

Australian fibre network business plan summary released - jackvalentine
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/11/nbn-business-plan-summary-released/

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grovulent
It's an important issue... I think it's success or failure will define the
discussion over government involvement in infrastructure for decades to come.

Thank god for politicians like Xenophon demanding some transparency to the
process. Whatever you might think about the merits of the plan itself, the
government's handling of the discussion has been amateur at best - shady at
worst.

As for the plan - my prediction (for what it's worth, and that's not very
much): the network will either ruin the business case for the deployment of
the newer tech that comes along in the next 10 years, or will be made
redundant by such developments. Honestly, massive 10 year infrastructure plans
in the telco/tech sector is just asking for fail.

They should have only mandated the plan for country areas and left the better
economies of scale in the cities do the job for them. Here in Sydney I already
get 12mb plus. Yet my connection is still being forced onto the new fibre?
What for? That's just wasted expenditure.

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jackvalentine
> Yet my connection is still being forced onto the new fibre? What for? That's
> just wasted expenditure.

That would be creating a baseline of availability. People would scream bloody
murder if you were told "no we will not provide you with capability for the
future as your current capability is fine for what you need it for now".

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grovulent
Not sure I understand the point. How does anyone know what their usage habits
are going to be like in 10 years time? That's part of what I mean by the
government framing the debate so poorly. If they are stupid enough to set a
benchmark of what the future shall be like - then it's their own fault if
people start complaining that what they are being offered doesn't match that
benchmark.

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jackvalentine
No idea what you mean. They're setting a benchmark of an expandable fibre
connection to 93% of Australia. How can you spin that as bad? As for usage:
more. Technology use always expands to fill capacity.

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Nick_C
Personally, I'm all for it because of Moore's Law. Particularly because we
seem to be approaching a plateau (he says hesitantly) in hardware growth that
may invalidate it for hardware, but we've only just started the exponential
spurt in network, connectivity and bandwidth increases that proves it for
networking.

Imagine the ability to connect to anyone in the country from anywhere at
100Mb/s. Imagine the apps and cloud stuff that currently is infeasible but
won't be then. We are already at the conjunction of the browser _being_ the
app and this bandwidth speed will help that. Imagine apps that we just can't
imagine right now because we're constrained to 1.5Mb/s thinking.

I think this will be the equivalent to communications that was the hugely
expensive push of rail networks from the US East coast across to the West
coast proved to be. Hugely expensive at the time, and cheap in comparison to
the benefits in hindsight.

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jackvalentine
Some more coverage here: [http://www.theage.com.au/business/nbn-bill-to-come-
in-7b-che...](http://www.theage.com.au/business/nbn-bill-to-come-
in-7b-cheaper-20101124-186vn.html)

Even though this is a predominantly American dominated site, I thought it
might be interesting to discuss such a bold public infrastructure project.
Especially now since $1.0AUD = $0.98USD which makes cost comparisons a bit
easier.

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yagibear
The summary still doesn't provide any pricing information. A rough estimate:
Paying back $27B over 14 years (2020-2034) is about $2B p.a. (ignoring
interest!) & with about 20M Australians = $100 p.a. per capita earnings for
NBN Co. Pretty ambitious for a wholesaler, but perhaps possible for a
monopoly.

