gizmo_2655 wrote on Sep 12
th, 2010 at 4:09pm:
...
Oh i grant that for intercity cabling, Fibre Optic would be great....right now......but fibre to house is very expensive, complicated and time consuming....
Repeated, because you apparently missed it first time, the response to a question on wireless by one who knows far better than I:
Quote:For the long answer, see Shannon-Hartley theorem plus various ACMA
spectrum planning documents.
I understand what Beazley was talking about when he said "vomit point"
(just when you think 'I'll vomit if I have to explain this one more
time, that's when people start to understand it).
Thought experiment: wireless broadband for all Sydney with (say) three
million households
Using the LTE data from slide 16 of this presentation:
http://www.nbnco.com.au/publications-and-announcements/latest-announcements/doc/...10 users per cell with a good signal can expect approx 10 Mbps.
By that maths, and with the next technology, to serve 10 Mbps at peak
periods you'd need 300,000 cells in Sydney.
Note that I'm not getting into arguments like the "wireless will
overtake fibre" nostrum that's snared the ignorant among our
politicians; nor am I anywhere near familiar enough with spectrum
management to imagine whether you could set up 300k cells in Sydney with
what's available; nor am I considering the potential real estate costs
associated with 300,000 spectrum sites, nor the capital costs, nor
whether it's worth pulling fibre to 300k cells without bothering to go
the extra kilometre to connect the home directly...
(I have two mobile broadband devices, one 3 and one NextG. I'm not a
wireless luddite.)
Quote:AND, by the time it's completed..there may well be a better and cheaper alternative available....
AND we may be invaded by carnivorous hamsters from space, but it seems unlikely.
Fibre is good, basic infrastructure. By all reports, it has a lot of potential for further development. Hence the tenfold increase in speed that caused so much mirth when announced before the election. Actually, that was about as surprising as the news that a Ferrari can go faster that a Model T Ford on the same road. Same infrastructure, more advanced technology.
Anything's possible but there's no realistic "better and cheaper alternative" in prospect. Aren't we better off going for the probable than the remotely possible?