rstuart, we're arguing at cross-purposes and going around in circles. I'm not disputing what you say about spectral efficiency, I'm saying that the average performance of 4g per user will be adequate for all but the most demanding environments. Sure, if you've got a workplace where everybody wants to be able to video-conference at once you could usefully implement a fibre solution and many already have. I mentioned the CANs run by Optus, Telstra and PIPE in an early post.

However, if you live in a typical home with 2.5 kids, then you're simply not going to need it. What you need is a big total data allowance and a reasonably low latency. Ultimate bandwidth is less critical. We already time-shift our use for downloading and many ISPs encourage this with lower rates, just as power companies encourage usage off-peak with lower rates in order to improve the ration of baseload to peakload and hence maximise their resource use.

The LTE paper you referenced earlier also mentions that low power femtocells are the solution to spectrum saturation, allowing re-use after much less distance. I mentioned this almpost at the start of this discussion.

Just as an aside, I worked in geotechnical engineering for years, which is quite an old field and well-understood, you would think, yet advances in technology have allowed structures to be built on foundations that would have been thought impossible only a few years ago. Engineers are problem-solvers and the best ones are innovative problem-solvers. I have great confidence in their ability to drive technology in new directions you and I think impossible. The vast expansion in wireless bandwidth just since the 90s is some evidence that this is already happening.

I still can't se what the killer app is that will make fibre vital.

@Antiseptic, @Shadow Minister,

I sense I've had a bit of a win here. I think you both now acknowledge wireless with the current spectrum and current equipment allocation's can't ever replace land line. If you reduced the cell size to a hundred metres or so, and allocated 10 times the spectrum we currently do to each cell you could approach the NBN speeds they are selling now. As I said earlier, in the cities I'm certain it's just cheaper to put in the fibre and in the country were it isn't, they are using 3.9G.

So now Shadow falls back to arguments like this:

@Shadow Minister: So your estimate of 70% connected is wrong.

The 70% figure is the NBN's estimate, which I concede I didn't look up. It wasn't worth it as your wireless arguments needed 0's, not a couple of %.

However, as repeatedly pointed out, it doesn't matter. To make a profit the NBN just needs to convert existing fixed line broad customers. You noisily point to the phenomenal rise in the number of wireless "broadband connections" as though it means people are dropping fixed line. What you refuse to concede is it doesn't, and we know it doesn't because fix line subscriptions are rising too. What is actually happening is are getting itsy bitsy data allowance with their shiny new iPhone's, and these are counted as broadband connections.

Finally Shadow, I suspect I sucked you into believing that the NBN's plans may end up being more expensive. What I said was true, but reality is we don't know yet. There is an almighty sh1t fight going on over NBN wholesale pricing right now, some of it in public http://delimiter.com.au/2011/07/21/pulling-apart-the-nbns-untenable-pricing-model-by-simon-hackett/ . This is situation normal for telecom industry. The ACCC has been presiding similar sh1t fights between the incumbent monopolist, Telstra, and is customers for years.

I suggest you stop leading with your chin like you did in the first post on this thread until the dust settles. Sadly that will probably take years, bureaucracies and politics being what they are.

@Antiseptic: I'm saying that the average performance of 4g per user will be adequate for all but the most demanding environments ... I still can't se what the killer app is that will make fibre vital.

And this is the argument you fall back to Anti. It's an odd argument. You were very keen to pin the future of the NBN on the tenuous indeed idea of huge gains in wireless. But now you are pinning your argument against the NBN on there being no similar gains in internet usage, even though we are installing the technology to make such gains possible. It's even odder when you concede you are already time shifting your usage, which you would not be doing if data wasn't becoming a scarce resource.

The other odd thing is internet usage is growing exponentially. In other words what you say won't happen has been happening since the internet began, and is happening as we speak. From http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ip_growth.htm :

"The Internet is growing exponentially in three different directions -- size, processing power, and software sophistication -- making it the fastest growing technology humankind has ever created"

In the face of that the argument that internet usage now going to suddenly stop growing is almost impossible to accept. The nice thing about the NBN is we are re-writing the country with the one technology that can cope with this of growth for decades. Wireless simply can't. Even if given huge chunks of spectrum and tiny cells, it tops out at roughly where the NBN is starting.

Obviously I think the NBN is an inspired piece of nation building. I was listening the the chairman of the ACCC saying who we have to thank for this. He said it was Sol Trujillo and Phil Burgess, because they so undermined public opinion of Telstra the government could shaft them. To that list I would add Howard. He sold off Telstra, which meant Telstra shareholders had to wear the write-off of the copper network. There is no way the government would have treated an asset they owned so cavalierly.

rstuart, I've ever argued that fibre was not the superior technology, I've always argued the fitness for purpose issue. As I said, I think we've been arguing at cross-purposes.

The point about time-shifting was that this is what the next generation technologies do within data streams to achieve best median performance for all users. At present, a lot of the time the spectrum is effectively idle and simply maintaining a carrier to the receiver to keep the connection alive. If this idle time can be used to send packets on that frequency to other receivers then the net data rate effectively increases.

Improvements in switching and development of the algorithms to manage it have allowed this to be a reality to be transparent to the user and barely impact latency. It's intersting that LTE advanced also incorporates some of the relay functionality that I was discussing earlier. Once the full 4g spec is implemented there will be a lot of develop in that area as well as distributed phased arrays, in which many stations can be directed to create a very localised hot-spot, rather than a beam per se.

On the issue of increasing internet use, you seem to be trying to have two bob each-way. you discount the effects of development of wireless tech as not important enough to bother with, then cite some unspecified reason for expecting bandwidth demand to increase exponentially.

I'll keep asking the question: what's the killer app that's going to drive that?

Rstuart,

A flash of insight? "I sense I've had a bit of a win here. I think you both now acknowledge wireless with the current spectrum and current equipment allocation's can't ever replace land line."

The only problem is that none of us ever claimed that they could, or even should.

85-90% of the cost of the NBN policy is not upgrading the heavy lifting centre to centre fibre, or fibre to the kerb, but simply the cost of fibre from the kerb to every household. I would compare the NBN fibre as the Porsche of the networking world, and the NBN policy is to deliver a "Porsche" to every house hold, and while that might be popular now, when the time comes for every house hold to pay for the "Porsche" there will be a problem.

If you recall from a previous conversation, the statistics on internet usage at the present. Roughly 80% of house holds have broad band, 10% dial up, and 10% have no internet connection at all. The NBN needs to get 70% of households to sign up the the NBN internet until about 2030 years to get 7% return on investment.

The whole economic model of the NBN is that it will shut down all other competition such as copper, and has paid Telstra and Optus not to compete with wireless. However, with the wireless technology expanding in leaps and bounds, largely driven by the huge appetite in the USA for wireless, the odds that competition in the form of wireless will eat the NBN's bread and butter are very good.

The other major danger to NBN co is that a new government will simply strip away its protection from competition, and it will collapse into yet another testament to Labor's financial incompetence.

@Antiseptic: I'll keep asking the question: what's the killer app that's going to drive that?

Sorry Anti, I didn't answer that because I thought it was rhetorical. If I knew what it was, I would be Australia's next billionaire. But I am not even sure there will be one. Internet usage is growing exponentially now without a killer app. But then most things (eg smartphone's) do.

The only "killer app" I can recall is VisiCalc. It was released before the original IBM PC, and died long before PC's became a common household item. It "only" sold 700,000 copies, a tiny number by today's standards, and thus has very little to do with the explosion of PC's it triggered. People found all sorts of uses for them, once they became affordable. In fact I can't actually remember when I last used a spreadsheet at home.

So if you are picking the killer app for the internet, it was the thing that got it into the mainstream. I'd say that was the original static web page browser. It was only good for browsing text, because HTTP/0.9 only defined the HTTP GET verb - it had no POST. We've moved well beyond that of course. Just like the PC, once it got it's kick start it has been put to all sorts of uses.

By the way, did you know it looks like online shopping in the UK in June grew 24% over last year? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/21/ons_retail_sales/ I only qualified it with "looks like" because the 24% includes all non-store sales, like catalogues - but it is more likely catalogues are dropping rather than rising.

@Shadow Minister: However, with the wireless technology expanding in leaps and bounds, largely driven by the huge appetite in the USA for wireless, the odds that competition in the form of wireless will eat the NBN's bread and butter are very good.

And you think this despite knowing despite the US's huge appetite for wireless, land line installations are still growing there. I don't there is anything more I can add, Shadow.