[LINK] tRe: NBN white-elephant-to-be ...

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Paul Brooks wrote:
<snip>
> Currently Copper is $7197 compared to Aluminium $2032 per tonne. Even when the cables 
> are made fatter to give the same electrical resistance as an equivalent copper cable, 
> an aluminimum cable is significantly lighter and cheaper.
> 
> Nothing to do with broadband though.

Though it does with replacing copper.

> 
> 
>> Deploying a tower every few hundred metres isn't as
>> difficult as deploying capiliaries of fibre terminated with
>> something to convert from optical transmission to
>> electricity, for either wireless or ethernet LAN (basic
>> common sense).
> 
> Lets make it a proper comparison - and include deploying the same capiliaries of fibre 
> to the towers and up them, still terminating them, and then include the radio 
> transmitters, radio receivers, dishes, panel antennas, technicians to climb the towers 
> and align the antennas...
> 
> Towers by themselves aren't very useful except as an objet d'art - and in this, they 
> still aren't very useful.
> By the time you have run fibre to every tower located every few hundred metres, you 
> might as well have run it directly to the surrounding houses, its a helluva lot 
> cheaper to maintain.

The cost of maintenance is speculation on your part and the 
coverage/flexibility of wireless is better than any cable.

> 
>> In any event, the NBN in high density urban areas is a
>> non-issue - the market meets demand.
> Tell that to the people in those high density urban areas that still to this day that 
> can't get any form of broadband, and please show me the market participants that are 
> offering an even roughly symmetric connection with 4 Mbps upstream or greater, across 
> those urban areas.
> Markets don't meet demand unless there is a significant level of competition and ease 
> of movement - and sometimes, not even then. Until then, markets meet only what the 
> market will bear.
> 
<snip>

However, I would argue that Inner Sydney has been well, if 
not over, serviced by telecommunications options.

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://ramin.com.au
Tel: 0414-869202