[LINK] Mobile 'phone network efficiencies [Was: Broadband for a Broad Land]

[David Boxall]

Getting off the original topic, hence the change in subject line.
On 4/01/2011 11:15 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 10:11 AM 4/01/2011, David Boxall wrote:
>> So why didn't the government of the day choose a better way? It seems to
>> me that a single coordinated mobile 'phone network, making optimum use
>> of available spectrum, would serve us best. Was it lack of imagination
>> or lack of talent? Or did they just want the money from selling
>> spectrum, so they could buy our votes?
>
> I doubt the spectrum use would have reduced because the volume of use
> would have eventually required expansion. ...
If all available spectrum was in a single network, couldn't it be more 
efficiently managed than it is under the current fragmentation? As it 
stands, we have overlapping coverage in some markets and none in others. 
The same thing happened with cable TV; it seems to be a fundamental flaw 
in market economics that markets perceived as lucrative will be 
over-serviced, to the detriment of others.

> ... What it did waste was tower
> duplication. I'm not a network engineer by any stretch of the
> imagination, but I'd bet that like the cable tv roll-out, there could
> have been a reduction in infrastructure build. Then again, redundancy
> isn't always a bad thing either. ...
Looking at forests of mobile 'phone towers on roadside hilltops, I 
wonder whether there's really effective redundancy. One storm will wipe 
out the lot (in a given location).

> ... if there were only one
> commercial mobile network, the competition thing comes into play.
>
And if it was one (publicly owned) wholesale provider, with multiple 
retail competitors? Think NBN model, but for mobile 'phones (leaving 
out, for the moment, the crazy notion that the NBN be flogged off at the 
end of the current project).

> There are those that think a government held monopoly is just as bad
> as a commercial one. I'm not sure. ...
Government enterprises tend to fail through ineptitude, commercial ones 
through mendacity. We can at least punish the government at the ballot 
box. The law has degenerated to a point that we have little defence 
against commerce (James Hardie, anyone?).

-- 
David Boxall                    |  The more that wise people learn
                                |  The more they come to appreciate
http://david.boxall.id.au       |  How much they don't know.
                                                         --Confucius