[LINK] fibre distance issues?

[Richard Chirgwin]

Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 24, 2007, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> I'm sure the same was said about getting radio to the centre of Australia,
> then running cross-country communications (I remember posters showing
> the novel microwave station network that spanned east/west coast back
> when I was a child); and I'm sure people thought running copper to peoples'
> farms was also out of the question. I'm sure radio telecommunications is
> still used out there; anyone done the numbers to see what it'd be like to
> run radio-based internet+telephony out to farms over 100km+ last-mile links? :)
>   
Without trying to pick a row with the entire world... IMO we can't 
sensibly debate "what should be" without an accurate view of how things 
stand today. And today, the "people who thought running copper to 
peoples' farms was out of the question" were right.

Lots of farms don't have copper now. They're served by VHF / UHF radio 
links, which are held by Telstra and can be viewed on the ACMA register 
of radio licenses. ( I suppose this replaced, in some cases, the 
single-wire-earth-return party line phones that used the top wire of a 
fence to carry the calls!) I would guess that these support dial-up 
access to the Internet and that's about it.

Following Glen's remark:
> Those remote places have roads and power, so its a falsity
> that infrastructure cannot be placed there.
Not all communities have power, and many of them have roads that demand 
a very loose definition. To the power question: the national retail 
electricity grid does not have 100% coverage. Many places rely on local 
diesel generators or, increasingly, solar.

As to roads: my nephew is in the top end working as a pilot to 
aboriginal communities. You can't get around in the tropical wet by 
road, because there isn't one; and even in the best conditions, it's 
quite common to spend six hours covering 100 km because the road is so bad.

So without trying to cause offense, I'll say that there are many 
locations that the infrastructure doesn't reach. From the cities - or 
even the country towns - we comfortably assume that the whole country is 
covered by at least basic infrastructure; this is not the case. Where 
the infrastructure is absent, people have to "make do" - which is also 
what leads to newspaper stories about third world conditions.

Back to Adrian's post:
> There's always a technical solution, as long as you're quite happy 
> spending money. (Both on inadequate solutions as well as adequate solutions.)
> The question is whether you're happy running _different_ solutions.
>   
Different solutions are, IMO, the only way we'll get anywhere with the 
most remote places. Which different solutions? I'm not that sage...

RC
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> Adrian
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