atw: NBN is not just about the speed of video downloads [WAS National Broadband Network issue]
- From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:04:07 +1000
Well put Peter. It seems to me that some on this thread have trivialised the
NBN issue. Consider this analogy.
Before the Stuart Highway linked Adelaide and Darwin, there was a dirt
track. (Think copper wire.) It suited those nomads who wanted to walk, say,
from Oodnadatta to Tennant Creek. There was a path they could follow and so
less chance of getting lost. The occasional supply lorry could get through
too, but it took a long time. Now if the government of the day decided to
butumise the path (think install an NBN) solely to make the nomads life
easier, and to help the occasional lorry driver, then that, plainly, would
have been a sheer waste of money. Likewise if we were to build an NBN solely
so that folk could download videos more quickly. Yes, that would be an
enormous waste of money.
But just as the butumised Stuart Highway has massively increased the
efficiency of goods distribution (thereby cutting distribution and
down-stream costs), a very-high-speed broadband network will massively
improve the efficiency with which valuable work can be done. The NBN will
enable companies to move large chunks of data around more efficiently
(replacing costly batch processing with real-time processing). It will
enable universities and other research centres to remotely access super
computers for large-scale number crunching. It will help the stock market
more quickly see the approach of wealth-destroying volatility and ameliorate
it. It will improve the richness of learning materials delivered online. I
could go on and on and bore you all to tears. Yes, we will get faster video
downloads, but that is a side benefit: a happy epiphenomenon. But it was
never conceived as the sole benefit of an NBN or even a major benefit.
Given the wide spread of efficiency improvements possible with the
NBN-commercial, academic, governmental and personal-there seems nothing
implausible in the idea that it be funded by government (and even by
government debt). Leave such a project to the private sector alone and
you'll end up paying more for its use, for governments can borrow more
cheaply than the private sector and are not interested, or not driven, by
the profit motive.
You might think that you will never use the NBN and thus shouldn't have to
pay for it with your taxes. But you might just change your mind when the
emergency ward at the hospital you are taken to after that blackout can
swiftly access your electronic medical records and tailor their treatment to
your benefit, not having to guess your history and waste time with
tentative, ineffective and possibly fatal treatments.
Cheers
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au
Skype: geoffrey.marnell
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter G Martin
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 11:17 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: National Broadband Network issue
A couple of "sceptics" here seem to have latched onto the facile argument
that the NBN is about having more time for people to download movies. It's
the equivalent of saying we have a telephone network today so people can
spend all day talking to each other on the phone and not doing any proper
work (an argument that was raised about establishment of phone systems).
Of course this is nonsense. Increased bandwidth may be used for movies in
some instances... including movies of things like business and academic
conferences, university lectures, training sessions for increased workplace
productivity -- which don't sound as trivial as people wanting to download
movies for entertainment. And in each of those cases, there are
opportunities to reduce travel and transport costs, CO2 and other pollution,
which some of us see as important.
But it so happens that our "phone" system today is of huge advantage to
private businesses like banks, insurance companies etc etc etc. When we
get increased bandwidth (there isn't really much doubt about it) private
sector businesses will be first on the "socialist" bandwagon for more
business transactions and data exchange. Hell, some of them might even be
able to get around to electronic funds transfers that don't take 3 days to
work their way from one bank to another ! (Why do I doubt that? Ok
they'll have the capacity, if not the will.)
I've spent years documenting uses of the internet that have nothing to do
with movies. And each and every system I've worked on documenting has had
issues at some point or another with capacity and bandwidth, even as the
bandwidth available expanded up to 10 times or more.. So conservative
thinkers might consider that things will stay pretty much the same... we
have found uses for the phone system in the past to the point where its
carrying capacity has had to have been increased exponentially. That
process is bound to continue, if we look at parallel developments overseas.
Gee, why would you ever want to use more than 640k of RAM in your personal
computer ? Just so the kids could play more of those computer games ?
Meanwhile, those who advocate the "free enterprise system" which of course,
has its benefits as well as its disasters, might note that a general
requirement usually seen as a condition for "freedom" in this context is the
avoidance or restraint of monopolies. We happen to have a case where a
single company has been handed 75% of the national communication grid. This
same company is also a supplier of services over that grid, in "competition"
with others who have limited access.
Whatever you want to call that, it ain't "free enterprise".... it's
entrenched monopoly, and the governments of both major persuasions who
contributed to that situation stuffed it up. And both of them have a
responsibility to try to restore some balance.
-Peter M
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