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Construction needs cloud flexibility
Australia’s embattled construction sector could benefit from cloud based information systems that can be switched on and off in lockstep with individual projects – with the exception of those organisations based in remote areas like the Kimberleys.
read moreJust say 'no' to Conroy's NBN
Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 18 October 2010 13:48
IT Policy - Government Tech Policy
Australia's Federal Government is pushing ahead with plans to build its national fibre broadband network in Australia at a cost that could be less than $43b, $46b with connections to all homes, or even up to $100b - even as Brisbane prepares to roll out its own fibre broadband network years before the Brisbane part of the official NBN is complete.
Then there are the plans re-confirmed by Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to continue on with Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband's plan to filter Australia's network with Government imposed censorship, a censorship that is promised to never get out of hand, with the good Senator Conroy himself guaranteeing to pop-up and say 'wait a minute' if it ever happens, while Senator Conroy actually implements such a plan himself right now.
Well, wait a freakin' goddam minute. Tens of billions of dollars is going to be wasted on an anti-competitive national broadband network which will come with free government spy software running behind the scenes; it will take nearly a decade to build and shuts down other major networks cutting off our redundancy options if and when the NBN has the inevitable outages.
Brisbane's Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman, has surprised all by announcing the intention to build a fibre broadband network in the city, years before NBN Co will have its Brisbane network complete. Will Brisbane end up with two fibre networks?!
To be built in the sewerage networks by British company i3, Brisbane's proposed fibre broadband network will deliver download speeds of up to 100Mbps and will be privately built at a cost of $600m.
The construction will come at no cost to ratepayers, will be installed within four years and serving customers long before the NBN Co's Brisbane network is complete.
It will be a wholesale network selling bandwidth to Internet service providers, who will then on-sell it to consumers and businesses. If prices are competitive and speeds are fast, the usual suspects of today's Internet service provider market, from the big boys to the smaller fish will step up to the plate, but that's a big if as Andrew Harris' article in Business Spectator 'How Brisbane could bring NBN Co undone' explains.
Existing ADSL2+ networks exist but as with all networks there are black spots where no ADSL or HFC cable is available.
Wireless is an option but when entire suburbs are forced onto wireless plans at higher prices than fixed wireless with far smaller download allowances, the high pricing and too many people on the same wireless network shows the clear need for a decent, high speed, fixed connection.
Future wireless solutions such as LTE, which Australian telcos have on their roadmaps, will take some of the strain off wireless networks, allowing for lower latency and even faster speeds, with future, faster and more capable wireless standards to come, but these are all still 5 to 10 years away if not longer.
Continued on page two, please read on!
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