NBN Myths Busted

[Ray?]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

No people have mentioned that telephones are going to be over the NBN and this will ensure better comunication during natural disasters.

Every time that power has failed in my area, I've pulled out the old PSTN phone and had communication, as the copper wire doesn't depend on mains power like our wireless phones and skype via computer. That's what I call redundancy.

Cheers

Ray

[supernova1965 (Warren)]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Depends.

Has your handset melted?
Cabling..above or below ground?
Was the seismic-rift big enough to snap glass, but not big enough to overly extrude copper?
Is your house under-water or just the optical fibre leading to it?

Sorry...a long bow at best

Our house has had water in it twice in the last 3 years and we lost telecomunications both times for weeks at a time and telstra refuse to fix it properly because the copper wires need to be completely replaced almost right back to the node and they refuse to fix it properly.

So I think until you understand what natural disasters others have suffered I think that you should not be so quick to ridicule what I have said. And if there had been fibre we would not have lost communications.

[Ray?]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

Our house has had water in it twice in the last 3 years and we lost telecomunications both times for weeks at a time and telstra refuse to fix it properly because the copper wires need to be completely replaced almost right back to the node and they refuse to fix it properly.

So I think until you understand what natural disasters others have suffered I think that you should not be so quick to ridicule what I have said. And if there had been fibre we would not have lost communications.

That last bit is a big call. The potential for failure always lies at the connection points, not between.

Cheers

Ray

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by supernova1965

... And if there had been fibre we would not have lost communications.

No ridicule intended.

But your supposition is incorrect. Disasters are almost always chaotic and affect complex systems in unexpected ways.

Copper is just as safe undergound as glass fibre.

Above ground, sorry, you may be thinking optical fibre and its supporting infrastructure is far more robust than that which supports plain old wires.

Even optically modulated systems need electricity. Without it, "computer (probably the cheapest ones in the tender) says no"

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

It is sad that it has reduced to an argument between uninformed people pushing their own uninformed barrows of ignorance.

A reputable poll out today had only 10% or so of those polled trusting Alan Jones and not much more for Andew Bolt... so maybe there is still hope..?

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Not sure why being deeply concerned about such massive expenditure, irrespective of the merits of the technology, should be labelled by your type as "pushing a barrow"? I guess it is, and most sensible people are always happier to put up a challenge to what could very well be recognised as reckless spending by incapable management. This doesn't seem to be a priority to the incumbent team. We apologise for putting our fiscal health before our desire to make a mark.

[AndrewJ]

Copper wire, for example, works fine under water and has done so for nearly a century. That's what formed the basis of the first submarine comminication cables across the Atlantic and Pacific.

Yep,
but when the connection to your house
is a cheap crimp in a pit in the roadside,
( vs a fully insulated, hi tech underwater proof jobby )
and rain fills the pit,
the line becomes decidedly iffy, and sometimes, stops

Andrew

[Deeno]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

A reputable poll out today had only 10% or so of those polled trusting Alan Jones and not much more for Andew Bolt... so maybe there is still hope..?

More importantly, the Prime Minister is enjoying 23%. Lets prey this insanity will end soon.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

, should be labelled by your type .

"Your type" huh..? niiice..so what "type" are you referring too exactly ?

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Yep,
but when the connection to your house
is a cheap crimp in a pit in the roadside,
( vs a fully insulated, hi tech underwater proof jobby )
and rain fills the pit,
the line becomes decidedly iffy, and sometimes, stops

Andrew

Not to mention all the copper sheath loving insects.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

"Your type" huh..? niiice..so what "type" are you referring too exactly ?

Boulder rolling astro-photographer extraordinaire.

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Boulder rolling astro-photographer extraordinaire.

...visionary!

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by strongmanmike

"Your type" huh..? niiice..so what "type" are you referring too exactly ?

Would you prefer "of your persuasion"? It's yours.

[Ray?]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

Yep,
but when the connection to your house
is a cheap crimp in a pit in the roadside,
( vs a fully insulated, hi tech underwater proof jobby )
and rain fills the pit,
the line becomes decidedly iffy, and sometimes, stops

Andrew

The reality is that the copper wire communications system has proven to be very robust over the last century. It's very simplicity makes it robust and easy to restore when failure does occur. More often than not, when we have problems lately, it's because of all the additional new stuff that's piggy-backed onto the copper system.

I'm not against high speed broadband and fbre optic, I'm just against the NBN because it has not been scrutinised openly to validate it's cost effectiveness. Most of the sales pitch supporting it's development is just hype. It's also tossing away a perfectly good communications system simply to force people onto the NBN.

Cheers

Ray

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Ah..it exists already. Telstra has a Universal Service Obligation.

The NBN business model is only viable as it requires the copper network to be be tossed in the bin via a no competition clause.

I do not have time currently to look through the rest of the thread to see if someone else answered this statement. Do you realise that the USO essentially means that Telstra has an obligation to provide you with access to a working voice phone? Everything beyond that including internet access, fax, basically anything beyond the brief of a POTS service is "Best effort" which for a whole lot of people translates to "Sorry, can't be done"


As someone in the comms game, underserved by Telstra (Because it would not be profitable enough to service me better) despite being one hour from the CBD of Melbourne, I am unreservedly FOR the NBN. Apart from anything else, twenty years or so of the profit motive has us left with a copper network which is creaking at the seams and the big T has no intent to do anything other than just keep on patching it up where it breaks down rather than doing anything about replacing it properly. To leave it up to the market means that the most lucrative areas will get the best services and everyone else can make do or move house!

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Would you prefer "of your persuasion"? It's yours.

Why do you feel the need to label specific individuals Chris? I didn't label you? Why must you make this personal? Crikey, the issues are NOT really that big ...

No biggy but fair suck of the sav, shake of the sauce bottle and pickle me grandmother

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

I'm labelling your like-minded group of politicians Mike - as they have a propensity to smugly label conservatives with some fairly tasteless and cynical terms. "Your" is a collective term in this context. If you feel that I've singled yourself out, then I apologise, because that's not the case.

As I said, I'm satisfied that the base technology would work if implemented. What more do you want? Whether it can be managed properly, we'll see. Maybe... not holding my breath though. The point that extreme proponents of the NBN are still missing is that the business case is, has and was never clearly established beyond reasonable doubt - like every other time a business case has been recently requested - only to be met with deriding and derogatory remarks and doing nothing more than neatly deflecting the question. Sheesh! No other government I know of in our recent past has ever neglected to recognise the absolute importance of providing this. "Because it's a great idea" isn't enough.

The Snowy Mountains scheme is a parallel here - and the planning that proceeded the building of this monumental, country-changing scheme was nothing short of monumental in itself. They'd put recent NBN justification efforts to absolute shame. As a side point, if I recall, Allan Jones did a pretty decent job in rallying support behind people like me who didn't want to see the Snowy scheme sold off to the Chinese for pittance.

Oh yes... and add "mooooving fooorwud" to your list...

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Actually, to your last point Chris, I would ask one question. Leaving aside wether or not to structurally seperate Telstra, leaving aside the likely stark inequality of services between "Profitable" and not so profitable areas. When the whole show is run on the profit motive, and the company which is making the most profit wants to eeke out as much profit as possible for as long as possible, while doing their best to use their market power to squeeze out competition. When the profit motive has finally led to the copper network becoming untenable, or simply incapable of supporting the services that we as a country require, who is then going to pay for a network upgrade and who is going to own it? How do you build up a dollars and cents business case on enabling actual competition in the industry rather than claytons competition where one of the "Competitors" owns the network over which most of the services are delivered and makes the lions share of the profit on those services regardless of who actually bills the end user, and makes a tidy sum on many of the rest as well (Such as ULL services where Optus, or whoever else has installed a DSLAM in your exchange and they deilver the service from that equipment, Telstra still make a profit on those services via leases for exhange space and charges for the copper lines to actually deliver the service)

As long as the main network is owned by a competitior in that market place they are always in a position to be a great gorilla in the market. What other proposal except the NBN concept removes that? Structural seperation may, but then the poor old copper network runs into the ground, managed by a seperate company and either never gets upgraded, or they put their hand out to government to help upgrade it (They tried that already pre NBN) or they charge us prices to make a more commercial rate of return on building it.

On this sort of infrastructure I actually like a quote by Terry Pratchett. the profit from government installed infrastructure that business would not have installed turns up "Spread around the community" rather than in the pocket of company shareholders.

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Whether it can be managed properly, we'll see. Maybe... not holding my breath though.

I don't think I'd be daring enough to hold my breath on that one, Chris ..
.. Did you see some of the timescales for deployment in Ferris' graphs ?

Originally Posted by Omaroo

The point that extreme proponents of the NBN are still missing is that the business case is, has and was never clearly established beyond reasonable doubt. "Because it's a great idea" isn't enough.

I agree with this point.
Unfortunately, clever business managers (in NBN) will be very capable of supporting the initial decisions with carefully selected business models, which clearly from Ferris' 'justification' points, include lavish helpings of the 'build it and they will come' justification strategies …

The technology game is all about building in accordance with an agreed business model. In this case, the existing infrastructure costs must have been inflated to compensate for Warren's point ...

Originally Posted by Supernova1965

we lost telecomunications both times for weeks at a time and telstra refuse to fix it properly because the copper wires need to be completely replaced almost right back to the node and they refuse to fix it properly.

When one has a large disgruntled workforce who refuse to do their jobs, one has a large cost burden to overcome in the business model.

If one has no solution to this problem other than rolling a truck to replace what is 'refused to be worked upon', then one might as well build in a technology which has a chance of satisfying them AND meeting future bandwidth needs.

… My (assuredly informed) 2 cents worth.

Cheers

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

I'm labelling your like-minded group of politicians Mike - as they have a propensity to smugly label conservatives with some fairly tasteless and cynical terms. "Your" is a collective term in this context. If you feel that I've singled yourself out, then I apologise, because that's not the case.

As I said, I'm satisfied that the base technology would work if implemented. What more do you want? Whether it can be managed properly, we'll see. Maybe... not holding my breath though. The point that extreme proponents of the NBN are still missing is that the business case is, has and was never clearly established beyond reasonable doubt - like every other time a business case was requested - only to be met with deriding and derogatory negativity claiming that they weren't needed and would damage the country. Sheesh! "Because it's a great idea" isn't enough.

Oh yes... and add "mooooving fooorwud"...

Well..I did see the pre edited versions of your post . Using the words "your type" has clear derogatory undertones, it's just not necessary... but no hard feelings though

Mike