[LINK] Broadband for a Broad Land

[Kim Holburn]

On 2011/Jan/03, at 12:54 PM, Tom Worthington wrote:

> Frank O'Connor wrote:
>> At 10:59 AM +1100 28/12/10, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>> I started writing a submission for the NBN Inquiry:
>>> <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/12/broadband-for-broad-land.html>.
>> 
>> Mmm ... many Internet apps are Web based, and don't benefit from the 
>> increase in bandwidth beyond the initial 12 Mbs ... The problem on the Web is latency ... and depending how the NBN 
>> implements this the Web may or may not be a better experience. ...
> 
> I assume that the NBN's optical network will cut out many hops between
> data source and the customer at home, reducing latency. What happens
> with the wireless sevice is anyone guess. Are there any specifications
> from NBN Co. about latency?

Wireless seems like a great idea until you travel in the country.   In the last week or so, we drove from Canberra to Adelaide and back.  The Sturt highway was closed due to flooding at Narrandera so we had to go through Deniliquin and along the Malley highway.  Once out of Deniliquin we had no Vodafone network until we got to Tailem Bend, 574 km.   There was Optus and Telstra sometimes but no Vodafone.  Mobile wireless has a lot bigger range than wifi which is really unreliable after a few tens of meters and very unreliable if there is water in the way - like wet trees for instance.

Even this region is a reasonably well travelled area of the outback.  We have a long way to go to get mobile wireless coverage in Australia.  Having all this duplication of mobile coverage in cities has not helped the bush all that much so far.

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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