[AusNOG] Aust Govt will build National Broadband Network, no company will be awarded the tender.

[Steve Baxter]

> Is the whole thing tied down?  Nup.   Is it commercially a great idea?
> Probably not (but if it was then TLS or someone would have done it by
> now).   Is it a decent thing for the government to be doing right now?
> Most likely yes.

Will they actually do anything though beside talk and make press
releases ? They spent how long getting the FTTN process wrong ? How long
was the industry in a state of hold due to Opel ? How long until they
realise all of the points and more that have been brought up here and
elsewhere and slowly put the process to death (maybe after some projects
in Tassie and elsewhere demonstrate the financial and other issues) ?

I really wish the government would keep the hell out. Are they serious
on their time frames for this process ? How long did it take to go
nowhere spending $4.7B - I suggest it will take a lot longer to spend
over ten times that. And what happens in the meantime is there are lots
of people sitting on their hands. It is a joke. I am a bit dislocated
from politics in Oz currently but what are the chances this level of
spending will get money bills passed ? (genuine question)

Regardless of what method of new generation 'thing' they deploy we need
backhaul, there is no shortage of high speed and competition where there
is backhaul. If it is seen as a national imperative to deploy FTTP at
some stage then it can actually still use the same backhaul - why are we
wasting time on the access front when the fact they want to deploy FTTP
now (instead of FTTN) is a sign of why you should keep out of the access
game - name the access technologies you have seen in 10 years :

- Satellite (remember Aussat - raging success put forward by government
at the insistence of media moguls) - not data I know but not a bad
inflection point to think back on

- dial - curiously there are TV adds over here (US) for dial providers
extolling people to save money by returning to dial from broadband !
[Also remember we had a midlife upgrade on dial requiring a gear change
out - 56k]

- ISDN 

- CDMA/WAP/3G

- WiFi

- WiMiax

- microwave (LMDS and friends)

- Exchange based DSL

- Pillar/building/node based DSL

- BPL (wow - that has taken the world by fire)

- HFC

- FTTP (PON, direct fiber...)

- please insert more.....

Seriously why would you want to spend money in the one space where there
is no clear answer and the answer tends to change trend every 5 or so
years. Ok - I know - "FTTP is the last upgrade the network will have" -
you tell me from your PC running 640k of RAM!


Cheers,

SB


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