[snip] >> ... Don't let yourself suffer from a failure of imagination > Proposing more bandwidth does not take a lot of imagination. What takes > imagination is coming up with credible uses for high speed broadband, or > at least ones where someone is willing to pay for. How do you reconcile that statement with what happens anywhere genuinely fast connections are available, and people subscribe to them like mad?
Others have asked this, Tom, and you dodge it as irrelevant: why do you consider fixed-mobile broadband to be an exclusive-or decision? If it's from your personal usage, it's an anecdote rather than evidence. > >> ...high standard network rather than the fragmented high maintenance >> hodge-podge that's being proposed. ... > What I proposed was to run fibre run down each suburban street, with a > pico-cell (about the size of a loaf of bread) on an electricity pole for > every six homes. Those who wanted could have FTTN or FTTH from the same > fibre, provided they were willing to pay the installation cost. I'll ask again: from what we know now that the new government's policy is public, the "huge" savings from a node deployment are relatively trivial. Why should an incremental benefit be sought at excremental cost? And look at the trade-offs. The picocell model offers: 1. Bandwidth shared with neighbours 2. A poor security model 3. An energy efficiency penalty (since wireless is, expressed as energy per unit of data transferred, wildly wasteful) As for "let the customer pay", I'll leave that alone because it's politics rather than networks or economics. RC > >> The fact that you and I are likely to be dead before the network is >> in place is irrelevant ... > It should not take more than a decade to put in place high speed > broadband, which I hope is within my lifetime. > >> Our generation hasn't exactly been studded with achievement. ... > Australia now has free Internet access in public libraries, which is an > achievement. A new goal could be to provide post-secondary education, up > to a bachelors degree level, free on-line, to all citizens. Most > students would still have to go to a campus for part of their education > and pay some fees, but could do some vocational certificates and degrees > completely on-line for free. We could invite others in our region to > join our students on-line, for a modest fee. While this is not quite the > same as fighting a world war, or tunnelling the Snowy Hydro Scheme, it > would be a worthwhile goal in cultural and economic terms. > > _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
