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

[Kim Holburn]

Your argument a furphy.  Technically here is no way wireless could  
give anywhere near the bandwidth of fibre especially at the scales and  
densities in Australia.  There is certainly a place for wireless  
though even in parallel with everything else and there will be places  
fibre will not be suitable.

You are also not mentioning the other important things the NBN would  
give us like non-Telstra pipes to the rest of the world.  Just this by  
itself is important.

I think you'll find too that fibre doesn't require nearly as much in- 
ground cabling as copper.  You don't actually need a full fibre pipe  
from the exchange to the home.  You only really need some fibre from  
the exchange to the local node and fibre from the node to the home.  I  
would think that this would be a saving in itself. Also there is the  
scrap value of all that valuable copper.  Perhaps we already have  
fibre to many nodes, I wouldn't know but suspect it.

Telstra recently recabled my suburb in a couple of weeks with  
directional drills.  I can't see it would be that expensive.

The NBN scheme is a great idea and the Coalition's opposition and plan  
for broadband is stupid.  Just as the Labour plan to mandatorily  
filter the internet is stupid and the coalitions answer was very  
sensible.

Government spending is not necessarily bad as such, especially if you  
get actual useful and lasting infrastructure from it.  Whether the  
government is the best bunch to do the job I can't answer.  The  
infrastructure definitely needs to be separated from the content  
delivery though.

On 2010/Aug/26, at 12:51 PM, Marghanita da Cruz wrote:

> Michael Skeggs mike at bystander.net wrote:
>> On 26 August 2010 10:17, Marghanita da Cruz  
>> <marghanita at ramin.com.au> wrote:
>>
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> The point is that any 10 residents/businesses/individuals
>>> can sign up to the service, and access it whereever they are.
>>> This isn't the case with location specific cables.
>>>
>>
>> But I think the point Richard has gone to some labours to make, is
>> that wireless does not have adequate capacity to accommodate large
>> numbers of users (or even moderate numbers, really) at high speeds.
>> Wireless is absolutely part of the mix for users who require service
>> in multiple, changing locations. For the vast majority of users who
>> need high bandwidth in one or two or three locations (and perhaps
>> lower bandwidth on the go), a fibre based solution provides a much,
>> much improved service in terms of throughput and reliability.
>> If you want to use wireless as your prime access method, you will be
>> welcome to do so, but mandating it as the prime access for all would
>> result in severely limited bandwidths.
> <snip>
>
> Mandating fibre will severely limit coverage.


AFAIK there were other delivery systems planned for when fibre was not  
appropriate.

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
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