Posts by Rich of Observationz
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Just a thought - it should be technically possible to have ADSL that favours upstream over downstream - in which case you could have two phone lines, one for up and one for down. No?
-
ClF3 I meant..
-
Pubs are of the 20th Century - cafes are the new pubs, especially as they now mostly sell beer (Fidel's, for instance - but don't go there tomorrow coz they have a holiday surcharge).
I'd be with Jackie - No Pokies. Unless, that is, the pokie room is a sealed glass chamber which is flooded with poison gas (CF3 would be good for a laff) every time somebody 'wins'. The bodies could then be removed and a fresh group of the brain-impaired enticed in. Proceeds to charity.
-
I'd suggest an alternative scheme.
Right now the (Telecommunications Service Obligation) TSO is for 99% coverage at voice and 9.6kbps modem (!)
This could be raised by stages, initially to 2MBits, but eventually to match the worldwide state-of-the-art. The cost of doing this would need to be met by telecom customers (or government), clearly.
There maybe also needs to be a last 1% option where people in the bush get subsidised wireless / satellite (I'd note that the fibre scheme totally excludes such people - you'll never have economic fibre service to Great Barrier, or even Horokiwi).
I'd also raise the question of *mobile* service. Other countries have cheapish, flat rate mobile data plans. We have price gouging (50c a megabyte if you go over cap!). For me, being able to have medium speed internet everywhere creates a lot more possibilities than high speed at home.
Might not government subsidised fibre put the kybosh on WiMax and any other wireless innovation?
-
For telecommuting, I think the main issue is not so much a lack of quality video-conferencing as a desire for employers to have their employees onsite 9-5 so they can be sure they aren't slacking off.
I'm amazed that most of my friends who work for the public service aren't allowed to telecommute. You'd have thought that the government would have made it a general rule that anyone who can work from home should be allowed to.
Given that the economy looks like it's turning down though, maybe anything that puts $1.5bln of cash into the system might be a good thing though. The 21st century version of throwing banknotes off buildings?
-
I'd review the book, but I really don't want to buy it.
Can I write a Wishartian review based on a warped fantasy of what it might contain?
-
I'm sorry to question peoples expertise and quibble the need to spend them Beeeeleon dollars now!
But I *did* read the VDSL2 article and I knew a bit about it anyway (I have worked in comms based IT for over 20 years, you know).
My point is that I haven't seen tangible evidence that FTTH is going to be more cost effective than copper + cabinetization. (You need cabinets with fibre as well - there needs to be a switch/concentrator somewhere in the system). Making (say) 10Mbit the standard for copper wouldn't involve rewiring the network - a high proportion of circuits can already run that sort of speed if Russell's comments on the Point Chev cabinetization rollout are anything to go by? I'm prepared to be proved wrong on the upgradeability issue but would like a reference.
On the usage side, I'm assuming this is all about FTTH, not business services. My work already has fibre, so I'm assuming CBD locations are already cabled for business customers. I'm sure it would be lovely for graphic designers working from home to have 100Mbits, but how many of those are there? (Maybe it'd be cheaper to just give them all a million dollars and a pencil).
For the home applications that will use all this lovely bandwidth, I'm told it's a mistake to ask about them. Just build it, and they will come. Reminds me of something: For carrying on an undertaking of great advantage; but nobody to know what it is.
-
self-regulatory body might need to be established for internet media
*Huge* can of worms. The Internet is global you know. My blogs (like most peoples) are hosted in the US (actually, I'm not sure that LJ hasn't moved its hosting to Russia).
Would there be a global body. Whose standards would it use - China's? Or would we have a Great Firewall Of New Zealand to block non-compliant media?
(Although, I suppose one option would be that if one joined a regulatory body and complied with their rulings, you'd get immunity from libel writs).
-
Could you be more specific?
What applications are there that will use 24Mbit + bandwidth?
What else makes fibre better than copper? The only thing I can think of is that most peoples copper cabling is many years old and was put in for 3kHz POTS, giving reliability issues, not to mention a lack of accountability (Telecom won't guarantee to any particular address). But wouldn't it be cheaper to make a clean copper connection the basic standard than to go to fibre?
I've seen fibre come and go so many times. For a while high-end disks used fibre to talk to the computer then it largely went back to copper again.
-
Far fewer users will want 100Mb/s than would be quite happy with 10 or 20
Which begs the question, since one can get 24Mbit with current DSL copper technology, and VDSL2 is even faster, why do we need fibre to the home? Is this a subsidy for a small minority that want HDTV movies in the time in takes to make a cuppa?
Not to mention that while copper seems to be very versatile, I'm not convinced that fibre can be upgraded as easily. It certainly seems that any upgrade would need new subscriber equipment in every home in an area. I'm happy to be proved wrong on that, though?