[LINK] How fast is the NBN?

[Frank O'Connor]

> On 1 Mar 2016, at 8:57 AM, Tom Worthington <tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Is a vision of broadband limited to mobile uses rational?
> 
> Is it rational to suggest the trend to mobile devices will end?

I haven’t seen anywhere, in this or any other LINK topic, where anybody has made such a suggestion, Tom.

> 
> 
> On 28/02/16 13:46, Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
>> So all the observed trends, the increase in speeds ... aren’t gonna
>> appear...
> 
> Speeds will increase, but people want stuff they can carry around with
> them, not have it stuck on a desk at home.

Trust me Tom, people will REALLY want it in their homes as well. (And the telcos will really need to get people to want it in their home if they hope to provide cell phone coverage in a more pervasive and distributed manner.)

And fibre is the best, most scalable, maintenance free, cost efficient means of providing that.

> 
>>> Cell phones were invented to overcome the limited spectrum.
>> 
>> ... I’m interested in knowing EXACTLY what you were trying to say.
>> ...
> 
> Cell phones use radio transmission in small geographic areas, called
> "cells", which allows the spectrum to be reused. The cells were
> originally many kilometers, but now can be tens of meters (for
> example covering a few houses in a street):
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network#Frequency_reuse

So … Telstra and Optus and Vodafone are gonna go on a massive build of mini-phone towers?

Or are they, just maybe, just maybe gonna do what it looks like Telstra is doing? (Piggybacking on the home services using publicly accessible WiFi modems they supply to the homes for their Internet and phones.)

I look for the day I see these, let’s call them Worthington Stations, nailed to street poles all around the country … but I’m thinking the telcos are MUCH more likely to use existing high bandwidth connected infrastructure in people’s homes. (If they can convince people that paying for the power to provide services to others that the telco charges for is a good idea, and also allay fears that there may be security considerations with a shared router on their network). I other words … the home connection and its pervasiveness is becoming absolutely critical to mobile coverage. (Yes, I know I’ve said that before … but from the above comment, I think you may have missed it.)

For mine, the cell phone is presently a tad too unreliable - service wise and battery-wise (and small screened) to rely on for mission critical usage down here in Rye (and in summer when the beach-going population increases our numbers by a factor of 10 it becomes seriously overloaded and unavailable), carrying my relatively heavy and bulky iPad everywhere would be tiresome, and watches and other light devices are again too small for my ever more myopic eyesight. I’d guess that goes for a lot of people of my generation in my location.