THE NBN

It seems to me there has been a lot of talk recently about the NBN and how we must “future proof” our technology. 

 

There has been a lot of jokes and piss taking regarding the coalitions offerings on an NBN, but I would like to point out that none of these are neither helpful nor accurate. I remember being told of the coalition’s plans for the NBN being like offering a super fast ambulance service that comes out as far as the town hall then a bicycle will be used to carry the patient the rest of the way from the house.  Whilst this is funny it is neither  accurate nor is it  a good analogy for the proposal.  It is also an Ironic analogy as at the2010 election people were presented with the option of voting labour and getting the NBN or voting Liberal and getting 2800 new hospital beds. Australians chose the NBN, now they are complaining that there isn't enough hospital staff to keep the current number of  beds open.

Now before I go too far into this, I should point out that I am all in favour of having superfast internet, for many years I had to suffer dialup speeds as my local exchange was not capable of DSL for many years. I even had friends in the country with broadband internet for about 3 years before I could get it. (I am inside the MELBOURNE METRO Area).

 

So what are the arguments for the NBN in its current implementation:

One argument that seems to be that we will need a serious upload speed that only Fibre to the premise can provide. It seems to be that everyone agrees we don’t need it right now as there is not a great deal of applications for business that would improve with increased upstream speeds. I can imagine a business being able to serve their own website from onsite could have an advantage, however can they also provide the redundancy and server reliability that a profession host can provide?  In several years upstream speeds will become important, there is no debate about that, video conferencing and video calls all suffer purely because of upstream data throttling. However The argument tends to fall apart at the point where it is insinuated that fibre is the only medium which can provide these speeds from the home.  This is a fallacy, I say this because the technology (VDSL) exists to transmit data at 55Mbs downstream on 50 year old pair gain copper networks and 3Mbs upstream, VDSL2 will do 100Mb upstream. Given that VDSL is not readily available my argument is somewhat moot, however my point is that the technology exists and is available to give us good upstream speeds without the cost of laying fibre optics to every house.

The other problem with the upstream speed  argument is the claim that wireless connections cannot keep up with the bandwidth demand especially if we were to put everyone on a wireless network.  This is true with our current 3G network, and partially true with 4G, however that argument relies on there being no further developments in wireless technology.

 There are, however, major developments in wireless technology and proponents of the FTTP NBN have clearly forgotten that South Korea (A country with one of the fastest average internet speeds) has over 20Million users on their 4G network. For reference Australia’s population has only just cracked 23Million. Further to this Samsung has successfully trialled the new 5G Phone which was clocked transmitting 1GigaByte of data in 1 second. This is the equivalent of an 8Gb connection or 80 100Mb FTTP NBN connections combined.  Now they said in 1812 that the human body could not withstand the forces incurred traveling at such break neck speeds of 11 Mph, in the 20^th century they said man would never travel to the moon, the 1970’s the CEO of IBM said the world demand for personal computers would be about 5 and Bill Gates said no one would ever need more than 512K of ram. Now they say wireless will never be fast enough to video skype.  Get my point, The future is unpredictable and spending billions of much needed money in order to future proof a technology that could conceivably go in any direction is not always wise.

 

The other argument I hear is that we need this super fast internet now so that remote Australians can be better educated and health services can be extended to such areas.  The problem with this argument is that the fibre system will not be taken into the bush, they will be serviced with satellite and fixed wireless technology, so pretty much what they already have. Also last time I checked You can send blood samples through the internet and all other information can be relayed over the phone as it already is being. There are not many situations where medical treatment can be improved with advent of faster internet.  With regard to education, in Australia we have already increased spending in schools, most of the schools in Australia now have new buildings, more computers, and magic whiteboards.  It is a shame that what we are seeing with the implementation of all these new resources and technology is that the actual numeracy and literacy skills of our students have fallen.  This means that we need to get back to a more grass roots abacas and storyboard education, less apps and more teacher time.  The NBN unfortunately cannot provide this.

 

I would love to see the NBN in its current form implemented across Australia, but I fear it is not the wisest of projects, the funds have much more important uses, For example if money was not borrowed to pay for the NBN it could be borrowed to fund the NDIS.  We could argue that there will be no return on that investment if it were used to fund the NDIS I.E the NDIS won't pay for itself the way the NBN will. But I beg to differ, If carers can be employed through the NDIS then that creates jobs, if family’s can go back to work because the NDIS is providing for them,  then that creates both a taxable income and reduces the load on the social welfare system. Also if funds for the NDIS are sourced from existing finances  then the requirement for higher  levy’s on Medicare and tax increases to fund the NDIS are reduced if not scrapped outright. 

I know not everyone agrees, But I have to assume health and the NDIS are more important the faster internet.