LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Glen Turner <glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au>
  To  : Simon Hackett <simon@internode.com.au>
  Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 19:46:58 +1030

Re: AOL? or best ISP

Simon Hackett wrote:
> 
> An investment only an old-world utility could contemplate

Hi Simon,

I wasn't having a go at Agile's ADSL service.  More pointing
out to Mark the reason for people's unrealistic expectations,
and the sort of infrastructure that would meet those expectations.

I agree that the fiber to the home is a big infrastructure
project, beyond the capabilities of an ISP.  I suppose my
real issue that we have a government that isn't planning
for the necessary infrastructure expenditure.  I think
we're both agreed that "waiting for Telstra to do it" isn't
a workable strategy.

> TransACT is a very exciting pilot (even Canberra wide, I still
> consider it a pilot in most respects).

Mainly in its economics.  The technology is now so old as to be
boring.

The economics are exciting because TransACT are just offering a
carriage service.  This is a huge departure from the "value-add"
mantra of most infrastructure owners.

Apparently, ACTEW sees customer management as the hardest and
most expensive part of their business and didn't want to buy
into a larger customer management problem with the TransACT
project.


> Note that they aren't fibre to the home, they're fibre to the <group
> of 50 houses> and VDSL over copper the last 300m's of the way to the
> house. An interesting choice which may have been driven (IMHO) by the
> cost differential between fibre ethernet termination boxes and VDSL
> ethernet termination boxes at the time that their rollout was
> designed

Spot on.  AARNet people were involved with the TransACT people
in the initial design and trial.  VDSL was more economic at the
time.  It's about the same now.   There's still a premium on
optical customer premises equipment, but the extra $200 isn't as
horrible as it sounds as fiber within the structure of the home
solves some interference and cable routing issues (eg: you
can run it through power ducting and put the patch on a
general purpose outlet).

Later parts of the rollout are likely to be entirely fiber
if customers pay more.  My view is that TransACT have greatly
underestimated what the demand for the all-fiber service will
be.  Small business and hobbists are much more likely to select
a service that allows them to offer Internet services.  There's
also a up-scaling of the technology.  If the average Joe in
Canberra can access a site at 10Mbps, then the average moderately
popular server can't sit on a 10Mbps-downstream asynchronous
service.

Best wishes for the ADSL service (and let me know when you do
a roll out in Semaphore),
Glen

-- 
 Glen Turner                                 Network Engineer
 (08) 8303 3936      Australian Academic and Research Network
 glen.turner@aarnet.edu.au          http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
--
 The revolution will not be televised, it will be digitised

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