Nice work Joolia Gillard.....

Mikey works in the industry as well so has an interest in the offerings.

This article may help some people decide,but one simple question for those that may have first hand experience is , if I want to put fibre to my house and all the others in my street are happy with copper, then surely my fibre is going to cost a fortune to install whereas if everyone in the street has fibre then the cost of install drops significantly due to the numbers alone.

It would need to be considered on parameters such as density of users, distance between users, terrain, etc for final determination of cost of installation and in a sparsely populated country like ours the costs can become prohibitive quickly for those in outlying areas, so then the telcos increase the fees for city users to subsidise the country dwellers.

 

In ten years time say, or less, WiFi technology will have advanced so much that it will be nearly as quick as fibre optic. Of course fibre optic is wonderful but the infrastructure costs to maintain a WiFi network would surely be miniscule compared to hardwired systems.

Therefore IMO the Liberial solution to implement based on an as actually needed basis and allow technology to catch up to ultimately provide coverage for the whole country made a heck of a lot more rational sense.

That is what any sane person would implement. The current Labor solution is like giving every person in Australia a Ferrari and only the rich via taxes pay for them ... and of course 98% of the population don't want or need a Ferrari and their running costs, and necessary improved roads, etc. And of course the Australian distributors of Ferraris are laughing all the way to the bank!
Pete

 

I could do both if the price is right

This rollout is HUGE and for little countries like Luxemburg or the UK the cost is miniscule due to the small distances, but rolling it out over a country our size is crazy so if I was in charge I'd concentrate on the cities as well as this would get it out to the majority in a reasonable timeframe. I think Armidale was the first town to get it so I suppose they decided to use an easy geographical environment with sufficient users to get good feedback.

 

Hang on Moretti you are sounding sensible and close to the Liberal proposed solution. You have no political future, especially in a Labor party!
Pete

 

Wifi can still be hacked and when the great unwashed learn that you can get it for free there will be the usual hacker info sent out in script/GUI programs for the illiterate to execute .

Also the problem with "as needed basis" is that by the time you realise you need it it's too late and the end users suffer (usually businesses struggling to keep up with technology anyway).

I liked the idea of fibre for the "last mile" but the way Labor implemented it was the usual politically flavoured manner which ends up being no good for them or the country and saddles the Libs with an infrastructure that has been hacked about .

A true Labor govt would roll all this out to EVERYONE for free, a true Liberal govt would roll it out in the cities and politically sensitive country areas as demanded by their country partners and charge EVERYONE for the privilege (I agree with the user pays principle, if it is fair, many aren't) ...... it has to be funded somehow and user pays makes sense.

 

I wouldn't join ANY political party if I wanted to keep my credibility (as little as it is)

I firmly believe that most pollies get into the business of politics to do good for the country then they meet their ideological masters and are forced to conform to the party line, and those that want to keep to their initial thinking are called mavericks when speaking their minds, whether that is good or bad.

I don't think there is ever a polly that joins to ruin the country intentionally for their own benefit but some people do come to mind.

 

Agree, but the concern is the salary or Super they get paid (I bet they wont tax themselves when they implement this immoral super tax grab ... utter b@stards).

IMO they should get paid a maximum of 5 years salary/super after being a PM and that is it.

Actually it's funny how Labor keep smacking people for wanting to better themselves and earn more and yet these very same politicians do the very same thing!!!!! Its really Communisim in action with the leaders getting all the royals.
Pete

 

Do as I say and not how I do.

 

The Parliamentary Retiring Allowances Act 1948 ? Parliament of Australia


They were all in for the money grab don't worry about that !!

This is why I have so little respect for either side

 

Anything that doesn't fix the copper last mile is a waste of time. User-pays for fibre last mile would be better than nothing, but as Moretti said, would be a huge cost for those people (especially since they don't all want it at the same time). On top of that, you're left with big variations in network performance, whereas if everyone (or even the majority) can be relied upon to have a fast, stable connection, potential use cases grow dramatically.

iiNet - $70/mo ADSL2 200GB vs $65 NBN 25/5 100+100GB. Top-end plan $120/mo ADSL2 600GB vs $100/mo NBN 100/40 500+500GB. To me, the NBN plans look about the same mid-range, and MUCH better on the high end. When I briefly lived in a new area with fibre pre-wired, the plans available were comparable to DSL in cost and volume allowances, but with improved bandwidth and VASTLY better latency and stability.

Any radio-based solution that doesn't have a line-of-sight, highly directional antenna pair per premises will never match fibre at a given moment because the air becomes a shared medium. As Moretti mentioned, it's far more susceptible to interference, interception, denial-of-service etc. You also have the ugly antennae on each building, if that's a concern.

Or it's like upgrading every (city, and major regional) road in Australia from dirt to tarmac. 98% of the population currently have cars that were built for dirt, and don't need paved roads. And the Australian distributors of tarmac are laughing all the way to the bank!

The NBN fixes the major issue we have now, which is the state of copper in the last-mile. It replaces it with glass (more chemically stable, less prone to water ingress problems etc) as a major infrastructure upgrade. I don't think anybody would argue that it isn't better from a purely technical standpoint than the proposed FTTN solution. But the FTTN plan doesn't actually fix anything - you can argue that NBN is a waste of money, but at least you end up with a good, lasting product. FTTN gives most people nothing, unless the copper is rip&replaced (then you may as well put fibre in instead), and maintenance is greatly improved. If you're doing that, then the cost advantage shrinks rapidly.

FTTP (NBN) is better. Is it more expensive? Yes. But so are most better things.

FWIW I have no political motivation for the above, I just want the infrastructure fixed. I don't care whose idea it is or who does it.

 

This is what is wrong with our political system. Party politics is at the epicentre of stuffing up our democratic system.

I know of 2 really well intentioned local councillors who have just won pre-selection for the next state election. If you listened to what either of them stand for and wanted to achieve if elected I would bet you couldn't tell which party they joined...I couldn't

 

Excatly!
This illustrates yet again just how retarded they are, Gillard and the rest of her Adams family cabinet have yet to work out that the socialism/communism model is collapsing around the world. The Russians can't manage to maintain their own sub fleet and every day are moving towards free enterprise, as is china. The boot of lunatics like Stalin and Mao are slowly receding thank god, and those populations want more.
Keep people in debt, and you control them.
Gillard and crew are dangerous because they are out of control.
She will retire on half a mill a year for the rest of her days.
Gillard and Bligh will have lunch together and compare notes.

 

Well seeing as how you agreed with most of what I said you must be right

FTTP is the Ferrari
FTTN is a Jaguar without wheels, user pays

 

so who's the idiot ??

 

Hey, I just realised that not only is that quite a clever, smartarse reply but it is damn near accurate

 

Close call, but Gillard is worse.

 

What is wrong with user pays?

Most people VMax, do not need fibre all the way to their house and that last bit of copper to their house does NOT affect your (ie. others) network performance so why do you care?, AND more importantly I do not want to pay for all that copper to be replaced knowing full well that it in 90% of cases will never be needed.

I use the internet at home ... for Ferrarichat and Alfabb and to read the news. My wife and kids listen to music and play a few games and message a few friends. That is what 90% of home users use the internet for and copper is fine. In fact that is what my house would have. I ocassionally work from home but I find it challenging and within 5 minutes wish I was back at work so I could understand what is really going on.

Now if I was running a business from home then I'd be quite happy to cough up the funds for replacing that 20 feet of copper with fibre and I then deserve to reap the benefits.

BUT I am really, really, really and I mean really p!ssed with having my tax pay for this FTTP (NBN) so somebody else can have access to w@nking material faster or the useless f@cebook cr@p.

NBN is not infrastructure it is a joke. Sure upgrade but use a USER pays model for Pete's sake, even if it has to be adjusted based on your financial position.
Pete

 

The existing copper is in a pretty sorry state in many places, and is deteriorating further over time. The maintenance costs will go up as the years pass, with more and more having to be replaced altogether. FTTN won't fix this, it'll just augment it with a bunch of ugly cabinets all over the place.

Whilst businesses can probably justify the cost of individual runs of fibre back to the node, the vast majority of home users can't, and will continue to be saddled with slow and unpredictable connections.

You're dead right about what 90% of people use their home internet connections for, and that's the problem - that's all they can use it for. More applications are out there, but they haven't got a reliable, widely-available network to support them. It's not hard to imagine that there might be plenty of benefits, just look at the old dialup days compared to now, and see what is possible that never used to be. It's the same sort of step from DSL to fibre, except fibre will benefit everyone in a given area equally, rather than just those who happen to live near their local exchange.

Spending so much money just for faster Facebook and porn downloads really would be a terrible idea - luckily that's not at all the intention.

 

nothing, as I said I believe in it, BUT, the first implementers of FTTP will pay a huge sum, the next person not as much and so on which I believe is an unfair (but market driven [Liberal ideology] and this being an egalitarian society would be unacceptable to most people.

e.g. let's say you are an early implementer and the asking price is $5,000 (quite possible really, I've put a LOT of fibre in industrial sites as is needed by law), then your neighbour gets it straight after you've paid to have the fibre sent down the street to your McMansion at the end of a culdesac, he'll only pay to have the fibre spliced off at the junction box to his house halfway down the street at $2,500, sound fair ??
Mind you , once the main run has been put down the street the Transfield guys will be making a fortune after that as well as screwing the initial user quoting the cost of the run to them as justification for screwing them.

This just shows that you don't understand attenuation and the effects on it as copper ages.

Even after new copper is installed there is the inherent properties of copper that limits it's effective use as a transport medium for data or voice. This is the reason there is a limit to ADSL speeds depending on the distance you are from the Exchange, you might buy ADSL2 but if you're at the end of the limits you will be lucky to get 30% of the speeds promised, speed drops off for both wireless and copper significantly.
Basically to convert from attenuation to distance you divide by 13.81 - because standard gauge copper (0.4mm) has a loss of approximately 13.81db/km

I've worked from home for 12 years ..... EVERYDAY !!

It sends you mad <---- I'm living proof

So you live next door to the exchange ??

so am I, but I suffer severely from myopia

It is infrastructure but the way it is being rolled out is a joke and I totally agree on user pays as I've said before.

And just how do you adjust user pays depending on financial position ?

Like some people pays off their fines at $10 a month ??

I know some well off individuals that claim hardship when sending in the form for progress payments on fines

 

Thanks KIAM


And answer my email too!

 

Is that the secret Whom email from a few years ago?

 

Sam the Stirrer!

 

Exactly, if you think this is all so you can get porn faster then you must never have worked in a large corporation needing to run resource hungry (read M$) based apps over a WAN.

Citrix use to be a hungry application , not sure if they've improved it, and fast, reliable fibre connections will allow better database access for the Citrix apps.

The last mile has ALWAYS been the problem and now we are finally addressing it .... AT A HUGE COST , the copper phone lines in my street were all replaced 10 years ago when I moved in because I was the first adopter of ADSL2 in my street, the copper had deteriorated to such an extent that the existing copper was unusable for ADSL2 and was seriously performance challenged for ADSL so Transfield were sent out to replace the copper core running down my street.

I'm within 100 metres of the exchange so imagine those that lived at the limit of ADSL over a click away

 

Stop it Arthur

 

Whom would do that?