Commercial provision relies on cost/benefit analysis, and with an appropriate risk factor being built in. The further off the payout, the greater the risk premium. There are certain fundamental pieces of infrastructure that are probably never going to be provided by the private sector, because the horizon and potential payoffs are too far into the future, and too uncertain. The US federal interstate highway system or the Large Hadron Collider or the Panama canal.
As for the Foxtel argument – so what. 20 years ago I could get my email using Pine over a 14.4kbps modem. Does that mean we shouldn’t look at something faster? Already 4K standard exists, and I have no doubt that the industry is progressing the 8K standard. I look forward to the day that I can sit at home, and I’ll have projected onto a flexible OLED-type screen not only my “monitor”, but also the background behind my desk “at work”. Someone wondering by my physical work desk would be projected onto my screen at home, and I can converse with them as if I was physically at work. If distributed working could be make as effective as centralised working, then there would be huge savings in infrastructure investment etc. (e.g. roads, pollution mitigation) Cheers Ken From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of David Connors Sent: Saturday, 13 April 2013 5:45 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: Office365 ? On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Tony Wright <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: [ ... ] The whole point of the exercise is to give the vast majority of the population the ability to connect at high speeds. When there's a reasonable saturation of high speed internet, new services and businesses become viable. New applications become viable. High definition TV over IP becomes viable (not quite the Back to the Future 20 animated screens, but you might be able to get 2 or 3 screens in HD). When those applications and services get patented, Australia wins as from then on, companies worldwide have to pay us, and not the other way around. I don't really subscribe to the 'build it and they will come' model of blind investment with no business plan. Plenty of providers are already doing triple play now on ADSL and you can watch movies pretty much instantly in high def using a $99 apple TV or Foxtel IQ today. So far the ads for the NBN show rainbows flying down streets and 3D dissected frog holograms floating above MacBooks. Really? Is this the pitch? All the coalition are really promising is ADSL2+ to a connection point closer to your house instead of the exchange, so that the loses between the end of the street and your house will approach the theoretical maximum for ADSL2+, which is around 24Mbps if you are damned lucky. You can barely get a single channel and its grainy, blocky and skips - it's most definitely not HD. You can get Foxtel on XBOX today. The Samsung flat panel we have in the foyer at work has Foxtel over IP built in. I can watch movies instantly on my Foxtel IQ at home over IP (in HD). I can use Foxtel GO on the Mrs' iPad to watch Foxtel in real-time over the shitty ADSL connection at her parent's place in Broadmeadows.
