Rstuart,

Did you read the links you posted. The broadband connections incl wireless. The Voip phones don't require a landline connection whether it is a copper or fibre land line.

Our business has one fibre coming in with phones and network distributed by a series of wireless repeaters for 100+ people. Wireless voip phones are mobile like a mobile phone within the office area.

The 26.6% have no land lines, and fibre is a landline.

Wireless is tomorrow's technology. Fibre is the heavy lifting for internode connections. At 10Gb/s that fibre is capable, the download allowance could be delivered in 20 seconds.

@Shadow Minister: The broadband connections incl wireless

I'll concede I didn't do my homework very well. The figures in that link are ambiguous. Here is a better link, which the figures original link appear to be based on: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-296239A1.pdf from this page: http://transition.fcc.gov/wcb/iatd/comp.html

It is US government published data for up to 2002..2008. Take a look at the graph on the page numbered 9. It graphs total fixed line broadband installations over time. It is a steadily rising almost straight line, despite mobile wireless broadband reaching growing from 0% to 25% of all connections in the same period. Clearly if mobile broadband was replacing fixed it would not be rising unabated. So it appears contrary to what you are saying, in the US mobile broadband lines are being used in addition to the home broadband link, not instead of it. This is what csteele was telling you 80 posts or so ago.

You also claim people don't care about the speed of their connections. ADSL growth drops to zero in the period (chart page numbered 13). They don't say why, but the usual reason given is cable is much faster than ADSL. FTTP growth (ie what the NBN is using, and what you characterised as "old technology") accelerates during the same period, rising to 61% growth in 2008.

The chart on page numbered 14 illustrated the relative speed of the technologies, showing how much faster than ADSL cable is in real installations. Mobile broadband maxes out at around 2 M bits/sec, ADSL somewhere under 6. Fibre is starting to encroach on cable at 25. Compare that to the the NBN FTTP which starts at 12, is offering 100 at very reasonable price and 1000 if you are willing to pay much more than I am.

These are 2008 figures so you still have some wriggle room I guess. Sadly they are the latest figures the FCC has published. But if you were to base your assumptions on those figures it is done and dusted: it is very clear mobile broadband wasn't replacing fixed line back then.

@Shadow Minister: The Voip phones don't require a landline connection whether it is a copper or fibre land line.

Correct, it doesn't "require it". But no one in their right mind routes a VOIP call over mobile wireless data.

It is an outcome of the technical discussion I gave when describing iPhone data connections above. It boils down to this: when you make a voice call over 3G one of two things happen. Either you are granted a dedicated voice channel for the entire duration of your call (assuming you stay in the same cell), or you will get a busy signal if there are none available. What's more, the network will monitor the strength of the signal coming from your phone and if rain or something weakens it, it will adjust its transmit strength accordingly. In other words, it will hold onto that voice channel as hard as it can. Despite all this, mobile voice connections can be frustratingly unreliable.

None of this happens for data connections. They are optimised for different things. One is speed. The other is latency: that negotiation for reserved bandwidth for a voice channel takes time, and is pointless for a packet that may take only 0.1 sec to send. So they don't do it. As a consequence a rain squally can wipe out hundreds of packets, and 100 people checking their email doesn't mean 10 get through - it means the data channels in cell collapse entirely and no one gets through.

So your wrong Shadow. A fixed channel with reserved bandwidth is always used for voice when at all possible, and no, mobile broadband doesn't provide such a thing for data. This means VOIP over mobile broadband is a really bad idea, and you can be absolutely sure the large firms mentioned in the link, such as Ford, didn't do it.

Notice Shadow the NBN provides reserved bandwidth for two dedicated voice channels. even though we are hardly ever on the phone. Doesn't that seem like a waste? Now you know why it is done that way.

@Shadow Minister: As for ASDL I get 200GB at 12-20Mb/s plus telephone (incl all national calls) now for $60pm. Which is cheaper and better value than what the NBN will offer in 7-8 years.

It turns out some ISP's offer NBN pricing now. But not surprisingly, its only those who operate in Tasmania. iiNet is one example.

iiNet's pricing for ADSL+Phone is identical to NBN+Phone. You can look up their pricing for the NBN here:

http://www.iinet.net.au/nbn/

The only real difference between the two NBN gives you a guaranteed 25 M bit/sec, ADSL gives you something between 1.5-20 M bit/sec.

Obviously iiNet isn't an el-cheapo ISP like you are using Shadow, but if looks like your fears of the NBN being more expensive than ADSL are misplaced.

Internode also offers NBN. Internode is (as always) more expensive than iiNet, but their entry price point is interesting: $29.95 for 15 Gb (25 M bit/sec). That includes line rental, which means it is the equivalent of a naked service. It is cheaper than any Naked ADSL service I can remember.

http://www.internode.on.net/residential/fibre_to_the_home/nbn_plans/1

@rstuart: if I was to have a guess ... voice channel ... [is] a ISDN BRI channel

Turns out I guessed wrong. They are SIP end points: http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/364013/updated_adsl_emulation_port_scrapped_from_nbn_plans/ SIP is the name of the protocol the internet uses to carry telephone calls.

@Yuyutsu: I do hope ... the need to encapsulate phone calls as IP packets (with IP addressing) does not arise

Sorry. This means voice will be carried using IP packets from the moment they leave the NBN box.

Rstuart, from your own link:

"Of the 86 million residential high-speed connections at year-end 2008, cable modem represented 46%, aDSL represented 31%, mobile wireless subscribers with data plans for full Internet access represented 18%, FTTP represented 3%, and all other technologies represented 1%."

Note that when talking about cable, they are not just talking about fibre. The vast majority would be copper cable such as CAT 5 etc.

FYI voice requires a peak data rate of 22kb/s and compressed, 1GB of download capacity will give about 200 hours of talk. So why would you be mad to use VOIP over wireless?

What iinet is recently offering would appear to match what is presently available guaranteeing 5Mb/s. Why are we spending $46bn to get the same?

@Shadow Minister: Rstuart, from your own link: "Of the 86 million residential high-speed connections at year-end 2008 ...

One more time, but I'll give up after this unless you present some new data. Your argument is: households will take up mobile wireless broadband INSTEAD OF fixed line.

The evidence you offered:

- There are lots of new mobile mobile broadband connections going in. (Everyone agrees this is correct.)
- Mobile phones are replacing fixed lines in households. (Again, everyone agrees this is correct.)
- This is what has supposedly happened in the US. (No one has said they agree with you on this one.)

The problem with your evidence is, as csteele was first to point out, rising mobile broadband connections doesn't mean they are replacing fixed connections. People could be getting both. To find out if they are, we looked how the growth in mobile has effected the growth of fixed.

- If the growth was negative then the evidence was strongly in your favour.
- If it tailed off and became flat it was ambiguous.
- If growth continued unabated then you are almost certainly wrong.

All the evidence presented shows fixed broadband growth has remained strong in both Australia and the US, despite the rise of mobile.

This is a puzzle, so people have put forward reasons (with evidence) why mobile broadband isn't replacing fixed broadband:

- Mobile broadband is roughly 10 times more expensive per byte than fixed.
- Mobile broadband is roughly 10 times slower than fixed.
- Mobile broadband is less reliable than fixed.
- Mobile broadband can not hope to scale to deliver the quantity of data _already_ being delivered by fixed.

A good reason was also given for the growth of mobile broadband "connections". They are low cap plans sold with smartphones, not fixed broadband replacements.

The thing I find odd about your refusal to accept mobile broadband won't replace fixed is that you have a 200Gb fixed plan. On the cheapest rate I could find would cost you $700/month using mobile broadband. Planning to give up your fixed line soon, Shadow?