National Broadband Network

Julia · 27 November 2010

Glenn Stevens has significantly embarrassed the government by joining those who feel strongly a cost benefit analysis should be undertaken prior to the implementation of the NBN.

This is on top of his recently saying that the banks were justified in increasing rates to the level they have due to their funding costs.

That Conroy and Gillard can continue to ignore the recommendations of David Murray, the BCA, Treasury Redbook Advice, Warwick McKibbin, and now Mr Stevens is beyond belief.

noco · 27 November 2010

Julia said:
Glenn Stevens has significantly embarrassed the government by joining those who feel strongly a cost benefit analysis should be undertaken prior to the implementation of the NBN.

This is on top of his recently saying that the banks were justified in increasing rates to the level they have due to their funding costs.

That Conroy and Gillard can continue to ignore the recommendations of David Murray, the BCA, Treasury Redbook Advice, Warwick McKibbin, and now Mr Stevens is beyond belief.

I agree Julia, but the Labor Party's problem is the fact that they are so heavily committed on the NBN and to back down on this venture will be the end of Ms. Gillard and Mr. Conroy, so they are determined to proceed irrespect of the cost and or the out come. They are also determined to make NBN a monopoly and charge what ever they like.

noco · 27 November 2010

The attached link surely should be a worry for the Labor Party with the Hong Kong wireless technology which will eventually make optic fibre obsolute in a vert short time. So why is Gillard and Conroy still determined to go ahead with the NBN?

http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermai...ments/hong_kong_shows_the_future_is_wireless/

noco · 27 November 2010

Does Julia Gillard and Conroy really know what the cost of NBN will be? Terry McCran states it is going to cost a lot more than Labor is predicting and would anyone really be surprised!!!!!

http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermai...couriermail/comments/50_billion_and_counting/

Julia · 27 November 2010

This provides the full context of Glenn Stevens' comments. It is more useful than extracts in that it offers his view of the overall picture on the Australian economy.

I'd have a lot more confidence if Mr Stevens were the person actually running the country.

http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/andrewbolt/index.php/couriermail/comments/stevens_worries/

sails · 27 November 2010

Here is more info on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Hong Kong:

'Fourth generation' internet arrives in Hong Kong

THE latest generation of wireless internet that will allow people to watch a crystal clear movie or live sporting event on the street or atop a hill is being deployed throughout Hong Kong.

The Long Term Evolution (LTE) network will give super high speeds across the city and could mean the end of computers ever needing to be plugged into a wall for a connection to the net.

and from Noco's link:

The system will give speeds of up to 100 megabits per second...(Mbps)

It makes one wonder whether the government has actually done any research on viable alternatives before committing excessive funds to a potential future white elephant.

It appears that LTE networks are apparently already operating in Europe, Scandinavia and North America with Japan also planning to install it. How could they have missed this...

Julia · 27 November 2010

sails said:
It appears that LTE networks are apparently already operating in Europe, Scandinavia and North America with Japan also planning to install it. How could they have missed this...

Um, Sails, because they have so much political capital invested in the NBN, they are in denial of any other options. They simply cannot politically afford another backdown in any area.

So they will forge ahead and spend this huge amount of taxpayer dollars without any cost benefit analysis or consideration of possible alternatives without a second thought.

The arrogance is unbelievable, as is their naivete if they imagine voters will be forgiving if it all falls over in an expensive heap.

sails · 27 November 2010

Julia said:
Um, Sails, because they have so much political capital invested in the NBN, they are in denial of any other options. They simply cannot politically afford another backdown in any area.

So they will forge ahead and spend this huge amount of taxpayer dollars without any cost benefit analysis or consideration of possible alternatives without a second thought.

The arrogance is unbelievable, as is their naivete if they imagine voters will be forgiving if it all falls over in an expensive heap.

Lol Julia, it was a somewhat sarcastic comment re how they could have missed it...

I don't doubt they would rather stick their heads in the sand than face any sort of reality. Seems to be the norm during the last 3+ years.

IMO Gillard, Conroy & co really don't care if NBN never works out. Aussie taxpayers (aka "working families") will be left to pick up the pieces while incompetant politicians go on their merry way with life pensions and other perks regardless of their performance (or lack of).

IFocus · 28 November 2010

Julia said:
I'd have a lot more confidence if Mr Stevens were the person actually running the country.

Politics is such it could never happen but I am thank full that Australia has had an excellent run of RBA governors supported by an excellent bureaucracy.

IFocus · 28 November 2010

sails said:
Here is more info on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network in Hong Kong:

'Fourth generation' internet arrives in Hong Kong

and from Noco's link:

It makes one wonder whether the government has actually done any research on viable alternatives before committing excessive funds to a potential future white elephant.

It appears that LTE networks are apparently already operating in Europe, Scandinavia and North America with Japan also planning to install it. How could they have missed this...

This has long been discussed over on the NBN thread at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum/142.

Did you know?
Labor and Coalition are looking at putting the same amount of people on wireless.

Cut and paste from one of the posters

LTE ADVANCED is 4G, LTE is 3GPP

Which is also referred to as 3.9G.

Who knows when LTE Advanced will be commercially available. It will probably be commercially available between 2013 and 2015, and full deployment will be years after this.

And while it claims maximum theoretical speed of 1 Gbps, that's for one cell, shared between who knows how many users. LTE Advanced has greater coverage area and support for more users per cell, so don't expect to be getting 1 Gbps or even 100 Mbps, it will most likely be far less than that.

And with smartphones consuming more and more (and more smartphones), each cell is going to be severely overloaded. And then you get all the problems you get with wireless, the interference, unstable nature of the connection, greater latency.

The need to provide backhaul to each cell is also important. Verizon is going with fibre as backhaul whenever possible (as opposed to radio, that is typical with 3G networks) – it will be even more important if/when LTE Advanced is rolled out. And the next big thing may be the femtocell architecture, which would also be most effective when combined with fibre (FTTH).

So even the future of wireless may heavily rely on fibre! Yes, even on a bus!

And I concur with others when they say they prefer a fixed line connection to wireless (3G). I had a much better browsing experience on a congested ADSL (1.2 Mbps at times) than compared to a faster 3G speed (2.5 Mbps), simply because of latency and the stable nature of a fixed connection.

There is a lot of excellent threads including one on Malcolm Turnbulls blog afraid he gets a hammering.

IFocus · 28 November 2010

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." ”” Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." ”” Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." ”” Lee DeForest, inventor.

todster · 28 November 2010

noco said:
The attached link surely should be a worry for the Labor Party with the Hong Kong wireless technology which will eventually make optic fibre obsolute in a vert short time. So why is Gillard and Conroy still determined to go ahead with the NBN?

http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermai...ments/hong_kong_shows_the_future_is_wireless/

With Australia having so much geographically in common with Honkers I can't believe they didn't think of that.

drsmith · 28 November 2010

IFocus said:
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." ”” Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." ”” Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." ”” Lee DeForest, inventor.

None of this detracts from the fact that the Government should be releasing more information about the finances of this project than they are.

IFocus · 28 November 2010

drsmith said:
None of this detracts from the fact that the Government should be releasing more information about the finances of this project than they are.

I think the biggest weakness of the Gillard Government is the inability to prosecute their case or simply communicate their position clearly.

Failure to do so allows this sort of head line rubbish

"NBN a 'white elephant', says Abbott"

PRIME Minister Julia Gillard's decision to give parliament another sitting day to push through the national broadband network illustrates the policy is a "white elephant", Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says.

The plans have the potential to become a "school halls on steroids", he told reporters in Sydney today.

moXJO · 29 November 2010

IFocus said:
I think the biggest weakness of the Gillard Government is the inability to prosecute their case or simply communicate their position clearly.

You think they would have learnt to deal with this. Considering they have had similar problems with Pink Batts scheme and the BER. So it doesn't exactly fill me with hope that they simply leap from one disaster to the next.

derty · 29 November 2010

Here is a very good article, well worth the read: BROADBAND FACTS, FICTION AND URBAN MYTHS

It covers the current global uptake of FTTP, trends of ADSL, fibre and HFC usage, historical and projected backhaul (main distribution infrastructure) bandwidth/capacity and historical and projected usage.

The article also addresses several of the dominant criticisms of the NBN such as the NBN is a white elephant, the human brain cannot process 100Mb/s, wireless technologies will be able to provide 100Mb/s, DSL advances will provide 100Mb/s e.t.c.

...the capacity of wireless access is constrained by the very limited slice of the electromagnetic spectrum that can be used by wireless communications (see Section 3 below for an explanation of the limitations of wireless). In addition, the radiofrequency spectrum in a cellular network is shared by all users in that cell. Therefore, to achieve anything approaching 100 Mb/s to the home would require almost one base station tower for every user...

...a single optical fibre can carry 10,000 times the information that can be carried on the entire radio frequency spectrum and that when a fibre is used, the information can be dedicated to a single user. On the other hand, wireless suffers from limited bandwidth because the radio-frequency spectrum is necessarily shared, not dedicated...

sails · 29 November 2010

While this article is probably more relevant in the government thread, I thought it's worth a mention here as Glenn Stevens, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), has expressed his concerns regarding the financial cost of NBN and which confirms what some of us have been bleating on about:

Under pressure: RBA casts doubt over federal finance

1) There was no place for a National Broadband Network (NBN) in his summary of national infrastructure priorities that will need to be funded by both the private and public sectors over coming decades;

2) If taxpayers are to be forced to underwrite 100 per cent of the $27 billion of equity risk capital associated with the NBN, then “of course, a proper cost-benefit analysis” should be carried out before committing to such an extraordinarily large investment, and that any productivity benefits from the interconnectivity enabled by the NBN, “hinges on how much you pay to do it and how efficiently it is done”

NB: Bold is mine.

Smurf1976 · 29 November 2010

How would a cost benefit analysis actually be done?

Surely, to do such an analysis, requires that both the cost and the benefits are known?

Cost we can estimate, but I challenge anyone to compile an accurate list of the benefits. Go back to 1900 and tell me what benefits electricity or motor cars will bring - entire industries based on both of those have since emerged that nobody could have foreseen back when the technologies were new.

As late as 1916 the Federal Government still had doubts about electricity, warning the Tasmanian state government that widespread use probably wouldn't catch on and that the state's scheme to supply it would likely be a financial disaster since there would only ever be one customer which, if it were to close, would leave no use for electricity whatsoever. Nearly a century later and we're all using electricity, and that first customer is still there too by the way (though the company concerned has changed names a few times over the years).

Same applies to just about everything. It's virtually impossible to assess all the benefits of a new technology.

Julia · 29 November 2010

Well, Smurf, I suppose that's why we have highly paid demographers and economists who are trained to make all the appropriate projections.

Surely their best efforts would be better than not even trying to ascertain the future benefits in relation to the massive cost to taxpayers?

And why, for goodness sake, are the government so absolutely and utterly determined that no such analysis will occur? If they were genuinely confident that there could be no adverse outcome of such analysis, wouldn't they be happy to accede to demands that it should happen, especially now given the high level of people asking that it happen, starting with Glenn Stevens most recently?

todster · 30 November 2010

Hard wire the major cities screw the country theres ya cost benefit geez its the Libs Wrecking ball regardless of any analysis.

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