I just read this article by Gareth Parker at The West. This article sparked a series of comments which pretty much sums up that a lot of people who are commenting and voting down the idea of a national broadband network have limited idea about its actual benefits, or why people support it.
I’m not even sure the NBN is the right choice, but there is a need for improved infrastructure and it should be taken seriously if this country is actually going to continue progressing at an acceptable rate. I don’t know if Labor are proposing it based on the reasons here, but this is my take.
Gareth describes the NBN as a “nerd’s wet dream”. Commenters claim “why would I want to download a movie in 10 seconds”, “how fast do you need to access a web page”, “my son already uses up his bandwidth quick enough”, “We don’t even need the Internet”. People actually insult other people who have an interest in a better Internet solution for Australia.
Sure there’s a lot of education to be done here for those people, but lets look at it logically from a today-forward point of view.
Most homes I visit have at least 1 computer. The average in my social circle (which is probably a fair representation moving forward) is a family computer, a business laptop, maybe a laptop for a child, Internet enabled phones, and a games console (maybe foxtel too). And that’s today. 6 or 7 Internet-enabled devices, right now.
I would imagine in the next 5 years, the average number of Internet enabled devices will at *least* double. The content distributed down onto those devices will increase tremendously with HD content, updates, human behaviour. So how does all of that operate all at once on your “Lite” ADSL plan. It doesn’t. Not even close.
Maybe they can get more out of the faltering copper network. Maybe they can patch up the system and stop going in to exchanges and manually switching ports to solve customer complaints ad-hoc. There’s not a lot more to gain out of that crusty network. And then what? Keep revisiting this issue every year for the next 15 years?
So, is $43bn the answer? I’m not sure. Is fibre-optic the answer? I believe so. This is a valid issue, just like every other being debated. I just hope the right people start debating it soon and come up with the answers to spend the money to get on track.
Tags: national broadband network, nbn
There’s no doubt the infrastructure the NBN proposes is needed for Australia to be at the forefront of technology in the next 10-20 years. Whether or not NBN Co. is the correct solution or not is a completely different (and big) issue.
I just can’t see that infrastructure being built any other way inside the next 5 years, so if NBN Co. is the only option then I say full steam ahead.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Perth Web News, Adam Fitzgerald. Adam Fitzgerald said: My blog post on NBN/infrastructure – http://bit.ly/azlaWm [...]
Agree to a point…if the government never sold telstra we wouldnt be having this nbn discussion
The NBN is essentially a new telstra in my mind
What really ****** me off about the NBN is:
1-its become a political platform
2-the ads are ******, hello everyone, you can video conference someone on the other side of the country RIGHT NOW on your PHONE…the ads they have which are essentially telepresence are ridiculous, everything they’ve advertised is achievable right now using free tools
3-having 2 or 10mb/sec vs 100mb/sec will make zero difference to the load speed of a typical web page load time when youre downloading a 100k page
4-there’s been no mention of backhaul or intercountry links…sure, give everyone 100mb/sec from home, that’s great, who’s going to pay for isps to have 10tb/sec out to the rest of the internet
5-quit comparing the price of broadband in australia to other countries – australia has one of the least dense populations in the world so obviously its going to cost more to get internet to everyone, cost is not directly proportional to speed, there are other considerations such as reach and population distribution
6-you cant have an nbn discussion without talking about web filtering, on one hand the government is forking out 43$ bn for faster internet, on the other hand, its investing in web filtering – maybe the nbn is being built to counter the slowdowns caused by the web filtering?
/rant off