Despite being announced
three years ago, many Australians still have little idea what the NBN actually is. This coupled with some of the
worst media coverage of anything,
well, ever plus a raft of politicians and commentators saying things
about it which are disingenuous or simply not true has led to the
primary discussion surrounding it focusing on who said what. Today we're
ignoring the politics and reviewing the NBN as though it were a new
television or a phone: rating it according to performance, features and
value.
If you hold the common misconception that the NBN is simply an
expensive way of accessing web pages and YouTube videos faster, then
this is the article for you. We'll deal with the general benefits of
super-fast broadband, the technologies that deliver it and the cost of
delivery. There's also a lengthy section addressing common criticisms
and alternatives that you can gloss over or skip to as desired.
What is the National Broadband Network
The NBN is an infrastructure which provides the vast majority of
Australians with super-fast, ubiquitous, future-proof broadband coverage
which brings with it vast benefits to business, existing infrastructure
and society in general.
It will cost $38bn with $27bn of that being a tax payer investment
(i.e. the tax payers will get that money back) with the rest coming from
private investors.
At its simplest, NBN replaces Australia's copper network with fibre optic cable. There are a few reasons for doing this:
- The current copper network is old and rotting.
- The vast performance benefits of fibre cater for the massive
increase in broadband traffic that will outstrip the performance
limitations of copper and wireless within the next several years whilst
also providing a future-proofed infrastructure which will last in to the
next century. It is also far more resilient and chemically stable than
copper and costs a fraction to power and maintain. This has made it the
obvious choice for copper replacement the world over.
- Replacing copper with fibre brings with it wide-reaching social
benefits and huge efficiencies to existing infrastructures (health,
education, power distribution etc) plus enormous potential for
businesses of all sizes.
- The current copper network is overwhelmingly owned by Telstra (which
is a competitor to the industry it supplies copper to) and this has
created a monopoly. NBN Co (the government-owned company that will
roll-out the fibre) will not compete with its customers: the carriers
and ISPs that it will supply. This would resolve a long-standing problem
with the structure of Australia's telecommunications industry. All
retailers should, in theory, have a level playing field.
Performance
There are three flavours of NBN. 93 per cent of Australian premises
will be connected with fibre while more-rural and truly-remote locations
will be serviced by fixed wireless and satellite connections. We'll
deal with each separately.
1. Fibre optic
In terms of raw speed there's no other choice. Off the bat it offers
fast upload and download speeds at 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s) in
each direction and can easily be upgraded to 1Gb/s (10x faster) just by
upgrading the electronics at either end of the line. Last year,
scientists managed to transmit at speeds of
26 Terabits per second (that's a geeky way of saying unbelievably fast) using fibre.
Fibre also offers low latency across vast distances and a very
reliable connection. Primary broadband functions such as video
conferencing and advanced cloud technologies ideally require sub 50ms
connection delays. Beyond fibre, only the very best copper networks can
manage this.
The good news doesn't stop there. Fibre is also far more resilient than copper, which is
prone to oxidization and general rot to a large extent. Indeed, it currently costs at least $1bn every year to maintain the current copper network.
Fibre maxes out advanced-aging tests (60 years plus) and has survived intact in harsh temperature fluctuations and
real world physical abuse like mudslides with aplomb.
Two other benefits are energy consumption and "attenuation". In order
to force data signals through copper, vast amounts of electricity are
required. The signal strength also drops off rapidly (attenuates)
meaning that high ADSL speeds on copper are only
available up to a few kilometres from an exchange. This drops to
just 600m using VDSL (and
that's if you live in an area with an idyllic, new, high-quality copper
cabling infrastructure). In reality, old, damaged rotten copper
decimates performance. By comparison fibre
travels without noticeable signal degradation over tens of kilometres at a time using a fraction of the power.
With bandwidth and capacity so vastly ahead of copper, limits on data
usage evaporate. Ultimately, a fibre connection must score top marks
for its future-proof performance and is the gold standard for any
broadband infrastructure.
2. Fixed wireless
Outside of metropolitan areas (that aren't too remote) premises will
be connected using 4G-like fixed wireless connections. This is akin to
having each house in a spread-out 'town' being connected to the NBN via a
mobile phone mast. However, they're more reliable and efficient because
the two wireless end-points point directly at each other - a "wireless
wire" if you will.
In performance terms, this provides ADSL-like upload and download speeds (
initially 12Mb/s download and 1Mb/s upload) though this will move up to 25Mb/s download and 5Mb/s upload down the line. This
should be enough for most of the imminent applications and features. There
shouldn't
be issues with interference from other premises as premises will be
spread out. However, with data consumption continuing to explode in the
coming decade, it will likely feel constrictive down the line. More
importantly, however, rural dwellers have the most to gain through the
massive boosts in healthcare, education, business (and their social
lives in general) that is afforded by fast, high-bandwidth, reliable,
low-latency broadband. Wireless struggles to offer this.
Less bandwidth and tighter limits on data usage mean it's very much a
second-rate connection method. We'll deal with the issues of fixed
wireless in the NBN criticisms section below. For now though, the fact
that fixed wireless is only being deployed for half-baked accounting
reasons means the overall performance score drops two points.
Satellite
Remote dwellings, which only get access to satellite NBN, may well be
left dreaming about fixed wireless access as satellite will only allow
speeds of 6Mb/s down and 1Mb/s up (this will move to 12Mb/s down and
1Mb/s long-term). It's very much the third-rate choice of connection.
Data usage is relatively restrictive and plans more expensive -
but they are affordable.
Even so, it may well be an improvement on what's available now. Many
of the remotest communities in Australia don't have a fixed line today.
They get telephone lines through long-distance radio connections or they
already use satellites for everything.
For those who couldn't dream of having broadband before, or those who
don't actually have a fixed dwelling or who are based at sea, the NBN's
satellite connection will provide revolutionary social, business and
scientific opportunities. Being able to access basic broadband speeds in
the middle of the outback or on the Great Barrier Reef, will provide
all manner of monitoring and communication opportunities that never
existed before (mentioned below). As such, satellite NBN is generally a
big win albeit with a big asterisk next to it.
Performance score: 8/10
Features and applications
The following might sound like a glowing endorsement of a particular
government policy but it's more a description of what ubiquitous
super-fast broadband provides in principle. The network requirements are
high download AND upload speeds, plus very low (ideally sub 50ms)
latency, and high reliability regardless of the technology used.
That's according to people like the administrators of Australia's leading Telehealth department based at
Melbourne's Alfred Hospital, and
Cisco's top analyst,
Dr Robert Pepper who advises governments and telcos around the world on
current and future infrastructure requirements (and has sat on
America's FCC and the UK's OFCOM), amongst many others. The following
can all be achieved on fibre and very-high quality, short lengths of
copper. There are questions regarding the reliability and latency of
wireless connections in some instances.
Healthcare
Super-fast broadband will revolutionise healthcare for everyone,
especially the elderly and those living in rural areas. In doing so it will save so much money from
Australia's annual $120bn (and rising) health spending that it will pay for the entire build on its own. Primary benefits involve
Telehealth - the ability to
have HD video conversations with a doctor (or even world-leading specialist) just by talking to a computer or TV screen.
This provides instant triage, improves efficiency, saves time and
money, has emptied waiting rooms in trials and ultimately provides
quicker and more-efficient care to everybody. It also negates the need
for many doctor visits and ambulance journeys (which can cost several
thousand dollars per trip). It also allows many hospital bed-ridden
patients to be monitored remotely and automatically which saves
hospitals vast sums of money (around $1000 per patient per night).
Furthermore, patients get better quicker and space in hospitals is made
available more quickly for those who need it.
Seniors can avoid expensive care facilities for longer if their
health, appearance, and mobility can be remotely monitored. It's even
possible to monitor degenerative conditions by automatically checking
things like movement range - an important issue as "
Boomers"
start hitting retirement age in large numbers. Niche features like this
can also bite chunks out of the annual $500,000,000 cost of Seniors
having falls.
Add extended benefits like not having to take time off work to get
yourself (or a sick child) checked out by a GP and the savings to the
economy and productivity are enormous. There are very many more health
applications in existence and many more in development. The cost savings
and efficiency boosts are in the billions making it worth the health
service building the NBN on its own -
in some places it's already started to do so. Talking to the national leaders in
Telehealth, based at The Alfred, the prime requirements are for bandwidth (including upload speeds), latency and reliability.
Telepresence
Telepresence
allows people to appear in meetings on screen, life size, in Full High
Definition and lag free. It's already being used by some government and
business leaders but with everyone attached to fast internet the savings
become higher.
Panasonic Australia is one company that's embraced it. Executives no
longer need to travel to Japan for regular meetings with head office,
which saves the company a fortune. It also means workers don't have to
be away from their families, stay out of the office for days at a time
and it dramatically reduces travel weariness.
Last year a limited government trial found the same thing.
Government Telepresence meetings meant
public servants didn't have to travel to Canberra for days at a time
for single meetings. The initial trial saw $12,000,000 saved in 1031
meetings in travel costs in one year. One meeting, connecting 12
different locations, saw $100,600 saved in travel costs alone.
The potential for telepresence and telecommuting at all levels of
society is huge. An increasing number of people won't have to commute to
work again. Many won't have to live in cities and can live in their
favourite parts of the country - parts where the local economy, for
instance, is tourism-based like the Sunshine Coast. The knock-on effects
for regional development and metropolitan traffic (and also the
environment) are significant.
Power distribution and the Smart Grid
Cities with fibre networks have found that the ability to micromanage
power distribution has led to massive savings through efficiency and
peak-power reduction. Little work on this has been published in
Australia but the potential for power saving at distributor and customer
levels is very high - worth thinking about for both power bills and
environmental levels. There are also potential benefits for power
routing during disaster periods and a reduction in outages.
Read more here.
Education
Education is revolutionised across the board but especially for rural dwellers. We're already seeing
Australian classes interact with counterparts in Japan in live feeds.
However, the potential is vast - particularly the thought of the School
of The Air (and anyone else in the country for that matter) being
replaced by
interactive online classes plus the ability to
take degrees from the likes of
MIT and Harvard in the US while out on the farm.
A recent report also highlighted the huge benefits of broadband to
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
In terms of money, efficiency boosts and centralisation of services are likely to
save millions of dollars each year.
We'll cover this more over time.
Television
Getting access to the world's TV channels will not be a big thing to
many people, however, to rural dwellers who struggle just to access our
Free To Air channels, having access to HD TV and world-leading Video on
Demand services from all over the planet will be transformative. The
potential for TV subscription (and video on demand) business is very
high.
Another consideration is that
Ultra High Definition 4K TVs will be on sale in Australia
by the end of the year.
The only way to distribute a full resolution signal to them is with
fibre (you can't broadcast the signal using other means). The importance
of Television to Australian households will vary from person to person.
However, it's worth noting that 4K (and
possibly even 8K TVs) will be normal in Australia in the next two decades and that only fibre can hope to cope with the
bandwidth required to
transmit the signal. The question as to the importance of catering for
media consumption in future infrastructure requirements is up for debate
but it's worth remembering that the average Australian watches
two hours of television per day, has at least two TVs in a house and many are already very used to recording multiple channels while watching something else.
Telephone
Paying for line rental and landline phone calls will be a thing of
the past - all of this can be catered for by one's broadband
subscription. This will save varying amounts of money depending on
landline usage but, generally speaking, wave goodbye to your phone bill.
An illustrative example
For those who struggle to visualise new and futuristic tech-based
claims like the above, an idealised but realistic example would be as
follows. Picture a rural farmhouse where the dad is playing online poker
with his mates hundreds of kilometres away on the big screen and
talking to them like they were in the same room, while the mother has a
full high definition video call with a child travelling in Europe (for
free). At the same time another child is interacting with her professor
at an American university, while her younger brother watches movies on
demand and plays games with his online mates in the other room. An, er,
visiting cousin goes through the accounts of a client in Perth live
onscreen as part of his accountancy business. Meanwhile, granny is
asleep in her bed after recovering from a fall which sees her vital
signs being monitored, hundreds of kilometres away, for any significant
changes. In that one scenario the great Australian tyranny of distance
is decimated, standard life is transformed across the board and the
traditional costs of doing everything are slashed.
The future, now
There are many futuristic applications on the horizon like
3D printing which
are shaping up to be revolutionary - the idea of sending physical
objects over the internet might sound like Star Trek but it's already
happening. While printing a gun might sound worrying, this recent
landmark achievement illustrates the potential of a nascent industry which commentators are describing as
potentially as revolutionary as the steam train.
Another concept is the
"Internet of Things" whereby
everything communicates with everything else. A localised version is already happening in
NBN-ready Tasmania where "Sense-T" initiatives are allowing farmers to monitor crops like never before.
However, the general consensus from the techies is that we have
little idea what we'll be using the internet for in 20 years' time as
the applications haven't been invented yet.
Business
Putting a price on the business benefits is tricky, but we do know
the numbers can be huge. A fairly exhaustive Cost Benefit Analysis
attempt was created in Japan which, despite being utterly different in
so many ways, did manage to come up with a figure that equates to
around $200bn over a decade.
That study estimated that telecoms companies would see 45 per cent of
the economic boost while other industries would get the remaining 55 per
cent.
Australia's tyranny of distance exaggerates Japan's benefits considerably.
Being the backbone of how most business is conducted suggests a very high figure. IBM recently put it at
$1 trillion over the next four decades. Last year a
Deloitte study
stated that the digital economy will increase from $50bn to $70bn per
year in the next five years due to expectations from the NBN. Also a
Nielsen study found
that 93 per cent "of Australian businesses believe that participation
in the digital economy is important to their ongoing business strategy"
and 75 per cent said "National broadband infrastructure will increase
their ability to engage in the digital economy."
Another significant boost from a business point of view is the
breaking of the Telstra monopoly. Businesses across the country will be
able to offer services on the network on a
level playing field affording great innovation opportunities and competition levels which will ensure prices are low and innovation high.
Wireless broadband boosts
The massive increase in mobile internet traffic over the next several
years means that the airwaves will get congested and that data will
increasingly need to be "offloaded" onto nearby fibre networks via WiFi
to avoid blockages.
More on this here.
Ultimately, there's something for everyone provided by ubiquitous,
fast broadband with people benefitting to varying degrees depending on
where they are and what they're used to. All of the above is already
happening around the world (and in Australia to some degree) and we'll
continue to cover the applications as they emerge, develop and evolve.
Features and Applications score: 10/10
Value
Firstly, the business model of the NBN demands it pay for itself
through subscriptions. According to the Implementation Study, when it is
sold 15 years after completion, it will go for five-to-eight per cent
profit meaning the net cost of the roll out is less than zero to begin
with.
However, the NBN will also improve existing infrastructure
(particularly health and power distribution) efficiencies to the point
where the savings will pay for the entire rollout on their own.
Thirdly, the business and innovation opportunities (repeatedly
reported as being billions and trillions of dollars over the coming
decades) afforded by the platform and infrastructure will dwarf the
initial build costs.
A Cost Benefit Analysis would help clarify numbers but is huge
undertaking. Ultimately, however, what's the point? By every measure
related to the operating model, efficiency gains and business benefits
you can easily justify the $40bn investment over the coming twenty years
(and probably much quicker) even if you use cynically-negative
assumptions.
As a value proposition, this makes for a trifecta of win.
If future-oriented industries, technologies and markets are too hard
to visualise, look at recent history. Telstra was sold for $60bn and it
was primarily a telephone company - with a last-generation
infrastructure. The NBN acts as a backbone to health, education and
power infrastructures, while affording Australian businesses a
world-leading infrastructure to innovate with and conduct business upon
and will also be the main method of media distribution, communications
(internet and telephone) in addition to providing vast social benefits
and applications that we haven't actually thought of yet. Predicting a
sale value is near impossible without a formal Cost Benefit Analysis as a
guide. If you want to have a go, leave your thoughts in the comments.
Potential criticisms and alternatives
It's hard to find valid criticisms of the NBN that actually stand up
to scrutiny, but that hasn't stopped people from making them up. Let's
examine the most common recurring ones.
Wireless technologies undermine it. Utter nonsense.
The reasons have been described in great detail on many technology
sites, many times over the past two years. There are many factors
but ultimately, the laws of physics are to blame.
Wireless technologies represent ways of connecting to the wired
network, wirelessly. They complement it, they do not compete with it.
Future technologies render it irrelevant. Nonsense.
The current record for speeds across fibre is a whopping 26Tb/s and
likely to rise. There's literally nothing on the horizon that suggests
fibre might be replaced in the foreseeable future.
People hate wireless towers. Arguably the number one problem with the NBN is
the use of fixed wireless. Towns
hate the masts and
have already banned them in places for aesthetic and perceived-health
fears. The concerns over fixed wireless performance and reliability
seem to be escalating constantly.
It begs the question, if we could get copper to some of these places almost a century ago, why can't we get fibre there now?
The official reasoning is that the
Implementation Study
regards the very high cost of connecting remote, isolated dwellings as
prohibitive in the current business model: the metropolitan
cross-subsidy can't be extended far enough to connect everybody.
Spending money for the social benefits alone hasn't been entertained.
However, a Cost Benefit Analysis may well discover that associated
benefits of rural fibre connections (for example health savings like not
having to make expensive ambulance runs plus Hospital At Home
efficiencies) may make the
relatively-high cost of fibre connection worthwhile. We'll
investigate this more down the line.
The market should compete to build it, not the government.
More idealistic arguments initially appear to have legs, but these too
wither under scrutiny. The best attempt yet is to say that a government
shouldn't have to pay for such a thing. However, historically there has been no commercial market to build it (see
4 Corners)
and the potential market players (including Telstra) have all said
there's no market. Furthermore, in the UK recently a market-incentive
scheme failed miserably after two years where every non-incumbent
competitor
dropped out of the running because
there was little benefit to the companies involved. The point has
become somewhat idealistic: as witnessed in the likes of the
USA,
UK and
New Zealand,
incumbent ISPs end up with monopolies and local micro-monopolies and
overcharge customers for mediocre services with corporate revenues being
the only winner. The
head of BT , the
House of Lords and recently the
Head of New Zealand's infrastructure
all lamented not rolling out Fibre to the Home with the former saying
that Fibre to the Node-style broadband is "one of the biggest mistakes
humanity has made". Finding any examples of commercial players
(especially Telstra) creating something for social benefit without
government intervention is also problematic.
Those who despise socialism-like government spending, on principle
and to a zealot-like degree, can console themselves that what will be
left, once the government has left the party, is a level playing field
that offers dream-like levels of competition which will allow small and
large business entities alike to compete for business, innovate and
provide services that ensure consumers are offered choice and price
competition like never before (imagine there was one mobile phone
network in Australia and choosing who to go with revolved around price
and services and not the coverage foibles of your particular area). This
perhaps explains why just about every Australian technology company,
telco and ISP fully supports the NBN.
You can read more on this, here.
It takes too long to replace all the copper. There's
no technical argument against this as every individual will have a
different level of impatience. The timeframe argument has recently
condensed into a "it's better to implement a lesser solution now (which
will still need to be replaced) that relies upon using some existing
infrastructure and which offers potentially faster-than-current speeds
(but no future proofing), than to build a whole new network from
scratch." However, this is best discussed when a fully-formed
alternative is on the table. In the meantime, if this is a concern, it's
worth reading about Cisco's projections for continued skyrocketing
growth of data requirements and speeds on both wired and wireless
networks and how the existing copper and wireless infrastructure will be
physically struggling with congestion in as little as four years. It's
also worth noting that the
Harbour Bridge took eight years to build with 11 years of planning before that. The
Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme took 25 years to build. The
Sydney Opera House took 14 years to complete.
In this light, it's tricky to validate complaints that the NBN will
take too long to build especially as ever-more people will be connected
throughout the ten year build - we won't all have to wait until it's
finished. How long should it take to replace the old copper network? Is
not replacing it at all because it 'will take too long' a valid reason
for scrapping the whole project?
The costs will blow out: Tricky to predict for
certain. Fanciful numbers have been bandied about stating $50bn to even
$100bn with no justification given. The initial stated cost was $42.8bn.
Three years on and after the latest '
blowout'
it currently stands at $38bn(!) Roll out efficiency may improve over
time. Unforseen cost blowouts may appear. Take your pick. Even if it did
hit $50bn, it would still easily score top marks for value.
The money could be spent on other things like roads: This one
appears a lot and
simply isn't true. The NBN represents an investment of public money
which it will get back. This isn't money that could ever be spent on
anything else. Fortunately, it appears that this
message is finally getting through.
Fibre to the Node does the same thing faster and cheaper.
The one technology which exists and could theoretically provide
super-fast broadband to the nation (including upload speeds) is Fibre to
the Node-based VDSL. That is
investigated here.
While technically feasible, there are an enormous number of questions
and challenges to do with copper-network condition, competition,
governance and
funding, which can only be speculated upon without an incredibly-detailed implementation study and Cost Benefit Analysis.
Any notion that a build would be quicker should also be viewed
cautiously. A FTTN network would still require an enormous amount of
planning, as well as supremely-complex negotiating, governance and
legacy infrastructure issues. It's unlikely to be cheaper owing to
costs relating to using Telstra's existing network and the maintenance of it. This
Citigroup Telstra-share-rating report deals with some of the realities of switching to Fibre to the Node.
Of particular note is the section titled "Significant Hurdles" on page
8. The casual summary of the astronomical costs of implementing Fibre to
the Node, plus the political ramifications and challenges (and even
impossibilities) are in equal parts entertaining and troubling.
There's also the raw issue of lining the country's streets with
fridge-sized cabinets on nature strips - it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to that one.
Between 50,000 and 70,000 of these cabinets would need
to be built (each with eight large backup batteries within) upon the
nation's nature strips. That could mean negotiating with every single
local council planning department in the country for every single one.
That would be problematic considering how some councils have thus far
have been unsympathetic to accepting solitary wireless towers.
There's also the issue of whether VDSL will work at the supposed
speeds of 80Mb/s downstream and 20Mb/s upstream as stated. Old and
rotting copper will decimate any such speeds - some people can't make a
phone call when it rains such is the state of parts of the network. Then
there are questions regarding the practicality of auditing every strand
of 'last-mile' copper in the country prior to roll-out or building the
system anyway and replacing rotten copper as needed. If that was the
case would it mean replacing hopelessly-corroded copper with fibre or
more copper? The latter would be ridiculous.
As for who would own the cables inside them is another headache.
Telstra's old FttN implementation study says
of sharing access with competitors, "in practice it would be a disaster
for customers" for many reasons (slide 14). And that's without
establishing how to get Telstra to part with its copper cable in the
first place. Citigroup states that reinstalling a Telstra monopoly
would set industry-reform back three years.
Then there's the issue of reinstating Telstra as a monopoly player in
the market, which NBN Co has just, to the great relief of the entire
Australian telecoms industry, managed to structurally separate. Relying
on Telstra's existing infrastructure won't come cheap in terms of
maintaining it (currently the costs exceed $1bn per year) or through
convincing Telstra to let the government use it -
Citigroup suggests it would cost $16.3bn but
with limited return on investment (the copper network is already an
expired asset that is in the process of being dumped on the scrapheap).
That could make
VDSL significantly more expensive than the existing plans and is a major reason why detailed figures and plans are needed to justify such a course of action.
There is the question of power consumption.
VDSL uses twice as much power compared to fibre.
According to Rod Tucker at the University of Melbourne, Fibre to the
Premises connections require 7-8 Watts per user to deliver 100Mb/s
services. Fibre to the Node requires around 15W per user.
Apparently, that is enough to require two-or-three new power stations being built.
The reliability issues associated with VDSL cabinets was one reason a
former BT Chief Technology Officer publicly stated that fibre to the
node-style broadband is "one of the biggest mistakes humanity has made",
imposing
huge bandwidth and unreliability problems on those who implement it, this severely diminishes the potential for telehealth benefits where reliability is often a 'must have'.
Nonetheless, if speeds can be guaranteed then the many features and
applications associated with fast broadband could be achieved. It's
worth remembering, however, that Cisco's top analyst has said that
only the newest and best quality copper networks meet such requirements.
That the cabinets and copper will all need to be replaced within
years of being built is a major reason why so many in the technology
community are saying, 'Why not just do it once and do it right at less
overall expense?' However, while implementation remains technically
feasible, albeit incredibly complicated, it can't be written off until a
detailed implementation study and Cost Benefit Analysis is provided.
Ultimately, however, any implementation would be expensive and simply
delay the inevitable requirement of replacing an ageing copper
infrastructure. While it
may be able to match
some of the most important features and applications of the NBN in the
next decade or so, it brings with it all manner of issues, isn't
future-proofed and will certainly need replacing at some point in the
near-to-medium term. In terms of performance and value, it certainly
can't compete.
Outrage, new information and updates
More than two years of covering the NBN suggests there will be those
who are unhappy with any positive conclusion. But technology is blind to
politics and any non-constructive technological criticism is just
rhetoric - all of the above descriptions can be expanded upon
considerably.
I've approached this review in a way scientific way. As facts change
and new information comes to light things will be adjusted. The scope of
the infrastructure is enormous however and some minor mistakes are
likely but there should not be anything significantly wrong. Leave any
constructive criticisms or new information below or contact me directly.
Conclusion
I've only scraped the surface of applications for the NBN. If you
want any additional information regarding costs and examples (that
aren't already linked to) let us know in the comments.
While it's a shame that not everyone will be getting a fibre
connection to their home, hopefully, as time goes on, the value of
having one will see this issue addressed by government. It's the only
valid criticism of the NBN which otherwise uses the right material
(fibre) to provide future-proof broadband to the country at a net cost
of nothing. At the same time it will generate money through boosting
business and save money in existing infrastructures through efficiency
gains.
Australia's tyranny of distance will be decimated to a degree that
will continue to escalate over time. The nationwide scope of the
infrastructure means that the huge number of benefits aren't localised
as with the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Snowy Mountains Hydro scheme. We
won't all have to wait until it's finished before we can start using it
too.
As infrastructure comparisons go, it's tough to see where any other
builds are better - the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge might just
beat it for tourism. Beyond that, however, the performance,
applications and value benefits to society are unparalleled.
Ultimately, if you never look at a web page in your life, the NBN
will still be one of the most important things in your world whether you
know it or not.
Verdict - Future-proof high performance, revolutionary,
nationwide benefits across all areas of society plus a value proposition
that wins on all counts make the NBN easily the best all-round national
infrastructure ever by just about every measure. Fixed wireless
connections are potentially the only let down.
Performance 8*
Features & Applications 10
Value 10
Overall 9
*Two points dropped for fixed wireless
This article represents version 1.0 and was published on 18 September 2012. It will be updated as new facts come to light.
