US expert: The future is wireless broadband

But the Australian method may not the best for promoting growth
Blair Levin

Blair Levin

Blair Levin was the lead author of the US Government's version of the NBN, the National Broadband Plan, which has faced similar controversies and challenges. He talks to DAVID RAMLI about how wireless broadband is the future and why the Australian method may not be the best for promoting growth.

David Ramli (DR): What do you think of using speeds to compare national broadband plans?

Blair Levin (BL): The conventional wisdom is that the primary metric for measuring the validity or power of a national broadband plan is the speed of the wired network to the most rural of residents. That way of looking at the problem is profoundly wrong and almost every word in the sentence I just uttered is wrong…If you think that there’s a single factor that measures something then you don’t understand that what you want is a constantly improving platform for knowledge exchange. You want networks, devices, applications and most importantly – people interacting to constantly improve how they operate.

DR: Do you see the Australian plan as being better or worse than the one you help author?

BL: The Australian plan comes out of the Australian experience…What Australia basically said was ‘we’re going to take over the core platform and have a Governmental wholesale operator’. We thought that doing something like the Australian version, which is a VERY significant sum of money and there are some things there about how it’s going to be repaid, wasn’t the way we were going to do it.

We wanted to be pro-growth and pro-investment, but we didn’t think having the Government play a major role, as they do in Australia, in suddenly saying ‘we’re going to decide to invest in this kind of network as opposed to that kind of network’ was appropriate. But then we were looking at America.

Korea has a very sophisticated and smart broadband strategy and everybody focuses on the fact that they have very high speeds. But I would point out that it’s not clear their economy to date has really benefited from the extraordinary wired speeds they have. But they’re doing a lot on the application side that is driving significant societal value.

DR: Do you envy the Australian ability to simply have Government step in and say ‘this is what we’re doing?’

BL: That’s not what the lessons of my own life have taught me about how to generate economic growth. There’s a lot the Government can do. And there’s a lot that our Government is doing profoundly badly. And rather than take on a new challenge of building networks where in fact the private sector is already building them, in some cases quite well, Government ought to look at what it does and improve it.

DR: Are wireless networks where the future is? Is the use of fibre optic networks overblown?

BL: What is interesting to me is the way some people judge a broadband plan solely on the speed of the wired line network to the most rural residents. That’s what I’m fighting against and that’s the wrong way to look at it. I think over the next ten years changes in wireless are going to be the biggest driver of growth in the economy.

Mobile broadband is a horizon industry. This means it is the industry to which every other industry will find new tools for innovation and growth. Whether you’re in the transportation, manufacturing, retail, healthcare or any other industry, you’re going to be responding to the fact that tens of millions will be carrying with them devices capable of doing things that 50 years ago you could only do in computer labs. That is a profound change.

But it’s a mistake to think of wireless communications as separate to wired communications. Most wireless communications are riding over wire so one has to have both networks working well.

DR: How important is fibre to the home?

BL: It would be great if we could fund fibre to the home anywhere the market wasn’t going to pay for it but great does not mean it’s a good idea. The economic benefit of funding that as opposed to funding other things has to be considered.

DR: Of all the countries you looked at, which stood out as the best example of how to roll out a national broadband plan?

BL: In some ways Korea, but not because they had an exact model for us follow. It’s because Korea had a process, they were dedicated, they were long-term thinkers and they corrected. They stayed with the vision but adjusted when necessary. So it’s that process of understanding that the plan should always be in beta. The thing I admired most was sticking to a plan in the long term while constantly re-adjusting in the face of changing technologies and markets.

DR: Is it therefore dangerous to say, for example, that 93 per cent should get fibre while 7 per cent will get satellite or wireless? To have strict percentages of populations getting a technology rolled out to it?

BL: I think that’s just the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is ‘do we have an ecosystem of networks, devices and applications in constant improvement?’ because over time that’s what really matters. This is not a race where you break the tape – this is a race where you’ve got to get better every year. In that sense the American system has a lot to recommend it because there are forces that are going to cause constant improvement.

DR: By improvement, do you also mean in delivery methods?

BL: Yes, be it fibre, wireless, cable or hybrid cable coaxial.

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Comments

AussieJohn

1

Yes, I agree wireless is the future.. but without a sufficient backbone to support this wireless network its a dumb idea. Australia just now has got speeds America had 10 years ago, fair enough Australia is a much smaller country (22 million), but if you look at broadband statistical world rankings you'll see that we are behind the Slovak Republic, which has a population of 5 million people!!!

Prowler

2

Aussie John, guess what? Telstra has 6million km of fibre around the country comprised of over 200,000km of routes between exchanges. We already have a fibre network, we just don't have the last mile. And other telcos have heaps of it also. For some reason Conroy wants to junk all that. It is a bit like ripping down old classrooms to build new ones under the BER rather than adding to the stock.

BB

3

I am continually bemused by the people (I assume Gamers) who post comments such as we are up or down someone's broadband index, 'behind the Slovak republic' etc blah blah.

You don't realise that these indexes are in most cases complete rubbish as the lightest loaded network will always perform the fastest. Look at the school head master on Insight the other night saying we are now 8 times faster. Well guess what, with all that brand spanking new hardware and a network with only 150 people on, a backbone designed for 50 towns etc, do you think you might have a fast connection?

Australians are by and large early adopters of technology by worldwide comparison, and so of course our networks are being hammered at a higher rate than the Slovak republic's network might be. This translates into slower response times in these broadband indexes.

I think everyone understands that people outside the major cities have been left behind, as have the true remote area users and also some small number of city blackspots and that needs to be addressed and I would suggest it best to address it immediately using existing technologies, that don't take 8 years to roll out.

If Telstra (or a mix of ADSL suppliers) was given about $1Bn for DSLAM equipment and judicious backhaul upgrades, they could get most 'no broadband' users onto DSLAMs in less than 6 months, as the underlying infrastructure is already in place in 93% of houses.

Also, if you are too far from the DSLAM, there are ADSL re-generators that can go in-line to increase that distance by a lot.

Too much of the NBN debate is being hogged and bogged down by the poor people (I don't mean financially BTW) who due to location have no real broadband, when that could be fixed almost immediately with just some smart investment.

Fix people today, not in 8 years. Keep rolling the fibre, BUT FIX THE PEOPLE NOW!!!

Daniel

4

USA is USA, their broadband scheme is for them to comment on their own, and not on other and other nation's policies in regarding to infrastructure deployment, especially in regards to Telecommunications geographic differences is entirely different as well.

High populated area's and cities should always be served by high speed fixed line internet.

Daniel

5

@Prowler: Telstra is a monopoly, it won't change unless it was given favorable position, including money or legislation/regulation deals.

Walter Adamson

6

I found his comments very interesting and useful. I support the efficiency goals of the NBN, and the fact that the government had to act since the telcos and Telstra in particular was killing us. But I don't necessarily support the social equity goals which are taken for granted - that we have to serve the final 10% of the population for 90% of the project cost. That's a debate which noone wants to have. Anyway I appreciated Blair Levin's perspective.

kai wen

7

it is good to get some exposure of ideas and discussions.

I am all for good legislation that allows the priavte sector to build the network.

Who can agree to a government selling telstra and deregulating because it did not want to spend 20bil now spending 40-120bil to do what the private sector should be able to do with good legislation.

keep in mind governments are not known for running commercially viable on budget builds, as conroy has said you cannot believe what the papers say (or Politian’s from my experience)

Adam

8

@Prowler @Walter Adamson: Might want to read the news every few months. Telstra is on board (subject to shareholder approval) with the NBN meaning that the NBN will utilise already existing Telstra pits and pipes and phone connections will be migrated to NBN Co as the connections become available. Also Telstra ADSL and HFC cable customers will be migrated to NBN.

Adam

9

@kai wen: The government's estimated expense is actually $26b (rest is privately funded) and it is currently anticipated that NBN will come in under budget, assuming the Telstra deal is approved by shareholders.

gxdata

10

Beware of US experts.

This makes for a nice controversial headline, and feeds the fires that media of all flavours in Australia love to see burning.

For a little bit of balance, and a truly relevant Australian perspective, ARN and ComputerWorld should get an Australian reporter to write an article in which he / she interviews Paul Budde, from BuddeComm, who had quite a bit to do with the USA broadband plan and is very knowledgeable about other countries, as well as Australian, plans and requirements.

Furthermore, many would acknowledge that "wireless is the future", and it would be opportune to have ARN / IDG / ComputerWorld present again the article by Tim Lohman (2009) on CSIRO's 100Mbps wireless, and Darren Pauli's article on 12Gbps wireless (2007).

I assume these links are still valid -

http://www.computerworld.com.au/author/176280396/tim_lohman/articles

http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/authid;133326908

But the way the (Australian) NBN is dealing with our current and future requirements does *not* preclude the use of fast wireless in the future.

Geographically, Australia's needs are quite different from those of the USA, where the population spread is markedly different.

A better comparison would be the Canadian province of Alberta, where the SuperNet was established over 5 years ago. The wreckers in the Australian Federal government - primary, Senator Nick Minchin - ensured that Australia had another decade to get a similar standard of service.

At that time, the Western Australian government (then ALP) was stymied by Federal (lack of) policy on national broadband, so it got cold feet and did not proceed with its "Big Pipes" plans for this resource-rich but extremely sparsely and erratically populated state. But that's another story ...

deteego

11

@Adam

Actually the amount of private funds can be anywhere between $26 billion to $43 billion. Those $17 billion dollars are in private bonds, and until the government gets any private bonds (which as far as I am aware of they haven't), it can easily cost up $43 billion dollars (and that is assuming its on budget).

If private companies don't provide bonds for the NBNCo, then they have to pay for the rest of it with taxpayers money

Francis

12

Australia's population distribution including regional Australia is extremely urbanised, making it ideal for NBN-style dense pockets of fibre to premises for towns where it would be more costly to build sufficient wireless-only infrastructure.

The NBN will not only deliver speed-agnostic multi-purpose fibre to 93% of Australians, but minimum 12 Mbps wireless to 97%. And wireless will work well, free from the congestion it would suffer without fixed infrastructure carrying most of the data.

From December 2009 to June 2010, the ABS reports a 22% increase in wireless internet connections, but only 2% increase in wireless-delivered data. By contrast, ADSL connections only grew by 2% (i.e. everyone who can get ADSL already has it), but a 25% increase in ADSL-delivered data.

Australians want wireless, and to get wireless that works, we also need fibre to premises.

Stuart

13

I can not see how a Government and I mean any Government will provide a leading edge solution to such a fast moving target.

There is not one solution to this and it is a suite of delivery that is required and my worry is that after such a large amount of money has been spent on only one required phase that it will put us years behind trying to make it fit all requirements.

We don't all drive MAC Truckes because that would be silly we have pushbikes, motobikes, small cars, large cars etc etc

The needs are just as deversified in this area as they are on the road.

Gamer/Computer Technician

14

The Problem with these wireless systems if you actually use it outside of a capital city, you would know that they are very unreliable. They Drop in and out and most of all give very bad pings. This is what matters not the speed. Our current speeds are enough if you can actually get adsl2+ but much of the country cannot. For a wireless network you would have to run FIBRE to the wireless towers, and then stick one in the ground every 100m and then you still would get a higher ping than a wired connection. Wired for homes is the only way to go unless you want to take away everything on your computer except emailing word documents.

Piller

15

Yes the future is wirless BUT if the core fixed wire network is not up to scratch then wireless falls flat as wirless will always be complimentry to fixed wire networks.  The Australian government should NOT sink money into wirless as we already have a thriving 3G market who are already testing the next evolution of mobile wirless called LTE. The problem is that the free market will not pump money into unprofitable areas (e.g. Rural).  Let the free market look after mobile wirless & lets sort out the mess our fixed wirled network is in both physically & regulatory.

To Prowler -
1) Thats fibre between most copper telephone exchanges.
2) Aus is in this mess because of the Telstra monopoly.
3) Your statement is useless & it does not address fixing ANY of the issues currently holding back Australias broadband.
4) You obviously don't realise that the current system is broken if, you live too far from an exchange, are on a RIM, can only get broadband through Telstra at inflated prices whilst still paying for line rental.  Need I go on....

Daniel Riley

16

Fix Wireless network IS NOT ANWEAR
US Want To Build a Wireless Go head.
Australia need to Build high- speed infrastructure now than later on
with Price Tag in Billions, 12 Mbps is Speed a African country can get now

Tom Brown

17

Trying to stay on topic.

Mr Levin is replyng for how he sees the American experience and makes comment on the differeing approaches.
"What Australia basically said was ‘we’re going to take over the core platform and have a Governmental wholesale operator’" is not transferable from the US to AU, there is not the core platform in AU and the existing AU operator has little differed from when it was a Gvt wholesaler (and retailer). The NBN does not "take over" any other operator wheras if a similar approach was touted in the US it would conflict with the interests of many operators.

With the US's core platform currently owned by several companies it would be difficult to get a concensus, the policy reflects that and leaves that core alone. We need to build a core and I believe for AU it has to be robust and give equitable distribution.

Also the US has not had the expectations of the AU models service level guarantee and so are not under that restraint.

Imagine the Coalition's, especially Turnbull, cries of foul if the NBN did not cater to the level of service coverage Telstra provides.

sonicmerlin

18

As an American, allow me to tell you all to ignore Blair Levin. This is a guy who sold his soul to his corporate masters when constructing our national broadband plan. America's "plan" actually does nothing substantive. Its goal is 100 mbps to 100 million homes by 2020, but even without a plan cable companies' adoption of DOCSIS 3 would have achieved that.

The plan does absolutely nothing to address competition. Blair Levin was too afraid of corporate backlash to even suggest opening the lines up to competitors through line-sharing policies.

His claims about "private investment" are idiotic. Where does he think private corporate money comes from, trees? We pay companies to lay infrastructure, which then makes them natural monopolies that can price gouge everyone.

Why do you think Australia is suffering under Telstra? Natural monopolies need to be controlled and operated by government.

Please just ignore Blair Levin.

anon

19

he is not an expert
not an idiot, his arguments are valid, but there purely economic

tim

20

Wireless is not best for a backbone technology.

The proposed NBN is a backbone technology that allows large amounts of data to be moved long distances with little or no delay.

Wireless technology for the internet is best at short distances.

When used for long distances such as satellites or microwaves there is a delay which is very expensive to deal with.

The internet protocol Tcp/Ip does not deal well with delays of more than a few microseconds.

tim

21

Prowler my understanding is they are planning to use telstra's fibre network the issue is however that most of it is located in the cities and runs only from phone exchange to phone exchange.

Copper wiring then runs from the exchange to the home .

Its the cost of connecting the fibre from the home to the exchanges which is what is so expensive .

Prowler there is no way that the NBN or any company for that matter could redo the work that the Government did when it put that fibre in when it owned telcom or telstra as it is now called.

It took years and millions of dollars and nobody or at least a sane one is ever going to do that again.

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