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

[Narelle]

A little more background on this as an fyi...

You may have heard that Australia just had a Federal election. The
Labor government had started an ambitious plan to roll out a national
broadband network based on fibre to the home. The conservative
opposition opposed this on economic grounds and that upgrades to DSL,
cable and wireless would be good enough.

The election result is not yet known, other than a hung parliament,
and the handful of rural independents holding the balance of power are
keen to see considerable improvements to broadband... so indeed the
government may be decided on the basis of who has the better
broadband.

It isn't strictly a wireless vs wired question, though it has in part
been portrayed as such.


On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> wrote:
> http://www.isoc-ny.org/p2/?p=1177
>
> Geoff Huston’s latest Internet Society ISP Column 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.




-- 


Narelle
vice-president at isoc-au.org.au