Let's have a look how our 50 bln spent on NBN compare to Elon's global internet.
Firstly - for the faction of Australian dream - 8 bln dollars - Elon will cover the whole globe with state of the art fastest internet access possible.Regardless of enormous amount wasted on fiber here most of the country remain outside any plans for fast internet access.
I just realized that 200km into the countryside that is not short or long term plans to provide any sort of internet access at all. Even ADSL is not on the table for rural Australia....
Hopefully, Elon pricing remains fair - same for African villagers and Australian farmer- then we could all afford decent internet at reasonable costs.
https://innovateaspire.com/2017/05/05/satellite-internet-no-more-a-fiction-elon-musk/

This Musk's another unicorn flatulence means shooting the satellites into the space 24/7 non stop comes about 3 rockets a day...for 4,5 K satellites..
But the recent news is that there will be 12K satellites..
parabolicarc.com/2017/03/03/spacex-launch-12000-satellites/#more-60879
Comes about shooting 6 rockets a day.. with the lifespan of each about 5 years..go figure

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dmitri said..
This Musk's another unicorn flatulence means shooting the satellites into the space 24/7 non stop comes about 3 rockets a day...for 4,5 K satellites..
But the recent news is that there will be 12K satellites..
parabolicarc.com/2017/03/03/spacex-launch-12000-satellites/#more-60879
Comes about shooting 6 rockets a day.. with the lifespan of each about 5 years..go figure

With new Falcon Heavy able to deliver 50 tonnes load to orbit at once and able to be refueled within 24 h to fly again- your calculations are a bit off.
Besides, US possibly wants to fill all available space in orbit to prevent any further competition.
If US could do something Chinese silk road could extend into space and drop prices 10x .
All Australia could do is provide some tax protectionism for their wasted NBN investment.
By analogy to restriction on solar panels now on your home - not to exceed allowed 5 kw per home, there could be similar introduced for internet access - data incoming from space could be charged say $1 per GB or more.
Space Tax is under consideration right now, I bet.

Satellite internet is ****. Massive lag. It's ok when downloading or streaming but for everything else which requires 2 way feedback it's poo. This is a function of the long wavelengths required I believe.

In the U.S. they are saying that wifi is going to be obsolete as all the phone companies are offering unlimited plans and are starting to roll out 5G.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-09/a-world-without-wi-fi-looks-possible-as-unlimited-plans-catch-on

The NBN is likely to go the way of the old land line - total waste of time and money.

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kiteboy dave said..
Satellite internet is ****. Massive lag. It's ok when downloading or streaming but for everything else which requires 2 way feedback it's poo. This is a function of the long wavelengths required I believe.

Nah, its a function of the speed of light and TCP acknowledgements. You can improve it, but only so much.

The frequencies used are quite high, with ranges in the gigahertz and even optical satellites!

If Elon Musk is such a visionary, he should build it and we will all switch.

But... But... We haven't even got NBN in the 'burbs yet!

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Macroscien said..

dmitri said..
This Musk's another unicorn flatulence means shooting the satellites into the space 24/7 non stop comes about 3 rockets a day...for 4,5 K satellites..
But the recent news is that there will be 12K satellites..
parabolicarc.com/2017/03/03/spacex-launch-12000-satellites/#more-60879
Comes about shooting 6 rockets a day.. with the lifespan of each about 5 years..go figure

With new Falcon Heavy able to deliver 50 tonnes load to orbit at once and able to be refueled within 24 h to fly again- your calculations are a bit off.
Besides, US possibly wants to fill all available space in orbit to prevent any further competition.
If US could do something Chinese silk road could extend into space and drop prices 10x .
All Australia could do is provide some tax protectionism for their wasted NBN investment.
By analogy to restriction on solar panels now on your home - not to exceed allowed 5 kw per home, there could be similar introduced for internet access - data incoming from space could be charged say $1 per GB or more.
Space Tax is under consideration right now, I bet.

What about the size ? Size matters..
Each Sat about the same size as an Alfa Romeo..and about the same 5 years lifespan
How many Falcons would you need for delivering 12000 Alfas to orbit ?
And then you would need to take the replacements.
Sorry I can't get my head around the numbers.
I am bad at maths

The key issue for the Musk plan, based on my research, is how to deal with "space junk" hitting their satellites

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kiteboy dave said..
Satellite internet is ****. Massive lag. It's ok when downloading or streaming but for everything else which requires 2 way feedback it's poo. This is a function of the long wavelengths required I believe.

You're not talking about that old PCnet?? service in the early 2000's. Asymmetrical bandwidth: Satellite stream downlink and a modem/landline uplink ?. If so, then yes, very limited.

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FormulaNova said..

kiteboy dave said..
Satellite internet is ****. Massive lag. It's ok when downloading or streaming but for everything else which requires 2 way feedback it's poo. This is a function of the long wavelengths required I believe.

Nah, its a function of the speed of light and TCP acknowledgements. You can improve it, but only so much.

The frequencies used are quite high, with ranges in the gigahertz and even optical satellites!

If Elon Musk is such a visionary, he should build it and we will all switch.

Yeah ok so I was wrong that it's wavelength to blame, it's mostly just distances involved.

My typical ping range 17 to 43 ms on fibre to the fridge. Was always low 20s on ADSL. High teens on cable.

Average satellite ping: 650ms

Can't game, internet's annoying, etc. Which ties in with my experience, I use it regularly.

Theoretical minimum ping with light speed comms & user directly below: 500ms ping. Still useless.

Low earth orbit satellites can have low ping, however they move & move quick across the sky. So you need a computer controlled directional phased array antenna to catch them.. Moving parts on your roof, Wahoo.

Straight up light speed fibre to your door, nothing beats it.

Tony Abbott tasked Malcolm to fk it up for kingmaker Murdoch. Never forget.

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kiteboy dave said..

Average satellite ping: 650ms

Don't worry too much.
Our grandkids will play the same Doom game as you do across the network but one sitting here,
second on the Moon,
third in Martian village.
Then will complain: Moon kid - 2 seconds ping ! ?
Martian kid - 24 minutes !!! ?
They will be so jealous about our ancient dial up ping, never worse than 1s.

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kiteboy dave said..

Straight up light speed fibre to your door, nothing beats it.

Tony Abbott tasked Malcolm to fk it up for kingmaker Murdoch. Never forget.

In 5 years time, phone companies in Australia will likely have unlimited data plans. For 90% of users - wouldn't that make the NBN totally redundant? There's no such thing as double unlimited.

In the same way as having a landline now is - when every Australian owns an average of two mobile phones.

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oliver said..

In 5 years time, phone companies in Australia will likely have unlimited data plans. For 90% of users - wouldn't that make the NBN totally redundant? There's no such thing as double unlimited.

In the same way as having a landline now is - when every Australian owns an average of two mobile phones.

I,ve got about 7 mobile phones........... 5 in the drawer, I'm wondering if they are just fun to keep, and 1 that is in the same drawer that worked last time I used it, and 1 on charge to use tomorrow and so forth until it ends up in the drawer.

Why would the average Aussie have two mobile phones both costing them money to do same thing? Is that 24 Million phones extra?

I just read that statistic somewhere. Sounds true.

I use 2 mobile phones... 1 for work... 1 for seabreeze personal... just jokes - my work phone is for seabreeze

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kiteboy dave said..


Low earth orbit satellites can have low ping, however they move & move quick across the sky. So you need a computer controlled directional phased array antenna to catch them.. Moving parts on your roof, Wahoo.

Why does a phased array need to move? I thought that was the whole point of phased array, you don't need to physically aim it.

Having the world become reliant on satellite internet would likely result in an unmitigated disaster in the future, with disastrous consequences for all world economies. Too risky.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome

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oliver said..

kiteboy dave said..

Straight up light speed fibre to your door, nothing beats it.

Tony Abbott tasked Malcolm to fk it up for kingmaker Murdoch. Never forget.

In 5 years time, phone companies in Australia will likely have unlimited data plans. For 90% of users - wouldn't that make the NBN totally redundant? There's no such thing as double unlimited.

In the same way as having a landline now is - when every Australian owns an average of two mobile phones.

Have you tried to run your house off hotspotting your mobile? nah not going to happen. Not to mention when the entire street neighborhood country is doing it.

I don't know about you but still to this day if I want guaranteed network capability in my house I run cable. I can't trust wi-fi not to lag, drop out, interfere with neighbors, whatever.

If you can't trust wi-fi to get a solid signal from your modem to your other room, what makes you think you could run your house off 5g?

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nebbian said..

kiteboy dave said..


Low earth orbit satellites can have low ping, however they move & move quick across the sky. So you need a computer controlled directional phased array antenna to catch them.. Moving parts on your roof, Wahoo.

Why does a phased array need to move? I thought that was the whole point of phased array, you don't need to physically aim it.

yep I got 2 and 3 confused. Reading up on phased array, they cost slightly more than practical for home internet.

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jn1 said..

kiteboy dave said..
Satellite internet is ****. Massive lag. It's ok when downloading or streaming but for everything else which requires 2 way feedback it's poo. This is a function of the long wavelengths required I believe.

You're not talking about that old PCnet?? service in the early 2000's. Asymmetrical bandwidth: Satellite stream downlink and a modem/landline uplink ?. If so, then yes, very limited.

No it's current service in regional SEQ. NBN satellite actually. I believe it's thru westnet.
www.westnet.com.au/internet-product/broadband/nbn/plans/satellite


It's also weather dependent.

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kiteboy dave said..If you can't trust wi-fi to get a solid signal from your modem to your other room, what makes you think you could run your house off 5g?

oliver said..

kiteboy dave said..

Straight up light speed fibre to your door, nothing beats it.

Tony Abbott tasked Malcolm to fk it up for kingmaker Murdoch. Never forget.

In 5 years time, phone companies in Australia will likely have unlimited data plans. For 90% of users - wouldn't that make the NBN totally redundant? There's no such thing as double unlimited.

In the same way as having a landline now is - when every Australian owns an average of two mobile phones.

Have you tried to run your house off hotspotting your mobile? nah not going to happen. Not to mention when the entire street neighborhood country is doing it.

I don't know about you but still to this day if I want guaranteed network capability in my house I run cable. I can't trust wi-fi not to lag, drop out, interfere with neighbors, whatever.

If you can't trust wi-fi to get a solid signal from your modem to your other room, what makes you think you could run your house off 5g?

He read it on the internet. It must be true....

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kiteboy dave said..

Okee Doeck.. "Direct PC" is the service I was thinking of.

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jn1 said..

kiteboy dave said..

Okee Doeck.. "Direct PC" is the service I was thinking of.

One-way internet actually has a better round trip time. Your traffic leaves your PC and then goes to the server on the internet, and then the response comes back via the satellite. So you only have one of the huge satellite delays.

Go two-way satellite and you have two huge delays and the contention mechanism to get access to transmit may slow you down as well. I guess LEO satellites may reduce this delay, but they are moving pretty fast, and I am not sure their orbit is stable for long term deployment.

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kiteboy dave said..
Have you tried to run your house off hotspotting your mobile? nah not going to happen. Not to mention when the entire street neighborhood country is doing it.

Work from my van sometimes - rarely a problem and very fast. But in saying that, I don't spend my days downloading movies or gay porn on p2p or ping testing middle class mates.

My existing cable connection is fine for me. With all the technologies advances coming on in 5 or 6 years time (when it's completed) The nbn will be less useful than the desalination plant that was built in Vicco 10 years ago at a cost of $4B and $608M per year - which has been used once.

Plenty of other problems in Australia. Spending billions to enable middle class white males to download illegal tv shows a bit quicker and ping test each other isn't that important in my book.

What is amazing that once 4,000 satellites will be deployed flying low over Earth, distances between will be very short.
Now we need to access Geostationary satellite 5,000 km away, but soon low flying satellite will be just a few hundred km away ( 300-500 km? ) That will change everything. Ping time, the power required to access both ways, available transfer rate. I hope that technology allows also to use the network for GPS positioning and we all could enjoy precision in cm on our smartphones. That will be fantastic if instead of using any tape we could take a measurement with 1 cm accuracy or request satellite photo from any place in the world at a flat fee: say $50 at any given moment. So I suggest next generation satellite co carry GPS signal and Hi Resolution cameras beside just transmitter for the internet and mobile phones.

It sounds reasonable until you realise that having a satellite whizzing overhead is not really secure.

www.businessinsider.com.au/spacex-internet-satellite-constellation-china-threat-2016-11?r=DE&IR=T

If you wanted, you could just launch a missile at one, or stand something in front of one, and take it out.

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oliver said..

kiteboy dave said..
Have you tried to run your house off hotspotting your mobile? nah not going to happen. Not to mention when the entire street neighborhood country is doing it.

Work from my van sometimes - rarely a problem and very fast. But in saying that, I don't spend my days downloading movies or gay porn on p2p or ping testing middle class mates.

My existing cable connection is fine for me. With all the technologies advances coming on in 5 or 6 years time (when it's completed) The nbn will be less useful than the desalination plant that was built in Vicco 10 years ago at a cost of $4B and $608M per year - which has been used once.

Plenty of other problems in Australia. Spending billions to enable middle class white males to download illegal tv shows a bit quicker and ping test each other isn't that important in my book.

1. Why do you keep mentioning gay porn? No one else is.

2. You can download a few emails in your vandura so you think that scales to the whole country? Nope.

3. What is this "ping testing mates" rubbish? Pings are a measure of latency which strongly affects usability. It's highly relevant in a discussion about satellite internet.

4. Wtf does class have to do with anything. You think lower socio-economic groups use internet less? Nope.

5. "You're existing cable is fine". Lucky you, you're in the small percent who has a solid relatively fast connection that should hold up to future needs.. For a bit.

6. "5 or 6 years" yep ok you think in 5 or 6 or 10 years the mobile network could manage all of our internet requirements? Yep & those fusion reactors will be providing all our power too.

7. "Other problems". We live in a digital economy. We're losing the international race to provide fast internet, literally slipping back every year. Borat has us beaten now.

8. If you can't imagine a use for broadband other than gay porn or downloading, I'd say that's your issue. The future is expanding every day, as are bandwidth needs.

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kiteboy dave said..
1. Why do you keep mentioning gay porn? No one else is.

2. You can download a few emails in your vandura so you think that scales to the whole country? Nope.

3. What is this "ping testing mates" rubbish? Pings are a measure of latency which strongly affects usability. It's highly relevant in a discussion about satellite internet.

4. Wtf does class have to do with anything. You think lower socio-economic groups use internet less? Nope.

5. "You're existing cable is fine". Lucky you, you're in the small percent who has a solid relatively fast connection that should hold up to future needs.. For a bit.

6. "5 or 6 years" yep ok you think in 5 or 6 or 10 years the mobile network could manage all of our internet requirements? Yep & those fusion reactors will be providing all our power too.

7. "Other problems". We live in a digital economy. We're losing the international race to provide fast internet, literally slipping back every year. Borat has us beaten now.

8. If you can't imagine a use for broadband other than gay porn or downloading, I'd say that's your issue. The future is expanding every day, as are bandwidth needs.

Because you asked me kindly: here's my answer to 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

I work as a computer programmer. Use the internet all the time - have done for decades - it's not broken now. The NBN is costing us $2K per person and at best all it's going to achieve is a slightly faster download speed? I'm not even going to get it for 5 years. The speed won't affect me, I don't care. My work is about making programs smaller and faster to load. Technology is a marvellous thing. When the NBN eventually makes it to my home it will make no difference to me - but I have to pay. That annoys me.

Just because all these idiot shouty shouty people argued for dud technology 10 years ago doesn't mean I should now be accused of snatching the Mccan kid for questioning them! The money should have been spent on a million other problems facing Australia.

What's wrong with having a different opinion?
What's wrong with expressing the fact that our nation could have saved billions of dollars if we hadn't been too hasty embracing this redundant technology?

I have no problem with middle class university educated middle class white twats who want to share ping tests with other like minded people about how fast they can download gay porn, or owner operators with a three-D printer who choose to print custom dildos - as long as they pay for it themselves.

I have absolutely no need to download the entire box series of Game of Thrones in 44 seconds. Rolling out fibre to the node in maybe 10 cities would have been enough for the average Aus, and even that looks like it would have been unnecessary now if we consider all the other technologies coming on board.

So how about you tell me what the $8,000 my household is going to pay for this - which we haven't got yet - is going to change my life so drastically in 5 years time?

You have NBN now - how has it improved your life?

I worked helpdesk a very long time ago. As you will see. One thing I learnt is that many 'computer programmers' are great at code and can barely turn their computer on or deal with anything outside their sphere. Yes I got the classic "my coffee mug holder won't go back in" from a programmer when his CD drawer broke.. from too many coffee mugs resting on it. Yes I got a ticket 'my floppy drive won't accept the disk" and I opened a case and there's literally 15 x 3.5" floppies jammed in the hole where I took the floppy drive out the week before for repairs.. which I did in front of the programmer... while explaining what I was doing. So yep programmers... good at making programs. Hardware? Not so much.

Opinions are fine but you're not "expressing the fact" you'reexpressing the opinion. And you're welcome to have one, and express it, you're just wrong.

The NBN as originally set up with FTTH was going to cost taxpayers... nothing. Yep that's right, nothing. Reason? NBN co set up to make money, generate a return on investment, so that in fact at the end of the day it would have made a profit for the taxpayer, even with overruns factored in. This was before the libs killed it and spent $11 billion buying our decrepit copper back from Telstra.




Redundant? Redundant? How can you possibly think Fibre Optic cable, which is only one element of NBN but the one you're referring to, how can you possibly think Fibre could be redundant? Nothing will ever travel faster than light, according to Einstein. If i had to look at our technological world and pick 1 single thing that's utterly future-proof and never to be redundant, it would be fibre optic communication.

Where are you plucking $8000 from? What is snatching the Mccan kid? What is the "Dud technology" that you refer to? So many questions.

The point of the NBN was originally to replace the copper network that carried us 100 years with a new network for the future 100 years. What happens with it today is not really the point, in that context.

Did you ask the people not in your 10 cities if they'd like NBN? I think you're underestimating demand. Everyone wants it.
Except you, because you have cable.

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Where are you plucking $8000 from? What is snatching the Mccan kid? What is the "Dud technology" that you refer to? So many questions.

Q 1.
NBN = $50B
25M people in Australia
$2K per head
4 people in our household $8K
I'd rather spend that amount of money for some 10yo's transgender operation. Than have fibre to my home.

Q 2.
In my experience. People who are shouty shouty about the NBN are irrational. When you question them - they look at you like you are a serial killer. I didn't snatch the McCann kid. I just question the money we've all wasted.

Q 3.
In my opinion - The NBN is dud technology.

And after all that you "refused" to answer the question I asked of you

How did the NBN improve your life? (being more argumentative isn't a valid answer)