How to Invest Outside the Government-Controlled System

^ Our disagreement still boils down to value, as Gino said.

I don't believe the money is being spent wisely, particularly in the broader economic context of this ' return to surplus' nonsense.

I don't suppose you can give me a cost comparison between $250 per month satellite broadband vs. the infrastructure outlay costs and ongoing costs of providing faster internet to rural areas?

And flying doctors, really? Essential vs. non-essential again

 

So, just to clarify in case I missed it. How do we invest outside the government controlled system?

 

I thought that stacking was the closest you could get to that .

 

:lol: Smart arse. See original post. The rest has been a side discussion.

 

Well this is what happens when you vote for Labour

 

It depends on your perception of value.

If you're only thinking about what you can do with your current connection for the amount you're paying right now then ~$5000/household might not look like such a great deal, but when you look at all the other things that other people could do with faster connections from now through to 50 years into the future, it starts to look like a really good investment.

Like I said before, all the really cool infrastructure stuff that's worth having costs a lot of money up front. The value we get from it is what makes it worth having in the first place though.


{edit} And just to bring this slightly back on topic...the NBN is a fantastic investment that happens to be inside the government controlled system (despite the mathematically challenged claims made against it).

 

Sorry Big A.D., but I am sick to F$#@%N death of paying through the nose in tax so that other people can do some imaginary 5h!t in 50 years time!
The NBN wil be superceded multiple times in 50 years, so if that is the justification of value and a good investment, then it is a big pile of steaming spin like all the other rubbish that Labor currently spews out.

 

We're talking about a optical fiber with a refractive index of about 1.5.

That means the data is travelling at the speed of light divided by 1.5 which is about 200,000 kilometres per second. For comparison, the circumference of the earth is 40,000km.

If you're expecting core communications infrastructure to get faster, you're going to have to start looking for holes in Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

 

Doesn't electrical current travel at the speed of light - roughly - anyway?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity#Electromagnetic_waves

I'm fairly sure I can have a real-time chat with a buddy in the USA - even without fibre to my home.

Whilst I know the point you're getting at, you didn't articulate it very well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Comparison_with_electrical_transmission

It's not necessarily the infrastructure that is expected to get faster, but the technology. Wireless technology has improved significantly over the last few years alone, and hugely over the last decade.

Fibreoptic technology has also significantly improved. Although who's to say it won't get better or cheaper in the near future aswell? There are many unknowns, and that is why present value is still important - not some future 'unknown' value.

 

I'm surprised that this steaming pile of trash hasn't been trotted out by now:





Wow! Gross-value added in South-West WA alone will increase by between $9.8-19.3 BILLION!!

If a region which comprises less than 1% of Australia's population and GDP (and which already has superfast broadband in parts - eg Bunbury) will generate over $10 billion of benefits as a result of the NBN then it's a complete no-brainer. Conroy was stupid for NOT insisting on a cost benefit analysis.

Wait. What's that? Most of the benefits are a result of people moving from overcrowded Perth which has good internet infrastructure to the under populated South West which doesn't? Really?

Oh, and that change in population accounts for 2/3 of the benefit?

Oh, and they used input-output multipliers which the ABS has stopped publishing years ago because they are too easily subject to misuse and have a strong tendency to overstate the impacts?

Oh, and there are a lot of other flaws that are too boring to post in an internet blog (and it's not your job to do this anyway)?

 

There are loads of unknowns but there are also plenty of projections we can make right now.

This is from the latest Cisco Visual Networking Index. Its a study of internet traffic and a five year forecast of what's likely to happen based on what's happening now.

http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/06/14/3524848.htm

Its also a conservative study and actual usage has tended to be either as predicted or has exceeded what was predicted.

[Fair warning: its a long article but it has lots of illustrative graphs.]

 

Thanks Big A.D. that is a good article and enlightening in many ways. It will take some time to digest everything.

Still doesn't change anything though. If the demand is there then the private sector clearly has a massive incentive to do it as and when necessary. The fact that we've waited 10 years but still managed to meet the demand (at continually falling prices) means that we didn't need an NBN 10 years ago. Also 1/3 use from private internet tv as enjoyable as it may be does not bring a dot of productivity or additional revenue into government coffers. So why is it taxpayer funded?

 

everyone knows what 'billion' means right?? Like its... its dollars.... everyone knows that right? The entire studen loan debt of australia is over 20 billion dollars... again 'BILLION'

 

To take the IPTV issue as an example, its well known that Australia punches well above our weight in the international entertainment scene. The only problem is that all our talent ends up leaving for Hollywood. Peter Jackson showed it was possible to direct a movie remotely when he did Tintin, so with greater connectivity we could do more of the creative work here.

Think about how much more work our actors and production staff could be doing if they could be funding their local projects through Kickstarter and selling them to a global audience. Maybe then we wouldn't need to keep subsidizing our film and television industries, actually make commercially viable entertainment and not just stop sending dollars to Hollywood but bring new revenue into the country.

To look at the even bigger picture, think of any of your favorite TV series that and been cancelled and consider whether it would have been cancelled if all if it's fans - all over the world - had been able to pay $5 directly to the people who actually made it.

Anyway, I'm glad you found the Cisco study interesting.

 

Okie dokie... so, it looks like he's made a few assumptions in that article.

Assumption #1: Global growth in internet usage = greater requirement for high-speed broadband in Australia (just because globally other countries have accelerating growth in internet 'uptake', does not mean Australia on the crest of the growth wave. Aren't we already one of the highest per-capita users of the internet in the world?)

Assumption #2: Cisco does not have a conflict of interest in recommending fibreoptic transmission - even though it produces the products for such infrastructure

Assumption #3: That we all require high-definition TV, streamed real-time from the internet (what kind of investment is that?)

Assumption #4: Things with a growth trend will increase and never reach a point of saturation (perhaps Facebook will have 200 billion users in 2020?)

Assumption #5: Cloud is the future ("Globally, cloud traffic will increase 12-fold between 2010 and 2015")

Some cherry picking:

So what they're saying is that people who paid for the faster 4G service, actually used more data because... they wanted to be able to use more data. How did these people survive on 3G! It must have been hell. Some of them might have trouble sleeping until we can get 8G and the latest Apple gadget no doubt. To me all it says is that people who wanted faster data speeds, were also people who wanted access to more data. It is not a weathervane for the rest of the population.

Why can't they just do fibre to the node and if people want it to their home they can pay for it - even if it is subsidised in some way.

I don't like to 'play the man' instead of the ball, but this Nick Ross is the technology journalist for the ABC. Whilst this gives him an insight, it also gives him a strong bias 'for' new technology. He doesn't need to care about cost or value, just that it will benefit him. Unforunately this kind of bias will be present in pretty much any technology journo, and there's not much alternative. Maybe if you get an economics/finance journo to write an article we'd get a different story.

And still, that's what it comes down to IMO - the cost. Is it value for money, even if it is for 'the future'? What if it cost $100Billion, is it value for money then? $200B? 1Trillion? At what value does it become a wasteful exercise? I argue probably about $10-20Billion.

What is stopping them now? Oh those greedy production companies? How about media saturation? How about, beyond the media that is spoonfed to us, we don't have a whole lot of time to try and expose ourselves to the wonders of the entire internet. Especially the less internet savvy people. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, but it will be small fry anyway. If they start making money they'll be bought out and sold 'exclusively'.

 

I can see the attraction because it opens up new sales and production opportunities for 'our' guys. It will also increase the sales opportunities for the Hollywood guys. In the end there will be more competition including increasing the supply of the massive bakcatalogue of great content. In the end the consumer will definitely be better off by getting better access to better content when and where they desire it. There's no guarantee it will involve new Australian produced content though (could go either way).

 

The refractive index is irrelevant to this discussion. And the speed of data transmission through fibre optics is about the same as through copper cable.
No, I don't expect to be able to ram signals down cables faster - that is not what the NBN is trying to achieve. It is about bandwidth.
Yes, I expect communications to get faster - currently crudely defined by the number of signals you can jam into a cable at the same time.

If you think communications technology won't evolve in the next 50 years, you are in denial and just kidding yourself.

 

^ That's what I said in 4th post from the top

 

Yes you did. I responded before I got that far down the page.

 

Dogmatix- this vindicates the benefit of having our "Olympic highlights" posts