[AusNOG] Long live the NBN. The NBN is dead?! [personal]

[Paul Brooks]

On 11/08/2010 8:27 AM, Mark Smith wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Aug 2010 07:41:28 +1000
> Stephen Carter<Stephen.Carter at workingtech.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> I just can help myself...
>>
>> Bringing a political view to this forum with no real technical value is very disappointing.
>>
>>      
> What might be a bit more useful, and this should be one of the better
> forums for it, would be to identify the pros, cons and justifications
> or lack of for it.
>
> One thing I'd like to know is why 100Mbps is the "magic
> acceptable threshold". Why would 50Mbps be inadequate? Why not go for
> 1Gbps? If it cost another $5BN on top of the $43BN, to get to 1Gbps, I'd
> say spend it. If we're borrowing money for it, and can borrow more, why
> not build the latest and greatest? 100Mbps seems artificially low in
> that context.
>    

Excellent idea Mark - lets actually play the ball, not the man, for a 
change.

Forget about the magic 100Mbps for the moment - in the context of the 
non-plan outlined yesterday, they will have enough trouble reaching the 
12 Mbps "minimum peak" threshhold.

Who remembers where the magic 12 Mbps threshold comes from?
It was first outlined in Telstra's ADSL2-based FTTN proposal at their 
technology briefing in November 2005, and released as an ASX announcement.
They proposed spending ~$3.1B to deploy FTTN - active fibre-fed cabinets 
- to shorten the maximum copper line length to around 1.5 km.

As it happens, 12 Mbps is the ADSL speed that can be guaranteed at a 
copper loop distance of 1.5km, under worst-case mutual interference from 
nearby DSL lines.
Since then, 12 Mbps has been used as the 'magic benchmark'  - not 
because of any analysis that indicates this is sufficient for any 
purpose, or is some sort of inflexion point on a 
economic-benefit-to-the-nation curve, but because it is doable with DSL.


So...Telstra calculated $3.1 bn required to bring 12 Mbps to around 4 
million homes in the 5 capital cities - less than 50% of the population.

The coalition apparently plans to spend ~$2.7 bn to bring 12 Mbps min 
line speed to 97% of the population, without mentioning FTTN or what 
proportion of the 97% would be served by copper (where they only budget 
~ $750 million compared to Telstra's $3.1billion ) and the remainder by 
some new fixed wireless networks.

This 'policy' appears to be badly thought out back-of-envelope numbers 
that simply doesn't add up.

Paul.

-- 
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