[LINK] The need for speed

Tom Koltai tomk at unwired.com.au
Tue Mar 24 23:36:27 AEDT 2009



> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman1.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Sylvano
> Sent: Tuesday, 24 March 2009 10:19 PM
> To: link at anu.edu.au
> Subject: [LINK] The need for speed
> 
> 
> 
> Some news items I have noticed recently while 
> browsing the news on the topic of broadband. 
> The promises, expectations and realities
> on the "need for speed" truly take on many 
> forms, and show that the challenge to deliver 
> using current tech levels universally is hard 
> enough.  
> 
> In the UK, we have T-Mobile describing that
> delivering speed to rural customers is tricky, 
> even for mobile carriers, (1). It is pointed
> out that at present BT is only capable of 
> delivering up to 512KB to 99% of homes. Is this
> one of those theoretical maximums?

Actually - yes.
The formula involves:

D Distance from Exchange (24 volts)
E Earth Leakage on Copper (Shorts with ground water lowering voltage
stability by introducing resistance)
C Capitalisation/Amortisation of upgrade to ADSL2 Dslams
R Replacement of CPE.

Thusly - if DECR => number of customers X monthly charges X 4 years -
Dont upgrade without Government Subsidy.

The real tricky one is distance from exchange and delivery of volts.

As we discussed on transmission of high tension power lines - loss = 2%
per kilometre.

Robin (W) feel free to jump in....

> And all the while the Digital Britain plan is to 
> have 2MB connections to all British homes by 2012. 

No the Digital Britain is planning to use RF to deliver 2048 kbps via
RF. However - if they said 2MBs then they maybe they are looking at the
802.16e (as yet unratified) implementation so yes 16Mbps.

Quote/
Universal Connectivity
In relation to Network Universal Connectivity on Digital Networks:
ACTION 17
We will develop plans for a digital Universal Service Commitment to be
effective by 2012, delivered by a mixture of fixed and mobile, wired and
wireless means. Subject to further study of the costs and benefits, we
will set out our plans for the level of service which we believe should
be universal. We anticipate this consideration will include options up
to 
2Mb/s.
/Quote

Yep Large M small b.

Therefore Typo by the Reporter.


> (I assume this means 16Mbps). This may be achievable,
> in part at least, if the claim in another news 
> story (2) is correct that the very same BT will 
> have 60Mbps to 40% of UK premises by 2012.  This is
> four times the goal for speed, but to less than half 
> of all homes.  And T-Mobile have already made the point
> that it ain't going to be easy to service remote and
> less densely populated areas.
> 
> On the home shores, we can read about the blistering
> 21Mbps mobile broadband offer from Telstra (3), but
> acknowledge the advice from Telstra officials that 
> you are really talking about a typical operating 
> range of 550 kbps and 8 Mbps.  What did BT promise again?
> And you get the sense that the 8 Mbps is a very carefully 
> selected point along the axis of of a heavily left skewed 
> distribution.  My iPhone on Vodafone 3G in Sydney metro, 
> which gives a typical range of 500kbps to 1Mbps, 
> ain't so bad then... for at least some of the time... ;-)
> 
> In the US of A, I read about Omaha, a rural town that 
> finally attracted a provider of broadband to service 
> their area, after years of effort(4).  The company 
> set up a dial-up friendly web page to build up a 
> profile to help their corporate efforts to get some of the 
> few billions of dollars the federal government is 
> giving to companies to provide broadband to underserviced 
> areas.  The mention of fire department and municipal 
> employees in the Omaha story would appear to be an
> important thing when you read about the grants program (5).  
> The company has "helped" many other towns in the USA.
> 
> Over in the EU, there is some hard core negotiation 
> going on about how the major carriers can "reduce risks" 
> to deliver ubiquitous broadband, which *seems* to equate 
> to the EU leaders saying it's OK for carriers to gouge 
> each for using each other's infrustructure (6).
> 
> And finally, a story about how some more US troops in Iraq and 
> Afghanistan now have mobile broadband access via a new satellite 
> based service, thanks to a US Army contract recently awarded 
> (7) to Inmarsat for it's Broadband Global Area Network 
> service (BGAN) (8) and accessed via fairly environmentally 
> rugged looking devices indeed. The theoretical maximum speeds 
> quoted and just under half a megabit or so. I still think I 
> prefer my iPhone 3G and the lack of enemy 
> combatants ;-)

Ah yes - but here the use of Inmarsat is in a zone peppered with
geostationary satyelites with under utilised transponders.

Each country only get three satelite slots to use or lease out from the
ITU.
As Australia is isolated we have only three useable satelites.

In the European/middleast/northern asia areas - there are 3 satelites
for every country - ergo lots of spare transponder space.

> 
> Whoever and where ever we are, the need for speed is the same.
> 
> regards
> Sylvano
> 


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