To save you the trouble, here a link to the Perlman paper. He's already built prototypes.

http://www.rearden.com/DIDO/DIDO_White_Paper_110727.pdf

Rstuart,

I truncated my throughput on my modem to 1Mb/s, and guess what, For most of the time, the difference was only slight. I measured the size of my Facebook page and it was 1.03MB, and while it took about 10s to load, most of it was not on my screen, but several screens below. The result was still that my initial screen loaded in a couple of seconds.

But my comment was that there is no application other than HDTV that requires more than 1Mb/s, and you have failed to show otherwise.

That the government has in your words neatly sidestepped the risk of take up by destroying the existing infrastructure and banning alternatives is only true, for 2 reasons:

1 Wireless can easily take away enough customers to make the NBN unprofitable, and
2 The NBN is going to need 2 decades of enforced monopoly, and the Labor government is not likely to exist for that long.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/nbn-pricing-model-angers-small-providers/story-e6frgaif-1226104582891

Now try and tell me how fair it is.

Even Conroy's crew couldn't come up with anything approaching a domestic need.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/in-depth/broadband-network-has-41-only-customers-at-test-sites/story-e6frgaif-1226104601174

"The federal government pointed to the benefits of the superfast network, such as patients in remote locations being able to be seen by doctors via webcam link-ups. The network also allows for businesses to move outside the major cities."

So hospitals and some businesses might need it, but where's the need for homes to be connected? Further, why am I going to pay for something that some other type of business might require? I could do with a new forklift and a new panel saw would be great. Some $3500 that could be put toward those things I need is instead going to be taken away from me and used for something someone else might need at some indeterminate point in the future, if there's no competition and no technological advances.

Great.

@Antiseptic: In a paper released yesterday, Mr Perlman claims his new wireless technology breaks Shannon's Law

Yes, I saw that. I thought it was sad to see an intelligent man like Malcolm Turnbull be dragged down to the level of Joh Bjelke-Petersen in the Hydrogen car fiasco, where he put state money into a nuclear power car, or perhaps a perpetual motion machine. I never did figure out quite how it was meant to work. Anyway, the measure of a successful scammer is now many suckers he reels in. Mr Perlman seems to have pulled in a few, including you. More power to him.

@Shadow, a comment from a electrical engineer who majored in comms on the likelihood of someone breaking Shannon's Law would be handy right about now.

@Shadow Minister: I truncated my throughput on my modem to 1Mb/s, and guess what, For most of the time, the difference was only slight.

I'm actually impressed Shadow. That piece of objective experimentation is far more than some of your other comments lead me to believe you would bother with. I'll comment once I get around to being as object as you were, and repeating your experiment.

@Shadow Minister: Now try and tell me how fair it is.

I posted a precursor to that article when I said: "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...for years."

The article you link to is mostly a beat up. If you read the article I linked to, you will see this isn't entirely the NBN's doing. It was the ACCC, who raised the POI's from 14 (7+7 backups) to 121. That decision favoured large Telco's over smaller ones like Internode, and the little ISP's are fighting this for all they are worth. Right now the dust is still in the air, and the feathers are still flying. Commenting on pricing before it settles down is unwise.

rstuart: "Mr Perlman seems to have pulled in a few, including you"

I'm certainly prepared to be convinced. You seem to be certain that you "know what can't be done". I'm sure you were equally certain that Cu pairs "can't carry high frequencies" and that "HFC is the network of the future".

Unfortunately, I can see it's a waste of time continuing this discussion, you're only intereested in hearing one thing:"fibre good, wireless useless" and you simply won't dicuss anything else. You don't happen to work for NBN Co do you?