John Linton Telstra's announcement yesterday that it would deliver 'live' LTE services to a significant area of Australia before the end of this year widely reported from many sources yesterday including this one:
http://www.commsday.com/commsday/?p=2331
again underlines how fast technologies change and increase capacities and decrease end user pricing - either via well publicised joint development plans (in the current case of mobile standards):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_Advanced
or by predictable developments by industry leading companies (like Intel and AMD in the case of processor technologies). The technology industries are totally different in this way to rust belt industries like automobiles, passenger aircraft or industrial machinery generally.
The knee jerk response from Stupid Stephen ("nothing will ever change the 'fact' that wireless is completely irrelevant to the back of the bus ticket planned 'NBN2')" is as typical as it is stupid of any statement he ever makes. Wireless broadband technology in on a well defined development path that it has been following for over thirty years and is planned out into the future for another ten years. Not only has it been planned into the future but since the very start of the GSM standard it has consistently hit its implementation targets. Stupid Stephen, because of his own stupidity and Krudd's giant ego, has been forced to maintain his Red Queen impression ever since the collapse of Krudd's initial 'NBN1' craziness - he has to continue to deny that the rest of the world's carriers (plus Telstra and Optus) continue to heavily invest in wireless broadband and continue to deliver sensible data/voice delivery services using the ever improving wireless technologies....that will continue to improve into a, planned, future.
Because Krudd, Stupid Stephen and now Ms Faustus had never had a real job in their lives (two union thugs and a public service dilettante), and whose knowledge of the commercial world is zero they have no ability to understand the two simple imperatives of commercial life......efficiency and lower costs always win over inefficiency and higher costs. They are embarked on a program equivalent to an 1840 version of planting acorns to build sailing ships in fifty years time while Telstra and Optus are mining iron ore to build steam ships. Wireless needs no "last mile" digging of trenches (and the subsequent constant maintenance) which is a very significant proportion of the cost in delivering a data service by land line. So the 'NBN2' is being built based on early 20th century 'technology' that carries with it the burdens of early 20th century delivery mechanisms. Only a complete prat would make such a decision and not even a complete prat with any understanding of technology and commercial advantage would make such a truly mind blowingly stupid decision.
So, back in the real world, Telstra's inherent advantage of delivering LTE via its unused 1800 spectrum by the end of 2011 to something like 85% of the current ADSL customer base will begin to more obviously define what sort of percentage of current users will adopt a wireless only approach to their data needs and get rid of any form of PSTN/other fixed wire service as an added bonus to put that unnecessary $30+ a month to better use. With the current percentage of no wire line service at around 15% there is only a small margin for Stupid Stephen's requirement of 70% (down from his previous 95%) of current users of ADSL to use the 'NBN2' required to make it profitable - eventually. With Telstra's LTE offering becoming available to a large percentage of current ADSL users before the 'NBN2' is available to more than a tiny percentage of Australian users the number of no wire line homes will rapidly accelerate - assuming Telstra price it sensibly - and there may well be less than 70% of Australian residences available to the 'NBN2' by the time they get around to providing the service.....it is possible there will be far less than that.....and getting fewer each month as LTE/4G gets faster and faster and cheaper and cheaper. (with no expensive 19th century trenches and wires to maintain)
Not that it matters at this moment in time but it is just yet one more example of why you NEVER let a bunch of political nitwits anywhere near decisions that have long time frames - let alone the current bunch of pig ignorant, incompetent, self serving fools....."lets build a network for the 21st Century based on 19th century delivery mechanisms".
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