“Wireless can never deliver equivalent services to fibre,” according to network engineering consultant Narelle Clark. But what the Coalition’s “affordable broadband” policy could deliver is a wireless base station at the end of every street in the outer suburbs and country towns.
Unlike most of Labor’s National Broadband Network (NBN), which uses optical fibre to deliver data, the Coalition’s Plan for Real Action on Broadband and Telecommunications would see carriers roll out fixed wireless networks where existing fixed-wire networks could not be upgraded. “We will commit up to an additional $1 billion in investment funding for new fixed wireless networks in metropolitan Australia, with an emphasis on outer metropolitan areas,” the policy says.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott continued to talk up the merits of wireless broadband on ABC-TV’s Insiders yesterday. “Let’s not assume that we should put all our eggs in [Labor’s] high fibre basket either,” he said.
In an interview recorded for this week’s Patch Monday podcast, Clark said that because fibre is a contained medium, you can use 100% of the available electromagnetic spectrum.
“In wireless, you’ve got to do a spectrum plan, where you carve up slices of the available spectrum, and only broadcast on the bits you’re allowed to broadcast on,” she said. The limited spectrum is shared by every customer who’s connected via the same cell tower. If fixed wireless becomes the main internet connection for every household, each customer ends up with only a small share of the total — unless you add more towers spaced more closely.”
What would that mean? “In order to get those 100 megabit speeds and beyond you’d need to be installing a base station around about on every suburban block,” she said. “At the end of every street there’d need to be a base station.”
It is possible to design base stations so they look like trees, or like street lighting.
“Certainly if there’s one at the end of every suburban block then you’ll get used to them and they’ll get very good at blending them in,” Clark says.
Narelle Clark is vice-president of the Internet Society of Australia and sits on the board of trustees of the Internet Society globally. She has worked with Singtel Optus and was until recently the research director of the CSIRO’s Networking Technologies Laboratory. (Clark said her opinions are her own and not those of the Internet Society.)
Wireless broadband is a joke, the speeds are terrible.
Labor plan is also a joke as they will allow the NBN to hang the fibre cable from power poles if Optus / Foxtel is already hanging on those poles.
They will make our streets looks even more uglier.
What about the radiation? WONT SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!! :^)
I smell an Abbott / Pell conspiracy to install very tall crucifixes at the end of every street, all cunningly disguised as Wireless Broadband base stations . . .
One sidelight of the planned NBN is the reduced need for phone exchanges, by up to two-thirds I’ve read somewhere. These are all on prime development land which would become available once households were wired to fibre.
There’ll likely be rich pickings for local developers, builders, tradies and estate agents in many communities around Australia, many of whom will be thinking of voting for the Coalition and thus denying themselves a piece of the action.
Of course wireless technology will always be part of an overall broadband solution. I am a big fan of the govts NBN proposal & will go into a huge sulk that I may not come out of if Tony gets in winds up NBN Co. However assuming the NBN gets built I will still be carrying around my 3G stick so I can connect my notebook to the net while I am out an about similarly using my Iphone for online apps.
To suggest it has to one or tother is nonsense, they both have their place. But anyone with a sliver of knowledge about how these things work will tell you wireless will never hold a candle to fibre for performance.