[Chapter-delegates] Geoff Huston on Wired vs. Wireless

[Joly MacFie]

http://www.isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=1177

Geoff Huston’s latest Internet Society ISP
Column<http://isoc.org/wp/ispcolumn/?p=276>
 examines the Australian scenario where, in the recent election, the vying
parties plumped down on either side of the wired vs wireless question. He
concludes that, just like the election, there is no outright winner.

He notes the reality that while wireless IP service often actually costs
less to provide, users are prepared to pay more for it, giving providers
little incentive to invest in wire. But wireless bandwidth scalability is,
ultimately, limited. What’s more its inherent unreliability is TCP hostile.
However ubiquitous wireless service would be a lot cheaper to implement: $6B
(AUS) vs $43B (AUS) for wired.

He then gets to the big question, which all countries including the USA are
having to address, namely how much of the taxpayer’s money is worth
expending, and to what effect:

Where should public funds be spent? On a comprehensive revamp of the wired
access network, replacing the aged copper pair telephone network with a
highly capable fibre optic network? Or on improving access in those areas
where the copper pair network simply cannot support high speed access by
public investment in wireless infrastructure?

In trying to answer this question, we return to a persistent theme in the
area of public communications infrastructure. What’s the role of public
capital investment and how is that balanced against the role of private
capital investment? Is it possible for private investment to fulfill the
entirety of a public agenda? Given that a capable, cost efficient and
effective public communications infrastructure that encompasses an entire
national constituency is seen as a core deliverable of any national
communications policy regime, then how is this best achieved today?

To move back from generalities to the specifics of this broadband investment
choice, is it realistic to expect that we have further decades of useful
life from an already ageing copper pair infrastructure? As a consequence,
should current public investment focus on current gaps in the national
infrastructure, using a relatively cost effective approach of plugging these
gaps using wireless infrastructure where the copper network is simply
inadequate, and leave the remainder of the network in situ, as being
adequate for the moment Or should we leave such wireless infrastructure
investment to private enterprise, given that this technology is enjoying
strong consumer attention and there is a continuing investment in wireless
infrastructure by the industry actors. Instead, should a public investment
program focus on a longer term national program of replacing the copper loop
with a comprehensive fibre optic network? From such a longer term
perspective perhaps the
NBN<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network>
 is the better approach, as we need to concede that the level of investment
required for a national very high speed access infrastructure in a fibre
access network is probably well beyond the scope of private capital works
investment. So far all that the industry has achieved in this space has been
the rewiring of the
CBD<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_business_district>s
in the major cities, while the upgrading of remainder of the network has
been effectively ignored. It appears that this is, like many major
infrastructure projects in the past, one that properly sits in the realm of
a public investment program, in the same way that we’ve made investments in
national road, rail and shipping infrastructure in the past.



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Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
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  Secretary - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
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