blog We can’t say we’re surprised, given the terrible history of reporting and education out there about the Federal Government’s flagship National Broadband Network project, but we do have to say we’re extremely disappointed by this highly emotive article published on the website of the Sydney Morning Herald this morning and authored by Frank Zumbo, an associate professor at the School of Taxation and Business Law at the University of New South Wales.
In the piece, Zumbo trots out all the same tired old arguments which have been defeated time and time again when it comes to the NBN, from the supposed dangers of “large cost blow-outs” with the project, to the claimed “lingering debate” about whether fibre to the premises is actually superior or whether wireless broadband could provide an acceptable substitute, to the “expensive” nature of the NBN compared with alternatives. Perhaps the worst paragraph in an article filled with terrible paragraphs:
“At the end of the day, a national high-speed broadband network is really all about access, convenience and affordability. What’s the point of building the most expensive fixed broadband network if it can only be accessed from your home?”
Your writer finds it simply incredible that a professor of business law and taxation who specialises in market competition would be ignorant of the fact that the deployment of the NBN by the Federal Government is not simply a matter of providing higher broadband speeds to Australians, and that much of the policy is aimed at dealing with the long-term issues caused by the failure of successive Federal Governments to separate Telstra’s wholesale and retail operations, and the subsequent implications
It seems unbelievable that someone as well-educated as Zumbo and who depends daily on access to the University of NSW’s connection to the ultra-fast fixed broadband network AARNet (which underpins all of the wireless access throughout the university) would be unable to understand that, as virtually every telecommunications expert of any note agrees, fixed and wireless broadband are complementary, with most Australians requiring both, and that the regulation of these two sectors of the telecommunications industry is almost entirely segregated, bedevilling any potential government intervention across both fields.
One can also scarcely credit the idea that someone with Zumbo’s qualifications would be unable to closely examine NBN Co’s finances to date and conclude that any cost over-runs the project has suffered so far are clearly within the bounds of good governance for a project of this unprecedented size and scope; and that they are also justifiable, considering that the NBN’s remit has been significantly expanded since its original business case were drawn up. There is also the small fact that the Government’s action to fund the “expensive” NBN is counted as an investment that is eventually expected to earn it a modest return.
But perhaps it is not so hard to understand why an academic of Zumbo’s standing would be unable to admit to these facts. Because, as outgoing Labor MP Craig Emerson revealed in mid-2010 (PDF), and Zumbo himself confirmed in a blog post at the time on News Limited site The Punch, the good professor has been known to have close links to the Liberal Party of Australia and has even spent time campaigning to get Liberal candidate Craig Kelly into the seat of Hughes; work which we can’t find disclosed anywhere in Zumbo’s biography.
Your writer only has a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts, and nothing but his wits to defend himself in the highly complex and confusing National Broadband Network debate. But Professor Zumbo, we humbly submit that it might be wise for you take another look at the fundamental premises contained in your NBN article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning. We humbly suggest that the degree of academic rigour contained within is sadly … inferior.
You’re much to humble in your criticisms Renai.
I think Renai shows respect and class with these pieces. Attack ignoramuses on a factual basis & in a ‘polite’ (but mildly sarcastic) way, and you can’t go wrong :)
“Your writer finds it simply incredible that a professor of business law and taxation who specialises in market competition would be ignorant of..”
You don’t have to be ignorant of facts to misrepresent them. I doubt the good Professor is an idiot. It’s more likely that a pro-fibre standpoint would be considered politically advantageous.
That and it’s really easy to argue how high-speed ubiquitous access is irrelevant when you already have it (care of AARnet).
Assumption of argument, is great like that. Allows for all sorts of sweeping generalisations.
That should be .. “would not be considered politically advantageous.”
Flogging the good professor with a very large feather Renai.
Of course, the fact that the feather is edged with extremely sharp razorblades,
makes the flogging a touch more painful.
Nicely done Sir!
Indeed, what IS the point of building a fast fixed broadband network that can be accessed from your home and office, where your bandwidth requirements are the highest?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. .. but in this case, the professor isn’t stupid.
The problem now with criticising the nbn is that most of the criticisms equally apply to the coalition’s version. Things like cost blow outs is more likely (renegotiations with Telstra for example) and the use of the same contractors with pay and timing.
PS: I had a tag after that question, but it disappeared.
A Sarcasm tag .. I even put spaces in that correction so it wouldn’t disappear, but it did. Le sigh.
Being an academic doesn’t make someone right, just pompos and condencending in their ignorance.
To be fair it kinda does but the problem in this case is that it’s not his field and he has an obvious bias. It’s pretty easy to criticise an infrastructure investment for being a waste when you don’t understand the value of it. Easier still when it’s one of the things that stands in the way of the success of your “favourite team”….
Not very “academic” is it? You are meant to carefully research your subject and examine the pros and cons. Not just write a whole wad of text on subjects you are ignorant about. Or maybe he is one of those who knows enough to really screw up an IT project, ie Turnbull.
Some of the comments on the article make me want to vomit all over my screen :(
Boy, you have a low tolerance. Don’t read any internet forum, especially others on this site, then. There is nothing here that is even mild.
What in particular made you feel vomitus? I’m failing to see any sickening material here (apart from professor’s Zumbo’s nauseating quotes anyway).
I think he meant the original article… :)
Reading it a second time, I think you’re probably right :)
Ahhh, bad wording. If he’d said comments IN the article.
Zumbo has several good points though, you can find them at the end of each sentence.
Unfortunately, most of the rest of it is rubbish he is sprouting either due to ignorance of the actual NBN plan, or for some darker reason. If it’s the latter, I hope the isn’t the convener for the UNSW course “Business, Ethics and the Law – LEGT2712″…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…
Personally, I have not encountered one person who’s opposition to the NBN can’t be traced back to either their political bigotry or financial selfishness (people who believe the NBN will affect their finances or that they may receive a better deal personally via the NBN’s alternative)
Perhaps I can add yet another…
:(
Agreed.
What? This is an act of altruism is it? I never realized that goverment infrastructure was some sort of charitable event which you have to be Ebenezeer Scrooge to want to oppose.
Really? Try telling the public and industry that the national Pacific Highway is fine as it is, or the Public Health system, and see what reaction you get…
Fine. So spend the money for the NBN on the Pacific Highway then? Or Public Health? It’s called opportunity cost, and we have to choose. But choosing doesn’t make people bigots or financially selfish. It just reflects the fact that we have to make choices.
Personally, I think all those things are important :o)
The thing about the NBN though, is it’s designed to pay for it’s self, at the end of the day, it’s a user pays systems, and those users will pay it back + 7.1% (by ~2025). If you/someone doesn’t want/need it, then don’t get the service. Whomever doesn’t get it won’t pay a cent for it, but those that do may well add valuse to the lives of those that don’t get it (through jobs for their kids, new businesses, better/remote health, a whole lot of things).
Public health and roads are a lot more difficult to work as a user pays system, health is way too expensive, and no one likes toll roads.
if the nbn is worth~3 months of costs for public health (which btw you cant just tip the funds into like that… but if you could..) one might argue the choice you suggest will be a very shortlived benefit, and its a one shot, once its spent, its spent deal. that spending is going on budget too, since it isnt making a return…
whereas a rebuild of 93% of the fixed line network to be good for some decades to come, and probably more, with a pathway there to repay stake funds, so it ultimately wont cost you much (vs tones’ plan, particularly if they dont use the extra contingency funds)…. thats a pretty significant change, and to my mind is actually overdue. its not a fleeting benefit either – it is quite longlived.
i think its a reasonable choice to make for using the funds given the return.
@ Oliver
…and I never thought Australians could be so ene eyed in their bias to oppose any government providing improvements for all Australians…
But then again as I said and as is proved in these forums everyday…
http://delimiter.com.au/2013/07/03/when-academics-perpetuate-nbn-ignorance/#comment-615335
> Personally, I have not encountered one person who’s opposition to the NBN can’t be traced back to either their political bigotry or financial selfishness (people who believe the NBN will affect their finances or that they may receive a better deal personally via the NBN’s alternative)
Whereas I tend to find that many NBN supporters fall into one of three categories:
1. Labor Fanbois (easy to spot as they defend the Mining Tax, Craig Thompson & HSU saga, Building Education Revolution, and Government Debt)
2. Don’t understand what Labor is promising in the NBN Corporate Plan
3. Heavy users (don’t understand how someone could need less than 100Mbps with 1TB of quota and how wireless might be adequate for light users)
Wait, wait…I thought you were the one saying everyone should get 1Gbps, now you’re saying it us, who have continually argued the demand for lower speed tiers?
I also question your understanding of the corporate plan because you don’t seem to understand how predictions made by oy are not set in stone, as explicitly stated in said plan.
Whereas I tend to find that many NBN supporters fall into one of three categories:
1. Labor Fanbois (easy to spot as they defend the Mining Tax, Craig Thompson & HSU saga, Building Education Revolution, and Government Debt)
2. Don’t understand what Labor is promising in the NBN Corporate Plan
3. Heavy users (don’t understand how someone could need less than 100Mbps with 1TB of quota and how wireless might be adequate for light users)
Yes, god forbid anyone being against the LBN because it actually has some petty basic flaws in it’s premise (one being a $19b cost just plain being ignored).
How about turning your critical eye on that and see if you can spot them?
Ahh, Matty mate, your misinformation and biases were readily exposed and debunked in Whirlpool and now you use these fora because the rebuttals aren’t as swiftly forthcoming. But that’s what a society is all about, everyone can participate.
So I gather you will saying “No thanks” when the NBN come knocking on your door? After all, you have to abide by your principles.
I suspect the silence will be deafening on that one.
From the article:
> “Zumbo himself confirmed in a blog post at the time on News Limited site The Drum,”
While ABC’s ‘The Drum’ is often guilty of the same bias that pollutes Limited News offerings, I think the site that Renai meant was actually ‘The Punch’. Easy to understand the mix up.
“Your writer finds it simply incredible that a professor of business law and taxation who specialises in market competition would be ignorant of..”
This is just typical of the MSM tho, what’s next, getting dentists to comment on cancer research?
While Zumbo might be a highly educated man when it comes to business and taxation, that clearly does not make him fit to comment on the technical nuances of the NBN.
It’s not like you would trust a builder to manage your personal finances, and reciprocally, having your accountant build your house. That aside, the published “article” is clearly LNP propaganda, and should simply be treated as such – with a good dose of “STFU you pants-on-fire liar!” and not a slap on the wrist.
I liked him better when he was the dark lord of pastry.
Haha good call.
the satan of sweets? XD
I’ll say exactly what I wrote on whirlpool the day before
1) It’s an opinion piece
2) It’s a *political* opinion piece
Bias a plenty is par for the course on those “articles”. The only real annoying part is the fact that the title and the way it was placed on the front splash page of SMH means its misconstrued as a “Tech Article” when it’s an opinion piece.
Wait for it… “The article I provided to the SMH was edited to fit editorial restrictions on content, all of my disclosures were removed for the sake of brevity”.
don’t think he is making these comments from ignorance… he is just trying to feed that in the public sphere
these are comments are deliberately put out there to benefit the LNP and nothing else.
Vested
Interest
The point he makes that “At the end of the day, a national high-speed broadband network is really all about access, convenience and affordability. What’s the point of building the most expensive fixed broadband network if it can only be accessed from your home?” is important.
How many people do you know who run ethernet at home as their primary connection to their main data consuming device(s)? I know a total of zero (although I appreciate that a not insignificant minority do exist). 802.11x is prolific. I appreciate that some people will want to run cable all the way to their devices but if we were to profile the NBN target households I think we’d see a material group who would be happier with fibre to 802.11ac (or similar) so that the get suburban wifi by default with an option of FTTP at personal cost. Such a solution would mean less tax, faster NBN rollout, and a better service (from a use case perspective).
What you suggest is not practical from an engineering perspective and only achievable via household, not neighborhood WiFi networks. In effect you fail to understand the limitations of 802.11ac and other wireless networks.
If you take your suggestion to its conclusion taking into account these limitations you get exactly the model being provided by NBNCo.
“less tax”? What do you mean?
It’s an interesting argument you have, but I feel that it just misses the reality.
A lot of people have wireless devices now, with access to WiFi that is provided by wireless modem-routers, which are connected to fixed line internet connections. In my own home, I have the phoneline in my room, and so Ethernet from my modem to my PC, but there are at least 6 other laptops, tablets and phones that can use my connection wirelessly. Basically, the need, in that sense, is already fulfilled. The NBN widens the bottleneck on the internet connection, and provides a better service, without changing the real nature of access from wireless devices. While I acknowledge that some minority might prefer your neighbourhood WLAN idea, and it might be especially valuable in certain applications, I think the vast majority of people would prefer to have their own home WLANs.
Ultimately though, the NBN is about overhauling our telecommunications infrastructure – better speeds are not the aim of the project, but better speeds and services and greater equality of opportunity are its chief products.
I said very early on in the NBN that the government missed out on an opportunity to include picocells (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picocell) in the NBN.
Wireless has 2 big problems with being “the” national broadband network. 1. The bandwidth drops off as you move away from the cell/router and 2. the bandwidth drops off as more users join a cell/router. The physics of it is well known, and the only real solution for the major telcos is to add smaller cells, but more of them covering a smaller area.
The problem for telcos adding more cells is they need to be able to get that data to the backbone (wireless cells connect via fibre). If they’d added picocells to the NBN, they could have boosted bother wireless (cell) coverage and enabled almost every building in Australia to have good access…
would have added significant cost to the NBN and meet with increased resistance from Telstra(whome the NBN project needs cooperation from) and Optus as you have the potential to eat into 3g/4g revenue. Not to mention available spectrum.
Zumbo makes a valid point. While I accept a lot of the people who trawl these web sites are office based, there are a lot of people who primarily and increasingly rely on wireless communications. While not wishing to diisparage the value of office work, I would argue there is equal if not more true economic value add by those of us who work in the field. I’d argue a billion dollars of taxpayer money spent on deeper and broader wireless access would deliver far more economic benefit than the equivalent money spent on FTTH.
Anyone working in rural areas would understand that an argument exists for equitable wireless data access, and this is more a priority than equitable FTTH access.
Not sure what motivates commentators to shoot the messenger; and it may seem a red herring to house and office bound folks, but for those who’ve worked in blue collars jobs, he makes a point that we’ve known for several years.
And what do you think provides the backhaul to the wireless networks …. Fibre!
much of the rural networks are connected by PtoP microwave and the NBN will actually enable the wireless phone companies to improve their networks significantly.
Except wireless networks are already well provisioned so government intervention in that sector of the market is not required.
in metro area’s Telstra has boat loads of fibre connecting their wireless network, the other 2 still rely on a lot of MW even in metro areas.
in the country/rehional areas even Telstra rely on a lot of MW backhaul that barely does the job and severely limits performance in many cases due to congestion on the backhaul links.
@Jona,
Why would you not cable the household and allow them to run their own Wifi devices like they currently do.
In that way you’re not concerned about wireless’s limitations from a provisioning perspective and the shared medium access that also comes with it.
That way you still get your committed rate.
djos,
Looking at the coverage maps I see no evidence that any RF tower will recieve a fibre connection….. I understand your argument, but I can’t imagine the NBN company just rolling fibre up to radio towers. (There’s a good reason they are connected with PtP microwave if you’ve had to trench to them).
NightKhaos,
Wireless networks are not well provisioned in areas where population density is low, and traffic demands highly variable.
it’s already been planned for in the Biz plan, I’ve forgotten the correct term but basically everything from traffic light systems, CCTV systems and Cell towers will be able to be connected to the NBN.
Actually compared to fixed line networks they are well provisioned, not only that but they get continued investment.
Well provisioned does NOT mean without fault or black spots. To make such a network would be difficult, and throwing money at it as you suggest will not fix it.
> Anyone working in rural areas would understand that an argument exists for equitable wireless data access, and this is more a priority than equitable FttH access.
How do you propose the Wireless Access Point or Cell Tower is connected to the internet?
As someone who has spent many years in rural Australia and has often been stuck without adequate communications, especially when working the land, I truly welcome the FttP.
I will give a personal anecdote of a typical large commercial farm in Australia.
Living in Laidley, Qld, a handful of houses could get ADSL2 (using ADSL1 profiles). None of these could reach 1Mbps and would not work when it rained. This was due to distance and degraded last mile copper. Unless one used CDMA, mobile coverage wasn’t great but mobile data was good as long as you were outside. If one headed to the closest shops in Gatton, due to the sheer number of people depending on mobile data, it could take hours just to open a single webpage.
Working farms in Upper Tent Hill was interesting at times. The farms along Mt Silvia Rd are responsible for over 20% of the Australian food supply. Yet they do business by good old fax and a dial-up modem. Because of this, it is far easier for the farmers to allow Woolworths to come along and take their pick at their set prices than to properly take their produce to market. Additionally, when there were accidents on the farm, with no mobile coverage, it would be a 15 minute drive to raise an alarm and another 15 minute return just for first aid.
Installing more cell towers is not economically viable in this region. Two solutions have been offered, Labor’s FttP and Lib’s FttN. Lets start with FttN.
FttN will likely mean that a township like Laidley will have a node. This node will likely be in the exchange that services Laidley or may be closer to the houses. The subscribers will still be using the same old copper last mile that doesn’t work when it rains. To achieve 25Mbps, the copper will need to be replaced.
Next is Gatton. A larger township with almost 2,000 houses. FttN will GREATLY benefit this community as internet services are lacking. These are the communities that th Lib’s campaign concentrates on. These are the people who WORK the farms, but not those who RUN the farms.
Last we have the actual farms which are usually all situated on primary access roads. With entrances to each farm being more than a kilometre apart, a single node is unlikely to service more than a single farm.
FttP offers something to truly rural towns like Laidley and is a huge boon for the farms – here is why: In the case of Upper Tent Hill farming community, there are 30 or so farms stretched along 20km of road between two townships. Both townships have schools and a population to warrant FttP being installed.
These farms now have the NBN fibre passing their premise and can really grow their agribusiness. But the real advantage is that being connected to a national network with large bandwidth UP AND DOWN, the farm can now operate a MICROCELL, which are offered for free or cheap by Optus and Vodafone. One to several of these could cover an important part, parts or all of the farm, allowing the farmers, employees and contracters to have access to voice and data backed by the reliable, fibre-based FttP NBN.
Having basic communications available will make it easier to attract workers, conduct business, research seed and emerging farming technologies, and improve safety in the rural areas. No longer will we have the situation where 5 unaware and uninformed workers are standing on a potato harvester while everyone in the office, the farm house, and pretty much all of SE Queensland are aware of the freak lightning storm that is about to hit.
I agree that we need advances in wireless technologies and that a lot of people prefer or depends on wireless/mobile data, but without a supporting backbone, these technologies will always suffer from problems such as interference, congestion, distance, latency, crosstalk, blackspots, power dependency, high power usage, health concerns, high susceptiblity to solar flares, non-backward-compatibility and lack of upgrade path without total replacement.
The NBN has been debated for a decade and, if my memory serves me correctly, was first made in issue in parliament by The Nationals. The Howard Government then fought a plan to roll out a private-enterprise FttN network and Rudd won the election promising a FttP NBN. He then won another. The Lib’s have changed their views from “NBN Bad. Must. Not. Spend. Teh. Monies” to “Labor NBN Bad. Vote for our No-Frills NBN-ish” and fail time and time again to explain how their plan is workable and why it is better.
Yes, on paper, the Lib’s NBN may be (may be) a little cheaper. It will be great for towns like Gatton but still leave places liek Laidley and Tent Hill in the dark. In the cities and suburbs, relying on VDSL technologies means NO running services from home, NO emerging HD entertainment, NO bi-directional HD video-conferencing, NO running a femto/pico-cell in your home or business, No guarantee of speed and NONE of the competition that will be spurred once eveyone is on a level playing field.
This debate was won in 2007. It is unfortuanate that a large portion of the population is still catching up.
Aaron,
You seem to be ignoring Zumbo’s argument. He’s arguing that the investment should be in Mobile technology. You acknowledge the real issue with mobile data in rural areas, yet present the argument as FTTP vs FTTN. Let’s deal with Zumbo’s argument.
I agree Mobile basestations should be connected to high bandwidth backhaul. (Whether this is fat fibre or low latency point to point RF I’ll leave to capacity planners). But I suspect the building of backhaul to towers, and the establishment of additional towers would be more cost effective than your suggestion that the Government build a fibre line to my farm and that I then establish a ‘microcell’. (Not sure about the size of your farming operations, but I can assure you that firstly NBN has no plans to run fibre to my place (it will be radio) and a ‘free or cheap’ microcell wouldn’t even reach the shearing shed.
I’d just like to be able to get my work done easier, and for me mobile investment is where I’d like to see my tax investment dollars go. ‘Large proportion of the population still catching up?’ I suspect that means that a few folks got togther in town and decided they knew what was best for everyone else….. That’s not a debate!
“You seem to be ignoring Zumbo’s argument. He’s arguing that the investment should be in Mobile technology. You acknowledge the real issue with mobile data in rural areas, yet present the argument as FTTP vs FTTN. Let’s deal with Zumbo’s argument. ”
The nation is ALREADY investing in mobile, by buying shares in Telstra, Optus, Vodafone.
It’s a good investment and attracts investors without much government assistance.
Investment in fixed line, OTOH, requires protection and regulation of the inevitable monopoly that is inherent in fixed line networks
Hi John,
I presented the FttP + Microcell solution as the only currently viable option to provide Wireless services to many parts of rural Australia. Fixed wireless may be suitable for farms that are situated on plains like many cattle farms but are not viable in catchment areas such as where all your fruit and veg comes from.
Catchment areas, being surrounded by mountains and an array of geographical features often don’t offer the clear line-of-sight needed for fixed wireless. The area I was talking about suffers from this. Two solutions have been tried.
Firstly, despite years of resistance, Telstra trialled not 1 but 3 cell towers along the stretch of road. Co-channel interference caused by the mountains made this near unusable.
Next, you had several farms contact the local techies to set up an array of UHF repeaters along the road so that CB radio was usable. This made the situation worse until they tried point-to-point, much like a microwave link. This worked well unless there was wind or rain. Being a catchment area, there was always wind and rain.
Digital base stations, particularly 4g stations, don’t get great coverage. You are looking at a 3-5 km radius if there is no interference. A microcell, while limiting the number of concurrent calls to 1 or a low number, is cheap, user-configurable, and can cover an area from 300m up to 800m (or more with ACMA approval). Covering a few key areas is all that is needed and can be easily accomplished once the backhaul is in place.
I do realize that some townships and farms will miss out on fibre all together and pray that this is only temporary as I have heard from two acquaintances that live in country NSW that have been forced on to NBN Wireless who are far from happy with it.
Wireless technology does have its place. It is an alternative for when a better solution is not available. It is also a great supplement to an already adequate and reliable telecommunications network. As long as there are still solar flares, weather events and human movement, wireless will remain unreliable.
Australia is investing in this network to provide a reliable, modern, futureproof and durable network to as many Australians as economically feasible. Investing the same amount in Wireless would give you convenience at the cost of reliability, diminsh the durability, and require a complete overhaul with each new generation of technology.
Most importantly, Wireless technologies lack the 1:1 contention ratio that is possible with the NBN. They also lack the upstream bandwidth (presuming we make some great advances in downstream – especially with the entire nation on wireless). This flies in the face of the entire business case for the NBN – To enable the little guy.
Joe Bloggs, a little guy, escaped the city and leased a nice lakeside restaurant. After speaking to a lot of the locals, he discovered they all shared a passion for music, in particular, jazz. So Joe’s Jazz bar became a local attraction.
Everyone knows the story where Joe finds some good local talent and builds a good customer base and is very successful for a year or two. Then people get bored of the same acts over and over. Joe is losing customers but being a very small business outside of a major city, he doesn’t have the income to pay bigger names. Joe goes broke and the cycle starts again for eveyone.
If Joe had something like the NBN, he could have expanded his audience by live streaming performances to the world, using part of advertising or paywall revenue to secure a variety of acts. He could have partnered with Lily’s Jazz Bar in another state and live streamed acts to each other in Full HD and lossless audio glory. Joe could even allow internet users to bid on requests.
Investment in wireless won’t enable this kind of enterprising. It won’t lead Australia to being a world-class innovator. It would simply lead Australians to being world-class consumers. The Libs, and by extension Zumbo, see consumerism as the fix-all for Australia’s economic security. How did that work out for the US? The EU?
>I’d just like to be able to get my work done easier, and for me mobile investment is where I’d like to see my tax investment dollars go.
I would fathom a guess that more work is achieved from a set location (like a desk) than roaming around on a mobile. Sure there are use cases for both but I don’t see a lot of research, reporting, administration, ordering, video-conferencing or designing happening in the mobile world where people are on busses, in elevators, rock-climbing.
> ‘Large proportion of the population still catching up?’ I suspect that means that a few folks got togther in town and decided they knew what was best for everyone else….. That’s not a debate!
Firstly, it was a few folks with engineering ability and experience in such subjects. Secondly, it was the electorate that decided.
We’ve researched it, we’ve costed it, we’ve designed it, we’ve started it…… Lets just get the damned thing finished. We could debate for another decade and waste time. We could cancel it and waste money and opportunity. We could change it and waste time and money. Or we could complete it, pat ourselves on the back, reap the benefits, and then see what is lacking next.
Everyone I see complain about being forced onto NBN fixed wireless connection hasn’t had any experience of fixed wireless. 1:1 provisioning is possible but often not necessary, I would put reliability better than DSL solutions. You do have to plan for Terran but being a fixed solution you can easily take this into account, I know of a few IT services companies that offer these types of solutions to connect clients to their DCs as it is much more reliable than DSL solutions and more cost effective running fiber when you need cover clients over a sparse area. NBN The part of Wireless has the same download/upload ratio as the FTTP speed they emulate, there is really no technical reason they can’t be 1:1.
Fixed wireless is no different to GPON in that contention ratio UP:UL ratio comes down to how you design the service and what you want the client to pay for. Obviously fixed wireless does have a lower upper limit on speed. The big difference between the LNP plan and Labor is the where they draw the line over who gets what with the LNP filling the middle with what can only be describe and a hodge podge of technologies so HFC here some FTTN there and relying on the most varible part of Telstras network for it.
If you going to be Fix wireless now you will be with the LNP
The other big advantage of a Labor NBN is once the initial fiber deployment is complete there is very little stopping future governments or even NBNco directing revenue to extend the fiber to fix wireless location that have growing or are marginal on the initial deployment, where as the LNP will still need to go back and rebuild their network with fiber.
Aaron,
As you indicate, for those of us facing relegation to a sub-standard fixed wireless solution, the NBN does not provide a compelling value proposition. ‘Changing it’ would be the responsible thing to do for taxpayers if a better result is achievable at the same or a lower cost.
I can assure you that those of us with sweat on our collars do not spend our time on busses, elevators and rock-climbing. We may not spend a lot of hours reporting and administrating and ordering from an ergonomic office chair, but we do learn; undertake real research (rather than reading others’ reports);and create (rather than report).
Australia used to be a world leader in radio technologies. A solution to the needs of rural Australia can be found. The critical input is whether money will be available for the critical ‘tower’ investments that constrain data throughput and coverage range trade-offs.
I was nearly convinced by your ballad of Joe Bloggs……but on reflection the argument doesn’t hold. I don’t think live streaming from small pubs will make or break our music industry. Surely a presentation on a remote screen at Lily’s bar could be delayed by two seconds, two minutes, or two hours without affecting the livelihood of the artist. (If Lily’s Bar is overseas, she may even prefer to delay it many hours.)
Worse for Joe, it’s equally possible that Joe’s customers now buy a slab and stay at home downloading jazz from a popular New Orleans jazz bar.
Those in international trade exposed industries find the assumption that the nation’s wealth is assured with the NBN quite surprising. It’s just possible that those key work activities of ‘research, reporting, administration, video-conferencing or designing’ that you cite may shift seemlessly to lower cost nations rather than establishing Australian workers as the most efficient pencil pushers in the world. (Ironically in that case you may have your case for rolling out fibre to the home: city folk who no longer have a job will need to be kept entertained at home. Regretably though, this will not solve the issue of data access for the rest of us.)
“What’s the point of building the most expensive fixed broadband network if it can only be accessed from your home?”
Fixed line also provides broadband to the workplace,shop, library, school, etc.
Same as water pipes provide to all those places.
Is this academic arguing that water and sewage pipes and mains power are all a waste of money?
Batteries, bottled water and porta-potties or plastic bags are the way to go?
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