[LINK] ADSL to reign in Australia

[Ross Kelso]

Glen Turner raises some interesting points: how will we ever get a broadband
(ie. optical fibre) customer access network - eg. fibre-to-the curb (as with
TransAct in Canberra) or better still fibre-to-the home/business?

With our various governments, state and federal, regardless of political
persuasion, so wedded to the power of 'market forces', would some one please
tell me of a business model (in a competitive environment) that will ever
provide many/most Australians with truly broadband infrastructure to the home?

To be more precise, let's take Melbourne and Sydney for starters. They are
substantially dual cabled with HFC networks that were basically designed for
broadcasting and are already legacy networks (or should I say financial
lemons).  DSL on copper isn't really a viable nor affordable proposition for
broadband either.  If you aren't Telstra, you would have to get space on the
power poles for a third set of cables and get local government approval -
but either is most doubtful now.  Of course, you could try to get access to
Telstra's CAN - but the smaller ducts and pipes down residential streets are
clogged with pay tv coaxial cables, or tree roots.  But if you were Telstra,
would you invest a few more billions of dollars if 'competition' law forced
you to become a mere bit carrier?

What steps do we have to take so that a truly broadband future for
Australians can ever come about?? 

Regards

Ross Kelso

(BTW: see
http://www.ic.gc.ca/cmb/welcomeic.nsf/cdd9dc973c4bf6bc852564ca006418a0/85256
779007b79ee8525697a00468c17?OpenDocument for news of Canada's next step
towards bringing high-speed broadband Internet services to all Canadian
communities.)

At 01:04 PM 30/10/00 +1030, you wrote:
>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
>
>