Paul’s low fibre diet

Paul Broad (CEO of AAPT) was on the news this morning, once again bleating about how the National Broadband Network is wrong and how wireless is the future. I’m usually a very calm person, but I did find myself wanting to throw things at the TV while he was speaking.

It is true that wireless is a complementary technology that will work with fibre to deliver services where hard-wiring would be unfeasible. Inside premises, for example, and the last mile for some geographically difficult areas. But does he really think that wireless – with its profusion of protocols and spectrum issues – will serve the needs of a tech-savvy Australia in the way a FTTH network would? There is a distinct lack of vision here, and also an ignorance of what is going on around the world.

Have a look at this fibre plan from Malaysia. It works out to be about A$60, and you get more than anything you could possibly get in Australia. And this is available right now. It is truly a disgrace that the chief executive of a major telco:

1. thinks that these services can be delivered over any type of contemporary wireless solution.
2. believes that the core of internet delivery in the future will be wireless
3. thinks that the current trend of people moving to wireless will hold

In the first place, the people moving to wireless broadband are moving because the process of taking a fixed-line internet connection when you move premises is slow, painful and expensive. If you could move from one apartment to another and have your internet connection move with you with little to no downtime, then you could be fairly certain that fixed line abandonment rates would be much lower. This can easily be solved by having an open FTTH framework.

Furthermore, you would think twice about wireless broadband if you did anything more than check your email and browse the internet for non-critical things. Even so, right now there are parts of inner-city Melbourne where you can fail to watch a YouTube video on wireless broadband. I would never dream of running my business over a wireless connection, mostly because my phone systems require a low latency that  just cannotbe provided by wireless networks. With all the wireless congestion around, I can’t even run a low-payload codec over VoIP using a 54Mbit 802.11g connection. How do you think LTE or 4G would fare? Better? Next to fibre, they would not stand a chance.

Paul, set up a nothing-special wireless connection in your inner-city office, and tell me how reliable it is. Run your business off it and then tell me that you want to have this replicated all over the country.

I will leave a discussion of the importance of the NBN for regional and rural Australia for another day. The argument that “people don’t want this” seems to reign supreme amongst detractors at the moment, but I would again refer these detractors to business owners in Ingham and Clermont and Richmond (QLD, not VIC) who are trying to compete with businesses in Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne. Without the NBN, they will fail in anything but the most ambitious attempt. But that is a rant for another day.