[LINK] NBN to cost 24 times South Korea's faster network, says research body

Michael Skeggs mike@bystander.net mskeggs at gmail.com
Fri Feb 11 09:54:00 AEDT 2011


On 11 February 2011 09:33, Marghanita da Cruz <marghanita at ramin.com.au> wrote:
> Paul Brooks wrote:
> <snip>
>> The issue is that contention on a mobile wireless air segment is completely
>
> I specifically made a distinction between the mobile and
> stationary/fixed. I would be surprised if carriers can't
> control access on both! This is the misinformation that I
> find irksome about the we have to have fibre camp!
>

Carriers can't control mobile phone user's movements. If too many
congregate in one area the available bandwidth will be shared. If
there are too many, the later arrivals will have no service at all.
This is much the same with fixed wireless, except in that case after
the available bandwidth is used up, presumably the supplier would not
sell more connections, so no service would be available to new
customers in that area.

If it helps to understand the difference between fibre and wireless, I
use a simplistic analogy in my mind (caveat, I am certainly not an
engineer):
- wireless can use all the spectrum in an area, then it is full.
- fibre can use all the spectrum in a fibre, then it is full and
another fibre can be laid beside it to immediately double capacity.

No matter the possible technical innovations, the capacity of one
fibre and one wireless will be roughly theoretically same, but fibre
can be duplicated, the airwaves cannot.
In practice, the bandwidth on a single fibre will also always be
greater, as it doesn't need to be shared with other uses such as
visible light, IR, microwaves etc.

Regards,
Michael Skeggs



More information about the Link mailing list