[LINK] Broadband for a Broad Land

Frank O'Connor francisoconnor3 at bigpond.com
Fri Dec 24 12:48:08 AEDT 2010


>
>That leaves batteries. The greatest risk is from putting battery
>management and disposal in the hands of consumers. Right now, the backup
>batteries (of which there are vast numbers, but they're low-visibility
>to us because they're all in Telstra exchanges) are managed by carriers,
>who I presume handle them responsibly. If the batteries are NBN-provided
>and therefore managed, their environmental impact should be similar in
>order to the environmental impact of today's backup batteries; an expert
>could discuss the relative environmental merits of very large lead-acid
>battery banks vs. gel-based batteries.

Mmm ... and anyone who currently uses a cordless phone as their 
primary land-line connected device (and I'd argue that's a fair 
number of us) has to have battery back up to continue to get a 
service during power failures anyway ... else the hub/handset doesn't 
work. Me? I rely on my mobile when that happens ... but others have 
to have some form of in-house battery back-up or an old time phone.

Seem to me a lot of the objections to the NBN are to some extent 
'manufactured' by people with too much time on their hands, or who 
are politically motivated.    :)

Bottom line: all my research indicates that the NBN will be an order 
of magnitude more power efficient than its copper or WiFi 
competitors, involve a heap less maintenance and failure (but be 
commensurately more expensive to repair per incident), be far less 
susceptible to interference (be it electrical, magnetic, solar or 
whatever), carry an inordinate amount more information and data, be 
far more capable of extension and expansion into much higher 
bandwidth levels to the consumer than the current 100Mbs proposed, 
and open up far more possibilities than the limited copper and WiFi 
mediums.

This is one infrastructure project I don't see a lot of down-sides to.

				Regards,



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