John Linton .......has been the 'defence' for the 'need' for an Australia wide fibre network since Krudd tried to hide yet another of his mindless 'election winning' broken promises after his 'NBN1' fell in the heap it was always destined to. Telstra's latest announcement:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/telstra-next-g-speed-bump-pushed-back-by-politics-20100830-146vn.html
is simply yet another example of how/why new technologies continue to deliver more for less as time passes. In itself it is not that important but as yet another 'mile stone' on the development path for wireless technology in Australia it is significant. The plan of $69.00 for 6 gb over 24 months (including wireless modem) is quite a step forward if you go back to the beginning of wireless broadband's very brief 'history' in Australia. Detractors of wireless, of course, never want to do that because, of course, it invalidates their view that only wire/fibre based broadband can provide 'true internet' for all Australians.
Wireless technology has a clearly mapped out future development path (and has had since the EU put in place the 'standards' for developing mobile telephony across its members. Over the past ten years that 'road map' has proven to be very accurate in terms of both implementation times and technical achievements. If I wanted to be particularly bloody minded I would point out the wireless broadband has developed 5 times faster in 3 years than wire line broadband has done in ten years and covers far more of Australia's geography that ADSL ever will. But the key difference is that wireless broadband is less than 40% along its KNOWN development path and hasn't really begun to reach the scale that will allow pricing to reduce to achievable levels that only come with higher adoption by more countries resulting in far lower hardware pricing and much greater efficiencies of spectrum usage.
The other interesting facet of Telstra's announcement was the speed at which it implies that 50% of Australian demographics will be able to use the new much faster, and cheaper, wireless services - almost immediately. While "50%" and "almost immediately" have to be taken in context it still demonstrates how much faster it is to add/replace some hardware on a 'tower' than it is to build a new Australia wide network. Sure, once you have spent some uncosted amount of money and undetermined amount of time you will be in the same position but just how much will that cost and just how long will that take? No-one, including Treasury based on their recently released papers, has any idea.
What will wireless technology be capable of delivering in whatever time it actually takes to get a fibre connection in regional Australia?
There is little doubt, based on the 4G/LTE 'road maps' that wireless broadband will continue to get faster and there is even less doubt that it will continue to get cheaper. By the end of 2011 wireless broadband will be faster, cheaper and more ubiquitous in Australia than Telstra's own ADSL2 network which is 3 times larger than any of its competitors. The only thing wireless will not be able to deliver is 'terabyte' downloads for $100.00 a month. But for 60% plus, more probably 75% plus, of internet users it will be able to provide more than they need in terms of speed, downloads and price per month than any ADSL2 service can do and that is the problem it poses for even the most stupid of 'NBN2' "supporters and proposers".
Is a Labor coterie of completely unknowledgeable people trying to 'cling to power' by borrowing unknown billions building a network that, at most, only 25% of the projected market would ever contemplate using and perhaps not even that many?
But even that isn't the real point. The real point is that technology moves so quickly and offers so many diverse 'paths' that then split in to so many more diverse paths that NO government (command economy or quasi democracy) has the knowledge necessary to make such decisions. Ignoring that the current nonsense of an 'NBN2' came about because an about to be disgraced politician attempted to cover up his ridiculous lies it wouldn't be possible for ANY government to make ANY decision on ANY technology scenario. The reason that technology is delivered to the possible buyers by multiple commercial vendors is because some decisions will be wrong at any point in time and those companies will collapse but others, who got that particular call correct, will continue. In the meantime the end users will continue to get a service at the best possible price and at the greatest possible 'technology level'.
It's been the case for 4,000 years....only children, the welfare dependent and the poorly educated don't understand that simple fact.
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