NBN Business case released!

[Jovial Monk]

There are people in our capital cities that can’t access decent BB due to pair gain, being on a congested RIM etc. The reason is John Halfwit Howard and Peter Crunting Costello and their idiotic privatisation of Telstra as a wholesale/retail monopoly owner of the copper.

Telstra prefer to service the profitable upper end of the market with BB, the rest of the copper is left to rot in the ground. A whole new network is needed and fibre is the logical choice to replace it. There is no real argument, except universal superfast BB would wipe out Murdoch’s foxtel and most of his crappy tabloid shit sheets so the media is against it, largely. And Lib fanbois are against it because it is a Labor initiative and it will boost the economy as the shadows of a new Long Depression start spreading over the world.

The NBN will be very profitable due to Video over IP.

1. Businesses and households will both use telepresence.

Grandparents tend to be users of email and skype and stuff to keep in touch with kids/grandkids who may have moved interstate in pursuit of jobs or careers. They will use the NBN to hold high definition video phone calls instead of email and the crap video calls now available.

Businesses will use it to reduce interstate travel, for collaboration with branch offices etc and this will grow and migrate down to small business with the NBN

Working from home/telecommuting will take off. ADSL just doesn’t have enough bandwidth for this. Time/emissions spent in gridlock will lessen.

Telecommuters can move to the regions to work and enjoy a great lifestyle rather than move into crap outer suburbs or tiny infill unit.

2. TV over IP
The number of services will explode—that is what Murdoch is afraid of, why he has tame columnists write articles slamming the NBN.

[Viking King.]

The entire wiring network needs to be checked and corrected, sister in Perth just a couple years ago was having problems with the line, service man came to look, the house was still with the old 2 wire system to the wall plugs,
how much of that is still being used today?

I am very very confident that if Howhard put this same project into action no one would be complaining about the costs,
I really hate it when the Libs talk of a plan but do nothing and no one says anything, but when the Lab mention the same plan it is considered a waste of taxpayer dollars.

[Jovial Monk]

“A” plan? They had 18 of them! And now still all they can do is complain! Yes, VK, the very nearly the whole wiring needs ripping up and replacing but only a Liberal would replace it with expensive, slow copper.

Of course, Liberals never do any nation building stuff. Menzies coasted on Curtin/Chifley reforms and plans, by the mid 60s something else was needed and along came Whitlam, then Hawke/Keating on whose reforms the worst economic managers we ever had coasted. All that money, we could already have the NBN, be in a world beating position but no, tax cuts for the rich and buying elections for our worst-ever PM pissed $400Bn against the wall! Now we have deficits because of those those idiotic tax cuts. Mining tax, carbon tax and the NBN would carry any future Lib govt a fair way, even one as inept as the crud, the Howardista remnants, led by Tone.

[Jovial Monk]

http://newmatilda.com/2011/04/18/seven-myths-nbn

7 NBN myths debunked.

[Jovial Monk]

http://www.zdnet.com.au/assessing-turnb ... 2011_fea_6

Turnbull’s voodoo telconomics

[Jovial Monk]

Mainland sites starting to have the fibre lit:

Test customers go live on Armidale NBN
Some of the 2900 premises pegged for fibre services have reported live services

NBN Co pegged 2900 premises for fibre-to-the-home technology in Armidale, with a take-up rate of more than 90 per cent.
The first mainland National Broadband Network (NBN) services have gone live, with users in Armidale reporting operational fibre access to the $36 billion network.

Users reported on the Whirlpool user forum on Monday that services had become operational that morning.

A University of New England IT service support staff member told Computerworld Australia that another staff member had been connected to the network on the same day to iiNet.

Computerworld Australia contacted iiNet for confirmation but did not receive a reply at time of writing.

An NBN Co spokesperson confirmed a “small number of test customers” had become operational as part of a soft launch of the network in the area. The wholesaler expected to more widely announce the operational network from next month.

It is unclear exactly how many test customers received the live NBN services, though iPrimus chief executive, Ravi Bhatia, said six of the service provider's customers received the service from 9.30am on Monday morning.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article ... idale_nbn/

Even bogan central, Townsville, has over 70% acceptances.

Roll on NBN. . .

[Jovial Monk]

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is set to flick the switch for the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Armidale tomorrow, officially launching the first services for the mainland roll-out of the $35.9 billion project.

The Armidale first release site covers some 2900 premises, and will be a critical test site for NBN services, as it has a 90 per cent opt-in rate — meaning that it has the highest percentage of residents opting in to have the fibre cable installed at any of the five first release sites.

http://www.zdnet.com.au/gillard-to-laun ... 315165.htm

roll on NBN. . .

[Jovial Monk]

Here is part of a govt-commissioned report into fast broadband:

1.1 Productivity
Harnessed effectively, broadband connectivity
will be a key driver of Australia’s Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), jobs and wages
growth. Broadband technologies will be
the roads and railways of the 21st century,
generating the next wave of economic
expansion. Just as transport opened up
new economic horizons in the last century,
advanced communication networks will
pave the way for productivity gains across
global economies in the new century.
What quantum of productivity gains might
be possible? Accenture
2
estimates that next
generation broadband could produce
economic benefits of $12 billion to
$30 billion per annum to Australia.
This assumes that broadband is adopted as
universally as the telephone over the next
25 years. A policy of encouraging
widespread broadband adoption could
deliver accelerated economic value within
years rather than decades

Discuss.

[Jovial Monk]

No one game to discuss the above report? It was issued in 2003. Leave you to digest that. . .


This is a thread I made of extracts from a Whirlpool thread. It illustrates why wireless broadband can only go so far due to spectrum being limited. The spectrum in one strand of FO cable exceeds the whole radio-TV spectrum in its entirety. Because of these limits, as covered earlier in this thread US wireless broadband providers are moving to put caps on their mobile bb plans—to howls of outrage from customers of course.

If you accept the laws of classical physics then Shannon's theorem is a theorem of those laws

Back when people got 3kbps download speeds with their mobile phones, what speed did they say would cook chickens around the towers?

They didn't because it was easy to increase spectrum per connection from 0.025 MHz to 20 MHz
An equivalent 1000x increase in spectrum is impossible without shutting down every other EMR service, so that's why people are talking about increased power needs.
In any case, increasing power to improve bits/Hz won't work built-up areas because it reduces frequency re-use dramatically.

Does Shannon's Law say that 100 Mbps can't be reliably delivered on a broadband wireless service?



nope, it just says that your tower can only do 100mbit (speed depends on how much spectrum you have at your disposal)

Thanks rhom for taking the time to explain this to me. So spectrum allocation is the big limitation and that's an engineering/political limitation rather than a limitation due to physics. True, it's a trivial distinction, but I don't like the way the rhetoric is being thrown about.

that's an engineering/political limitation rather than a limitation due to physics.

After you allocate all the available usable spectrum (which you would need to do to get another few hundred x increase), it does become a physical limit.

Higher frequencies (= shorter wavelengths) simply can't penetrate objects, and need to be guided around or through them via cable or optic fibre. (Until you get X-rays and gamma-rays, but they're too dangerous.

So we know that Shannon's theorem states the amount bandwidth that can be delivered over wireless. How does that translate to the impact of wireless on tomorrow's consumer market? Does Shannon's Law say that 100 Mbps can't be reliably delivered on a broadband wireless service?

Short answer: Yes

Much better answer (with all the numbers etc):
Have a look at this post on the Aus.Computers newsgroup (Author Thomas K, Thread: NBN clear winner over wireless ) :
http://groups.google.com/group/aus.comp ... 71bb0ade3b

for comparison purposes, how much spectrum is analog tv freeing up?

18 channels = 126 MHz, enough for one or two hundred Mbits/sec each way in theory.
If you shutdown all TV, you would still only get 3 x that.

whats the highest frequency we can realistically use for wireless (fixed or mobile)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimeter_wave

See the Telecommunications section.

Look like around 100 GHz is usable, although that will act more like light beams than radio waves, so it's more suited for fixed point to point than mobile.

http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_ ... oet70a.pdf

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-re ... 705931&p=4

Wireless just does not cut it for serious fast broadband.

[Jovial Monk]

Construction can go ahead now when trials done:
NBN Co press release 1 6 2011

NBN Co and Silcar Pty Ltd today struck an agreement which enables NBN Co to prepare for the
first large-scale deployment of optic fibre for the National Broadband Network.
NBN Co and Silcar have reached agreement on terms and prices for construction worth $380
million over the next two years, with the option of a further two years at an additional value of
$740 million.

This covers Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, and represents almost 40 per cent of
national construction activity planned over the next two years.
Importantly, the design and construction pricing in the Silcar agreement is in line with NBN Co’s
Corporate Plan.

This agreement follows eight weeks of intensive negotiations between NBNCo and Silcar, and
represents a competitive and acceptable benchmark for design and construction across the
project. The final detailed contract will be concluded by 17 June 2011.
According to NBN Co’s Head of Corporate Services, Kevin Brown: “We have always said we
would strive to deliver the best possible deal and achieve the lowest cost for taxpayers. Having
reached this position, we have every reason to believe we will bring in the remaining locations
across Australia at acceptable prices and on very competitive terms.

“We selected Silcar based on objective criteria, and on their performance in the field as the
construction company responsible for the rollout in the Armidale First Release Site

http://nbnco.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/dow ... 0FINAL.pdf