[LINK] NBN Broadband Plan

[Tom Worthington]

Paul Brooks wrote:
> Tom Worthington wrote ...
>> ... NBN ... right approach by not trying to do too much...
> 
> Tom - thats a somewhat different position to the first reaction at 
> the ATUG seminar a few months back - good to see :-)

More details have come out on what NBN Co propose to do, since the first
ATUG seminar in October:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/10/australian-2009-telecommunications.html>.

> And in Tom's point-5,NBN Co. agree that IPTV will need layer-3. ... 
> another service provider to build a PPPoE/L2TP framework. However, 
> these are the things NBNCo are looking for feedback on. ...

VoIP and IPTV seem to have been afterthoughts with the NBN but may turn
out to be most important to the consumer. The technical issues with
these are minor compared to the commercial and political implications. 
What people expected from telephones and TV evolved over time, along 
with laws and businesses to support that. Suddenly much more will be 
possible with the NBN. The issue will be how much of the old system and 
their limitations have to be emulated on the new system.

In particular IPTV could be a political minefield for the Federal 
Government making Internet censorship look easy in comparison. IPTV is 
not really TV, it is video carried over the Internet. The laws 
restricting on who could broadcast what where and when, largely grew up 
around limitations imposed by the physics of how radio signals propagate.

TV transmitters could only send signals a limited distance and so an 
area could be licensed. There was limited radio spectrum and so only a 
few channels could be licensed. Broadcasters had to build expensive 
transmitters and so had to have the prospect of an audience to cover the 
cost.  Many of these restrictions did not apply to Digital TV but the 
broadcasters have so far managed to have the analogue restrictions 
applied to digital TV. These limitations do not apply at all to the NBN 
and it will be interesting to see how the existing Australian TV 
broadcasters go trying to have them imposed so as to maintain their 
oligopoly.


-- 
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