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

[David Connors]

On 11 August 2010 12:53, Tom Sykes <TomSykes at nbnco.com.au> wrote:

> David Connors writes.....
> > Another thing lost on the one-eyed-NBN-at-any-cost nerds arguing in this
> > debate is that there are entire sectors of the population who don't give
> > a toss about quality of service on the Internet- loading a web page is
> > FINE for a lot of people who just want to tool around on Facebook or
> whatever
>
> If you freeze the application capability at a point in time (e.g. Text
> Webpages) then we would never have required DSL.
>

At the risk of stating the obvious, going from PSTN -> DSL had a number of
advantages:

   - Faster bandwidth and now you can run multiple audio/video streams and
   not care
   - No need for two lines
   - Much less drop outs

There were huge, obvious, and practical wins going from PSTN to ADSL.

I am not sure there is going to be the same natural demand from people going
from 5 or 10 or 24 or whatever mbps today to 25, 50, 100 mbps in a couple of
years.


> If you are building this network for "Facebook", then I mostly agree, you
> probably won't see much difference between your Internode 25M service and a
> Fibre 25M Service. However, making the "internet" faster is clearly not the
> only goal here.
>

25M also does the "youtube" as well. An Internode DSL service with decent
CPE (877-m-k9) is surprisingly good.

All of those poor buggers behind RIMs and pair gain are definitely in need
of something better, but I doubt my life in inner city Brisbane is going to
be revolutionised by speeds that allow me to burn through my monthly quote
in 1 hour instead of 3.

There are clearly other applications (and more to emerge) which either (a)
> simply cannot be provided using current infrastructure, or


Ah yes, the classic broadband clichés of a neurosurgeon operating on someone
over HD video and so on. Oh wait, all the current (and remotely affordable)
NBN plans have a 2 (less than what I get on Annex M now), 4, or 8mbps
upstream because ISPs don't want to cannibalise their
expensive symmetrical links they sell to business.

Then there is pay TV I guess- but then again Foxtel only makes what? $150M a
year gross out of all its subscribers? And that is charging $50-140 a month
- which would be savaged with competition from IPTV players.

Everything about the NBN looks rosy *provided* you ignore the amount of tax
payer money being sunk into it.


> (b) may work, but suffer from the lack of determinism in the copper loop
> and can't be offered on a consistent basis.
>

Possibly, and as I said earlier I am definitely in favour of fibre in my
house - but I recognise that I am a nerd and work in IT and so not
representative of the general populace. I am not sure what the average
westie bogan is going to do with it (hopefully not neurosurgery), *or if
they would even subscribe*.

$43bln (x 2 plus a few dozen dead people if it is going to run as well as
previous government visionary projects) is a lot of money, that much is
certain. God only knows what wholesale fees need to be brought in to provide
some return on the sunk capital + cover opex.

-- 
*David Connors* | david at codify.com | www.codify.com
Software Engineer
Codify Pty Ltd
Phone: +61 (7) 3210 6268 | Facsimile: +61 (7) 3210 6269 | Mobile: +61 417
189 363
V-Card: https://www.codify.com/cards/davidconnors
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