[LINK] NBN Providing Wireless for Regional Areas

[Tom Worthington]

In "What reporting of the Brunswick NBN survey didn’t tell you" 
(Commsday, 5 March 2013), Geoff Long looks at a study of early NBN 
first-release sites carried out by Melbourne and Swinburne Universities: 
http://www.commsday.com/commsday-australasia/comment-what-reporting-of-the-brunswick-nbn-survey-didnt-tell-you

The study "Broadbanding Brunswick: High-speed Broadband and Household 
Media Ecologies: A Report on Household Take-up and Adoption of the 
National Broadband Network in a First Release Site" is by Dr Bjorn 
Nansen, Dr Michael Arnold, Dr Rowan Wilken, Dr Martin Gibbs for the 
Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, 2013: 
http://accan.org.au/files/Broadbanding_Brunswick.pdf

While the study concentrated on take-up of the NBN, Long suggests there 
should be more research on why 20% of households have no Internet access 
at all, which is a good question. However, it was not clear to me from 
the study report if households where residents had one or more  smart 
phones or tablet computers with broadband wireless built in where 
counted as connected. If not, then the number of connected households 
would be greatly under-reported. The popularity of wireless devices 
might make the concept of "household" connection largely irrelevant, 
much as mobile phones has lessened the need for a home fixed telephone 
lines. Previously the number of telephone lines per 1,000 population was 
used as a measure of the communications access of a country, but this is 
now largely irrelevant.

Long also suggests that the study shows that there is no urgency for 
urban areas to upgrade to fibre. This seems a reasonable conclusion: in 
urban areas which have good access to Internet via ADSL or cable, this 
is not a compelling case for fibre. In fact the latest take-up rates for 
NBN nationally show that of the 34,500 subscribers, 70% are via 
satellite or terrestrial wireless in regional and remoe areas, with 
fibre in urban areas being the minority: 
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/330331,nbn-co-reaches-10000-active-fibre-connections.aspx

Also the issue of take-up in the city is not really an issue as the NBN 
will have an effective fixed line monopoly: the plan is to eventually 
remove the copper cable, so that if you want a fixed line it will have 
to be NBN fibre.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
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Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/