[LINK] fibre distance issues?

[Richard Chirgwin]

Well, I have no idea what the "1.5 km" statement means. That sounds 
distinctly like scrambled technical information to me!

As far as it being impossible to reach X% population, there is an upper 
limit. Sorry folks, and I sympathise with the very remote, but in the 
far-distant west, there are places that are several hundred kilometres 
from a telephone exchange, where only a couple of hundred people live 
... essentially their phone systems amount to a small PBX connected to a 
digital radio concentrator link. There are issues, not just economic but 
technical and logistical, that mean such places are out of reach of fibre.

Too many people don't understand the scale of Australia. I just ran an 
analysis for a conference presentation; some people think Bathurst is 
fairly remote - but it's still in the upper 50% of the country in terms 
of population density, as is pretty much 100% of Victoria and most of 
NSW. The *really* empty bits have *at most* 0.08 individuals per square 
kilometre. That is, eight people per 100 square kilometres.

Even limitless funds won't solve all the other problems associated with 
threading fibre across huge distances to serve a few hundred people. So 
100% isn't going to happen, not ever. Just what the difference is 
between 100% and the "real" limit, I don't know.

Now I'll duck while enthusiasts lob grenades ...

RC


Adrian Chadd wrote:
> G'day,
>
> Could someone please decode Coonan's relayed statement from an Optus
> Engineer about fibre builds and the new broadband system, as quoted
> here:
>
> http://abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/24/2069263.htm?section=justin
>
> Senator Coonan seized on the comments made by Optus engineer Peter Ferris
> at a summit in Sydney yesterday who rejected Labor's plan.
>
> Senator Coonan says there are obvious technical problems with the proposal.
>
> "Industry has pretty much established that it would be both physically and
> technically impossible to reach 98% of the population with a fibre build,"
> she said.
>
> "The technical limitations are of course that the fibre doesn't go beyond
> 1.5 kilometres of a telephone exchange or a node."
>
> Uhm, any ideas?
>
>
>
>
>
> Adrian
>
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