<https://www.facebook.com/groups/BIRRR/permalink/628764697332221/>
Australia's National Broadband Network is a landmark investment in the
nation's infrastructure. In was born in the depths of the Global
Financial Crisis of 2008: an antidote to the risks of worldwide
economic depression; a capital investment in long term public
infrastructure to underwrite prosperity and growth throughout the 21st
century, and illustrated as the digital-age equivalent of the
engineering ‘marvel’ of the 20th century, the Snowy Mountains Scheme.
Most importantly, and going one better than the Snowy Scheme, the NBN
was headlined as an investment for all Australians individually, no
matter where they lived.
Despite political division over its specifications, the project was
endorsed by Federal Parliament, and the NBN promoted as the most
advanced nationwide technological project in our history.
So what has gone wrong?
As connection to the NBN approaches for some residents in North
Queensland, many people who live only a short distance away from
National Highway One and the main national rail network, and who are a
short drive from nearby towns where they work and shop, have been
informed their NBN connections will be limited to a service delivered
via satellite.
These are people living where residents have had access to
international telephone services for nearly 150 years!
I'm referring specifically, for example, to my home region
encompassing long-established communities in the Kennedy Valley, parts
of the Murray Valley and places just north of Cardwell, whose
settlement began in Queen Victoria's reign over the British Empire.
It's a shock for people whose homes and businesses are currently
connected directly to national landline broadband services, to be
informed that this access is to be discontinued, permanently, and that
it will be replaced by a service delivered only via satellite.
While we might be remote from Canberra, we're directly connected
commercially and socially to a vast region of interconnected
communities that stretches from Cairns to Townsville and beyond. This
includes the Atherton Tableland and the communities of Port Douglas,
the Daintree and the Burdekin.
Geographically, we live and work at the virtual centre of this vast
and interconnected north Queensland community, yet suddenly, the NBN
of the 21st century has rebranded us as ‘remote’! This 21st century
technological ‘advancement’ is inflicting communication uncertainty on
places that have enjoyed phone services to Melbourne, London, Paris
and New York since the 1870s.
Why satellite NBN is not a ‘technological advance’ in north Queensland.
* communication via satellites is especially unreliable during periods
of cloud cover and rain, and we live in Australia’s wet tropics across
the wettest region of the nation where annual rainfall is measured in
metres
* the speeds of satellite internet services are inferior to NBN
landline services and the costs are far higher
* these issues of poor reliability and inferior speed will
deliberately disadvantage our communities both commercial and socially
* the NBN designers aree ‘choosing’ to make our communities ‘remote’
for the first time in our history
* our businesses will be disadvantaged against those we compete with
whether nationally or internationally
* this business disadvantage will extend to timely access to market
alerts, sensitive information or warnings
* our children will suffer the same inferior service disadvantages at
a time when government educational services are moving online at an
accelerating speedthe greater cost disadvantage of satellite internet
will impact more heavily because of the increasing use of, and need
for cloud computing
* every satellite connection in currently networked internet service
areas will reduce the quality and capacity of services available to
Australians who are living in remote regions and genuinely need them
* because an NBN city boardroom meeting has apparently categorised us
as ‘remote'!
* in the Kennedy Valley for example, some 240 businesses and residents
being forced onto satellite NBN are in close proximity to fibre
internet access, reticulated electricity and a site available for
erection of a tower to disseminate wireless NBN.
--
David Boxall | Any given program,
| when running correctly,
http://david.boxall.id.au | is obsolete.
| --Arthur C. Clarke
_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
