Subject: [LINK] Considering Fibre to the Home

[Richard Chirgwin]

Addressing two posts in one...

Stewart Fist wrote:
> George asks:
>   
>> My question to the Link Institute is whether Australia should be also
>> be considering the costs of an eventual fibre to the home network that
>> extends any fibre to the node development. If we are looking further
>> to the future, I think we should consider the eventual replacement of
>> the copper last mile now and how this might affect this next
>> investment and rollout.
>>
>> Have any recent costings on a long term migration to FTTH been done?
>> If we are to spend $5-10b now, will that investment be wasted when we
>> come to the next upgrade. It would be excellent to have a 25 year plan
>> that took into account the current rusty copper, the intermediate FTTN
>> plans and where we really want to be compared with other emerging
>> broadband economies.
>>     
George, it's reasonable to ask: "Why should a mass rollout of a consumer 
product be government-supported?" If (say) IP-TV can't compete with 
renting a DVD on price, then why does the government need to help pay 
for it?

Second: "I want it and I want it now", which is what too much FTTH 
advocacy boils down to, isn't a good reason for government funds.

I agree broadly with Stewart Fist's points...  chiefly this one:
> Upgrading the last-100 can also be done progressively-on-demand if you use
> FTTC-nodes as an interim stage. Not everyone needs (or wants) to swap over
> to FTTH at the same time.  It is best done in stages.
>   
The only problem is that any "staging" of the rollout inevitably leads 
to a sort of bandwidth-as-penis-envy. "But they got hundreds of megabits 
and I only get ten! Boo hoo!" So who's going to get the new network 
first? I hardly think we need some sort of "planned political economy" 
of bandwidth just to shut up the guy who's getting the new service 
second instead of first.

However, missing from the "gimme gigabits" argument is a simple question 
of Internet transit. No individual - well, none except the very rich! - 
can afford a gig of Internet transit. So beyond what we can afford for 
our Internet access, what's everything else going to be? Stuff "inside" 
the walled garden, designed to keep us hooked to a service provider, 
mostly. Forget the dreams of geeks: the reality would not be freedom to 
do anything on the Internet really fast. It would be "buy more of our 
bundled services! Only $99 a month to get TV that used to be free, plus 
gambling!"

Already, in the political side of the debate in other countries, the 
cost of the infrastructure is the supporting argument behind stealing 
what used to be free and making it cost money. It's a simple 
exploitation of a cargo-cult mentality on the part of the public.

Richard Chirgwin
> So Fibre to the home with say, 40Gbps of bandwidth, is probably the final
> stage.  All technologies have a limit (not necessarily technical) in terms
> of social or cultural requirements.
>
> We have a four-lane bitumen road dowm the streets (two of which are used for
> parking) and have had these four for nearly a century.  I see no reason to
> want it upgraded to 6 lanes.  Nor do I need bigger water pipes, or more than
> 250 volts of electric current.
>
> I'm not an infinite-extrapolist, so my guess is that no home in Australia
> will need more than a gigabit-per-sec of bandwidth, even in the life-time of
> your grand-child's grand-child.
>
>
> Personally, I hope they keep the old 'rusty copper' in place, since it can
> be used to provide DC feeds, and is ideal for security systems.
>
>
>