Linton on NBN: God help Australia

How does a NBN that only reaches 91% of the population affect these clueless guys? if you look at where 93% of the population lives there is no fibre connection to these centers. The country people have been sold out & we will have to pick up the tab (again)

I fully agree with Mr Linton's comments. The incompetence of Labor government in IT and communications matters is in par with "initiatives" of communist governments: waste of taxpayers money to support the narrow-minded ideology. We are going to be undoubtedly confronted with expensive, yesterday's technology and totally useless communication infrastructure which contrary to some stupid comments by media cannot be applauded by forward-thinking IT professionals.

Yes. it is notable that those in the IT industry who vociferously support the NBN are predominantly beneficiaries in one way or another of $43 billion. Of course they are unbiased, aren't they?

I think alot of people have miss the point of the benifts of the NBN. High Speed broadband is only 1 application that NBN can be use for ,we forgeting about video phones,voip, Internet Television,medical application that is just a few things you are missing in you disapproval of the NBN. Wireless will have a hard time keeping up the bandwidth required, if the backbone is not in place, for country users or in some case areas of fast growing population.
Curently the place i call home has a region population of over 260 000 people and still wireless and adsl broadband is not keeping up. Most poeple can't even get adsl , so the isp offer wireless, and even then connection are poor and eracitic.
So people are carrying on about putting infrustucture and what it cost per head of population , i am pretty sure we didnt carried on when australia got phone lines in place. So we could actually call your family and friends and keep in touch with the world. This is cost of moving into the future ,Get over it.

If we don't build this NBN, I'm embarrassed that other poorer developing nations can come out with fibre and faster broadband technologies and we cant.

Fibre is the technology that is used to connect Australia etc, to the rest of the world on the undersea backhauls. If a better technology existed that was cheaper to install and support which was also faster then it would be evident by now, at least in development labs.
There is a new installation underway to double our data capacity through to the west coast of the USA via New Zealand and that cable is a Fibre connection. The width of our nation is a similar distance to the distance between our east coast and the coast of New Zealand and Fibre is the only solution. We have it at the wholesale level anyway so adding retail interconnects is a no brainer.
Before the world was interlinked with optical Fibre undersea, our overseas voice and slow data communications were via satellite technologies both analog and then digital, voice calls were full of delay and echo and messages were sent via telex, even a fax required too much bandwidth to be feasible because anything that utilises wireless tech of any type will always be slower than the speed of light, the speed that the laser signal in optical fibre travels at.
However Fibre is not yesterdays technology, using laser as a carrier, it is further scalable and adaptable using complex modulation algorithms but it operates on the boundaries of the speed of light, anything wireless does not and cannot match those speeds. Installing Fibre is not more expensive than installing copper to every premises and nobody begrudged the cost of our copper wired infrastructure, but copper has capacity limits. Optical Fibre can easily replace copper wiring in the same locations, already available and trenched.
Are Japan, South Korea and substantial parts of Europe wrong for using Fibre technologies to enable fast reasonably priced fixed internet and wholesale telephony services across and within their nations?
Remember that these are the nations that we rely on for most of the design and specification of our most advanced high technology imported products and the most luxurious cars, how then can the telecommunications technologies they have already adopted be wrong for Australia?
The fact that the world is moving toward eventually having a wholesale rated quality optical technology delivered to every premises on earth is scary for the powerful traditional telco sector, 10 years ago Telstra were promoting the fact that they had installed the most advanced optical fibre wholesale infrastructure in the world and the systems to utilise those installations, now that most of us are being offered that same level of product in the retail sector by the NBN many individuals from the wholesale telco industry are crying foul because they will loose that competitive advantage and can't then overcharge the consumer for voice and data services imposing fake limits on service availability to avoid installing more outdated infrastructure.

The parochial inward facing mentality that infests this nation is isolationist and threatens to keep us backward for at least as long as it takes for all the old luddites to die off. Meanwhile the rest of the world will move on and advance.
There is a lot of obfuscation and fear mongering being used to hinder the consumer from benefiting from the NBN because the traditional telco-overcharging paradigm will die when the NBN is completed. Time will prove and history will show which argument is right.

Well what can I say except that for all of those nocking the NBN - WAKEUP as YOU TOO will benifit from it. It's far better than what the Lib's were offering - ANOTHER BANDAID SOLUTION. Go labor and thanks for giving Australia the chance to catchup with the rest of the world. The Lib's like telstra just wanted to keep Australia in the dark ages and charge the enduser heaps for an absolute garbage service/product. Oh and one other thing, is Linton against the NBN because he is going to miss out on all of the little backpocket perk's he would have got from the Lib's ??? Makes you wonder???

Ahhh the internet, everyone hates everyone. Even the people talking about making the internet faster hate each other....on the positive side at least the NBN has been designed (and will be built) by people who know what they are doing.

It's great to finally see some people who understand the NBN concept commenting on this story.

The Government did not sell the NBN effectively during the campaign because only a few of them really understand the benefits, these people are typical IT people and they struggle to position it in a way that non IT people can relate to.

Mr Linton has been known in the industry for many years as an outspoken, imbecile by the true experts and why a publication such as ARN would even give this self proclaimed expert air time is beyond me.

I am currently employed by a global IT organisation that is working to increase their foot print in South Australia. As a relatively small state it was not worth us investing in an office for a single employee and I therefore work from home, initially this was set up over a 3G link, the coverage and performance was unbearable, I know work over ADSL2+ and whilst it is an improvement it is nothing compared to my colleagues in the eastern states.

This is the perfect example of what FTTH will enable us to do. Businesses will have a far greater reach and be able to expand in to areas which they previously thought impossible.

The technology will last well in to the future before needing to be replaced (much like our current copper networks have) and is an asset which can be sold off, by which time it will have paid for itself.

The Liberals proposal to extend ADSL2+ coverage and wireless is a waste of time and money. All of this infrastructure would need to be ripped and replaced every 4 -8 years, potentially even more often - Even if we retained the fibre to the transmission towers you would still need to replace the "last mile" equipment as wireless matures - And you will still have a technology which is out performed time and time again by Fibre.

Not sure all decisions should be made on cost otherwise we may not have roads or rail transport or water or electricity, etc . Society is not a business and maybe we want to divert our taxes on services to improve everyone's life style. Investment in society does not always follow business rules. Returns are not the prime objective.

I benefit from food being grown away from the cities and so do the majority. Why not treat this as an essential service. If you can provide this essential service more cost effectively put together a business plan and let your peers make a judgement. I would venture to suggest anyone can put one together one for the city but not for the country.

Surely we want to encorage Australians to grow food instead of importing which invaribly means they will need to live in sparsley populated areas, so why should we not give them similar services to city dwellers. Dare I say it AT SOCIETIES EXPENSE.

Please note I am not affiliated to any political party or support the ideaology of communist regimes.

However; I would like to know when it will be coming to my suburb just to make sure that this is not a political stunt. Perhaps they could have a web site?