[LINK] NBN expectations

[Paul Brooks]

On 3/11/2010 1:53 PM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> Bernard,
>
> In part, that probably depends on what the customer buys. If you take
> the 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps plan, some expectations management is probably in
> order. But I would expect the NBN to have a similar plan distribution to
> the rest of the world, with most people taking well below the maximum
> offering. Someone getting 20 Mbps or 50 Mbps, compared to 1 Mbps or 8
> Mbps now, probably will notice the difference!
>
> But I agree that our focus solely on the gigabit capabilities is
> probably skewing expectations.
The other aspect that isn't getting any airtime is that there isn't or perhaps 
shouldn't be any great expectation that the 100 Mbps (or more) needs to be occupied by 
a single service chunk.
Subscribing to a 25 Mbps Internet service, a PayTV service that reserves perhaps 15-20 
Mbs, while your work pays for a separate 25 Mbps VPN link into the corporate 
datastore, plus a telephone service on one of the POTS ports that reserves 150 kbps, 
and all up you're using approx 75 Mbps of aggregate capacity on your link even though 
you've only subscribed to 25 Mbps for Internet.

Its not just a case of how many opt for a 25 Mbps service - its how many end up with  
three or four 25 Mbps services of various types into the same building.

And to ride a pet hobbyhorse of mine - people that opt for the lowest speed Internet 
access should still see a very noticable improvement in performance from the greatly 
improved upstream capacity
(which will greatly improve the outbound bittorrent rate, which will be reflected in 
vastly increased incoming bittorrent rates, allowing people to download their Linux 
ISOs incredibly quickly, even if they opt for no more downstream capacity they have 
now on DSL....)

Paul.