(Warning I shall once again massacre an analogy for this post)
Now this is shitting me to tears. Everyone against (and most for) the NBN keep using the car analogy to describe it. “Who wants a Ferrari”, “ Who needs a Ferrari” e.t.c. Well let me just say this. You are all WRONG.
Why, because the NBN is not the car, it is the road. Your connection and how much you pay to drive on the NBN is up to you. That is the end user cost, and that is the car. The Autobahn is the NBN, and you will find people driving trucks, old bombs, Ferrari’s and even some lucky people a Bugatti Veyron down that stretch of road. Why, because that is what their budget ( or expense account ) lets them drive.
Unlike the Autobahn however you can drive as quickly or as slowly as you like. So you can drive at 1.5mbps or 1gbps if you want and you wont piss off any other drivers on the road.
Myself, I want a Ferrari or a Veyron for driving down this road, why because I can think of a lot of user cases for it.
The difference between 100mbps and 1gpbs for example means that I can access blue ray or higher quality video 1 min before I walk out the door onto my portable device to consume as I need. Where ADSL gave us always on, 1gpbs gives us always there content. No planning required, just obtain the content on a as needed basis. This will be as big a shift in how we communicate and consume media as the always on model has been if not bigger.
Lots of people say, but I won’t consume that amount of data. No, chances are you won’t. Chances are most of us won’t (well not for the next 5 years anyway). But if you have more than 2 people in your house they will. As we become increasingly connected, the number of devices in our homes increases. Each of these devices sucks in media, the more people the more media that is being consumed. 1gbps will mean that as the kids can watch the latest BBC doco in 4k brilliance (and YouTube already offer this quality of video), you telecommute with large 3d cad files. Each of these on their own isn’t much, simultaneous connections is where the NBN will excel.
5 years ago there was no YouTube outputting 24 hours a day of content every minute. In 5 years time, there will be something new. Data growth is exponential. That is a fact, anyone who thinks that we don’t need more data needs to look at their own data use over the last 5 years.
Now, the NBN goes to your house. Not to the node. That last mile connection is what gives you the real speed. Wireless isn’t going to give it to you, wireless will just give you a traffic jam in peak hour. ( Worse when it is raining :-))
However unlike the Autobahn, the NBN is effectively unlimited in lanes. Upgrading the interchanges will upgrade the speed. Once the cable is in the ground, your end point and the local node are upgraded to increase speed. The cable doesn’t need to be changed.
And like any major road that is built the NBN will be available as parts are completed. Yes it will take 8 years, but that is for the whole project. Major urban areas will come on stream much quicker. So the ” it is 8 years away” argument is nonsensical. More so that the test sites are coming on stream already. The Hume as dual carriage did not need the whole road to be completed before it could be used.
Also the NBN as it currently stands is an Autobahn to 93% of the population. Look at the maps to see just how many small regional towns are going to get access to this technology. This will remove the digital divide between city and country faster and better than has ever been achieved at any time in the past. The business case will be for the end user to decide their own car, not to shareholders to decide what car you can drive.
I don’t count 12mbps per second as anything future proof in any way shape or form. There are so many businesses already crying out for faster speeds, spending 6billion on a few new signposts and a few new highways between capital cities isn’t going to make the road any faster. It will however create more of a divide for those not living only where it is profitable for the big end of telco town to spend money.
When the Snowy scheme was built it opened up new areas to farming. The NBN is the 21st century opening of the whole country to this high speed road. A road you can drive whatever car you like on.
Tags: Annoyances, General by Me
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