David, I'm not really sure where you're getting your information on the NBN, but you seem to be missing a few facts. You are right that NBN is replacing the existing copper "last mile" network, but that's no longer a "telephone system" so calling it an upgrade to that is not appropriate. Telstra's copper phone line business is losing money year on year, as people have discarded their extra dial up lines, then moved to mobiles and disconnected their fixed line phones in favour of VOIP+Naked DSL products. I won't even begin to get into the rort that was ISDN broadband...
To address a few of your other points: On 31/12/2010, at 8:13 AM, David Lyon wrote: > Australia is the first to get Fibre Optic Phone and Internet.. This is not even remotely true. Off the top of my head I can think of Japan, South Korea, Finland, France and even the US (Verizon FiOS) who have commercially available FTTP services. Singapore is building their own FTTP NBN and no doubt others are in the works. The biggest barrier to widespread FTTP rollouts are incumbent, privately-owned telcos determined to wring every last cent out of their existing assets. Hitting the reset switch like Oz has done with the NBN is a brave move, no doubt, but ultimately it is in the best interests of consumers. Consider that Telstra, for literally 10 years crippled ADSL network performance to a maximum of 1.5Mbps, if they had been allowed to continue, we may very well have been looking at no real improvement in broadband speeds for another 10. Telstra's NBN solution, if you don't recall, was essentially to flood every suburb and street corner with a cabinet big enough for their gear only (FTTN), thus monopolising the entire DSL market in Australia - there would be no DSL broadband but through Telstra. Those in metro areas would have been worst affected, as these are the areas in which providers like TPG, iiNet, Optus, Internode, etc all operate their own ADSL gear and thus offer plans which, until very recently, have been at least $20-30/month cheaper than the equivalent Telstra broadband plan. > > Is it not a reasonable expectation for us to ask to be included in > something that might be a worldwide hit? Ask whom to be included in what exactly? > > or are we just being used as a test case by overseas manipulators > who know we will buy something blindly, test it, and then let them > go sell it once we have payed to debug the system... There's not really anything to debug on the hardware side - the technology is mature and off the shelf in nature. Why waste time and money trying to reinvent the wheel? As a taxpayer, I'd rather the NBN utilise the most cost-effective gear available, rather than trying to brew up some solution of our own in the name of protectionism. > > In 25 years time.. will Australia be selling Fibre Optic telephone > and Broadband upgrade solutions around the Globe? You seem to be under the impression that the NBN is something other than a massive (MASSIVE) civil works project. The bulk of the expense is going to be in the labour required to roll out the hardware. The fact that there is huge demand for people who can drive trucks and operate earthmoving equipment in the mines means that the longer we wait, the more danger there is of cost overruns due to a wages blowout. In terms of the actual end user connections, there are plenty of datacomms and electrical tradies out there who can learn to do this work, it's not rocket science. In short, there's very little R&D to be done in this area, so very little IP that can be monetised. Expertise in managing large scale brownfield FTTP rollouts might be able to be capitalised on by consulting on network design, but again, this is more of a civil works than a technical problem area. Outside of the NBN though, Australia is doing some great, dare I say world-beating, research in the optical switching and optical computing field, which is already well supported by the Aus Govt through the ARC. http://cudos.org.au/index.php The best place I think to be looking for opportunity is conceiving and developing applications (either software or hybrid projects with plug and play hardware) that are only possible with 50Mbps++ connection speeds. Bonus points if it can be geographically contained within the AU network (preferable due to speed, latency and international transit costs) Cheers, Warren -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
