[LINK] Battery back-up mandatory for NBN?

[Paul Brooks]

On 28/10/2010 9:20 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
>
> My view is that the NBN is intended to replace the current telephone
> service and will become even more essential to the community,

The first is technically not true, but I'll acknowledge up front the distinction is 
splitting hairs!.
The medium is not the message - or the service.
The NBN does not replace the current telephone service. The NBN provides a different 
material for the current service to travel through. (The current service has nothing 
to do with the medium carrying the signals. The current service consists of - dialtone 
on a standard customer physical socket, interpretation of standardised audio tones 
generated while dialling, any-to-any capability to connect to another telephone 
service elsewhere on the planet, and usually (but not always) the ability to receive 
calls from other parties.   The fact that currently the majority of such services are 
carried on kilometres of twisted copper wire is an implementation decision of the 
carrier, not a part of the service.

I respectfully submit the second statement is false. In previous days without the 
cellular mobile phone system, and even affordable walkie-talkies, the telephone 
service was the only game in town for communicating beyond shouting distance - and 
therefore essential. These days there are several communications alternatives 
completely independent of the fixed standard telephone service, including mobile 
phones often on several different carriers and frequencies, so the level of 
'essentialness' of the conventional fixed service is lower, not higher, than before.

Paul