[LINK] Business fetishism (was Re: LINK] Four Corners NBN)

[Tom Worthington]

Richard Chirgwin wrote:
> [snip]
>> The business just needs one fibre link, not one to every home in the
>> bush. Similarly, for educational applications, the schools need the links. ...
>
> Tom & others ... The statement that "this is good for business, but consumers don't need 
> it" is third-world thinking. ...

In terms of income per square kilometre, most of Australia is an 
undeveloped country. There are few people living there so little moey to 
pay for networks or services.

The average Australian, even in a city, will not be able to switch on 
their video screen at home and instantly be connected to a highly 
trained medical specialist. Even if this was good fhealth care, it would 
be prohibitively expensive. This is not due to the cost of 
telecommunications, but the cost of specialists.

My experience of developing nations (and former developing nations) is
limited to a week in China and Samoa and three weeks in an Indian
village.

Mobile phones and fixed wireless Internet were very evident in China
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/bws/index.html>and
India <http://www.tomw.net.au/travel/>. There was nothing backward about 
the sophistication of the use of
telecommunications. Samoa
<http://www.tomw.net.au/2005/emuseums/> had problems due to a hold up 
with mobile
licences but were catching up. They had a novel approach to broadband
cable: DIY using ordinary Ethernet cable down the street.

> ... E-learning and tele-health are already passe in terms of the NBN debate. ...

Having the NBN will only be the start (and the cheapest part) of 
providing services by broadband. We need to equip medical and 
educational centres and train the staff to use them. There will need to 
be a hierarchy of services from the first line responders, to the 
specialists, online.

> ... any competent study would find successful, pervasive user-led 
> innovations outnumber business-led innovations on the Internet. ...

I would prefer to see an orderly and planned take-up of e-initiatives,
rather than hope that somehow it will all just happen, even if it ends 
up not happening according to plan.

It would be better if the education and health systems, for example,
planned for the change, rather than waited until their customers started
using adhoc arrangements. One risk of unplanned development is that most 
e-health and e-learning services will be provided over the network from 
low cost, former developing nations, particularly India, with little 
scope for Australian doctors or teachers to have a role.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra