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W00t! Yes, big time!

1 (25%)

Yes, but too expensive

0 (0%)

Yes, but I don't agree with how it's being done

1 (25%)

No, it's too expensive

1 (25%)

No, what we have now will be good for the next 20 years

0 (0%)

No way Jose. All wrong for every reason.

1 (25%)

Whats an NBN

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 4

[Lord Biscuit©]

There's a lot of hoopla about this, and varying points of view. Are you for it, or agin it?

[Bookworm]

From what I've heard/read about it, it doesn't seem like a bad thing at all, in fact it seems like quite a good initiative.

What are the naysayers saying about it, however?

[Nick 2]

It's a really expensive way to make porn more accessible - ?

[Lord Biscuit©]

This article today:
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/nbn-report-onetenth-the-speed-at-24-times-the-price-20110209-1an1z.html

on the report by the "Economist Intelligence Unit". However, being a group of accountants, they can't see past the cost per person.  National infrastructure in Australia will always have the worst cost-per-person of anywhere in the world, because we have bugger all people and a huge expanse on countryside. The Economist group would like to see Australia string together a broadband network that takes in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and towns that happen to lie inbetween.

While this would look good on their spreadsheet, 25% of the country would be left with dialup or ADSL operating at 1/10th of the speed of the reat of the population. This is the American model for doing things. Australia has always been more inclusive with it's national infrastructure planning. In fact, the little rank thing they show in the aricle compres Australia with countries that are either 1) tiny 2) densely populated or 3) both. That to me seems a very favourable ranking.

"The opposition's communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, said the report underlined the need for a cost benefit analysis of the network, which the government has refused to do.
He claimed Australia was spending up to 100 times more per person on broadband than the United States, which is backing wireless technology."
See - an accountants point of view. Here is what your street would look like with 100mbs wireless:

Is that you want in your street?

[Bookworm]

I seem to be missing what looks different about that street.

[hammer]

Double the number of poles & towers in the photo, all emitting EMR, & Microwave radiation.

I seriously think the NBN is a GREAT thing!

I saw someone refer to the NBN as redundant technology - that person is a technical retard.
 
The fibre itself transmits at the speed of light. Once it's laid, It doesn't need any maintenance, just protection from knob-ends with backhoes & shovels.

- It's impervious to EMF (so will NEVER be affected by electromagnetic radiation/sunspots etc),
- It operates underwater (as long as the ends of the fibre aren't underwater - that's where the electronic equipment is attached. BTW, most of your overseas internet traffic is now via underwater fibres)
- Depending on how the cables are run (buried -v- flown), it's reasonably immune to bushfires
- Does not suffer from crosstalk - copper cables actually start picking up the signals from cables running parallel to them, that's called crosstalk
- is very hard to tap without very specialized equipment

and so on....

The speed of the NBN will always depend on the speed of the switches either end of the fibres. so a 100Mb switch will only give you that speed on each fibre port. Want more speed? easy - Change the switches to Gigabit switches.
You'll never need to change the fibre itself (unless there's some weird hi-tech circumstance that I can't even imagine right now)

Once optical switching/computing is developed, switching speeds, and hence, network speeds will increase dramatically - the fibres between the switches will not need to be changed.

I know this because I look after a pretty large & complex fibre network, and have been doing for over 10 years. most of the transmitter/receivers we have are over 10 years old & still performing brilliantly - I think I've had maybe 6 repaired in that time (of 300ish - I'd have to go count)

so I say BRING ON THE NBN!

[Nick 2]

It is a waste of money ... sure the technology might be great BUT what will it be good for besides downloading porn, and scintillating conversations such as this one. PLUS the government will be able to monitor what everyone uses the internet for (!) that is why it is being installed in the first place. They want to catch people like me who regularly google 'how to beat speed cameras' 'how to build rockets' 'how to overthrow governments' etc

[hammer]

So, download all that shit now - you'll be able to flog it at a much higher value later on......

Actually, they can do all that now if they reaaaaaaly want to, but they'd probably have to triple the size of the feds in order to keep up.

But what about applications like video conferencing, tv on demand, internet shopping, internet banking, remote medical monitoring, distributed processing, offsite emergency backups, etc...

Sure all these things happen now, but they are in their infancy compared to what will be achievable with those sort of speeds & reliablity.

Think of the difference as like the difference between driving down a poorly maintained single lane country road, and driving on an 8 lane freeway
Which one is going to get you there faster & more reliably?

[Bookworm]

The country road. There are too many fuckwits on freeways.

[Nick 2]

There are no government spies on the country road.

But there is no question that for the majority of you plebeans the freeway will suffice.

[Lord Biscuit©]

Actually, a faster network means it's easier to use encryted communications. So in fact your network usage could be far more secure (from government spies and other knobs) given 1Gbp to play with.

[Nick 2]

So going by hammer's analogy, I'd be driving on a faster freeway and my car would be equipped with a cloaking device...

Bring on the NBN

[hammer]

Another thing to consider - scientists have been mucking around with teleportation, and have successfully teleported atoms (so they say)

Can you imagine the bandwith that's going to need if they get that to the point where it will work with humans?

And how cool it would be to teleport across the country for an evening on a QLD beach after work... beats the fuck out of public transport!

[Nick 2]

It's not teleportation hammer. They destroy the original at point A and then create an exact copy in point B. To enter such a machine would be to die.

Also "quantum mechanics says" that it is impossible to measure the exact state of particles anyway

[Lord Biscuit©]

Another thing to consider - scientists have been mucking around with teleportation, and have successfully teleported atoms (so they say)

Actually, it's called quantum entanglement and requires no bandwidth at all, because there is no transportation of information as such. Stuff simply disappears at one location and simultaneously appears at another location. Recently some chaps at Harvard managed to do a bit of QE using solid state qubits, which is a jump forward from QEing photons. Pretty soon the police will be able to teleport the engine from your car when you're trying to get away from them.