<RANT> ( <-- Precursor warning :) On Sat, 27 Dec 2003 10:29:49 +1300, Juha Saarinen wrote
Richard Naylor wrote:
I'm a bit sleepy and may be reading this wrong, and I haven't read the full report, but my understanding is quite the opposite. I understand the Commissioner is saying "don't rely solely on Telecom's infrastructure (its old legacy stuff with no future) focus instead on making the NZ Broadband Internet using newer stuff".
If he was, why then is he so keen on cementing Telecom's already firm position as the roadblock on the "Information Superhighway"?
Reading between the lines I see things as quite different... perhaps I should shutup but the troll in me says "bite!"... Do you want to live in a world dominated by the telephone company? Many regulators around the world seem to be making moves at present to prevent this. Read between the lines and see what they're really doing. Ask now that your telephone company should do for you... ...but what you can do for your boradband internet community!
Personally I agree with him. NZ has had the *best* deregulated environment for the past 12 years and has largely squandered that advantage.
Therefore, new initiatives are needed. The commissioner equates broadband with 256/128k ADSL with several service limitations and no guarantees as to performance.
The commissioner is attempting to light a fire under the ass's of the geeks to push them to do something more than sit on our fat asses, get busy and start putting CAT5 in the streets along with a bit of fibre to hoke the nodes together! (Someone did that once then they sold the interest to a bloody telephone company... now no one gets full advantage from it!!!)
It's almost 2004... we should be looking at tens of Mbps services, if not faster.
Actually it's 2003 (as you seem to want to correct people on the date - see below)... but yes I agree we should be using the technology that we've spent years developing! (I warned you this was a rant! :)
I believe there are plenty of alternatives such as fiber, wireless, cat-5 (a personal favourite) with alternative architectures that are perfectly viable, scalable etc. Accept the fact that Telecom's local loop is based on older cable which doesn't meet many requirements other than a phone and DSL, and is of diminiuishing value for real broadband.
Every effort overseas
(and remember is all about economic development NOT communications)
Thank you Richard... That's what we all needed to be reminded... I've spent some of the last few days looking at web sites talking about why Linux is so important and they're all so hoplessly out of date it's annoying :)
is where countries are building new networks.
In terms of business models look back in time and see how little NZ got power to its smaller towns and cities. They were build by community owned power boards. Its a very effective way of raising the capital as well as providing lots of local employment. They weren't build by NZED/transpower/etc and Telecom won't invest in real broadband in those areas while its share price/value slides to zero.
FANTASTIC point!
Although I agree that community networks are probably the only way out of this mess, your analogy doesn't quite hold.
To start with, there were no existing electricity grids in the past, and they didn't have to link up with one another.
With Telecom in place, anyone wanting to build a community network would have to contend with a national giant with deep pockets that is allowed to offer predatory street-by-street pricing and charge hair-raising fees for interconnectivity.
This is actually a good thing from out point of view if our aim is get faster bb access - if on the other hand your aim is less altruistic (hope I sp that right) and your interest is in building a high value commerical entitiy that you can then sell to a telephone company in the furture then I agree it's not good...
And as for why Telstra would want to build dsl over copper networks today with new plant, well I can only think of Lemmings......
Well, DSL is a known technology with lots of off-the-shelf products available for it.
Rubish... everyone's clambering over each other to develop new hardware at present that will deliver what Ethernet can already do and it's still costing 5 times the price!
(So's Ethernet, but it's not widely deployed like DSL, and certainly not by telcos.)
Sorry for the rant, I'm a bit passionate about broadband and how NZ was WASTED the chance it had.
I wouldn't say the chance has been wasted. Why do you feel that way? Sure we haven't picked up the 8 ball and run with it yet but we still have the chance to do that don't we? My question to you guys is 'is there enough geek support to bring change'?
No kidding.
BTW - Happy Christmas everyone.
It's been already. Check your clock ;-)
Cheers DiG -- Don Gould The technology exists to give every home 10mbits per second for $10 per month! Sounds to me like it's time we started actually building?!