Yeah, I know, I know . . . bigger government and more bureaucracy is always and everywhere the answer. It's logical, if you've got bureaucratic problems, create a bigger bureaucracy and put the country in more debt. :lol: But at least they have improved their surveillence systems . . . which will undoubtedly have new and interesting departments to lord it over us all.
Hahahahahahaha. No. They can't even get decent cell phone reception you think they can get good wireless? The bandwidth throughput of SMS/phone calling is much lower than internet and they can't even manage that. Again, no. Fibre optics is quite mature now and relatively cheap compared to our existing network infrastructure. The maintenance costs of our aging network are rising dramatically and would most likely outpace the cost of the NBN in due time. Like I said, 600 million dollars per year per state for decent internet for everybody is barely anything in the big picture. The bloody trains in Sydney cost more than that and are fail.
You'd think a few skilled techs would be enough to convince people about the wireless myth, but obviously not!
Also, tin foil hat time: The wireless argument is beneficial to vested interests wanting to spread more EM radition to a town near you, but don't let that get in the way of the facts spoken above @_@
I don't know why people keep bringing up Wireless like it's some Cheap Godsend Fantastic Solve-all thing. You would think people would do some research before regurgitating the crap politicians say.
It's ironic that the people I know that are pro-wireless NBN are the same people who complain about their mobile phones 3G connection.
I agree, wireless is not ready yet but it is a fast developing technology still with much untapped potential. I also agree that fibre is a mature technology and is the right option for dense populations and connecting regional centres - but beyond those applications it is not economical to keep placing fragile wires into the ground. It should have been hybrid project where fibre is used in the aforementioned situations, then the wireless technology is developed for isolated regional homes. Whilst it could be argued that this is pre-emptive, the fact is that the upgrade is not required yet - this project had rushed decisions as it is driven purely by political ambition. We won't here the end of how Labour delivered fibre to the nation, and the naive public will forget about the cost in time. Wireless technology is being rapidly developed, and by holding off for 5+ years we would likely be able to obtain suitable technologies. Hell we could even invest directly into this area. Instead, we have spent exuberant sums of money on a network that will be dated by the time it is really needed and could have been delivered with the right technologies at a much more sustainable cost.
Actually there is another purpose of placing fibre in the ground. Copper replacement. Assuming NBN succeeds, it is possible that in the future, all your data/phone/cable needs uses only 1 cable. Which will represent a saving in the future. Copper can be used for other things rather than phone cable. For wireless technology, towers are not the only expense, you still need fiber cabling and the transmission technology. In the past, every change of transmission technology has required a complete replacement, hence old radios are often useless for new wireless technology (waste of money). Case in point: GSM/EDGE/GPRS vs WCDMA/3g vs LTE/4g/wimax and so on. And we don't know when will wireless ever be as reliable as copper or fiber. Sun flare or any strong electromagnetic wave will disrupt wireless. Mobility demands wireless, but business and productivity demands the stability and reliability of wired connection. Rushed decisions? Maybe, but it is better to have NBN than not (my opinion). Sooner is better than later.
Wireless is not as secure as fiber. Anyone can intercept it. Can't break into fiber without it being obvious.
Gillard is for NBN and Fibre Optics... therefore it MUST be the wrong/worst thing to do the debate is over lol
Are you in a major city? In some of the regional areas in north qld wireless performance is like dialup. In fact, someone was chatting and complaining to me about their wireless Dodo dongle today.
Other than downloading movies and internet gaming (both of which decrease productivity), what is the average australian's need for highspeed internet access, and how does that increase productivity. I use video chat to other countries and never have a problem with what I already have. Just interested to see what people use their highspeed internet productively for?
I operated an international business for the best part of 19 years, which consisted of very large technical downloads. No problems.
Writing off non-productive uses isn't necessarily a good way of measuring value. I get extremely good value out of an $80 online game that I'll play for 12 months which saves me bucket loads of money on entertainment (most of which ends up going into silver as it happens). There is also the question of whether the internet would be as ubiquitous as it is today if you couldn't use it to access porn. Sex has always been a huge driver for new technology and while looking at naked people might not be "productive" as such, the fact that lots of people want to has created thousands of jobs in manufacturing, engineering, design, programming and of course "acting". That aside, if someone living in Tamworth can reliably video conference in HD with someone in, say, Kuala Lumpur then that person has more opportunities that someone who doesn't. If they happen to be a qualified structural engineer, they would be able to advise on a building project in Malaysia and send and receive large sets of technical data on the project and run remote simulations to find the most optimal use of materials. That means they don't have to travel as much and can spend more time at home with their family. I know someone who commutes for an hour a day so they can answer phones at a call centre. That is a completely pointless exercise which is justified by the employer wanting everybody in the same room so they can keep an eye on them. If the employer was able to monitor all the operators working from home via webcam, that would save 160 people from clogging up the roads every day, thousands of dollars in petrol (plus a heap of carbon emissions), and hours of wasted time that they could be doing something more productive or more fulfilling with, like being with their family or neighbours or friends. Then there are latency sensitive applications like remote machinery operation where it would no doubt be easier and cheaper to drive a dump truck at a mine remotely, provided that the remote driver has access to real time data to be able to make decisions. If the remote driver makes a left turn and the truck doesn't because the data is running through a corroded copper wire that sometimes craps out in wet whether, bad things can happen. I have no idea how feasible it would be for projects in the Pilbara to use fiber from the drivers house to a main base and then use wireless for the "last mile" to the truck, but I can say for certain that Fortescue Metals isn't going to pay to have fiber run from the drivers house to the main base, even though it would save them a pile of money not having to fly in drivers on $120k/year ever other week (and who knows, maybe then they'd have a bit of spare cash to contribute back via a mining tax). The same latency thing goes for e-health applications like remote keyhole surgery which is often done via electronic controllers in an operating theatre but which also requires the doctor to actually be in the operating theatre as well. If the surgeon can do their job just as well from an office in Melbourne as they can from a hospital in Brisbane it means that every patient potentially has access to every doctor in the country. Its a lot easier to find an operating theatre and a nurse than it is to find an operating theatre, a nurse and an experienced, qualified surgeon. The other side to the medical area is large data sets where massive quantities of data are more relevant that real-time communication. For example, if I start feeling sick later tonight and think I'll go see the doctor tomorrow, I'd have time to order a remote diagnosis kit and have it delivered to my house overnight. If I can use the kit's sensors to provide information about my heart rate, temperature, breathing and physical appearance (in HD) then a remote doctor has just as much information about me as if I were to haul my arse out of bed and spend 2 hours in the GP's waiting room coughing all over everyone. Having high resolution images of my body will be vital for them to make a decision about my condition. Some of these things exist already and others are already in development. No doubt there will be a heap of completely new things we can do over the internet in another 10 or 20 years that nobody has thought of yet. Without an NBN, we miss out on virtually all of that potential. Okay, we'll still have Facebook and XBox Live (and Silver Stackers), but it would be nice to think we can do better and have more than that.
2.1mb/second? You must live next door to the exchange. What residential customer needs that sort of speed? For $50/60/70b? The NBN is simply unnecessary and wasteful.
About 400m away I think. It's damn useful for working from home and connecting to the work network. Slow Internet would make a lot of what i need to do really difficult.
Yeah, look. Everybody wants faster internet. Nobody said anybody didn't want faster internet, we all want faster internet. But like, we have managed to get progressively faster and faster internet in this country for the last ~15 odd years without the necessity of establishing a massive monopoly. Why then do all the NBN supporters seem to think that technology progress of internet speeds will suddenly cease entirely unless the bungling government steps in and throws their wieght around? I mean its an economic fact that monopolies are inefficient, and inexorably lead to to the consumer getting ripped off. And its also another economic fact that government-run, bureaucratically administered services are inherently inefficient and always lead to continual price hikes. These facts are not disputable guys. So then why does every one so easily jump aboard the NBN train, when its guaranteed to cost us more and provide us with less in the long run? Yes we all want fast internet. And because we all want fast internet, there is demand. And in time, free enterprise will satisfy that demand, in a way that, through competition, will lead to better and better quality over time while prices get driven lower and lower. It has always been this way. This is how free-market capitalism works. I think the definitive word on this subject was spoken yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition in his excellent address to the 2011 Economic and Social Outlook Conference in Melbourne. It is probably the most substantive and authoritative speech yet delivered in this country on the ALP's socialist agenda, and I think everybody needs to read it. Here is an excerpt: "There is another reason why the government's modelling almost certainly understates the costs of a carbon tax. For example, Treasury's CPRS modelling assumed sufficient progress in the development of commercially viable carbon capture and storage technology such that: "From the mid-2020s, carbon capture and storage (would begin) to replace conventional coal-fired technologies, including through retrofitting existing power plants." These technological developments may well emerge over the coming decades, but the modelling is of dubious predictive value if key problems are simply assumed away. Such assumptions also provide an astonishing counterpoint to the government's rationale for another of its mega-schemes, the National Broadband Network. With the carbon tax, the government assumes that technology will change rapidly with fundamental breakthroughs within the next 10 to 15 years. By contrast, with telecommunications, the government assumes that no technology will emerge to challenge fibre as a delivery mechanism. The government insists that a carbon tax is needed to create a competitive market, to unleash what Professor Garnaut terms the "genius of the market" no less. By contrast with the NBN, it not only insists on picking the single technology for the next generation but directs that competition with this new network actually be shut down." http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/Latest...spx?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Residential customers don't really need it for now. However for telco purposes, it can completely replace copper. The uses of NBN or high speed internet will come later anyway. Arguing about an infrastructure's future usage is difficult, it requires clairvoyance. Who the heck imagined copper can be used for internet and now adsl? But it is nearing the limits of the medium. Back in the days of horse carriage, roads would seem like the most expensive and wasteful thing to make, but hey we managed to utilise it to the max.
