To Broadband or not, that is the question?

I'll be very happy if i can get some fast internet...because telstra own the lines around my area the fastest optus net we can get is 46kbp/s.

When his plan is done we wont have world dominance...our fibre optic cables will be able to push down around 100mbp/s...Japan who have the best internet in the world can already push down 1TBp/s...This net will just keep us on par if not somewhat behind the rest of the world...anything better than 3rd world internet would be helpful though so im not complaining...

N.T

Why should the majority of the population pay for speeds that allow a small number of people to watch 12 monitors of pr0n? If certain groups need the speed, let them pay for the technology themselves.

Mr J,

Youre obviously not a gamer =]. For gamers speed is everything. Being able to host a game/get a good connection in a game therefore reducing lag is the difference between life and DEATH! The only other reason people need/want super fast internet is for the illegal download of music, games and movies...my friend has 120gb of usage and all they do is dl music, games, movies most recently they downloaded windows 7 ultimate cracked (its normally a few hundred $$$'s)...this was not helped/hindered (whichever way you see it) by iinets recent success in its piracy case (http://www.smh.com.au/technology/te...od-in-landmark-piracy-case-20100204-ndwr.html) now illegal downloading is free gain for young and old...

N.T

Nah latency is everything not just raw speed. By the way Conroy's pr0n filter will stuff latency up anyway.

And gaming is not the only need for such high end networks biz, health, financial and education stuff is way ahead of pimply faced gamers BUT they will pay for it.

The 20 mil tax payers shouldn't have to subsidise the 10,000 gamers FFS with the biggest ever government funded (TAX) infrastructure gamble!!

What's wrong with gaming Trembling?

newbie trader said:

What's wrong with gaming Trembling?

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Nothing but thats no justification for 50 billion dollars of tax payers money is it?? Not when we have a health system that's by everyone's reasoning close to sh!te.

And add all the other things, i just cannot see how the 50 bil subsidised Internet is in anyway justifiable.

Yeah i agree with you but the deals done now so im only really comparing what the net will be like with the rest of the world etc etc...also there are thousands of homeless people in all of the major cities whom the gov just ignore and refuse to help...we can spend millions on a war and on internet but we can't help those who need it most, quite sad actually.

N.T

The 20 mil tax payers shouldn't have to subsidise the 10,000 gamers FFS with the biggest ever government funded (TAX) infrastructure gamble!!

Click to expand...

Exactly. It's what 4k-5k per worker? And it's not like everyone pays, this is coming out of taxes, so the wealthy are going to be subsidising everyone else for a service that will barely be used .

but we can't help those who need it most

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Many homeless people aren't simply unfortunate victims, many created their condition and have no desire to be "helped", unless it's some sort of fix.

Mr J have you ever worked with homeless people before? Many are the result of unfortunate circumstances but a large percentage are handicapped either physically or mentally with a small percentage being the latter of what you just described (i think you just plucked that comment out of thin air, but please prove me wrong)...getting back to the net with this new service obviously speeds will go up, but will usage also go up with prices coming down? Or will speeds go up as well as usage as well as the price youll pay?

N.T

I said many, not most, and I am talking about many that were in "unfortunate situations". I'm against any sort of compulsory donation.

compulsory donation? Do you mean just a cash donation? If so, then yeah I agree with you there the best thing you can do is give them a hot meal and sit and talk to them.

N.T

I mean government spending tax dollars. Charities obviously can't do enough, but doesn't that just reflect the overall opinion of society? Like many of society's problems, not many people really care much to do anything about it.

Personaly I wonder whether the NBN is going to turn into a White Elephant and a huge waste of taxpayer money before it rolls out. The representations of unparallaled speed are mostly pie in the sky estimates. Over the last 15 years I have built and maintained a few Local Area Networks (LAN's) starting from the thin ethernet loop style running at 2-5 mps (migabits per second, not megabytes) upgrading to Cat 5 cable Networks at 10 mps, then taking them to 100mps and 1000mps (gigabit not gigabyte).
While the speed improvment within the LAN is significant and enhances productivity, the biggest weakness in the chain, when connecting to the internet, has always been the modem and Internet access speads. ADSL and CABLE are superior to Dial-up and ADSL2+ is faster again than ADSL but they all have limitations of speed and only connect to the End User at at a top speed of less than 100mps. All users are limited by the internet speed plans they buy from their ISP providers. High end users paying more get faster upload download speeds over the net.
With cable your speed is subject to the number of ppl in your area sharing the spectrum between your exchange and your area. With ADSL your speed is often dependent on how close you are to the exchange.
Then there is the matter of security. Land lines are faster and more secure than wireless but wireless is being touted as the way to go because of mobility.
The only real long term benefits to come out of the NBN will be better internet access into remote areas, Television content into remote areas and improved download speeds for volume downloaders. Gamers will get more reliability and slight improvments in speed but their advantages will be lost as every other gamer will have equal access.
The big winners of NBn will be the people providing the crap that is available over the net being able to push more out onto the public, and the criminals making use of faster speads to hack into domestic end user pc's to steal identites, bank accounts etc.

NBN could help with subscription TV competition. Satellites are not cheap. Appears iiNet are moving in to the market.

VoIP could grow more.

There may be new services come online that we haven't dreamed of.

newbie trader said:

Japan who have the best internet in the world can already push down 1TBp/s.

N.T

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Do you have a good reference for that? One gigabit I could understand.

The speed they get isnt 1TBp/s but thats how much they can push down their fibreoptic cables per second.

Can you provide a reference to where that figure comes from? As far as I know only speeds close to that are approachable in the lab.

A friend lives in Japan working in that industry (i dont know a lot about it myself just what he's told me)...i think their speeds are a bit over 100mbps but they can 'push' down close to 1TBp/s...other than that i dont have a reference but feel free to post your own reference.

N.T

i have a feeling that in 2 years time I will need to rename this topic. "The Broadband Disaster Thread".

best i could find from speedtest.net

Download Speed
1 Republic of Korea 23.16 Mb/s
2 Aland Islands 19.21 Mb/s
3 Japan 17.63 Mb/s
4 Latvia 17.04 Mb/s
5 Romania 15.50 Mb/s
6 Lithuania 14.89 Mb/s
7 Sweden 14.71 Mb/s
8 Netherlands 14.23 Mb/s
9 Andorra 14.17 Mb/s
10 Bulgaria 13.95 Mb/s

..

41 Australia 5.46 Mb/s

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is this good or bad?

Look like average broadband speeds and Australia doesn't look that good. Some people are still on 256 kbit plans. There will be instances where they are on RIMs and other equipment that may limits speeds. Also copper

I don't think the average speeds will go up much even with FTTH. ISPs will will sell slower plans for less than faster plans. People have budgets. Many will also think they can wait a particular amount of time for things to happen so see no need for full speed.

Unfortunately the FTTH retail network with GPON will have much more limited upload speeds (and ISPs will be unlikely to offer 100 Mbit upload speeds at affordable prices if they could get the speeds) so will reduce niche server upstarts.

I had a brief look around. NTT sell 100 Mbit connections. PCCW did have 1000 Mbit (1 Gbit) plan. Seems hard to find anything faster in the retail space.

I noticed today on Seek a number of Tasmanian positions advertised that mentioned PVC conduits and other things. The locations where the jobs are seem to match with some kind of NBNTas (I think that's the right name) rollout. Launceston, Burnie and Devonport could be the 3rd stage which could help explain limited ADSL2+ rollouts from companies other than Telstra.

I do see some wholesale market issues with both wireless and fibre.
Wireless looks like there are only a few major suppliers with suitable spectrum. Hard to build more spectrum - it relies on government licencing. Fibre is expensive to get in to. With FTTH there is 1 wholesaler although above there there could be other resellers. Hard to put downward pressure on wholesale market. Maybe the government can take the losses as a stimulus measure to allow returns for the private investors.

Wireless and fibre introduce an issue about what happens with power outages. The copper network has generator and battery backups at the exchanges - at least the major ones.

Fibre looks like a future technology for home/commercial networking. Copper has finite speeds and interference issues. Widespread rollout of the fibre network helps more widely develop experience with fibre. Notably many developed countries see it as the way to rollout out faster broadband. Maybe governments should have been looking at the Japanese model instead of the USA model to get the market pushing the rollout.