[LINK] fibre distance issues?

[Craig Sanders]

On Thu, Oct 25, 2007 at 07:37:17AM +1000, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> 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.

yes. it's silly to let the debate about comms infrastructure be hijacked
by extreme cases that are NEVER going to be adequately served (by city
standards).

if we can reach 90, 95, 98% of the population with FTTN (or better,
FTTH) then we should do so. the rest of the population are special cases
that should get what makes most sense for their situation.

> 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.
> [...]
> Where the infrastructure is absent, people have to "make do" - which
> is also what leads to newspaper stories about third world conditions.

partly.  there's also appalling short-sightedness and cluelessnes.

e.g. every time i see video on TV about remote communities, i look at
the houses and wonder why they're such dreadful brick and fibro shacks
- it would be cheaper and better to build strawbale houses. excellent
insulation, cheap building materials, cheap house design (basically a
post-and-beam structure with rendered strawbale wall infill), and an
abundance of dirt for a mud-render.

transporting strawbales might be expensive, but not when compared to
transporting bricks or other mainstream construction materials.

with sufficient water, mud-brick houses are an option too.

another advantage is that the "plasticity" of the mud-render would
allow the occupants to make each house a work of art, the mud can be
manipulated into any shapes or patterns before it dries - encouraging
emotional investment in the housing and reducing vandalism (people
vandalise what is ugly, what they don't value)

and repairing damage is just slapping on another coat of render. easily
done by unskilled labour - probably the occupants themselves.

IMO, a lot of good could be done by sending teams of experienced
strawbale and mudbrick builders up there to run workshops teaching the
communities how to build their own cool, efficient (eg simple stuff like
passive solar design, north-facing, wide eaves/verandahs, etc) houses
using local materials.

of course, housing and overcrowding aren't the only problems in remote
communities - not by a long shot - but they are significant.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>

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