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised