Australia's $44B Broadband Network May Settle For Fiber Near the Home 229
Garabito writes "In April 2009, Australia's then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, dropped a bombshell on the press and the global technology community: His social democrat Labor administration was going to deliver broadband Internet to every single resident of Australia. It was an audacious goal, not least of all because Australia is one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth. ... So now, after three years of planning and construction, during which workers connected some 210 000 premises (out of an anticipated 13.2 million), Australia's visionary and trailblazing initiative is at a crossroads. The new government plans to deploy fiber only to the premises of new housing developments. For the remaining homes and businesses — about 71 percent — it will bring fiber only as far as curbside cabinets, called nodes. Existing copper-wire pairs will cover the so-called last mile to individual buildings."
Fuck you Rupert Murdoch! (Score:4, Insightful)
Rich prick didn't like the idea of losing his total control of media, so began a relentless attack of the previous government using the current media he has at his control. All sorts of brainwashing techniques were used. It worked.
We had a chance and we blew it.
Re:Not an issue, provided... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is infrastructure for the future of the nation. We are paying for this now to last the next fifty to a hundred years just like the copper network has. The issue is not that it will provide a service that is 'fine'. The issue is that what is provided relies on a slow, outdated and highly degraded copper network. The copper network in australia is almost at the brink of failure, network engineers have described it as non-repairable. The new Government wants to save a few million dollars now by installing fiber to the node only, unfortunately this is going to cost billions of dollars ion the near future when we have to rip up all the old fiber connections to the nodes and re-run fiber to replace copper.
Yes the solution may be fine now for most Australians, getting a full 10-22 meg broadband service will let most people "record a handful of HDTV-channels at once, surf the web or watch YouTube videos on 3-4 computers at once", However in ten or twenty years what kind of bandwidth requirements will we have? I know twenty years ago I was happy with 56 kbps dialup... now I shudder at the thought of that kind of bandwidth.
Re:Fuck you Rupert Murdoch! (Score:5, Insightful)
What killed the National Broadband Network as a progressive fibre-based infrastructure project was the politicisation of a technical project. The Parliament (not the Government), having decided to do the project should have allocated the money to the project for the next ten years, got the **** out of the way, and stayed there. However, at the time we had a corrosive opposition party that saw an opportunity to pester an internally fragile, and later minority, government. They could not let cheap political points lie for the greater good. That they had the help of certain vested commercial interests is not surprising, but that was only possible while the political division continued. Had the same politcial effort been put into constructive endeavours aimed at furthering the project we would still have a fibre-to-the-home network project, that was not in danger of being canned entirely (my prediction), and Murdoch and the shock-jocks would have been neutered.
Re:Don't they have an fiber to the node cable netw (Score:3, Insightful)
The current governments plan is to obey the order of Fox not-News boss Rupert Murdoch. That is stop broadband. So first step, stop new FTTH services, so they are only carrying out existing contracted services. Next step FTN, well, they are not going to do it, quite simply they are going to spend the next three odd years talking about doing it and then of course just prior to the next election change their minds and go back to FTTH, they really truly promise (After setting is place as many obstructions as possible).
Just to muddy up the waters, they intend to buy the incumbents rotting copper network after renting the conduits in which it resides initial for running fibre optic and no of course for nothing, that purchase is just a quick back hander for, well, no one is telling. A glaring example of the mismanagement the guy they put in charge of the NBN was the douche nozzle who got fired for losing so many customers after raising the monthly charge by $10 and dropping the cap from 20GB to 3GB and then telling his customers he only raised the price by 20% and trying to force the continuation of existing contracts, all under the protection of the same political party that is now killing the NBN.
So FTN will consist of;
Discussing FTN
Designing FTN
Tendering FTN
Discussing the FTN Tenders
Redesigning FTN
Re-Tendering FTN
Next Election - FTN sucks we promise to do FTTH.
As a bonus for Fox not-News corp the current government is also looking to destroy the public broadcaster the ABC http://www.abc.net.au/ [abc.net.au]. Why does Rupert Murdoch hate broadband Fox not-News number one on cable and number 36 on the internet also Myspace as a glaring example of their inability to adapt to the internet. So Australia finally managed to get Fibre Optic Internet going only to have it killed by a corrupt government at the behest of a single corporation and months of the worst examples of biased news political coverage. JFC why haven't you locked up that bastard yet?