anawanahuanana

But here is one of the problems as I see it. If businesses no longer pay large inner city rents, they save money, but someone else loses money. Less cars on the road with no commuting would mean less cars overall, leading to less rego money being paid and less fuel duty, meaning the State govt needs to get the money from elsewhere. Less people travelling on public transport (as the UK showed) just leads to higher fares for the people that still have to use it. Less traffic on the roads means less repairs and fewer new roads which means less work for road crews, construction companies etc. Less money for them means less jobs for their employees. If you look at any CBD now, the vast majority of companies don't have to be located there. They could be out in the suburbs or even further out. They are there partly for prestige and partly just because that is what is expected of a large corporation. You can't honestly say that the reason they pay the high rents is because our communications network is so poor.

Broad Shoulders

Of course not. But I'm sure given the opportunity businesses would look to make cost cuts where possible. Immediate sasvings on office space (regardless of where it is) would be an immediate benefit. My company is already moving to a Software-as-a-service model, which basically means that our company needs less IT infrastructure to serve its employees. The abilities to do this on the new NBN would be beyond comprehension. You raise some good points about the effects this would have, but then any technological advancements that happen in life are generally designed to automate and improve the reliance on humans to carry out tasks...like the language skills of the world's population since the introduction of spell checkers. But humans are a clever lot, we adapt and learn to use the technologies to grow further and improve conditions.

Your point about less rego and fuel tax etc...well that just means less money is needed to invest back into roads, which are always struggling to handle the growing population. If you aim to take the people off the roads in the first place then you are immediately tackling the issue at the source. I agree that many effects would be felt if this happened, however we would just adapt to manage this, as we have done through time. Think about the number of professions that are no longer in commercial existence. We don't see many archers anymore since the advent of guns, but did that mean that the world fell to pieces? No, it just meant that people adapted and moved their skills onto something else, it happens all the time.

BristolBeary

I think we should build a massive space ship. Imagine the possibilities! They're endless, we could goto far off alien planets and bring back technologies we haven't thought of yet and reap the benefits.

Viedo conferring one day (which I do on my phone already wirelessly), intergaltic apace travel the next. How's that for outside the box.

Also along with the $500 you need to spend to get the wire from the front of the garden to your house, people need to factor in the cost of new wireless routers and in worst case scenario even new software (OS upgrades).

From a business point of view just the company I work for would have to spend the best part of $40000 for the 200 web applications we run.

Broad Shoulders

why?

BristolBeary

One switch controlling all data access to our SAN costs the best part of $20000. We need 2 of those. The NBN with the speeds being quoted would cause our network to crash pretty quickly.

Faster speeds bring more data to our network faster, think of it like a DoS attack.

BristolBeary

Something a bit more sensible... http://www.swindon.gov.uk/latestnews...?itemid=135507

At a cost of £1 million, £700,000 by tax payer, Swindon is supplying free broadband access to 186,000 residents. A fee can be paid to guarantee 20Mbit access, the fee being somewhere around £10-£15 a month. This will work and always be on no matter where you are in Swindon. Meaning your iPhone or whatever is also connected to the Internet.

Now honestly tell me you think your getting something worthwhile for $43 billion!

Broad Shoulders

Only time can tell. You may well look back on this piece of infrastructure as a pivotal moment in this country's future prosperity in years to come. You and I cannot say for sure that it will be either shit or great until then.

keel

What the deal with the solar panels, how long till the outlay brakes even?
I'm just starting to look into this and don't have much of a clue yet. What size system do you have?

Keel

iamthecreaturefromuranus

I don't have them... I just "went with them" in the poll.

From all I read about them, there currently not a really smart move, financially.

It takes years, before you hit the break even point. I think I saw somewhere that it takes longer than the average person spends in a home before moving into a new home.

ABCDiamond

Didn't think I was going to see much interest in the Solar option

Some people end up getting 100% free Electricity, so, say $1,200 per year savings, rising to $2,000+ per year as electricity rises in price.

However, as you are talking reality, you should be able to get a 1.5kw system for about $2,000 after all rebates. Even if you only saved $500 py, you would get it repaid in 4 years.

I know someone who gets cheques from the electric company these days, instead of bills, and they paid out $2,500 for their system.

I will be going with it myself soon.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Odd, as that seems to be in complete contradiction to all the guff I read about it.

Wol

90% of what is done on the internet nowadays can be done perfectly well at 1.5Mb. I don't mean 90% of the actual downloads, but 90% of the applications.

There are some downloads that require large capacity, but let's be honest: it's the gamers and video downloads that suck down the pipes data at huge rates.

It would be nice to download the latest huge Windows security patch in a hundredth of a second, but it's not going to change my life if it takes a minute or two, and I - and I suspect the majority of other users - won't be interested in paying any more for the facility.

Which is, as others have pointed out, the nub of the matter: if private companies don't see a sensible return on investment what the hell is the government doing, promising OUR taxes to pay for an uncosted, unbusiness-planned network?

ABCDiamond

In what way is it wrong ? Are you saying that the Australian figure is really only 1 Mb/s, and that people cannot get faster than that in Australia ?

I assume the UK figure is also wrong, but the other way round, and that the UK is all at 24Mb/s


Based on my approximate figure of 3.7 million Australians using it, I would say you are correct, as there are about 7 million Households in the country. No one said it did test every house in both countries, it just gives an idea, an approximation.

3.7m from 20 million Australian population is 18.5%
11.2m from 60 million UK population is 18.6%

Our two countries do end up being very similar don't they.

ABS statistics show that 89% of Australian households had broadband at Dec 2009

The UK National Statistics (ONS) showed that 88.4% of Britons were choosing to use broadband rather than dial-up, in Nov 2007. But it also said: Only 4% of those questioned were using services faster than eight Mbps.
That is probably higher now, especially as the Australian figure in Dec 2009 was 24.7%.

However, no one has commented on the 24,000MB speed that was effectively quoted in that article.

ABCDiamond

That's one reason that I have kept putting it off. I wanted to see real peoples, real electric bills, to see the real story, not the media garbage.

However, if you paid the full price for solar, without getting any rebates, then you would be 100% right.

At $8-9,000 for a system, it isn't very cost effective.
But getting that system for $2,000 makes a very big difference.

Currently the government are subsiding to the tune of about $6-$7k per system

To do every house in the country, with bulk buying discounts, I reckon they would have change from $43 billion, without us having to pay any difference.

Broad Shoulders

Have another read of my post as to why it is wrong. I never said people cannot get faster than that. But you are claiming that the average speed that that website shows for Australia is the official average, which it isn't.

The other problem in your assumptions (as that is exactly what they are) is that you claim only about there being "households"

See a problem there? In that businesses also use that service. Stop looking at those figures as "official" and "households" and you might start to understand how their stats are flawed and basing your ideas on them are equally so.