Slashdot Mirror
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.'" "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Arthur C. Clarke
There's always the Sex Party, they've got decent enough policies, no internet filtering, no internet spying, R Rating for games... What more could you want? http://www.sexparty.org.au/index.php/policies
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.
It's a particularly stupid statement since the technology selected for the NBN was designed to scale to 1Gbps with only a simple upgrade. Fibre is insanely high-bandwidth, the limitation is mostly around the cost of the transponders and the core network routers, which have to handle huge aggregate speeds. Speeds of 100Mbps are doable now, many Asian countries have already deployed networks that fast, so given the equivalent of Moore's law for networking, I'm not surprised they've changed their targeted initial speed to 1Gbps.
$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...
i don't know how it wasn't obvious it could go to gigabit with very little tinkering. it's OPTICAL right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth-distance_product
Through a combination of advances in dispersion management, wavelength-division multiplexing, and optical amplifiers, modern-day optical fibers can carry information at around 14 Terabits per second over 160 kilometers of fiber [4]. Engineers are always looking at current limitations in order to improve fiber-optic communication, and several of these restrictions are currently being researched
14 terabits over 160km? does tony abbot's advisors do any research? presently, we have a copper network that can manage at best 24mbit at a max distance of 4km, at best. the NBN is an *optical* network, and is likely to be dispersed at network segments of less than 100km per run. lol. do i really need to point out the stupidity of saying it can't be gigabit? do i also need to point out the stupidity of saying a 100mbit network is not gonna be a piece of cake to roll out with optical in australian metro areas? what a retard.
anyway, i'm voting for the sex party. you can bet they are all on for the NBN. super HD pr0n here we come :)