FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NBN, FTTN, FTTP…OMG!? How do experts in information technology and academics who rely on the internet feel about the political parties’ plans for the future of broadband? Below several experts offer up their views.
Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. if you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 7120 8666 or by email.
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Dr Philip Dobson is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business, Edith Cowan University
“Much of the benefit of the NBN is achievable only via universal adoption; anything that discourages universal adoption will ultimately reduce potential overall benefits.
The Coalition NBN proposals will lead to inconsistent infrastructure, particularly for rural regions. Under their model the high capability to be delivered by Labor’s Fibre to the Premises plan can no longer be universally assumed by service providers. Thus, for example, remote education or medical diagnostics will be more difficult to implement and thus not drive adoption to the same extent as under the Labor plan. The more complex infrastructure and varied capabilities will discourage easy and universal adoption, particularly for those who are uncertain and confused as to technology possibilities. The power of the NBN to reduce rural inequality will also be severely hampered under the Coalition plan, with less powerful technologies being made available in rural regions. The Greens, with their focus on rural advantage would be expected to support the Labor proposals, particularly where rural advantage is obvious.
The prospect of the NBN providing a platform for unification and social enhancement will be reduced by the Coalition plan as the potential for rapid universal adoption will falter markedly.”
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Tom Worthington is an Adjunct Lecturer at the College of Engineering and Computer Science, Australian National University
“Political commentators in Australia are struggling to explain the difference between ALP and Coalition broadband proposals to the voters in nontechnical language. The ALP proposes continued roll-out of Fibre To The Premises (FTTP) for the National Broadband Network (NBN), whereas the Coalition wants to use mostly Fibre To The Node (FTTN). My suggested analogy is: Should you buy a new car or fix up the old one, or “The Lexus and the Broadband Network”.
The Lexus and the Broadband Network:
“The ALP FTTP proposal is like the car salesman offering you a new Lexus: sure it is expensive but it will be fast and reliable and last a long time. The Collation’s custom auto centre says your ten year old Toyota Camry (copper cable) is mechanically sound, it just needs some new parts (FTTN) and will be much cheaper. Your kids say they don’t want an uncool Lexus, or an old Camry, they want a cool Italian Scooter (Wireless Internet). You tell them they will grow out of the scooter in a few years and then want a real car, to which they reply “Whatever”. ;-)
In my view, if the government, whoever they are, want to save money, they could prioritise fibre roll-out in greenfield sites and areas with no, or poor broadband.
We have had FTTN in Canberra for just over a decade, with the Transact system. If you have power poles handy, and the citizens don’t mind more overhead wires, it is a cost effective system. Also it works okay in new buildings. My apartment building has a fibre optic node in the basement and twisted pair copper to each unit. But if you are going to the trouble of putting new cables underground, then they might as well be fiber-optic, as most of the cost is in digging the trenches.
The areas with copper phone and Pay TV cable could be left for last, where it is working okay. This would be a slight change to the current government’s NBN FTTP to achieve cost savings proposed by the opposition. Installing new FTTN should only be done on a limited scale, where the copper cable is new enough to be kept, but so far from the exchange that higher broadband speeds are not possible. The FTTN should be done so it can be upgraded to FTTP later.”
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Dr John Lenarcic is a Lecturer in Business IT and Logistics at RMIT
“If connectivity is deemed to be a basic human right then neither of the major parties address this trenchant issue in their broadband policies.
Mark Zuckerberg believes the former to be true as witnessed by the recently announced Internet.org initiative, where Facebook and other IT partner companies are set to provide the digital have-nots of the planet with low-cost, low-data connectivity. Their aim is not to worry about speed or fibre per se but to provide equity of access through clever design (e.g. more efficient compression algorithms.)
Indeed, the “freemium” model of Internet delivery seems to be at a tipping pint. Look at Google’s Project Loon: broadband servers launched into the sub-stratosphere via balloon to provide free access to those who have none or little due to geographic remoteness or socio-economic conditions.
Both Internet.org and Google’s Project Loon are the moral equivalents of putting a library into every community on this world. Now, that’s something that could stimulate accidental innovation of true worth. And these are also examples of justice as fairness, something sorely lacking in local political policies on the matter. The Internet is more than just a technological artefact. It’s become part of life itself, for better or worse.”
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Professor David Jamieson is Head of the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne
“As a researcher in physics and frequent lecturer on topics that include references to the sort of internet we will need in the future, I have the following comments:
Present trends suggest our complex society is becoming more and more dependent on the fast and frequent exchange of data. Major multinationals have announced various plans for a supercharged internet of the near future:
From IBM: “The planet will be instrumented, interconnected, intelligent: Traffic, Energy, Intelligence, Infrastructure, Healthcare, Banking, Cloud Computing, Water, Cities, Government”.
From Hewlett Packard labs there are plans to: “Create the mathematical and physical foundations for the technologies that will form a new information ecosystem, the Central Nervous System of the Earth (CeNSE)”.
In the press this week, plans to make Australia more creative by accelerating the use of cloud computing and have citizens interacting with the government via digital mailboxes were announced by the Coalition.
And, one day, the effects of dementia could be mitigated by “SenseCam” technology that could stimulate memory and record significant events that would otherwise be forgotten.
Later still we may see internet-based technologies that continuously monitor the mechanical condition and safety of our cars (as is now common with aircraft) or provides adaptive energy usage in our houses. See, for example, the Korean smart grid project that is a 30-year road map to retrofit the power grid with a parallel information network.
Then there is the rise of massively open online courses that promise mass education from experts in the field to everyone regardless of location, timezone or affluence.
Finally, managing our increasingly complex lives in a crowded world were resources must be efficiently and effectively managed to deal with the challenges of climate change, alternative distributed sources of power, rising expectations of education and lifestyle and global commerce will need large networks accessing big data banks.
All of this shows the relentless need for greater bandwidth in our everyday lives. This corresponds to trends from history when rising levels of literacy triggered demands for libraries, access to education and communication. But this is on a much, much bigger scale.
From a scientific point of view, to meet our foreseeable and unforeseeable future needs, greater bandwidth for the lowest energy cost is the logical way forward.”
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