If NBN 3.0 can promise "up to 100Mbps" by wireless why can't NBN Co?

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 01 September 2010 15:01

Opinion and Analysis

We now have two new acronyms in the every growing lexicon of telecommunications - NBN 3.0 and AAB, the Alliance for Affordable Broadband - along with the promise of near FTTH performance from wireless networks: all from a 'gang of seven' CEOs who, with two exceptions, are exclusively providers of wireless communications services.

One, tantalising possibility canvassed in their manifesto is the ability to deliver broadband wirelessly to 98 percent of the Australian population at speeds "up to 100Mbps" for mere $3b, and within the term of one government using '4G' wireless.

However, as I'm sure they all know only too well, the technologies they are advocating are not true 4G. The ITU last October accepted submissions for what will be the first official 4G technologies - three based on LTE advance and three on 802.11m, the next iteration of today's mobile WiMAX 802.16e, and the standard is several years away.

AFB has arrived at its cost estimate by extrapolating from the announced plans of US telco LightSquared. According to AFB's manifesto, "The [LightSquared] network will cover 93 percent of 300 million people, over an area roughly the same land mass of Australia. Total cost, $US7billion (which includes operational costs for first seven years)."

Well for a start that is not the total cost. That is how much the main supplier, Nokia Siemens Networks, share is worth According to the announcement Nokia Siemens is providing "network design, equipment manufacturing and installation, and network operations and maintenance." It's not clear from that statement whether backhaul links are included, for example, or civil works.

Extrapolating from this $7b, AAB says that, in Australia, "you might expect to cover 98 percent of our 22 million people who occupy a much smaller portion of the landmass than is the case in the US for $3 billion or less with a large part of this delivered by private investment."

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