[LINK] Considering Fibre to the Home

[Tom Worthington]

At 11:36 AM 7/05/2007, George Bray wrote:
>It's good to see the call for opening up the analysis of Australia's
>future broadband network. 
><http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,21682412%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html>
>... whether Australia should be also be considering the costs of an 
>eventual fibre to the home ...

Fibre to the node and copper cable for the last few hundred metres 
seems to work fine in Canberra and could supply 100 Mpbs. But 
wireless may make cable to the home obsolete, if people only want a 
dozen Mbps, or less. You should be able to get TV at this speed, 
assuming anyone still wants to watch TV.

Transact put fibre to the basement of my apartment building in 
Canberra <http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/sa/bauhaus/>. There is CAT5 
cable from the basement to each apartment. This could supply 100 mbps 
to each apartment, if anyone was willing to pay for it.

But the novelty wore off after a few years. I cancelled the broadband 
and my fixed line phone. Now I use wireless broadband and a mobile phone.

I use iBurst, but there is also new Canberra fixed wireless service 
called Longreach, offering up to 14Mbps 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/05/canberra-wireless-isp.html>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml