[LINK] Wireless Broadband for Regional Australia

[Frank O'Connor]

Well, yeah ... but:                     :)

On 27 Dec 2013, at 10:20 am, Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 26, 2013 at 5:26 AM, Frank O'Connor
> <francisoconnor3 at bigpond.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Personally, I think that satellite (with regular upgrades) or eventual laying of pervasive fibre, was the answer to maintaining universal coverage in the bush, rather than 4G towers dotted over the landscape ....
> 
> 
> Satellite is like renting... a recurring expense, ie a SERVICE you pay
> for (control ground station, orbit adjustment, backup strategy in case
> of malfunction, etc). Whereas if you build a fixed-wireless tower...
> it's fixed infrastructure, like a bridge. It'll be there in 100 years
> with little maintenance cost compared to a satellite.

How much a 4G Tower would be worth, other than as an eyesore, after 10 years in service is highly debatable. I'm guessing it would be largely obsolete by then.

That said, it has served a critical purpose by getting fibre laid to the tower ... and that fibre could be used to service the surrounding area via direct connections or the like to offer higher bandwidth services than 4G could ever supply.

> 
> Not to mention the 2nd-class internet service you get over satellite
> due to uplink/downlink delay...  aka latency. More important nowadays
> with "web 2.0" AJAX "web apps" (GMail, Facebook and the like)  than in
> the previous non-AJAX web.
> 

Latency on satellite is bad, yeah ... but have you seen the services that the Bush currently uses? In addition to poor latency, they also have very low bandwidth and extremely poor asynchronous performance, and a quality of service that would effectively make homing pigeons a viable alternative. 

Fast synchronous communications would go a long way to providing the Bush with connectivity that would be really useful to them. Connectivity that would compete with the radio communications they had that tied them together in the Schools Over the Air and Flying Doctor Service and the like of 50 years back. That was useful, not so much for the low bandwidth, or the broadcast model that it supported for services ... but because it offered real-time education and community and emergency services capabilities in a synchronous manner that involved real communication rather than just consuming information.

> Satellite Internet faster than advertised, but latency still awful
> Satellite latency is 638ms, 20 times higher than terrestrial broadband.
> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/satellite-internet-faster-than-advertised-but-latency-still-awful/

Let's analyse 638ms. That's .638 of a second.

Now sure, for online games and the like .638 of a second is the difference between nailing an opponent or getting fragged ... but for somewhat more productive high bandwidth uses the Bush would put it to? 

For pricing and trading, for online education and instruction, for buying and selling stuff online, for doing research, for accessing health and welfare services, for e-mail and sending and receiving instructional videos, large files and attachments, and the like .... satellite would be ideal. For contacting friends, relatives and the like in real time (by phone, chat or whatever) it would suck, but the old radio phone service and the like is already in place for when serious real time is needed (if you can't stomach the delay).

The point is that for any number of uses high bandwidth satellite would be a huge improvement on what they already have, and a stop gap until the NBN (or some local company looking to make a buck) ran the fibre land line to their door.

Just my 2 cents worth ...