NBN: A courageous decision …

Noddy’s Big Network (NBN) will deliver signal by several ways.

One way is an unsightly thick fibre cable mostly hung from existing electricity supply power poles and connected to a single fixed point inside a building in a high density population area. Another way is by point to point radio providing a fixed point inside a building remote from the ugly power pole cables. Because this is point to point radio, not shared radio like existing radio internet, the bandwidth will not suffer as multiple users activate their hardware as currently happens with existing radio internet. Another way is by satellite dish connected to a receiver which is connected to a single fixed point inside a remote building in an area of poor radio reception.

Now that we have one outlet in each building unless they opt out and luddites may choose to opt out but most folks will not. If that building only has one computer it will be cabled to the fixed NBN point and will experience the promised great speed if the internet service provider (ISP) engaged by the owner is paid to enable it. If you do not pay for high speed you will not get high speed pretty much as is now experienced.

If there are multiple or roaming computers like notebooks in the house a domestic radio modem will need to be fitted to the NBN fixed point at the owners expense. Alternatively the house can be wired room to room with cable at the owners expense. Speed will depend on the quality of this hardware purchased at the users expense.

Mobile appliances like notebook computers will not be able to receive roaming radio connection to the radio used by the NBN to connect buildings.

If someone wants a roaming wireless connection like they now experience on notebooks and mobile phones they will need to get it from an ISP who taps into the NBN and retransmits the signal from local towers like existing mobile aerial towers. Hardware will probably be faster than is now used but the maximum speed will probably be less than the promised NBN core speed.

The speed of this sort of connection depends on the ISP hardware, the contracted paid for ISP plan, and that will probably be lower than the NBN core speed.

Barack Obama wants to make high-speed wireless available to 98 percent of the population of USA within five years at a cost less than the NBN. This goal was set out in his State of the Union address. The USA is about the same size as Australia. It has remote areas and long distances as well and is a high end mobile phone and notebook environment just like Australia.

To think that a relatively ill informed Australian political party hack, a lawyer Prime Minister and a couple of hick country independents know more than the Information Technology gurus in USA is an interesting proposal.
Anyone can make a mistake but to really wreck something big time you need a great big network. Labor and Green true believers may fall for the NBN plan but anyone with an inquiring mind will question it.

A system that only connects to fixed computers when Australia is a high end mobile phone and notebook environment is a courageous decision.

There is no costed NBN plan because even the NBN installers themselves say they will design the NBN as they go along. Each local area will have a local distribution plan. They cannot cost each local plan because they do not yet know what local plan configurations will be used.

The reason the NBN is not being exposed to a full and frank investigation as to how it is going to work, the cost to the nation and the cost to the individual user is because if it were exposed to a rational critique it would be exposed as a political program rather than a wise, sound, technological venture.