[LINK] The market for wireless [WAS: Work on Next Generation Wireless in Canberra]

[Kim Holburn]

On 2010/Nov/29, at 9:10 AM, Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Excuse the snip...
>> More seriously, I may be wrong and wireless networking may not take off.
>> But in case I am right, I suggest the NBN be engineered to be
>> retrofitted with wireless.
> I have no doubt that wireless networking already has taken off ... I'd 
> guess that half or better of home networks, but don't feel like going 
> out and researching the numbers.
> 
> In the home, I can see good reason to retain the "boundary" demarcation 
> at the NTU. I can do what I please in-home, as long as I can use 
> Ethernet to connect to the NTU.
> 
> Why should the NBN dictate what kind of network I use in-home?

If you have a phone that can do wifi and *G mobile, and say prefers wifi, then the question doesn't really need to arise. If your home network drops out your phone automatically switches over, even better.

These days wifi APs can do lots of separate SSIDs.  If there was a ubiquitous wifi system, your phone could attach using your account whenever it found a wifi outlet.  It might be nearly as good as having a system designed to handover to new cells like a cell phone network.   
 
> As for the mobile networks: we now have intense competition between 
> three carriers, all of which are responsible for their own decisions 
> about coverage. Where's the benefit in subsuming this into the NBN?

Don't get me started.  We, the public gave them use of three separate parts of the wireless spectrum, our public asset,  and what do we get for all that competition?  Can we roam, can we use all that coverage in the country and all that duplication in the more populated places?  What do we really get for all that competition?  Different contracts and plans that no-one can understand or compare?  Networks that don't play together.  "We" made them pay so much for the spectrum that they will never interoperate.  "We" did well with that, I don't think.

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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