How can the Rudd government deliver its promise for creating a National Broadband Network?
by Jui-Wei Yang
If the Rudd government sticks to its plan of using FTTP to create the National Broadband Network, it will very likely deliver some of the promises it made to the Australian people, for making the NBN.
FTTP stands for Fiber to the Premises according to Wei-Ping Huang of McMaster University of Canada and the
According to Huang, unlike traditional digital subscriber line and cable modem technology that has limited bandwidth. FTTP technology’s bandwidth is almost unlimited. Huang stated, Fiber Optic network such as xPON, has an upstream and downstream transmission rate of 155 Mb/s to 2.5 GB/s. Huang also stated that Passive Optic Network such as, APON, BPON, GPON and EPON are extremely promising in term of performance and cost effectiveness. Huang stated that FTTH (Fiber to the Home) and FTTB (Fiber to the Business) does not only allow the convergence of voice, data and video applications, but a whole range of other services [1] also.
Sinana Aral and Marshall Van Alstyne of MIT, state there is increase evidence in regards to how having access towards a network system, will affect an individual or a group, in terms of their economic performance. Aral and Alstyne argues that people who have access to a network system have an information advantage in comparison to those who doesn’t have one. Aral and Alstyne also argue those who have access to a diverse network, which is one that is low on coherence and structure equivalence, has an advantage in wage, promotion, job placement and creativity, because it give them the opportunity to have access to multi dimension information and gather none redundant knowledge, although it also mean a diverse network need to be flexible to increase in size, so there is no need to decrease the amount of specific information that is within the network. Aral and Alstyne [2] argue that the ability of been an information rich is a strong advantage within the economy.
The Rudd government plans to create a NBN that will connect 90% of Australian homes, school and workplaces with speed that is up to 100 megabytes per second, investing a budget of $43 billion over a period of 8 years. It plans to use FTTP technology to create this NBN service and promises that the NBN to be a historical nation-building investment [3] that will help to transform Australian economy and create jobs and business of the 21st century.