Neil Creek asked to be credited for the thought provoking tweets. I originally left them off cause I just wanted to get out my opinion of the situation but am happy to link to him since it has become a two way discussion
-- Original post follows (with linking) --
I seen a tweet come up in my feed that made me want to reply.
The NBN will be a lot of money spent on today's tech. Speeds form new tech will rapidly overtake and make it redundant.
Technology is cruel. It is so expensive to start with and gets out of date quickly. My response to this tweet was:
Extremes do not work. My first computer was top of the line, $3000. My second was $1000 second hand. Then $4000. Get what fits.
Which was quickly followed by:
A good argument against NBN. Give it to those who need the speeds, not those who don't. It's one size fits all.
Which is a perfectly valid response and made me rethink why I feel the way I do about the NBN.
Backfired :( I'm for NBN and believe it should reach the many. 8 years is a long time and believe that 100mb/s is a good start.
It is at this point I realised that 140 characters is not enough (but a good start to the conversation).
I feel the Governments role is to redistribute wealth and make sure the country moves forward as a whole. Whilst it is probably fact that the majority of people wanting faster network access are city folk, people in country regions should be able to access the same sort of facilities.
ISPs are going to have a hard time justifying large costs to get the infrastructure out that far and whilst they could pass on the cost to those customers, the service would become so expensive that few would want it. The ISPs could share that cost amongst the city subscribers but then there services would be more expensive than other ISPs that just service city regions.
I feel like it is comparable to the roads. Just because they get used less out in the country, the roads should still be built to the same standards that roads in the city are built.
I'm reminded of a lecture in accounting. Monopoly isn't a bad word. Sometimes it is the best way to get something done. Power, Water, Government and Public Transport have the monopoly feel. There is basically only one way of getting them.
The only way we are going to get a major step forward in out internet connectivity to catch up with the rest of the world is if the majority of the infrastructure is treated as a monopoly. Otherwise it will be patches of improvements. I'm still waiting to get off 1.5mbs. I can't watch high def videos on Youtube because it isn't worth the wait.
Why have I lumped the Net Filter in with this post? The roads analogy. I'm torn between thing that the Net Filter is a coffee shop on the side of the road or whether they are the police that patrol the roads.
I would prefer them to be the coffee shop, because I don't like coffee, so can happily drive down the road without worry. This gives power to the driver and to the business that want to set up on the side of the road. Give you the options of Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Milkshakes etc.
It seems that the likes of Conroy would like the filter to be like police with an ever watchful eye. Being technically minded I guess I see a huge gap between physical danger and cyber danger. You can protect yourself online but it is hard for you to stop someone that has had too much to drink from driving into you.
