WiMax
It annoys me no end that the federal government is obstructing Telstras fibre roll out (via the ACCC) because of competition concerns. And it annoys me even more that the ALP wants to spend our money rolling out fibre (essentially to give Telstra and others a free ride). All of this is driven by an unfounded panic about the viability of broadband within a free market competitive framework.
As a communications technology fibre is fantastic. However installing fibre to the node still leaves a copper bottleneck from the node to the home. And the ALP is looking at a solution that only delivers data at 12Mbit/s. We routinely get 10Mbit/s today across the pay TV cable network, and it could deliver vastly more if we had a need for it.
Most significant however is that within a few years there will be multiple competitors deliverying broadband via alternatives that completely bipass the copper and cable infastructure entirely. Wireless is the way of the future and any fibre based solution is going to face stiff competition. The wireless trend for the residential and small business market niche is a protocol called WiMax. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the technology:-
In practice this means that in line-of-sight environments you could deliver symmetrical speeds of 10Mbps at 10km but in urban environments it is more likely that 30% of installations may be non-line-of-sight and therefore users may only receive 10Mbps over 2km. WiMAX has some similarities to DSL in this respect, where one can either have high bandwidth or long reach, but not both simultaneously. The other feature to consider with WiMAX is that available bandwidth is shared between users in a given radio sector, so if there are many active users in a single sector, each will get reduced bandwidth. However, unlike SDSL where contention is very noticeable at a 5:1 ratio (if you are sharing your connection with a large media firm for example), WiMAX does not have this problem. Typically each cell has a whole 100Mbps backhaul so there is no contention here. In practice, many users will have a range of 2-, 4-, 6-, 8- or 10Mbps services and the bandwidth can be shared. If the network becomes busy the business model is more like GSM or UMTS than DSL. It is easy to predict capacity requirements as you add customers and additional radio cards can be added on the same sector to increase the capacity.
With the near unlimited ability to recycle spectrum capacity within cellular wireless technology there is going to be no lack of bandwidth options. The government should let Telstra get on and build it’s fibre network and move the political focus onto something more important. If the government stays out of the way nobody is going to monopolise access to the information superhighway.
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‘The government should let’- a lot of things alone, but it aint going to happen soon! There are votes in them there gadgets, and the powers-that-bedazzle are going to squeeze every last vote out of them!
The only way to stop govmints misusing taxdollars is to starve them to death. No taxes ever! Let them learn to live on, and like, voluntary fees. Keep governments small, and they’ll stay good, tame pets. Don’t let them turn into Cujoes!
The government will only stay out of the way if it is so smalll, it won’t dare to tackle anything. And monopolies are government specialties- they even try to monopolise opinions- ‘We will now all hate drugs!’
The future fund seems to be ripe for plunder. It would seem simpler to just take away the allocated pensions of all the public servants and given them a genereous top up in their private superannuation accounts as compensation.
Telecommunications regulations are to be reviewed in 2009. Still a fair way off.
The friggen nerve that taxeaters have a better retirement plan that regular workers.
In a way I find it ironic that the socialists want to raid the coffers of their taxeating brothers and sisters retirement.
The Rudd proposal is horrendous. The governments plan is not equally bad though, not by any stretch.
The little ex-mid level public sevant actually thinks he’s gonna become a silicon valley executive. What a stupid little dick he is.
We could end up spending $5 billion and in the mean time wireless could actually make huge advances. Who knows where tech ends up with this. Telstra at one stage thought it was gonna be mostly wireless.
You now have the telcos and the Packer types sucking up to him seeing they see a great deal. There’s one born every minute .. and we’re about to elect one. What a sucker. It will also be a gravey train for the union hacks bleeding the thing for all its worth.
Dead shittery never ends. it just gets replanted in the ALP with every generation.
Fair dinkum, you blokes take this stuff far too seriously.
The ALP proposal is intended to impress the punters. Punters are people who don’t know that much about the internet but know it’s a “good thing”. They are the people who think computers in schools are important and “no child should be left behind”. They are all in favour of the government paying for it, long as it’s not with increased taxes. They decide the outcome of elections.
When (not if) the ALP wins the federal election, the ALP will do “something” to ensure broadband is widely available. It won’t do it with the Future Fund if it can avoid it, because the public servants whose superannuation is tied to the fund are mostly Labor voters. It won’t increase taxes. It won’t do anything that makes it look like a bunch of hopeless dreamers. It will be entirely pragmatic.
My guess is it will look for public private partnerships of various kinds. That might mean tickling the tummies of a few telcos that donate to the party, but the job will get done mostly by the private sector with the ALP claiming the credit. It will be similar to the Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cover Tunnel in Sydney.
It’s not ideal from a free market perspective, but it won’t be a descent into marxist fundamentalism. It will be mostly private sector, with a bit of public, and too much regulatory intrusion. Pretty much what the Liberals are into these days.
So chill out. Until the LDP is in the position where it can set the agenda, the difference between the ALP and Liberals is mainly rhetoric.
David
The big difference is that the Libs at least try to control things through regulation. Not saying that a good thing by any stretch, but they don’t pony up the cash.
I think Kev is actually serious about this stuff.
Look, if he does it his own back through the silly future fund, the remaining telstra stock will take off like a rocket and i would guess the socialists would want that because it disgusises what they took out.
Telstra owns the last bit of wire to the home. They are still in the drivers seat compared to the other telcos. This would favour them more than anyone else.
Take the fact that they no longer have to spend the big bucks foroptic cable but have the advantages of owning the last bit of wire and the stock will have to reprice for all the advantages it will accrue without the associated costs.
Rudd will do this deal if he gets the levers.
It’s a rotten deal for the public, but it sure favours telstra. This could put a few bucks in the stock price.
If the punters are reading the ALS blog then they know enough about the internet to get this far. And hopefully if they disagree with the thrust of the argument then maybe they will engage in discussion.
In any case over 15% of Australians have broadband already and over 70% have Internet access, so the idea that this is a product that people only have some vague awareness of is not really an accurate characterisation.
Nobody mentioned marxist fundamentalism. However if that is the benchmark you want to use then we can all just shuffle off and stay silent about the direction of politics in Australia.
“And it annoys me even more that the ALP wants to spend our money rolling out fibre (essentially to give Telstra and others a free ride).”
Somehow I don’t think that’s what will happen. The ALP have been harping on about how determined they are that this won’t damage the future fund. I take this to mean that they’re going to continue dipping their hands into the cookie jar in future, and just charge monopolistic rates to use their lines so the fund keeps replenishing itself at the expense of the broadband consumer.
Also, if this “It will be similar to the Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cover Tunnel in Sydney.” doesn’t set alarm bells off in everyone’s head I don’t know what will.
I am engineer working on wireless technologies, very similar to WiMax.
I realise that instead of marketing an appealing technology and obtaining a massive consumer base, its much easier to build a 2nd rate technology and spend more time lobbying the government and media to purchase infrastructure and technology from my company.
I’m happy enough that the Government has now announced its response to Labors $5 billion fibre to the node plan and has included this argument about fostering a more competitive environment using WiMax wireless technology. Although the fact that the government seems equally willing to splash about cash and pick winners is hardly to be praised in anything other than political terms.
WiMax and it’s likely progeny will change the competitive landscape. Wireline services will soon start to face the competitive presures that have long existed in the mobile phone market and all telecommunications consumers will ultimately win. The time is coming when the bridle should come of Telstra. Nearly 15 years after the former ALP government brought an end to the old Telecom monopoly the market in voice and data services should now operate free from price controls and the subsidies should be reined in.
The 7.30 Report were trying to defend the ALPs plan. Wi Max will be obselete! The ALP plan will compatible with copper forever!
Did they stop and think that copper is obselete?
Copper is not obsolete. Technical innovations like digital TDM in the 1970s and ADSL in recent years continue to squeeze more and more out of copper and go way beyond what anybody expected when we started deploying the stuff a century ago. ADSL2 has just hit the scene and I won’t be shocked to see an ADSL3 protocol in a few years time.
Fibre is a fantastic technology but the simple economics of hiring earth moving equipment and digging up streets versus smarter modulators built on integrated circuits and bolted onto legacy phone lines will mean that we continue to squeeze more and more out of copper. And once technologies like WiMax start to overlay a truely competitive alternative we will suddendly see copper doing all manner of new tricks to stay in the game. The death of copper has been announced far too many times.
The future will be faster. But the future will be a hybrid internetwork of fibre, wireless and copper. The “Internet” long ago proved that quests for hetrogeneous infrastructure solutions at the physical layer are unnecessary and misguided.
I did not see the 7:30 report but claims that WiMax will be obsolete due to fixed infrastructure such as fibre are also extremely foolish. Wireless is so much more versatile and mobile WiMax would find a ready market even if the ALP put fibre to every house in the country and gave it away for free. WiMax is also likely to have a massive market in nations that have traditionally had poor telecommunication provisioning and this mass market will rapidly shrink the cost of WiMax technology. Of course other wireless protocols will compete but only a few have the momentum that WiMax enjoys.
You said it better than me. If copper can be made more efficienct, why not WiMax?
WiMax seems more viable for all communications. Canada went the right way with their telephone network, as I am led to beleive much of Nortel Network is run via satellite?
I fully expect a debate in 5 years time about how access to “mobile” broadband in the bush is not up to scratch and how our friends in the bush are getting left behind. All this in spite of the fact that the bush has never been more connected to the world.
Traditionally Satellite has been best suited for broadcast although LEOs will change the nature of these things. You can already get Globalstar mobile satellite coverage across 100% of Australia. In fact that has been the case for nearly a decade. And it costs little more than a regular mobile service except the handsets are a little pricey.
I’ve been reading the Elders and Optus announcements about their joint venture. It’s a real pork barrel.
The government will put in almost a billion dollars to bring ADSL2+ and WiMax to rural and regional areas, including metropolitan outskirts. The companies claim they will contribute roughly the same except only $200 million will be cash. The rest is “kind”. I know how that works – you price all your staff at full rates and charge for every waking minute.
Optus and Elders then get to collect both retail and wholesale rent for the use of the services that taxpayers largely funded.
About the only good thing about it is that Telstra is hopping mad and will inevitably improve its own service (or lower the price) so there might be some competition.
It won’t be true high speed either, although it will be faster than satellite (which is only about 256K).
What is true high speed? The government says that WiMax will deliver 12Mbit/s. The OPEL crowd seem to be claiming 6Mbit/s. Either way that is comparable to Cable. And WiMax may well deliver 75Mbit/s to some people who are closer to the transmitter. Also this will only be the first version of WiMax and we can expect more bandwidth in later evolutions of the protocol (ie basically after some later network software upgrades). Thats what happened with WiFi speed and there is no reason to think WiMax won’t be much the same.
I agree that it’s pork. It seemed pretty predictable that the government would match pork with pork. It is also essentially picking technology winners which is what the ALP did with GSM and the Liberals previously did with ISDN (so sad) in the late 1990s. One gets the sence that the government would like to win the next election and has decided symbolism matters.
The following article discusses a real world deployment of WiMax on the Isle of Man.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/wimax-works-a-treat-on-isle-of-man/2007/06/20/1182019202455.html
Extract:-
I currently use Skymesh which is a wireless system and find it very good and reliable. This was the only option available to me as the phone lines would not support broadband. Even in the town some people use this as it gives a better service.