Subject: [LINK] Considering Fibre to the Home

[Adrian Chadd]

On Tue, May 08, 2007, George Bray wrote:

> I've seen first hand (through GrangeNet and AARNet) the possibilities
> for new high-bandwidth applications.  The argument FOR raising the bar
> on retail-level bandwidth nationally is that there is an enabled
> user-base for advanced applications.

And I've seen first hand (through GrangeNet and AARNet) what its like
being on the remote end of a super-fast network which is so easy to
run over quota, departments are too scared to use it lest the university
is charged for excess. Worked great for specific projects with funding
that wanted access; worked out really crappy for the average departmental
staff member or student.

I can't count how many times I heard students ask why the hell they
have super-fast internet access thats charged per-student per-byte; and
I can't count how many times we had to muck around with AARNet's billing*
because they charged for something we assumed to be on the "free"
network list.

Now, people who say "lots of interesting stuff is doable when there's
super-fast infrastructure" are correct, but if you don't end up giving
end-users the ability to do what they want you're just going to end up
being a vessel for purely commercial interests. I'm a believer that
individuals are going to be a much, much better innovator than companies -
give them the infrastructure and let people do what they're good at.
Let the companies then take those ideas and build products.

Don't stifle innovation by providing a 100mbit link to the home and only
allow people to download 10 gigabytes a month.




Adrian

* I hear that AARnet are finally fixing their billing to be less..
  20th century. I'm not having a dig here, but we once or twice ran
  the numbers of building dual over-large uplinks to commercial providers
  and WAIX versus what we were currently getting from AARNet..