Hope I'm not intruding: On 26 Dec 2013, at 9:12 am, Tom Worthington <tom.worthing...@tomw.net.au> wrote:
> On 23/12/13 10:39, Paul Brooks wrote: > >> ... Mobile wireless broadband stats are counting USB dongles, pocket >> cellular/Wifi routers, and dedicated data-only SIMs ... It is not >> valid to intercompare the mobile broadband and fixed broadband stats >> in a meaningful way ... > > If we want to make rational resource decisions, then comparisons need to > be made. The mobile wireless broadband statistics could be scaled down > by the average number of people per Australian household, for comparison > with household connections. In 2011, there were 2.6 people per household > in Australia: > http://www.censusdata.abs.gov.au/census_services/getproduct/census/2011/quickstat/0 > > The number of people per household in Australia is falling. With only > two or three people per household, is it worth planning a roll-out of > broadband to homes? If each home is to have a fixed connection, then > that comes at a cost. I don't use a fixed connection at my home, so why > should I subsidise yours? But, with little numbers like IPv6 and an IP address in every device, 'the Internet of Devices', and visitors to household wanting to piggy back their devices onto the owners broadband/WiFi whilst visiting bandwidth usage is expected to explode dramatically. Factor in Super High Res TV (that even unconstricted cable connections couldn't handle), new applications like home care/monitoring/treatment of the elderly and infirm to obviate spiralling nursing home and hospital costs. remote medical procedures, ultra high bandwidth movies, TV, entertainment, music, games etc on demand, online education, work-from-home and its impact on business and employee overheads, smart appliances and home systems, the 'need' to monitor kids, other dependants, the premises and valuable possessions at all times, e-government (when and if it eventually appears), pervasive e-commerce, pervasive Internet enabled manufacturing (transferring big complex 3D printing and other design templates around with gay abandon to 'small and medium manufacturers), design and implementation work on new templates and IP, an explosion of remote area connections (and the propensity for networks generally to get richer and more bandwidth intensive as more connections come ! online), increasing appearance of digitally upgradeable product ('smart' or otherwise), new paradigms for the Net (other than the text dominated standards that now apply ... maybe serious multimedia will be the go in 10 years). Producer direct to consumer e-commerce, and a whole heap of things that can't possibly be foreseen as yet. All of this (and much much more) will require an inordinate increase in the bandwidth, responsiveness, security Look at what happened to the Net in the last 15 years, and try and extrapolate it. Don't let yourself suffer from a failure of imagination > > Perhaps in telecommunications terms there is "no such thing as a > household". Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said "no such thing as > society": http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher But networks have nodes and endpoints. The sad fact of life is that the speed and performance of a network is governed by the performance of its endpoints. Just as server performance can impact the client, so can client performance impact the rest of the network in a truly pervasive Internet. And the asymmetries we have now severely limit interactions, and the possibility for 'rich' transactions between parties ... be they consumer and producer, employer and employee, dependant and parent, client or server, voter and party etc etc. The asymmetries we have now promote consumers and consumerism, rather than entrepreneurs, partners and producers. We are expected to be passive consumers sucking stuff down through the pipe, rather than producing our own content, stories and IP - because there's no way to share said IP at any reasonable data rate other than by booking space in the Cloud - and we now know know how secure, private and trustworthy that is thanks to Edward Snowden. Bottom line: We need the best most pervasive most scalable and expandable network we can get within the next 20 years ... and what's planned doesn't cut it. Not by a long shot. This is a public infrastructure thing. This can only be built by government. This should be built to a high standard, because that will maximise the resale value to shareholders when it is complete, and hence the government's returns on the project and the offsets (profit) to be made. As a prospective shareholder in 10 to 15 years time (whenever the government privatises the NBN) would you be more likely to pay a premium for a universal pervasive network that will, from Day 1, meet the country's bandwidth requirements for the next 50 to 100 years without substantial re-investment, or would you buy the fragmented (part hybrid cable-copper, part HFC, part fibre) puppy that doesn't even meet bandwidth demand when its finished, and would require the expenditure forty to fifty billion dollars to do so. Me? To minimise risk and hedge against the future, I'd go for the high standard network rather than the fragmented high maintenance hodge-podge that's being proposed. The fact that you and I are likely to be dead before the network is in place is irrelevant, as is the fact that you don't use a network or network services much now, or that you can't see that anything you do could be improved by more bandwidth and less latency. We don't matter. GenY matters. GenX matters. Our descendants matter. Like any number of problems we're leaving them with, they're the one's who'll have to deal with our (many. many, many) failures. Our parents (and grandparents) were a great generation. They fought World War 2 ... probably the only truly dichotomic war in history against a tyranny we wouldn't believe nowadays. They built heaps of infrastructure before and after the War, that we're still in the process of running into the ground. They built roads and bridges, power stations and power networks, and hospitals and schools and universities and the phone and satellite networks. They supported science and technology and the better standard of life that we now enjoy. They built ... whilst we baby boomers pretty much just used what we were given. Our generation hasn't exactly been studded with achievement. Neoconservatism, Libertarianism. Profit and Loss. Monetarism. Whatever ... Great human endeavours weren't carried out by individuals under the auspices of such myopic and self centred ideologies. They were done by governments and/or massive numbers of people working in like-minded groups, looking to the future, wanting to provide a better life for those who followed them. Nows the time to step up ... do something for our kids and their kids. And for once ... just once ... I really wish we'd do it right. Just my 2 cents worth _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
