[LINK] Resilient Broadband Network needed for Australia

[Richard Chirgwin]

Glen Turner wrote:
> Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>> It is likely that consumers and businesses will replace their wired 
>> phone services with VOIP over this new network. Most VOIP services 
>> are currently not designed for emergency communications, nor to 
>> operate during a mains power failure. The RFP asks about provision of 
>> battery backup of the equipment and also mentions emergency calls, 
>> but this is priority 16 out of 18.
>
> Batteries in CPE are two-edged. You'd need to run one of those
> distasteful exercises estimating deaths from disaster against
> deaths from additional house fires.
>
> VoIP resilience is currently problematic. There's insufficient
> redundancy of call routing, insufficient peering between
> ISPs, and insufficient connectivity into the PSTN and mobile
> networks.  The situation needs a technical directive from ACMA,
> but Telstra and Optus won't be happy as they'll lose PSTN
> revenue as a result.
Nobody would be happy. Issue a technical directive, for example, 
insisting that a VoIP provider maintains multiple PSTN interconnect 
gateways, and I would guess a lot of small providers would resist.

Cheers,
RC