Andrei.Hicks wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 10:44am:


Broadband will never reach rural areas with such a policy, which is clearly demonstrated by our pre-NBN days.

This is a case where government must make neccessary infrastructure investments where private ($$$ based) wont happen.

A very similar analogy as roads. Country roads are not economically as useful as city roads, yet we still build them.

longweekend58 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 11:45am:


ADSL2 is not suitable for two reasons:
1) Is low bandwidth compared to NBN
2) Suffers from severe degredation in performance when distance from exchange to house exceed 1 or 2 km (so not suited to rural)


ADSL2 also uses copper, not fibre, thereby only a stopgap measure at best.

Doctor Jolly wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 12:06pm:


I used to have Optus cable. I now have Telstra ADSL2. I can't tell the difference between them despite the former being mathematically superior. There are two reasons for this;

1) 99% of my Internet usage is using google, email, youtube, online banking, social media, etc, as well as the background updates that happen such as by Windows, antivirus downloads. In other words, I am never pushing my net connection to the limit. Even if my Internet connection dropped to half speed I would still surf the net without noticing the drop off. ADSL2 is very fast for normal every day Internet usages.
2) 90%+ of my Internet usage these days is done on the laptop or iPad. The Internet speed to my house could increase by a million, it ain't getting to my device any faster than the wifi will let it. I'm willing to bet that an ever growing percentage of people are using the net from wifi devices these days, making out right net speed irrelevant.

How many people in Australia actually need anything faster than ADSL2 or the cable connection they already have?

I want to be clear that this isn't an aggressive negative post bashing the NBN. It is just after all these months of hearing how fast the NBN is I am still failing to see how it will be of any advantage to the greater percentage of the population. Internet speed much like CPU speed was all the rage at the turn of the millenium. These days I don't think most people care as they don't even use what they have to the max anymore.

Quantum wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 12:47pm:


I think  you'll find that CPU speed is still ramping along very quickly.  Even phones are coming with quad-core processors these days.

ADSL2 (if you are lucky enough to be near an exchange) is good for most surfing activities now, but as you know the data consumed by users increases every year.  What is good now, will not be good enough in 5 to 10 years. In fact, hopelessly outdated by then.
Even now, on cable or ADSL2, watching standard video is still hit and miss. And we have HD video, and 3-D video almost locked out of the IP space due to home connection speeds.

That, really is the tip of the iceburg.

Doctor Jolly wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 12:55pm:


No doubt. But most people don't care. Even an old core 2 will still run windows 8 and the latest office without any problem. There isn't the need to upgrade anymore to use normal everyday software. There isn't the need to update every couple of years like there was in the late 90's. Most people just keep using the old computer as the advantages of new hardware is diminishing for everyday use. Most 5 year old quad cores don't get used to a fraction of their full potential if one is just using it for office work.

Quote:


Future proofing seems fair enough. But just like how Optus went around Sydney putting up fiber optic cable everywhere in the mid-nineties, would not something similar happen in the future? If the demand is there someone will supply it. Probably not to rural areas, so I can see the need for the NBN (or something like it) there, but the whole country?

Dsmithy70 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 12:51pm:


FTTN is fibre to the NODE. the coalitions plan is expansive fiber to many thousands of nodes. and nodes are like those dalek like things u see on the streets already - just there will be more of them.

longweekend58 wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 8:36am:



I have no problem with right wing media.....News Ltd however have sunk to the bottom of the barrel and have spawned a culture that cannot be trusted.....Why am I not surprised you missed the point completely???

salad in wrote on Feb 28^th, 2013 at 6:45pm:


Doug Cameron is an Australian citizen and Nick Bolkus was born in Adelaide.....Just so you know!!!