I'm fascinated by how little of the discussion about the proposed National Broadband Network has been about other things the money could have been spent on.

I think it's a dubious proposition (to any but tech-heads, that is)that internet speeds 100 times faster than currently available will provide much benefit to the country at all. I suspect that a version of the 80/20 rule applies to technology and that we are at a point where the productivity dividend from spending an extra dollar on bandwidth is approaching zero.

In which case if I had the money I'd be much more likely to want to spend it on infrastructure. Australia could have done much better in the last boom if our exports could have reached their markets more easily. That requires investments in ports and rail lines.

I think I would also be looking at physical infrastructure around cities. The housing crisis won't be fixed by building welfare housing, but by building more housing in general. And the constraints on that are to do with availability of land, which in turn in a lot of cases hinges on availability of infrastructure like water and sewerage which are supplied by governments. Generally governments wait for private developers to pay them to put the infrastructure in which means that a lot of land is effectively locked-up because no-one owns enough land in a particular catchment to be able to justify stumping-up the readies.

I think I would also be looking closely at education. Perhaps we could get a real education revolution for this money, rather than a computer on every child's desk.

Thinking of which there is a theme here. Seems the answer to many questions facing the government is more IT.

I wonder how much of the 43b is to supply rural areas.
Do they deserve a subsidy like this?
Should they be left with dial up or nothing? Satellite if you pay $$$$. Its been left to the corporations to do it for the last 10 years and they havent bothered.

Personally I am all for it.

And interested to witness for myself the same sort of naysaying that apparently went on over modern day icons like the Opera House, Snowy scheme, Harbour bridge etc etc.

"And interested to witness for myself the same sort of naysaying that apparently went on over modern day icons like the Opera House, Snowy scheme, Harbour bridge etc etc."

Yes, and how about the dotcom bubble? Is this latest scheme kevin.com, a bubble filled with fantasy, ego, and 43 billion dollars of taxpayers' money? I'm with Graham on this: Spend the money on boring stuff that is a proven wealth generator, not on a polly's temple of vanity.

An absolute waste of money.We have more urgent issues like transport.Wouldn't it be nice not to be exhausted travelling to and from work and have more time to spend with your family?

Kevin Rudd is grandstanding again and just like the farce of have each child with a lap top,it will send us into more unproductive debt.If Govt does this,it will cost us a lot more than $43 billion.

I heard that faster modems are solution and individuals can pay for them on a needs basis.What happens if better technology comes in that is far cheaper?

grayham its not intended govt pay for it[i think some reading between the lines is needed]kevo said like australia post[that as many may have noted has become a franchise... so what i see is a lot of franchise oppertuinities[=and an open bidding process[no doudt with intrest bearing security bonds to ensure delivery]

what i also see is telstra privatisation of the infastructure is a failure[sure its a nice litle earner for teslstra but its not working, so govt needs to get back controlover the pipes somehow

[43 billion is enough of a carrot to get back the pipes..[only to re-bundle the new pipes into a diverse franchise..[many little chiefs not one giant colusus]

i have no need for the extra pipes bandwidth..[and many others in the burbs dont either...[but the their franchise wont be the plum's bid up big for]...this is an invotive reply to some real clever sabvotage from the previous govt..[thing is its all still in the designing and planning stage for now]

[think of it as a game of chess]..the all up price is only speculative[and will be in future dollars]..mainly from those who see a chance to own the pipes in their own domain...[franchise]for ever,its a bargin,if its not affordable for them to provide a gold service affordably..then the pipes pass on to the bankruptsy trustee

anyhow see it as a way to do something..[that when thwarted by the opposition in the senet;reveals them for the oppertuinists they allways will be...[they allways seem to reap where labourites did sew[look what howhard did with his keating planted harvest..lol]

The difference between bringing fibre to nodes at the end of streets and to each household is the difference between $15bn and $43.

As Conroy had no idea what the cost to each house would be, there is also no indication what % of houses would want it.

Maybe I am backward, but I get 1.5Mb/s and I find that it meets all my gaming / video needs. I would not be prepared to pay more to get 100Mb as I would struggle to see the difference.

I am in favour of installing the back bone, and then charging the house holds to install it to the house. The alternative might be a huge white elephant.

GrahamY,
you of all people should know that the biggest beneficiaries of this move will be business'. Does your post come with a "this is a party political announcement"? It's straight out of the the Liberals leaders(?) mouth....what's his name?

Just because it comes from the Labor party doesn't mean it's bad. Opposition for opposition sake is putting the interest of the party before the country. Where is their alternative? oh yes amongst those high fliers with golden parachutes

As pointed out the business/private people are intended to put up 49% initially. The idea of a government infrastructure bond is safer than forcing the people and the retired to go and risk their money in the market. Which is a Liberal 'core' issue. The security bit was a non core issue wasn't it.
Thanks market place for nothing.

I wonder if between the lot of us we could end up writing an article about this.

That's a good idea Democritus. I've also been reading that Telstra intends to upgrade their existing line to 100 mbps, so Rudd better get in quickly or he'll end up spending $43 Billion for no commercial benefit whatsoever. And apparently the 3G network is going to 42mbps.

Perhaps the $43B is really just an exercise in scaring the telcos into supplying the speed themselves? Although how would the government explain it away if they didn't proceed?

A letter published in The Australian recently made the good point that the debate is being cast as though the only benefit of fast broadband will be to improve people's Facebooking and porn surfing.

In reality, it's a step toward making computer terminals a workplace, video-telephone, home entertainment system, household management tool, and thousands of other applications that haven't been developed yet. I don't think we should underestimate the utility of fast digital communication.

For my part, however, I'd rather the money was spent on an effective water management plan. When the oil starts running out, that will be a major problem to tackle.

Apparently in England they use the sewer systems to run the cabling through thus cutting costs on excavation.Could we call this shitsu cabling?

When Kevin sends us all broke we won't have to use any cabling.In the gaols they simply remove the water from the bowl and shout at each other down the toilets.

Could someone please send a message to Kevin via our sewerage system?

Tits on a bull comes to mind.

This is as well designed as the stimulus package building such critical infrastructure as town hall buildings, & school assembly buildings. Just the sort of stuff we need to boost productivity.

I suppose all those at home on their paid maternity leave will be able to get their entertainment more easily.

Hasbeen

An absolute waste of money indeed Arjay.

The best use of a sum in the order of 43billion$ would be to facilitate a quick conversion from a continuous-growth-based economic system to a steady-state economic paradigm, and assist people who may become disadvantaged by it during the transition.

Weaning ourselves off of the future-destroying continuous-expansion-with-no-end-until-it-all-crashes-in-huge-heap economic system is the single most important thing for this country and the quality of life and prospects of a healthy future for all its citizens.

Achieving a balance between the demands exerted by the population on our resource base and environment and the ability for the resource base to provide the necessary resources for a high quality of life in an ongoing manner, and for the environment to remain healthy and not suffer continuous decline, is the bottom line in devising the right strategy for our future.

We need sustainability Mr Rudd, NOT stupid expenditure that props up the continuous-growth grossly unsustainable system that is leading us to ruin.

Quite frankly, Rudd is about as bad as the leaders of the Easter Island civilisation, who apparently put just about all their resources into appeasing their gods when things became critical, rather than developing strategies to manage their highly degraded resource base for their own survival.

Although no one has been forthcoming with a breakdown of costs I presume a large proportion will be to lay fibre to all those out of the way rural residents. As it stands the answer to my previous question seems to be that most of you lot would be happy to have our country cousins excluded from broadband. Actually most of you sound like youd be happy to leave us all without.

In 50 years time our kids will thank us for this. Well actually they will take it for granted but thats good too. I look forward to the creative use they make of such a vital tool of the future. Look what it has brought us so far.

Let's look at this another way.
Do we REALLY need to spend more money on a National Highway system?

It's already there and working.

Keeping it just the way it is should be just fine for the long term. Sure, the trips may take a bit longer but you will still reach your destination.

Maybe an improved car suspension system may come along in the future and make the need for continual road repairs obsolete too.

Realistically, telecommunications is an integral part of the entire economy and is far more than internet download speeds. It's also about accommodating rapidly increasing traffic volumes and coming growth in areas that are still in the planning stages. Relying on the copper CAN network (still a Telstra monopoly) will result in severe bottlenecks. Wireless broadband in metropolitan areas is a joke.

By the way, Telstra WILL be boosting its speed with the Next-G technology it's currently installing but only in the profitable Capital City areas, and only if it can be guaranteed that it does not have to provide it's competitors any access.

Provision of increased speeds in the rural areas (but NOT using Next-G but inferior technologies) will depend on even more government (ie taxpayer) subsidies. Keeping this model will end up costing the taxpayer as much in the years ahead but ending up with an inferior result.

Once upon a time Telstra (when it was Telecom) was fully self-funding. Another example of government short-term thinking that has produced the current circumstances.

“It's also about accommodating rapidly increasing traffic volumes and coming growth in areas that are still in the planning stages.”

Yes Wobbles. Now, if it this absolutely massive projection in growth wasn’t part of the plan, then I wonder how much the whole thing would cost? Many billions less for sure. Perhaps half the projected cost.

If this sort of project was undertaken along with efforts to take our society quickly towards a stable population and steady state economy, then I’d fully support it. But for as long as it is yet another plan to facilitate rapid and never-ending expansionism, it deserves to be condemned.

There is no doubt that our communications infrastructure must be brought into the 21st century.

It is the method that concerns me. 43b$ is an awful lot of money, part of what I like about the scheme (if I have understood it correctly) is that the basic infrastructure will remain publicly owned. That is good, we should never be at the mercy of private business for public necessities.

After reading Wobbles (Telstra was fully self-funding and made a profit once in a long ago time) and as Ludwig stated, making the upgrade part of a general move towards a steady and stable public infrastructure. How do we get the other utilities back under public control? With that umbrella over all essential services we could then apply a systematic approach to the affordability, environmental impact and sustainability of all. However, I agree if this plan is just another part of never ending "growth" then there are better ways to spend those billions.

I'm surprised by the hostility toward this proposal. I'm thoroughly supportive. Read Zwiggy Zwitkowski's piece in The Australian - given that he's ex-Telstra, I'd have thought his surprising support carries some weight and he'd know what he's talking about.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25325554-5015664,00.html

There are some key points here which are being overlooked:

1) It's in ten years, maybe more.

You may have what you 'require' now. In ten years, things will be very different. Plus, you need to invest in these things ahead of time. How about in 25 years hmm? It's no good building the damn thing then, we'd be way behind the 8 ball.

2) Our telecommunications are terrible. Honestly, go overseas. It's bloody awful here.

I recently spent a significant amount of time in China's poorest province. The connection speed was better than I could get north of Brisbane.

That's just shameful, and embarrassing. Our internet speeds in Australia are an absolute joke.

3) Breaking Telstra's stranglehold.

Telstra's monopoly has been terrible for Australian communications. This project will bring them under heel, or shut them out in the cold. Either way, they won't be able to dictate policy to us any more.

1.5 mpbs is fine?! Honestly. In 15 years we'll look back at these posts and compare it to people saying floppy disks are all well and good.
As another poster said, think about industry requirements. It's not just about music and surfing the net

TRTL

Considering that the majority of the net users are not prepared to pay for speeds much beyond dial up, the 1.5Mb is way in front.

In 10 years maybe 10% will be prepared to pay extra for the 100Mb but still the other 90% will settle for 10Mb or less. In that case most of the network will be unused.

I never said don't put in the back bone, but fibre to every house is a huge waste especially considering that copper can get 1000Mb and fibre is only really needed for 10 000 Mb or higher.

Fibre to each house is like building a highway to each property.

Ludwig,
"...if it this absolutely massive projection in growth wasn’t part of the plan, then I wonder how much the whole thing would cost? Many billions less for sure. Perhaps half the projected cost."

Now that's a wild stab in the dark for sure.

The bulk of the cost is going to be in the provision and physical installation of the fibres themselves. What's placed at either end is the thing that's going to be evolving and changing.

A Canadian company called Sasktel was planning to cable up the Hunter Valley some years ago and then move to the Woollongong area. The plan fell through due to local Council complications and their partner failing to come up with their share of the finance.
I was also involved in preparing a quote for a full-photonic solution (fibre-to-the-home) in China in the Shenyang province at about the same time.

Australia is different nationally because of the greater distances involved and the geographic spread of the population.

It's not some sort of wild unachieveable fantasy because it's been happening elsewhere for many years and waiting for "something better" will certainly not make it any cheaper.

Wobbles

Wouldn't a combination of wireless and fibre be the best solution depending on region to be covered?

I quite agree that the evolution of communications is going to be at each end of the infrastructure. Not something that is going to happen overnight and that's for sure. I also see an opportunity (and further expense) to place cables underground. For two weeks earlier this year I was without any communication due to bush fires - the isolation was palpable.

I'm reminded of the $1000 laptop argument argument of Perseus. The advance of technology can bring a great reappraisal of the existing infrastructure, as well as offer new options at less cost.

Of all Rudds proposals to stimulate things this has the most merit. I'm dead against some of his profligacy and the debt he is incurring on our behalf because there won't be any payback. But an efficient, fast Network will benefit everyone (assuming the right tech is introduced efficiently).

I'd like to see real money being spent on 'hot rocks' and a large scale trial of concentrated solar. I'd be very happy to see government work towards eliminating our dependence on oil imports. In exchange the govt. can stop telling us what to eat, how to dress, how to behave et bloody cetera.

“Now that's a wild stab in the dark for sure.”

Wobbles, the notion that the cost would be very much less if it was to be built for a population just a little larger than the current level, compared to one much bigger and still rapidly growing, is no stab in the dark.

The point is that if the projected population growth in Australia was small, with a stable population just around the corner, the cost of this proposed national broadband network would be a great deal less than if it has to be built to cater for the projected growth rate, which at the 2008 rate of 1.8%, would give us a national population 50% larger in only something like 24 years.

That’s a pretty enormous difference.

GrahamY wrote 11 April 2009:

"... dubious proposition (to any but tech-heads ..."

I am a tech-head, but dubious of the NBN. Apart from high cost, the NBN may be inflexible and obsolete before it is completed.

The proposal is for FTTH: Fibre To The Home. At present the fibre optic cable terminates in a telephone exchange, hundreds or thousands of metres from the home. Copper telephone cable carries the data from the exchange to the home. The shorter this cable, the faster the data.

Running the fibre into the home is expensive. Even if the government's new company does not need to make a profit, it needs to be cost effective.

The Australian Computer Society, which I am a member of, and which is pro-NBN, has called for "... a digital economy strategy that clearly articulates how we will use the new network": http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25329529-5013038,00.html

There are cheaper alternatives to FTTH. We can have FNTH: "Fibre Nearer the Home" (not an official term, I just made it up). The fibre optic cable can be run to within a few hundred metres of the home and then copper cable, or wireless, used for the last bit. This will reduce the bandwidth, but also the cost and was the approach used by Transact in Canberra: http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/sa/bauhaus/

There is a fibre optic cable ending in the basement of my apartment building, with copper cable from there to each apartment: http://www.tomw.net.au/links/20020501.html

This provides an excellent telephone, pay TV and Internet servcie. But after a few years I decided it provided more than I wanted to pay for and cancelled my Transact service. I replaced this with a cheaper wireless service, which is not as good but is adequate.

If mobile phones become the preferred way to use the web, then a fixed broadband NBN connection might look as old fashioned as a black Bakelite telephone screwed to the wall. High speed fibre optic connections would still be of use in businesses and community centres but of no use in the average home.

More on this on my blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/labels/NBN.html

Fractelle,

I believe that is the actual proposal - fibre to the home in metropolitan areas and supplemented by wireless in rural and remote areas. The target is only 90% coverage.

Before it became Telstra, Telecom's "commission" was a POTS service to a little over 98% of the population. It could have achieved most of that number in what was called "the Golden Boomerang". (Brisbane to Adelaide via the East Coast).

This announcement was pretty light on detail and was really only a statement of intent. It was made because the original Tender decision was due and they had to explain why nobody had been successful. The full costings are yet to come and some (if not many) things are likely to change.

It's way too early to get overexcited about much of this.

*It's way too early to get overexcited about much of this.*

I agree with Wobbles on that point. Alan Kohler of
Business Spectator, who is usually extremely well informed,
seems to think that with Sol moving on, Telstra will be
split. Much of the optic fibre is already in the ground,
owned by them. So Telstra shareholders will land up with
two stakes, one in the infrastructure company, the other
in the Telco for mobile etc.

So nobody would have to actually spend 43 billion and it
could turn out to be a win-win all round.

tomw: "obsolete before it is completed."

By what? Wireless? That sounds pretty unlikely. At best wireless scales from its current 10MBps to 1Gbps using experimental techniques. But is unreliable, as always. Fibre can scale to over 10 Tbps using experimental techniques now, and it is more reliable than our copper network. 10 Tbps is a factor of 100,000 over the proposed 100 Mbps. It is not something that obsoletes easily.

GrahamY: "I suspect that a version of the 80/20 rule applies to technology"

Well, others suspected we would need no more than 640K of memory. Modern computers have 100,000 times more than that. So what happened - did we do more of what we were doing when we have 640K of memory? No. What happened is new things sprang into life - like computers becoming so easy to use a 70 year old man could engage in a political discussion on a web site.

To put it another way, if we spent $50B on our hospitals what would we get - no queues? On our highways - an optimistic speed increase of 50% Well if we spend the same money on broadband we get a 1000%..10,000% increase now, and a 10,000%..100,000% percent in the foreseeable future. You say you can't see this changing things. As a comparison, if spending $50B on our roads meant the 12hour drive from Brisbane to Sydney took 7.2 minutes, could you tell me what the future would look like? If you start talking in terms of reduced hours for truck drivers you fail.

GrahamY: "it's a dubious proposition that internet speeds 100 times faster than currently available will provide much benefit"

I think characterising it as an "Internet" upgrade is misleading. We are replacing the copper wires current to our homes with optical fibre. Yes, we are replacing the Internet transport - but also the phone transport, and in the long term cable as well. It means everybody with a phone line will instead have a 100Mbps digital connection instead. In that sense, take uptake won't be optional.

(cont'd)

It is that last point that is most important. Right now we have an takeup of 50% of the population having broadband, getting an average of 2Mbps.

http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/dataviz5.html

This means if you are a large company, you can not build your business model on the assumption all of your customers have a high speed link to you. A purely electronic business model is impossible. You have to carry dual infrastructures.

If the NBN goes ahead, in metropolitan areas you will be able to assume 100% of your households have a 100Mbps link to your servers. If there isn't some strict need for a physical outlet, it can disappear without loosing most of your customer base. The shop fronts of banks, accountants, real estate agents, video and music stores will change into something unrecognisable to us now.

Despite, the $50B figure like this makes me pause. That would be true regardless of what it was spent on. It will always be a risk: an enormous bet on the unknown and unknowable. But to answer your question: what else could we it on that make me more comfortable - the answer is nothing. I can't see anything that has more potential upside than this. The rest is merely a case of making the cars go slightly faster, hospital queues shorter or whatever. Boring, predictable, and most importantly small scale stuff. About the best that could be said for it is you have some idea what the pay off will be. Evidently that isn't true for the NBN given most of the comments here.

I have seen the "Back of the Envelope" estimate of the cost to the
average user. It is quite a simple calculation actually.
Just divide the $G43 by around 10 million for the number of premises
amortise over a variable number of years and add on a 8% return on capital + maintenace
and it comes up at around $100 a month +- $10.

As far as the average user is concerned the vast majority will not
notice any improvement over a 1 or 2 Megabit service.
Instead of a page coming down in 2.000 secs it might arrive in 1.999 secs. If you are lucky it might arrive in 1.99 seconds.

There will be many on here that will argue about those figures but
the principle will apply. The speed you get is set by the server at
the other end and how many are connected to it.

TV stations will use it to move programs around the country instead
of paying licences for dedicated co-axs or microwave links.
They are doing this from overseas now when there is not a time critical
factor involved.

Thats where the benefit will be not to Jo Blow and his mate.

Good post, TomW.

Has anyone else noticed that computers are getting smaller and more mobile? Why will people want a home connection, when a wireless connection will give them a voip service and internet access, albeit slower than 100mbps, wherever they go? Speed isn't everything.

Bazz: "Instead of a page coming down in 2.000 secs it might arrive in 1.999 secs. If you are lucky it might arrive in 1.99 seconds."

That shows a distinct lack of imagination, Bazz. What makes you think the predominate traffic over the Internet in the future will be web pages? Actually, its worse than that. Bugger the future. Right now web traffic - ie displaying web pages, constitutes roughly 20% of internet traffic. So how long a web page takes to load is all a bit irrelevant, even now.

Which brings me back to many of the comments made here. There are persistent claims a faster Internet will make no difference to how it is used. But these claims are being made by people who evidently don't know what good uses the existing Internet can be put to now, so what hope is there of them imagining what new uses a faster Internet could be put to?

I use broadband, dial-up (very infrequently now) and wireless. The broadband is definitely superior to the wireless, but for most purposes I notice very little difference between any of them.

Yeah, I wince when someone sends me a large file and I'm on dial-up, cancel the email download and use webmail instead. But I've had the experience of wireless, theoretically capable of 7.2 mbps being slower than dial-up in some parts of country New South Wales.

Even back here in metropolitan Brisbane my wireless is variable. Yet, when we had to wait for our ADSL connection to be reestablished when we moved office we powered the whole office off my Optus Wireless Broadband connection and no-one complained.

It's a relief to be back on ADSL2+, but again, apart from some of the back-ups that we do of external servers there is no noticeable difference to how we were travelling with the wireless broadband (and I notice little difference between now and when we were on slower ADSL speeds).

I take Bazz's point about server speed too.

I wonder however whether the government's strategy, apart from covering up the debacle of the original policy, is to force Telstra et al to roll-out faster broadband themselves so that the government will eventually pull the plug on this policy as well. Or alternatively to encourage Telstra to agree to splitting itself into an infrastructure arm and a retailer it would end up being a spectularly successful policy.

I did have a similar thought Graham. If this were a game of poker, I'd think that Rudd was bluffing and he's just tricked Telstra into folding, when actually, that stunning four-of-a-kind was merely a respectable straight.

It seems that Telstra are now looking amenable to splitting their retail and wholesale divisions, something they've been loathe to do over the last few terms.

However, as brilliant a move as it would seem, I can't quite believe that Rudd would be playing politics on that level - simply put, he'd have to back down later, and even if this was an intentional move he'd either have to admit to deceiving the public in order to bluff Telstra, or making an incompetent announcement.

I can't see him doing either.

I can only concur with rstuart's comments. Having been overseas for some time now, I can see how far Australia has fallen behind in terms of our internet speeds.

To me, there is no doubt at all that the uses for the internet will increase along with the increased speeds.
We're often held back by lowest common denominators, but near-universal access (even if there's a significant minority, this it wouldn't affect this development provided it's a minority) would mean that trade, advertising, entertainment and all the associated things would be capable of moving forward.

This isn't just about web pages and downloads.

Projected fees are somewhat misleading and premature.

This kind of technology will supercede all basic telephony with VOIP and Pay TV via satellite and introduce things like video-on-demand for the consumer and conferencing for business.

The telephony cost will no longer be distance based but probably charged as data volume.

There will probably be a basic access fee (like water, electricity and current phone line rental)but many of the current things you may be paying for will be absorbed. Our access is comparatively expensive due in part to the infrastructure limitations. The existing network is being shared by all the carriers and resellers.

It's not just speed - it's the amount of traffic that we will need to cope with.

Imagine what it would be like if we were stll using 52kB dial-up nationwide - back to the World-Wide-Wait.

As for wireless, the more the number of users connected to a transmitter, the lower the average speed and the smaller the cell radius.

You may log on at high speed early in the morning but be prepared for a speed reduction during peak times plus potential loss of coverage and drop-outs.

Raiche, the wireless speed was brilliant at some times over Easter, until the rain came. I was downloading pods at one stage a 1 Mbps. So I take your point on wireless. But isn't that also true of fibre and everything else - the more users the slower they go?

GrahamY: "But isn't that also true of fibre and everything else - the more users the slower they go?"

No, not really. I guess its obvious the bandwidth available in a single wireless cell is fixed. In a 3G cell it is very roughly 4 Mbps, so Telstra says you can get 3.2 Mbps in a NextG cell. You get that if you are the only user, but if there are 3 users, each will get about 1 Mbps. Equally obviously if you service that same cell with land lines the bandwidth available is not fixed, but rather increases as you add users. In the case of the NBN, each line adds 100 Mbps. There is a minimum size for a wireless cell, so this is a real and fundamental limitation.

This is why magazine reviews of 3G wireless changed. When 3 and later Optus brought out the cheap wireless plans, the reviews were almost raves about how well they worked. Over the 12 months that followed those reviews became increasingly negative. Those rave reviews attracted users, and the additional users killed the performance. There is no easy fix, particular in the inner city where the cell size is already small.

I presume you weren't concerned by that, but rather the backhaul at the exchange. Yes, that is shared, but the economics are totally different. You can see it isn't the limiting factor by just looking at the NBN proposal. The money is being spent where the bottleneck is, and that ain't at the exchange. The reality is the cost of putting in cables is dominated by digging trenches and erecting poles - not by cable you put in them. The telco's knew that when they replaced their backbones years ago with fibre. They filled those trenches are filled with unused (aka "dark") fibre. The cost of lighting those fibres is very cheap compared to the rest of the NBN. What's more the cost per bit drops as you pump more bits into the existing ones. A laser that pushes bits 10 times faster doesn't cost 10 times as much.

RsStuart;
The point I was making is that the average Jo Blow, who
mainly only reads web pages and email will get no benefit at all.
The commercial and industrial user will in a few cases get some
benefits, but one example will do for the industrial users.
The electricity suppliers will be able to access every meter and switch
board and also be able to communicate with tcp/ip fitted appliances.

What they get is not speed as they do not need much speed at all but
the access. They would have got it with fttn anyway.

Those downloading music and movies will get a bit better speed
depending on the other end servers.
I hear people talking of these mystery services that will come with
significantly higher speeds, but where are they ? What are they ?
The control of loading in the electricity grid was always promoted
to be one of these applications, but it turns out their data rates
can be done at 9600 baud for meter reading.
No one seems to know, is it just fairy floss ?

If God (or evolution if you prefer, for that matter) considered it important to have us humans communicate at speeds of 100Mbit/sec, He would have created our bodies with suitable antennas and/or fibre-optic connections.

God (or evolution if you prefer) did understand the importance of communication and therefore gave us a nervous system, vocal chords and a tongue. To balance, however, God in his mercy also understood the value of silence and reflection/contemplation and therefore limited the capacity of those faculties. Had our nervous system been running at 100Mbit/sec, we would experience it as a constant horrific pain (perhaps this is what people refer to as "hell").

Throughout history, it was the custom of kings and barons to levy heavy taxes on their innocent and hard-working subjects in order to finance extravagant entertainment, primarily for their own courts and then for the masses, so they too can forget their miserable condition for a moment and not rebel.

Life is a balance - stop and smell the roses, but those rulers would not allow us to have a life, they rather keep us as slaves, and their latest plan is to inject us with 100Mbit/sec opium to get us addicted and glued to LCD screens, 24/7 in virtual prisons, instead of letting us go out and breath the fresh air (which in most countries is still free).

Yuyutsu

1) Nobody's stopping anyone smelling the fresh air.
2) Evolution or god might have given us brains so we had the means to create 100mbps.
3) 'Rulers' are probably disadvantaged by the net and free communication. Think of the great firewall in China.
4) This attitude toward the plebian masses is more contemptuous than that of the 'rulers' you so despise.
5) Politicians just aren't that clever. I know a few. That's why these Byzantine schemes for controlling the masses make me laugh.
6) The proposal is for all homes, not just the oligarchy.

All this nonsence over such a short sighted perspective of technology as it stands today doing todays thing.
Common sense dictates that if and when this comes it will provide more benefits to the average man and business employment etc beyond the Worms Eye view of the net.
The arguments being put are either politically partisan or so limited to be almost troglodytic.

As computing speeds have increased so too the oppotunities many of the business, employment and benefits. This step is clearly one more along the line.

Read some of the comments at the time the snowy scheme was being mooted. Waste of money etc was amongst then too. Which major energy corp wouldn't want a slice of it now?

Some OLOer need to catch up with the potential of the future rather than status quo. THEN make an assessment.

TRTL,

I don't believe it's anybody's right to separate people from their grog,
but I don't believe that making others pay for your grog is fair either.

1) In theory, one can smell the fresh air once off-duty, but after working long hours (to pay for other-people's grog), when finally off-duty, one can only collapse in bed.

2) If it's evolution, then over 99% of mutations are now extinct, but why not try - as long as you pay for your own experiments. If it's God, then He has given us free choice, which we haven't always used for the better.

3) To say "The king is naked" takes only 4 words: 17 characters, 170 bits (with parity and spacing), 4.4 milliseconds on a 38.4 dialup connection (OK, double it for 16-bit Chinese unicode).

4) The Plebian masses were not just drinking and dancing: the next morning they had to rise early (with a hangover) for work to foot the bill.

5) A contradiction with #2?

6) Modern oligarchy no longer lives in the same castle - it's gone cyber... Of course the masses get it too, no choice whether they want it or not: first everyone pays for it, and once you paid for something you tend to believe it's actually worth something, then if you still refuse to have it, you will just find it harder and harder to get or to keep a job to provide for your physical body so it can breath the fresh air.

eAnt,

I am not looking forward to that future which you plan for me. Thank you.
As all this technology closes in on us, I hope not to remain here for long, but rather be relieved of the need to share this kind of world with you.

There are some interesting figures from surveys here about the likely take-up of broadband. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24444/1095/1/0/. I'm more and more inclining to the view that this announcement is a gambit, and that the government's final position could end up being quite different.

Bazz: "The point I was making is that the average Jo Blow, who mainly only reads web pages and email"

Although it isn't obvious, we are arguing here about cause and effect. You are assuming Jo Blow only reads web pages because there is nothing more that could conceivably interest him. You might be right, but ...

As you said, it takes a second or two for a web page to respond. At Uni, we were given a rule thumb for computer response speeds. Under 250 milli seconds; perceived as instantaneous. Under about 2 seconds: slowing down. Over 2 seconds: unusable for interactive purposes.

That means about the best application we can hope for over the internet is one that dumps a whole pile of information to a local computer where you can interact with it using the mouse clicks, key presses and whatever at a reasonable speed that won't drive the user nuts. Hell, throw in some tabs so you can download one thing while reading another. Sound familiar? Yes - its a the WWW. Anything requiring more interactivity than the WWW simply won't work on our current networks.

You say Jo Blow doesn't use anything other than the WWW because it doesn't interest him. I say how do you know, given right now it is impossible to build anything more sophisticated than the WWW with our current networks? Jo Blow hasn't had a chance to try anything else.

Phone calls over the internet are an obvious example. All you have to do is reliably send 10 K bits/sec with 300 milli seconds delay over one of our u-beaut 1M bits/sec ADSL links. 24 hours of yapping would cost you around 1G - a dammed sight less normal than telco charges. If you have a very good ISP that knows his stuff you can pull it off now, otherwise forget it. Why - see above. And voice isn't that demanding! Try doing any live video interaction is impossible.

look its about getting us into debt[so we can get lumped with compulsory global carbon tax]better things to spend 43 billion on try buying stuff before the real carbon price gets put on it[buy food]

been doing research re the tax, interesting discoveries are being revealed..like bying a potatoe, will have its carbon credit added for the cooking, pre paid[in its purchase price]

so they figure it will cost 15 carbon credits to cook it so the potatoe has that cost added to iots price [neat scam eh]you pay on the carbon credits via electricity and the potatoe

i heard it explained by dr winn parker, in googling his name found this interesting link
http://www.magnesiumforlife.com/waterpolution.shtml

but unable to find him saying it[it was on republic broadcasting network, john stadmillers show, its in the archive but it costs 1.33 cents [via pay pal to listen to the re broadcast]
http://republicbroadcasting.org/?cmd=archives
thus my search goes on

interesting search result's
http://organictobe.org/index.php/2007/07/20/uhhh-explain-that-carbon-credit-deal-again-please/
http://www.erb.umich.edu/Research/Student-Research/VoluntaryCarbonConfusionformatted-MLedit-2-22.pdf

http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-article/treat-carbon-symptom-not-disease.html

but hey its a long search
http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGklnszOdJlbkAEG6l87UF?p=carbon+credit+value+on+a+potatoe&fr=sfp&fr2=&iscqry=

and have no doudt its going to be the biggest scam[i understand even growing your own food will result in govt finning you [even animals need to be registered[$5 for a chicken[so selling your home grown chicken cost 5 bucks [before you factor in what you are selling the actual chicken for]

but hey get back to your tv...lol
govt is trying to screw us into the ground so the speculators can speculate the neo carbon credit con derivitive for their imf banker mates, but hey thats how they sold us on drug wars and bikie wars, and the global [cabal cooling

[oops global warming]warning and the y2k computers failing [and sars/birdflue, and mercury vacinations, and fluerided water [and tax on cigarettes, and tax on alco pops, and private pensions that stole your super...[its the same old elites sukking you dry..[but hey you love it right

lol
shoot the messenger