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Aussie National Broadband Network Will Be Gigabit
schmidty-au writes "NBN Co, the Australian Government company established to build Australia's national fibre-optic broadband network, announced today that, instead of the previously announced 100 Mbps network, it will provide 1 Gbps, within the existing AU$43 billion budget. Meanwhile, the Australian opposition, which has announced that it will scrap the network if it wins the 21 August election, and instead provide incentives to the private sector to improve the existing copper network, and to install wireless broadband (with promised peak speeds of 12 Mbps), does not understand or believe that this would be possible. The man who wants to be Australia's next Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said today 'This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible.'"
The man who wants to be Australia's next Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said today 'This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible.'"
Yeah, and computers will never get faster, cheaper or smaller. What a tool.
No thanks.
Hey... you know, I could have said that about Tony Abbott.
This idea that "hey presto" we are suddenly going to get an improved economy, less waste and an excellent immigration policy from someone we haven't elected yet I find utterly implausible.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet
Well, it's much easier to upgrade a design plan than an existing infrastructure.
Lets put this in its propper context..
From the second linked artical
"It's very hard to take seriously a government which suddenly pulls yet another technological rabbit out of a hat just because it's under enormous pressure in the closing stages of an election campaign," the Liberal leader told reporters in western Sydney.
"This idea that 'hey presto' we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet I find utterly implausible."
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
$43bn for speeds faster than what the internet naturally provides... There isn't a need for gigabit connections when the average pipeline of a website is less than a megabit. I suppose if you want to watch 75 HD porn videos at a time, now you'd get the chance
You're right, instead of spending $43bn on gigabit network now, we should spend $30bn on 1Mb now, then $30bn in 3 years on 5Mb, then $30bn in 6 years on 10Mb, then $30bn in 10 years on 100Mb, then...
It seems he's only calling the leap from 100Mbps to 1Gbps implausible, rather than the plan to lay the 100Mbps infrastructure. I don't know what the cost differences are between 100Mbps and 1Gbps but I would have thought they'd be negligible compared to the cost of putting any infrastructure in place.
We gave Telstra a decade and all they did was stall adsl2, milk the international interconnects, keep exchanges difficult to access, charge use up and down by the mb and muddy any NBN press.
The idea that "private enterprise" will save us is cute but reality shows they kept the rust belt warm, rolling out the min of new tech for the max price.
Tony is offering Australia more of the worst of a US Bell system.
Julia is offering a faster internal network with faith based filtering, and Bell international interconnect pricing.
"multiple businesses" will never get a look in on any Telstra property other than increasing long term rental deals, something that has kept Australian in a digital dark ages for years.
That is what made the NBN (without faith based filtering) such a good idea, making a Bell just another big telco.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Considering we've gone from, what, 14.4k to approaching Gb speeds in the space of less than 20 years? I don't think it's unreasonable to build in some future redundancy - after all, the majority of the cost is going to be physically putting the cable in place, the cost to increase the capacity of said cable is likely to be close to incidental.
In theory, a state monopoly can be more efficient since they don't have the overhead that multiple competing smaller companies have.
In theory, private companies do a better job since competition puts more pressure on doing things efficiently.
In practise, both are ruined by greedy bastards looking out for #1. Arguing which is the lesser evil seems pointless to me. Toss a coin and focus on effective monitoring/oversight/regulation to keep people honest, instead. That's the best way to get better service.
It isn't when you consider that those exact taxpayers get more than they could conceivably get spending individually.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that the same party that is offering 1GBps "last mile" connectivity, is the same party that wants to filter the internet with a China link filter. redtube.com (42nd most vistited site on the whole interwebs) is blocked under the Hitler like filter. 1GBps "last mile" filtered internet vs 12Mbps unfiltered.. I think I'd go for the less "book burning" solution. Australia's biggest problem, even with ADSL2, is the international links. You can't go faster than the speed of light, and with 200ms latency to the USA (home of the interwebs), Australia will always be slow.
They can make Aussie content / data cap free! Just cap over seas data.