[LINK] Indonesia Overtaking Australia with Wireless Internet

[Richard Chirgwin]

On 5/06/11 9:56 AM, Tom Worthington wrote:
> grove at zeta.org.au wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, Tom Worthington wrote:
>>
>>> ... Indonesia as a 'near-networked' nation ...
>> I am hoping this conference won't be used to once again bang on about
>> the NBN and the wisdom in not doing it. ...
> I raised the topic of the NBN during Dr Sulaiman's talk on
> "ICT-enablement in Environmental Social Movements in Indonesia". It was
> not something he was planning to discuss:
> <http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/more/SID/2879>.
>
> Sorry for raising the issue of public access to the Internet, but I
> thought that was what the Link list was for.
>
>> ... I wonder if wireless is more suitable for Indonesia given the geology of the area, its concentrated
>> (and dispersed) population centres and that wireless is a lot more easy
>> to spy on in an ad-hoc method than other technologies? ...
> Yes, the population dispersed over many islands and issues of security
> were discussed in the talk.
>
>> I actually do  not consider Indonesia to be a good comparison to Australia for
>> networked technologies as there are many cultural and geographical
>> differences between the two...
> You might think of Australia as an archipelago, like Indonesia, but
> with dirt between islands of population density, rather than water. In
> terms of culture, is there much that would make a difference? Aren't
> people much the same the world over?
Indonesia is jumping from zero or low access to the Internet, to 
wireless access. Whether or not this represent a valid cultural 
difference, it certainly represents a difference in expectation. People 
using fixed connections are already habituated to low latency, and have 
become demanding about performance.

For example, ISPs have had to revise their architecture to minimise 
backhaul contention. This has been in response to people complaining 
about poor peak-time performance.

People aren't actually the same: they are the product of their 
experiences as well as their genetics and culture. To a no-net or 
dial-up user, I'm sure a widespread wireless network looks like all the 
wonders of the universe. That experience doesn't make it a template for 
how Australia should view its future.

RC
>