John Linton
.......on which 'NBN2' relies for financial viability.
The ABS half yearly report is due to be published on Wednesday which will provide an update on Australia's use of wireless in terms of data services. Telstra's recent announcement that it will trial LTE over the coming weeks and Optus previous announcement that it will do the same later this year add impetus to the reality of much faster wireless speeds in the future and the LTE implementations in the EU confirm what was said in 2008 - that LTE would be a commercial reality by early 2010 - two major carriers in Europe now provide LTE as a commercial offering at speeds above 60 mbps and the three largest US carriers are promising to do the same 'later in 2010'.
So, with mobile telephony now exceeding (by 2:1) the use of a falling PSTN telephony installation base and data now approaching ADSL customer numbers what is the future of wire line telephony and wire line data services? Or, if you prefer, if you were going to 'bet the company', on rolling out a new residential communications infrastructure over the coming 5 - 10 years what would you use as the technology base? Well....you almost certainly wouldn't use copper. Would you use fibre? Many countries have done that including the US carriers and, of course, the Europeans did it 30 years ago. So why are the Europeans so determined to bring LTE to commercial use in their much more easily fibred countries than either the US or, far, far more difficult to fibre, Australia? Because they aren't as clever as Australian decision makers? Unlikely - as they not only have almost thirty 'national interests' but they have far more carriers competing across the EU than any other place on the planet. They also, of course, were the early champions of GSM and the subsequent 3G and 4G standards.
There are already fibre networks installed throughout the major Australian capital cities (ignoring Foxtel) and have been for more than 20 years which are used to deliver up to 10 gbps fibre services to the carriers themselves and their major commercial and government customers. Over the last five years (more if you count the Optus HFC network for residential users) Telstra and three other 'commercial only' network providers have continued to widen the areas covered by fibre with Telstra saying it can make fibre available to over a million residential users in Melbourne and in Sydney.
I really have no interest in the world wide use of technologies other than as a 'guide' for what our small company should do for its own good as, at least I, have seen this situation for over three years now, only wireless has any real future in Australia outside the major cities and within the major cities it is a toss up between the growing speed, lower pricing and far greater flexibility of wireless over a sensibly priced fibre solution - neither owned by Telstra. So our tiny company with its tiny financial and development resources has put all of its efforts into developing its own VoIP, MoIP, SMS and FoIP capabilities while gaining a better understanding of how to deploy the provisioning, customer education and support capabilities for providing those services to residential and corporate users. We continue to make progress with these developments and are a highly sophisticated user of these services ourselves as well as providing them to an ever increasing number of corporate and residential end users.
My only concern since the current government came to dominate the communications industry in a way/ways a government has never done before is whether the logical development of fibre for dense populations and LTE for everywhere else would be slowed down by the doctrinaire interference (that happens nowhere else in the world) with the, up to that time, sensible development of competing networks deployed by the two or three largest carriers in Australia. After twenty painful years of attempting to get rid of all the problems associated with a government telecommunications monopoly would the 'turning back of the clock' by smothering the industry with an new, even more expensive and incompetent, government monopoly crush all the innovation of the past 20 years? What has changed over the last two decades that makes building a new Telecom Australia THE answer to Australia's future communications needs?
I haven't got a clue as to where someone would start to make a case for such a scenario.
But then, I have no interest beyond attempting to ensure that new technologies don't 'damage' our customers or our employees or our ability to survive in circumstances that continue to change in completely unpredictable ways.
PS: It's not only me who thinks that the current prime minister is someone only obsessed with getting re-elected to the exclusion of all other issues:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/rudd-ominously-silent-on-climate-change-20100328-r54s.html?rand=1269779842613