I have been somewhat quiet of late and that is because I have been on a family holiday (more of that in my next blog) and it has taken me a few weeks to catch up with necessities. However, I notice that during my absence, Alan Kohler wrote an article (FTTN-piracy and porn - www.businessspectator.com.au, registration required) essentially accusing the NBN of being a ‘cargo cult’ (in fact, as I recall, Mr Kohler has used that exact term previously). My colleague, Dr Tony Warren, has already responded to the economic fallacies of this argument, but given that Mr Kohler also claims to have checked the technical validity of claims made by Internode’s CEO, Simon Hackett and claims that they are correct (“Hackett is just pointing out that it is not technically necessary at all, and I’ve checked – he’s right.”), I felt it necessary to put fingers to keyboard to refute other aspects of this dangerous argument. Of course, members of the Third Estate routinely claim that they know everything and have checked their facts.

However, the real danger here is that we shall let the people with their eyes firmly glued on the rear view mirror (and with obvious vested interests) take control of the agenda for the future of our country.

So let me deal with the technical claims in Mr Kohler’s article – other than his reference to “little switches inside the nodes” – it is a bit hard to figure out what these refer to (perhaps they are run by “little” green men?).

• “DSL 2+ is currently running at up to 14 megabits per second”. Well actually it can run up to about 20Mbps but, of course, the speed you get depends on where you live in relation to the exchange, the state of the wiring in your house, whether your neighbour is running an arc welder, etc, etc. Most of the population cannot achieve 14Mbps with ADSL2+ today. The whole point of a National Broadband Network is ubiquity and social equity. One of the startling lessons from our Next G wireless network is the power of ubiquity – if people know they can get access to the speeds wherever they need it, they behave differently and start integrating the use of the broadband into their daily lives in ways they would not do if most of the time the service is not available. Dr Warren covered this eloquently and in some detail in his post.
• 12 Mbps “…would deliver two high definition TV channels at once (they need 6Mbps each)”. Wrong. 12Mbps will deliver 2 standard definition TV channels at once. High definition channels require a coding rate of 8 to 10Mbps depending on the content being encoded. For example, live action sport requires high coding rates of about 10Mbps for HDTV.
• “I sometimes watch YouTube videos on the computer, but they seem to do fine at 1.5 Mbps”. Mr Kohler either consumes his videos in postage stamp size, or perhaps only watches talking heads, but you will find that very few users would regard a full screen rendition of Youtube videos as “fine”. As an aside, Youtube videos tend to be of the order of 300kbps.

The final point raises a very important consideration – the relentless drive to quality. Any observer of the telecommunications industry knows that its whole raison d’etre is to simulate a distant reality in a way that is as close to authenticity as possible, within the constraints of the technology of the day. Until such time as we can reproduce reality at a distance in such a way that it is indistinguishable from actually being there, the technology will keep on driving forward to improve quality, speed, depth, touch, etc.

Each time a new technological leap is made, the whole world moves on. This journey will continue for an unforeseeable number of decades into the future – stopping the boat and getting off is not an option. If we followed Mr Kohler’s lead, we would all be happy with black and white TV and would have not made the switch to colour TV.