[LINK] The importance of high-speed broadband in regional Australia

[David Boxall]

http://paulbudde.com/blog/nbn-ftth-broadband/importance-high-speed-broadband-regional-australia/
> All of this requires not just high speed; even more importantly it 
> needs infrastructure that delivers resilience, robustness, low 
> latency, security and so on.  One of the key problems ahead is that 
> the broadband network in regional Australia will be second-rate 
> compared with the services that will become available in the future in 
> metro-Australia, and yet arguably rural Australia depends even more 
> heavily on high quality broadband services, since they are often 
> further away from healthcare, education and business facilities.
I've often said that the value of telecommunications is inversely 
proportional to population density.

> ... significantly larger parts of regional Australian will need to be 
> linked to fibre networks.
Like most commentators, Paul omits the timeframe. The anticipated 
service life of optical fibre is a century or more. If we commit to that 
timeframe, what can we achieve (our government's artificial 2020 
deadline notwithstanding)?

> As quality high-speed broadband will remain elusive for many people in 
> regional and rural Australia the region will become more and more 
> reliant on mobile broadband services. In that respect 5G will be a 
> real boost for those users; but in reality it will take roughly a 
> decade before these services become commercially available throughout 
> the whole of regional Australia.
It seems unlikely that 5G will ever be much chop outside 
densely-populated areas. Even at te lower frequencies advocated by the 
likes of Telstra, it just doesn' perform over distances and around 
obstructions. Does any Linker know the true potential?

> Poor quality broadband access, therefore, will remain something that 
> will hamper economic and social development in regional Australia for 
> many years to come.

-- 
David Boxall                    |  Australia's problem isn't fake news,
                                 |  it's fake government.
http://david.boxall.id.au       |                        --Ross Gittins
                                     Sydney Morning Herald 27 March 2017