[LINK] Senator Coonan on 7:30 Report

[Tom Worthington]

At 07:53 PM 18/06/2007, steve jenkin wrote:
>... It looks and smells like catch-up ...

The announcement is available at 
<http://www.minister.dcita.gov.au/media/media_releases/australia_connected_fast_affordable_broadband_for_all_australians>. 
There are detailed documents, all in PDF so you need broadband to 
download them.  ;-)

My quick take on it at 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/06/broadband-for-our-broad-land.html>.

>The bulk of service is going to be metro - FTTN. Where are the plans for
>FTTH? ...

No plans for Fibre to the Home.

>And the really BIG question didn't get asked or answered: What's it
>going to *cost*? ...

Seems to add up to just under $1B. This is not the full cost of the 
service, just the subsidy for rural areas.

>BTW: I didn't know that WiMax was ratified/agreed or chipsets available.
>And they're saying at 5.8GHz. ...

The WiMax standard is still a bit new, but I expect that the 
chipmakers will be able to deliver now and sort out the bugs with 
flash upgrades later. I suspect that a year's worth of research will 
be needed to optimize the system for working in low population 
regional Australia. There are also the uncertainties of cockatoos 
eating the antenna cables, and the like.

One aspect is like that like CDMA upgrade, the rural customers should 
not get the idea that the service will be as mobile as in the city. 
They will not be able to use tiny antennas on laptops, but will 
likely need a roof mounted antenna.



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