[LINK] How far the fibre?

[Craig Sanders]

On Sun, Jul 01, 2007 at 07:56:20PM +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-07-01 at 18:39 +1000, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> > In another thread, Karl wrote:
> > ...So like I said, I did some research. Looking at WA, there are places 
> > whose distance to the nearest telephone exchange is measured in 
> > *hundreds* of kilometres
> 
> Yes - still waiting for the point here...

the point, since you seem so unwilling to see it on your own, is that
it is absurd to spend millions (or tens of millions) running fibre
optic lines to an extremely remote community of, at most, a few tens of
people.

it is absurd to expect that extremely remote communities should, or even
CAN, have exactly the same telecommunications service as those in cities
and towns.

and it goes way beyond absurd, to mind-boggling lunacy, to not only
expect it but to demand it.

perhaps you think that every tiny remote community should also have it's
own opera house, multi-million dollar art gallery, library and museum
(of the same standard as those in Melbourne or Sydney, of course), cafe
& restaurant district, train, bus & tram network etc etc etc just so
that they have exactly the same level of service as city-dwellers?


> Only if the small of vision stop it. Replace every instance of "fibre"
> with "rail" in your message, and imagine yourself back at the start of

would it surprise you to know that not every tiny remote community has its
own train station?  and that those that do, have stations much smaller than
either Flinders St station, or Sydney's Central station?

> PS: Roads costs a *great deal more* than fibre per metre laid, yet
> hardly anyone ever questions the utility of roads, even to the smallest
> of outlying settlements.

most don't have what we in the city would call "roads".  they have dirt
tracks.

hell, i own a bush block about 60km from Melbourne. the last 3 or 4 km
of the "road" there is unpaved dirt...sometimes impassable, depending on
recent weather and how recently it has been graded, by anything other
than 4WD vehicles.

i don't expect the same level of phone service there, or electricity, or
town water, or piped gas, or sewerage or any of the other services that
i expect in the city. i knew all that before i bought the place....i
didn't want suburbia with a few more trees, i wanted a bush block with
hundreds of tree-ferns, a little creek, and isolation. i have a one room
shack, a couple of storage sheds ("site offices", actually - basically,
lined shipping containers), some car batteries and a solar panel for
lighting and a gas barbecue for cooking.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

  "With soap, baptism is a good thing."
[Robert G. Ingersoll, "My Reviewers Reviewed"
 lecture in San Francisco, June 27, 1877]