Alliance of Affordable Broadband hopeful on NBN changes

To Paraphrase
... we think our self interest is more important than the Nation's best interest
... and we hope someone (other than ourselves) will listen to us soon.

Hear Hear!! Stirling Johnson I could not have said it better myself.

Oh wow, the naivety of some people. Did you not read what they said ? Their not using their current capacity of fibre. Fibre isn't the best end all solution which Labor and the NBN are claiming it to be. Connectivity between is australians is really all that bad ? I think not. I know I don't require a fibre connection, not many people would, data just isn't that big yet. Even downloading music and movies - most of this content *isn't in Australia!!* So what is the point in having a point-to-point fibre network ? How about logical spending of this money ? upgrading 3G infrastructure to support more users and further away ? upgrading connectivity to the US and other countries where said content is held ?

There'll be more then a little chump change from all this, how about upgrading the water supply ? added funding for education, hospitals and police ? It's like buying the latest 3D Plasma when your house is falling apart around you!

I realise that. I'm merely pointing out theres better ways of implementing their changes. We don't need fibre in the time frame their talking about. The UK has a better broadband infrastructure then Aus atm (Aus is way more spread out, and more difficult to implement) their gov't has been distracted by keeping or gaining voters and a multitude of other things, they now have to buy power from scandinavia because of no foresight until new nuclear power stations are online in 2020.

Yes, I'd like fibre and gigabit connections in 10 years to my home, but I'd rather better connectivity to the US and less restrictive caps on downloading, utility companies tacking clean drinking water, more reliable power stations, better road maintenance etc etc. I've been around computers and networks long enough to know cost-effective solutions can work if correctly implemented as well as more costly solutions. And by no means do I like 3G modems, I hate them, but in remote areas you tell me a better way of doing it.

Give me a break...It stinks of self interest.
This Paul Broad hadn't even looked closely at the Opposition's broadband policy by his own admission and he is the CEO of AAPT.

"You do it once, you do it right, you do it with fibre"

What part of this didn't this mob understand, anything less than this now, will go against the independents which the government just wont do.

I am totally confident the government will see straight through it like most others out there.

We already have like four different wireless networks with hundreds of resellers on it.

Meanwhile HFC covers under 20% of the population and is not competetative, only two providers offering it not to mention the horribly crippled 2Mbit upload.

DSL is falling apart and I have a hard time believing there is 500 exchanges with competetative options given even the ISP with the largest DSLAM network, TPG, only cover 385 - right under that Eftel at 365, followed by Optus at 336 and iiNet at 332 - rest <300. Keeping in mind most of those are in the profitable areas, it's the epitome of overbuild...

Metro fiber in the cities? Not at any price small business or residential can afford, terrible comparison.

We will also have 22Tb/s of capacity to the USA by the time the NBN is finished, at 10% contention (VERY GOOD) enough for everyone with broadband to download on average over 100Mbit/s - and many will take up 25Mbit plans making that pool higher.

Loads of ISP's are offering unlimited, or 1,2,3TB quota's now - we are at the point it myaswell be unlimited.

No bed to put the patient in??? Jesus, $560bn on health in the same timeframe as the NBN isnt enough?? Are the beds encrusted in solid gold with diamonds or something??

I believe that the NBN will lead to an explosive avalanche of local data (Australian data), and that we aussies may one day be getting most of our data locally rather than internationally.

good point about the need to avoid duplicating fibre infrastructure - but its mixed with some anti NBN bias, and doesnt promote a strong case why the whole project should be scrapped. some responses:

We already have a fibre backbone
........
is that the one that sees us ranked 50th in the world for broadband performance... or should we blame that on our wireless networks? we have fibre, but it could hardly be called a 'backbone' (depending what you mean by that) - at least it is not a skeleton. and we have a huge problem of inconsistency across regions - a main reason for our poor comparative performance.

all four major Japanese telcos are moving one step closer to building out their 4G networks, with infrastructure investments pegged at $10 billion.
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last time i checked japan had a significantly higher population density than we do.

and they already have a very good 'fibre backbone' - korea and japan are 1 and 2 in the world because they have such networks. competition worked there to about the same extent as it failed here.

and the whole point of the nbn is that it will free up wireless networks, making them better performing - as is the case of the good fibre networks in korea and japan. the whole idea is that they are to be complementary. you would think from what you are saying that an nbn will mean the premature death of wireless, but actually it will improve it. it will mean we can still be 'mobile', only with greater capacity for each individual user without having to build towers on every lightpole.

All it will do is enable people to watch movies and steal music MARGINALLY quicker than today.
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you worked as a 'softare.network' engineer' for 27 years (and in 'OPTUS, Telstra/OPTUS, Paradox Digital, STALLION, AWADI (military comms) an a fe government departments' - (how impressive is that!!) and you think all a good broadband network is good for is to 'is enable people to watch movies and steal music MARGINALLY quicker than today.' obviously your long and colourful career has jaded you, because it seems you dont think improving our currenlty poor performing and inadequate national network has any real value.

Revenue from selling wireless data in the U.S. has rocketed from $211 million in 2000 to $41.5 billion in 2009
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our crappy wireless network makes enough money from its poor and deprived australias customers, thanks. we are in the top three for prices and at the bottom of the pool for performance. you cant directly correlate revenue with improvements - especially when consumer choice is limited, and poeople there simply dont have the choice of an operational NBN to choose against.

end part 1

@addinal

People want mobility? I don't see many desks in council cleanups.

@T.brown can you link that, is it in english?, been translating forum posts on the Swedish Telco site and slow and not overly accurate, unless they were actualy typed like that, and well its a forum so maybe (laugh).

@RS
I do nearly all of my work from MY OWN wireless account. That would rate about 99% easily.

As for the rest of you, when you give up DOOM and get a job, you may realise that FTTH is a crock of bullsh*t.

@22...

Oh Addinall, you can’t just can’t help that adolescent stupidity - "get a job", LOL...What brilliance [sic]. What debating tecniques [sic].

Gee you sound like another insignificant, can't quite put my finger on who, as he's also, quite forgettable... Anyway.

You sadly are unable to make your point, without an idiotic swipe, eh?

As such and reading your opinions, it is obvious that you have been in the "old school" comfort zone and away from cutting edge tech, for way too long.

Time for the glue factory for you, I'm afraid!

@Addinall, what is it about "Wireless does not, and never will have, the capability to provide a full national network" that you don't understand?

Wireless is a valuable coproduct to a fixed network, and will undoubtedly be further developed. But for many reasons - spectrum, capacity, latency, number of cells needed - it will never remotely be able to match the speed, reliability and sheer capacity of a fibre based network.

You probably know all this, or at least you should, so would it be too much to ask you to run a quick reality check before you take up arms again?

@Vin:

You're arguing against yourself. On one hand saying you can't get NBN 100Mbps unless you're wired, then saying you're looking forward to the upcoming 108Mb wifi. You don't think that perhaps a few million users may hook such a wifi router up to their NBN connection, thereby delivering them 108Mbps wireless?

This is what the NBN will do. Thousands of home, business and public hotspot wifi routers will be accessing gigabit fibre connections for the same price they now get 20Mbps (if they are lucky) ADSL2+. Delivering speeds which are degrees of magnitude faster than what they can deliver now, or what could be delivered via slow/congested 4G networks.

Far from hobbling our mobility, the NBN will only improve it.

"8 years to roll it out is outrageous". Are you kidding? You realise that this involves running fibre into ~8 million households. In 8 years, that equates to almost 4,000 connections every single working day. You think that's slow? My greatest concern with the NBN is that it may not be possible to do it that fast.