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 It is so expensive to start with and gets out of date quickly.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.
I'm the one you quoted above, my name is Neil Creek, and my twitter is http://twitter.com/neilcreek Crediting and linking my tweets as the source is the right thing to do.
ReplyDeleteLet me explain why I think a huge capital investment on the NBN is not a good idea.
On the surface it sounds like a good thing: giving everyone access to fast net for all kinds of good uses. But the cost is gigantic, and it's locking us in to a particular technology.
Communications technology is one of the fastest growing technologies. We regularly hear of new developments in increasing the speed of existing technologies, the development of new technologies and better ways of delivering them both.
By investing all that money in a one-size-fits-all solution, which will take 8 years to complete, and presumably is expected to perform for many years ahead, locks us in to one tech.
What happens when a new, cheaper, faster and more rapidly deployed technology comes along? Consumers will stop using the NBN and will use the new one instead. The NBN will then become a massive white elephant.
Let me give you just one example of a possible new tech that could eclipse hte NBN's fibre to the door: stratospheric balloons.
These small, cheap aircraft carry essentially a very powerful and sophistocated wireless router to huge heights. They can provide wireless broadband internet access to a very large area. They are cheap to build, quick to deploy, and can easily bring cover to a huge area.
If demand increases, and the balloon is overloaded, just launch more. Lots more if needed. If new tech comes along that makes the old ones redundant, bring them down, upgrade them and re-launch.
This would mean that ALL areas of the country would get the SAME high speed broadband, as long as they have a balloon over them. The balloons could even be launched by different companies, or even individuals. No community would be without internet, and they could all be the same speed.
There's no need to dig up thousands of kms of streets, causing significant inconvenience. You wouldn't be locked in to the speed of the cables you have buried. Fibre to the door means just that - to the door. You have to use it inside your own house. But with a national wireless balloon network, you could access your internet account from every square inch of the country.
Here's a couple of links to read on the topic:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8177-balloon-beams-broadband-internet-from-stratosphere.html
http://www.spacedata.net/
Yes, this technology isn't ready for prime time yet, but it should be a viable option soon. But what if the $43bn was spent on THIS tech, rather than the NBN? Well all of the benefits I describe would surely be achievable in a very quick time. Certainly sooner than the 8 years for the NBN.
But that's just one example of a possible new tech. The actual new killer connection technology will probably be one I haven't imagined.
The NBN is a MASSIVE financial committment, and it will certainly be bettered by innovation before it's delivered it's cost worth of benefits. Possibly even before it's finished.
@neilcreek totally disagree with you, particularly with the balloon things, checked your link and I can never see this system taking off (so to speak, pun intended). Might be useful in some areas, but can't see it being useful in major cities especially ones with lots of aircraft movements.
ReplyDeleteI hate wireless and don't want a 'plan' that involves connecting people without a connection. Have you been driving on a wet day and lost connection to a GPS satellite? Yes it is going to be required to reach remote areas but I wouldn't want an irrigation system that relied on buckets of water because a pipe is too expensive.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I think the number of connection a single base station can hold is improving, you might need 100,000 - 200,000 balloons in the air to service the ~4 million people in Melbourne.
What I like about fiber is the speed increase you can get by improving the hardware at either end of a link. The hardest thing to find on the Internet is the standard length of a fibre link. Some say 70-150kms, whilst other time you read it can reach 7000kms. Which is a long way. If the NBN is done right, we should be able to move from 10 or 40 Gb/s to speeds of around 70 Tb/s - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_fiber#Applications That is the sort of 'upgradability' that I am happy with.
One thing I don't like about these fiber installs is you never hear what the upload speed is going to be. I guess everyone fears torrenting but I want to live in a world were each home could house a service that I might visit virtually.
VDSL wets my whistle in this area - "data rates exceeding 100 Mbit/s simultaneously in both the upstream and downstream directions" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bitrate_digital_subscriber_line
My understanding of this is that it runs over the same telephone line that I am currently using which is great! It may just not reach as far as some ADSL installations so we are back to providing for just some of the people.
re response 3.
ReplyDelete7000 kms fibre runs. Nope - doesn't happen. They all typically run around 100 kms before they go into an optical repeater/amplifier - this reduces the optical signal to an electronic signal and then back to optical as it goes through the repeater/amplifier this will still have an effect. I was involved with the old Cray Super Computers way back when and the Speed of light, or more specifically the transmission of an electrical signal came into consideration with them - each board in the CPU had a spiral clock signal circuit in the etch, a few cms of extra wire made a difference to how the processor ran, a similar principle will apply to the dozens of repeaters around the NBN backbone.