[LINK] Re: Telstra ultimatum on fibre

[Richard Chirgwin]

Marghanita da Cruz wrote:
> George Bray wrote:
>> And followup commentary.
>>
>> <http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,21862727-5013046,00.html>
>>
>> Good to have people write clearly about this complex situation.
> ...
> Wouldn't it be simpler if News Corp got some of the broadcast spectrum 
> and the government allowed a few more wireless paytv or even 
> commercial TV stations. Not sure what this would do to the value of TV 
> licenses. But given that everyone seems to be skipping the ads anyway, 
> maybe they are on the way out anyway.
>
> Is some of the hype on this broadband related to digitisation of the 
> cable service?
>
> M
Marghanita,

I have tried more than once to take the "broadband over abandoned TV 
channels" debate seriously, but Link doesn't seem to have anyone who is 
both (a) advocating TV channels for broadband carriers, and (b) 
sufficiently knowledgeable about radiocomms, to present a cogent case. 
Yes, I know that every half-baked no-technology 
sucker-for-a-vendor-pitch IT journalist in America just loves the idea, 
but it seems to me to be about 60% snake oil stirred up with "the 
government would like to add to the surplus".

Worse still: it looks like a distraction, deployed to confuse 
governments and activists -- "we can ignore what AT&T is doing because 
we will have the 600 MHz spectrum", to which AT&T says to some 
think-tank astroturf specialist, "well done, fella, they'll waste years 
chasing that particular chimera!"

So. Does anyone on Link care enough about the broadband-over-TV-channels 
idea to explain how it stacks up into a business case that genuinely 
competes with DSL etc?

RC