Date   : Sat, 20 Nov 2010 19:26:34 +1100
From   : station240@... (paul aslin)
Subject: [OT] Who'da thought...

> Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 01:44:00 +0100
> From: rick@...
> To: bbc-micro@...
> Subject: Re: [BBC-Micro] [OT] Who'da thought...
>
> On 19/11/2010 17:33, paul aslin wrote:
>
> > I've got 21mb/s ADSL2+ over copper here, VDSL can do even faster
> > but is distance limited.
>
> Not bad, given I have a book that goes into detail about trellis
> encoding and quadrature something-or-other that basically makes the
> point that you simply won't get faster than about 19k/bit down twisted
> pair. End of.
>
> Mmmm... Sometimes old books make enjoyable reading. Aren't we supposed
> to be wearing tin foil suits and living in big orbiting wheels?
>
>
> > Government here in Australia here are going to rewire the entire country
> > with 100mb/s fibre and replace the entire copper network in the process.
>
> That sounds lovely, but on the other hand you poor sods have a certain
> politician by the name of Conway (Conroy?) to put up with. You might, in
> a few years, have a jaw-droppingly fast infrastructure... and nobody to
> talk to...
>
>
> > and think its practical or even the same thing.
>
> Of course. It is related to the problem I mentioned otherwise regarding
> the shop's (lack of) fail safe provision. No doubt some pimply-faced
> geek pointed out all of this stuff, but nobody with the authority to
> write cheques is going to want to cough up until something goes
> seriously wrong. And even then...
>
> ...likewise, you show me a politician who advocates *spending* money (on
> something other than WAGs, flipping property, and employing relations in
> cushy jobs) and I'll ask "what's in it for them?".
>
>
> > as a whole and the retards are freaking about the $43B price tag,
>
> You might call them retards, and maybe they are, but $43B is a big
> number. Please write it with the correct number of zeros, then ask
> yourself where the outlay will come from.

Ah they also do that stupid thing with the ,000s and even add .00 to the end too.

Here is a number for you
206,096,000,000
206 billion dollars, that is the outgoing government expenses for 2005/2006

Here is another one
400,000,000
400 million dollars
Yearly repair bill for the current copper network, its not enough to keep
up with repairs either.
It increases a great deal each year too. The cost to business and consumers
is unknown, but I'd expect high. 

> New company or not, the thing
> to ask is "if it could have been afforded previously, why wasn't it?".
> Maybe greedy management is getting the boot and the cash will be folded
> back into updating the infrastructure. Or maybe in three years your
> bills will double. Or maybe it'll be like western governments that talk
> big, yet ultimately do nothing.

Nope, the existing nation wide telecom is right behind the NBN project, they
know we need a new network anyway.
The problem is the share holders, the share price is in the toilet anyway,
imagine what it would look like if they borrow a few billion.