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

[Sean K. Finn]

>> Quite frankly most people have little understanding or appreciation for external plant and street furniture.


Ø  That is true, but my experience is extensive in that area, especially in copper and fibre.  The one thing about fibre is that it is not well suited to frequent re entry.  The fibre on power poles around australia is all on very well maintained main transmission routes.  With all the greenies and the move to aerial bundled cables in street distribution the same level of maintenance is unlikely /is not going to continue.   I was in Brisbane last week and the weather was wet and windy.  Energex had 6000 customers without power all day, as they fixed some others were reported.  This was predominantly due to trees falling on power lines.  This is quite common now.  If that had been fibre it would have taken a week to fix it, not same day.  Then there is the cost issue, fibre cable is cheap but splicing and enclosing it is a different story.  It would not be out of the question for a fibre break to cost $3 to 5k to fix a simple break where a copper break could be fixed for $300.   If you are paying off a new network you do not want high maintenance costs.  Lets put it this way if I had a choice of providers and one was under ground and the other on power poles, I would be with the underground preferably ducted network.



It’s much easier to have multiple paths for fibre than it is for power though.  If power goes down, the sengment needs to be off, otherwise some kid on a tricycle is going to have a bad hair day.

With a bit of lazy fibre sitting down on the ground, the most you’re going to do is to bore a hole in someones eyes, if they decide to pick it up and stare straight into it.   (I’ve got laser damage to one eye, and it doesn’t go away but that’s another story).

That said, Fibre rings for metro are pretty common place, but further out I wouldn’t be so sure, it guess it’d be more like a hub and spoke network, which would really suck if you were on a spoke during a storm.

-S
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