Bushwalk Australia

Worth a read...
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/fo ... 5961914817

my whole argument with the NBN. The future of personal communications and networking is highspeed ubiquitous wireless networking.

walkinTas wrote:my whole argument with the NBN. The future of personal communications and networking is highspeed ubiquitous wireless networking.

Horses for courses. Fibre services have a place alongside wireless, and can deliver higher speeds and lower latency and don't have radio spectrum issues. Whereas wireless offers more flexibility. It's not all about "100Mbits" peak speed. You can dig one hole, deliver a LOT of fibre, and change endpoints once new tech emerges (ie: better transmission standards, example basic dialup modem tech vs ADLS2+, both delivered on copper).

Have a read:
http://people.eng.unimelb.edu.au/rtucke ... a10043.pdf

As someone who uses the Telstra 3G network, which is theoretically 14Mbits IIRC, I can tell you I rarely get above 2Mbits, so the reality is not what it seems. Congestion, especially at peak times, is a big factor at the moment with wireless. A multi faceted approach with fibre at the core is the best strategy.

Definitely horses for courses. Them there words were carefully chosen.

Terrestrial networks will continue to be important for business and for large volume personal data, but cable can never provide the ubiquitous cover that personal communications require. Wireless will have to provide true highspeed digital networks. The sheer volume of mobile phone sales and the power and functionality of the modern offerings show where this market is heading. Your mobile phone and PDA / tablet have already merged. Already the hardware is well ahead of the data networks. ....And soon we'll all be computing (living) in the cloud.

Its not that the NBN isn't required. In ground cable is important. The wireless network alone won't do. But we do, and will, need huge advances in wireless. IMHO the article posted by tasAdam is a great step in the right direction.

walkinTas wrote::) Definitely horses for courses. Them there words were carefully chosen. .

Aaaaahhhh sweet, sweet data. You should read the article I linked if you haven't, it's totally pro-FTTH, but it's a pretty good read.

Good to see discussion of a topic not widely understood . NBN coverage maps are at the bottom of this page: http://www.alp.org.au/agenda/nbn/.

Bill P

Latency is an important issue. If you want to use a VoIP telephone such as MNF, you need a hard connection. Latency on sat services is too great for reasonable voip use. But I don't know how the numbers compare to wireless internet access.
VoIP saves a lot of money on telephone communication costs and is well worth investigating if you have an internet connection like ADSL (minimum 512).

It can and has been done Adam!

And by none less than Telstra themselves. http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/ ... ING_072061

As an aside, I'd be happy to consistently get even a fraction of the promised speeds from my NextG connection.

After having to endure using NextG wifi via my phone's built in wifi hotspot whilst my ADSL connection was being provisioned, I'm not impressed. Telstra towers get flooded in the late afternoon, and remain so for the evening, and speeds are down to dial-up levels. This was in West Moonah (bleh) and also South Hobart, in full view of a tower.

Latency, sharing bandwidth and dropped packets are a fact of life with wifi.