Why would it be a monopoly, telstra, optus ,etc co share copperwire now when telstra allows. so whats the difference. Instead of bying space from telstra, they bye space from govt;

Shadow Minister,
From your comment on towers, I think you are presuming an
architecture like the mobile phone system.
I cannot see that being suitable for more remote areas.
Much greater ranges will be required than is possible with mobile
phones. A quite different protocol would be used and as an example
Mt Canoblas near Orange would have a base station there and farms out
to around 100KM with suitable antennae would have service.
In an area with few farms etc only one channel would be needed
but in a more dense area a couple more channels could be used.

That seems to me to be the most practical way to service remote and
scattered users of the system. It certainly would be a lot cheaper
than erecting hundreds, if not thousands of sites using mobile phone
techniques, even using existing mobile phone sites.

I have not heard what NBN is planning on using except the old and
venerated phrase "wireless" has been stated.

Guilty as charged, individual.

>>Pericles, You obviously are unaware of remote area phone & internet services. You can only choose between Telstra & nothing.<<

There is another problem though.

If getting services to a remote community is expensive to provide, then any commercial private enterprise is going to whack you for it. Your only hope is to have it subsidised in some way.

I would suspect that a substantial part of the $40 billion is being spent on rural areas; coverage in cities are a piece of cake, in comparison. On that basis we city folk will be subsidising your internet services forever and a day, whichever way you cut it.

So a little thanks might be in order.

Send cows.

Pericles,
What I would like to have explained by service providers is why can people in Bangladesh, India & Indonesia afford to call Australia without much concern of cost yet to call these countries from Australia is almost prohibitive on my slightly above average wage ?

Spacing of mobile towers isn't just a function of the number of users, it's also related to the frequency band and also has a lot to do with advancing or retarding the signal transmission to stay within the allocated timeslot for the call while the handset is moving toward or away from the transmitter.

With higher frequencies the timesolts are "narrower" so the calls need to be handed-off much sooner, so more cells are required.

The coverage of the cell also shrinks with the number of users to adjust the overall transmit power.

After the original AMPS system was closed down the GSM network didn't have the coverage to meet rural demand so Howard brought in CDMA to keep the farmers happy.

Remember?

That gave a 35km radius for omnidirectional transmitters which was later stretched to about 70km under ideal conditions.

The 3G network Base Stations are only about 1km apart in the Sydney Metropolitan area and Hutchison (the original 3G providers) needed about 600-odd for Sydney alone.

With higher speeds they will need to be even closer together or suffer chronic dropouts as a result.

If you're thinking about plain old WiFi HotSpots for high speed coverage, it will be much the same thing.

Then there is the cost of providing all those transmitters, the transmission path plus all the associated equipment (at both ends) for every additional tower - not to mention the ongoing property leasing, access and power costs for every site. Every set of aerials or tower you see on private property costs the provider money continually just to have them, let alone ongoing maintenance costs.

At best, wireless (like satellite) is a way to plug up holes in remote areas where it's impractical to put in fibre but to see it as some sort of magical cheap overall solution is just like flogging a dead horse.

It's more a political debate than a technological one and not a viable option - just another convenient way to keep hammering at the ALP.

Wobbles, I think you were agreeing with me that the mobile phone
architecture is not suitable for data over remote areas.
In any case you do not want to mix voice and data in the same service.

There are a raft of VHF and UHF ex analogue TV channels becoming redundant.
Some of them would be available for remote area NBN.
The coverage of these frequencies would be very suitable for internet usage.
Also the very remote users could use high gain antennas pointed
at the nearest mountain top data transmitter.
A farmer could place such an antenna on his nearest hilltop and use
a wifi link down to his house. All these techniques are old hat.