[LINK] Railway standardisation model for NBN

[Tom Worthington]

The Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG) held a National 
Broadband Network Reference Model Forum in Sydney this morning. There 
will be another in Melbourne on 12 November 2009: 
<http://atug.org.au/NBNForums/MelRego061109.pdf>.

The forum discussed a model for the NBN proposed by the Communications 
Alliance. Based on the morning's discussion, my view is that a simpler 
internet model be used in place of the Alliance's model. This will be 
technically simpler to implement and will also avoid many difficult 
regulatory issues with telephone and broadcast services. In essence the 
NBN will be "an internet", which will be part of "the Internet". The NBN 
can carry many different services using internet protocols, including 
services which emulate the plain old telephone service (POTS), cable TV 
and broadcast TV, without being limited to only providing those services 
or providers. My notes from the Sydney forum are at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/11/designing-national-broadband-network.html>

After the forum I retreated to the relative calm of the State Library of 
NSW, where I came across "The World's First Railway System: Enterprise 
Competition and Regulation on the Railway Network in Victorian Britain" 
by Mark Casson  (OUP, 2009). This  looks at how efficient the investment 
in railways in the the 19th century were. There are lessons in this for 
Australia's planning for the National Broadband Network. Internet 
protocols could be seen as the equivalent of the standard gauge which is 
missing from Australian railways. With it we will be able to have a 
meshing of multiple private and public networks, seamlessly carrying 
data round Australia and around the world. Without it we will have a 
series of little branch lines, with packets of data having to be loaded 
and unloaded between different data standards, just as goods have to be 
transferred between different gauge railway lines in Australia today.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274