by Jimboot on August 30, 2010
Yesterday we had more comment both politically and from the industry on the NBN. Whilst none of us know what the outcome of this election is yet, Senator Stephen Conroy is right about at least one thing. Anthony Wong, President of the ACS followed me at the podium at Cebit in Sydney this year. He told the audience that Senator Stephen Conroy had said to him (paraphrasing) that, this election Australians will really care about technology. Well he was right. Maybe that is because the two issues that have most Australians interested about technology are ones that come from his portfolio. I don’t think it’s quite going the way he had hoped though.
Yesterday, John Linton a Director of Exetel, discussed in his blog, that wireless was very important as so many residences were moving away from fixed line.
This is one of the reasons I don’t understand why we aren’t talking more about freeing up the spectrum. With more and more of us being mobile, ask yourself where you need a fixed line? For me obviously at the office and at home because 3G doesn’t give me the speed I want. However I primarily work wirelessly. So whilst FTTH is great, the majority of the population don’t want a fixed line. They do not want a router they have to configure and reboot. They want “Apple” bandwidth. You switch it on and you’re connected.
The NBN is Infrastructure
The NBN is infrastructure right? Some are even saying it is a human right. Let’s consider how this would work then. Many have written that it is best the NBN stays in public hands and there seems to be a variety of opinions on the scope of the network. Obviously the major business centres need to have the best fixed bandwidth solution available. A scalable fibre solution from my understanding is the best bet. The major centres also need incredible wireless access. SMartphones, netbooks, ipads etc, not to mention future proofing for in car IP devices as well. If we’re serious about business we need to consider free wireless all over the city. That would attract business as well as making it easier to do business. My understanding is that we couldn’t do this with a Telstra because they were the wholesaler. As they controlled the network and the costing model it was always cost prohibitive to do something like that. I pay my taxes like I do to use the roads. I want to use the NBN. It’s forever loss making so access should be essentially free as long as I pay my taxes, water rates etc. That means no ISPs. Ever Again. It’s infrastructure right? I’m just passing through your town, I’ll need to use your roads, plumbing and wifi.
Get rid of the telcos & ISPs
Every business that let’s me use it’s electricity like lights etc should also let me use wifi. The business has already paid for the electricity so I can use it. Of course we’ll have to move away from our current costing model that suggests there is some inherent value in a megabyte and how many of them you have. That’s just traffic. Pricing should be based like highways. The more trucks you have the more registrations you pay. Bigger tubes = more $. When more capacity is needed we build bigger highways but because they are public they are not tollways. The ISP model is more comparable to a tollway where you pay for how much you use. A public NBN will allow us to be the most networked country in our region. Business will boom where there is free wireless access. I will come to your shopping mall because you give me free high speed bandwidth.
So everyone ok with scrapping the ISP industry?
Wimax for the last mile
Industrial areas would need good bandwidth from a fibre backbone and the surrounding residential estates could use the bandwidth in non-business hours, at night and weekends. Residential could connect with Wimax to the local industrial/commercial nodes. A few towers around the neighborhood should do. Maybe the odd repeater for black spots. This will cover the last mile to residential but Industry & commerce will be on the fibre backbone. We can put voice over this too. Compression is getting better and better. Do we really need telcos as well? Our major freeways we should have free wifi as well. For our satnav, gaming, mobile business applications like sales reps, transport etc. This would see an amazing increase in productivity. Online all the time and if you are wireless it’s free of course. Just like the street lights are free.
So no ISPs and no Telcos. I really cant see the need for these middle men. Maybe just some regional authorities administering access…. and let’s give everyone an Internet user license number too so we can make sure you’re allowed to use the bandwidth.
