Re: Broadband

Hi All,

Wow, no replies to this!? I am surprised. I personally think it is a good 
thing. Some people will go on about the cost, and return on investment. That 
may a good stance to take if your an accountant and you live in the economy, 
in which you can debate these points all you like, some say yay, others say 
nay. I however live in reality. Yes, the economy has SOME effect, but I eat 
food, not shares, and I don't communicate by transfering large sums of money 
either.
If we had such an attitude 100 years ago, we would never have built the 
harbour bridge or the opera house. Most of our infrastructure infact would 
never have been built, including most of our railways and highways. THese are 
things we take forgranted and without which we would litterally have a 
thridworld standard of living. Add to these the damns, water mains, sewage 
systems and electical station which were all built with the idea of building 
for the future and there is a pretty conclusive picture of what we need to do. 

Sure, fibre to the home is a luxury now, just like a highway used to be, or a 
train line, or even running water, sewage and electricity, but will it sill be 
a luxury in the future, or a necesity? It will take 5-8 years to build 
(correct me if I'm wrong) and we are already feeling the strain of some areas 
of life being constrained by network speeds (such when I'm sick and need to 
work from home.)

Further, the cable can take any forseable upgrade wihtout having to be 
releaid, unlike copper, this makes future upgrades a lot cheaper, easier and 
quicker, as you only need to upgrade the electronics at each end of it. THis 
also alows upgrades to be localised and backwards compatible if desired. A 
wireless network cannot be upgraded, it needs to be replaced, and is not 
backwards compatible. Add to that the radiation and energy consumption of 
wireless networks with all the reception problems and you'd be requiring 
admitance to sanatarium to upport that.

The biggest winners out of this will of course be the country, by which I mean 
anywhere outside of Sydney and Melbourne. Privatised telstra was a nightmare 
in the cities, can't imagine how bad it was in the country. That is a good 
thing as well. I'd love to live outside the big cities, where there is space, 
and it doesn't take the majority of my income to keep a roof over my head, but 
two things stop that: lack of services, and lack of jobs. Fast communication 
really will go a longway to resolving both of those issues I know I'm not 
alone in that stance either.

I also believe that the system being built only has the first two layers of 
ethernet - not sure what that means, but apparantly it allows a lot of 
flexability for ISP's to put their own protocols on, such as IP4 or IP6.

So in short, NBN good.

cheers

Jon

On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 11:25:26 am david wrote:
> Now the politics is over, I can't help but wonder what the more informed
> members of this list think about the NBN.
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