Recently in Australia with all the drama surrounding the national broadband network (or our lack of it :P) an idea to cut costs has been put forward, why not put the cables up with the power lines! A report claims that it would be 4 to 6 times cheaper than putting the cables underground.
Is this a viable option or will it cause problems.
This is a fantastic idea. Not only would it cut costs on the national surveillance, uh, I mean broadband network, but it will allow real competition between ISPs as it won't cost them a fortune to put in their own cables.
well it would certainly increase the speed of roll out... South Australia has a real problem in that the Telstra Pits (where the cables were going to go) are totally contaminated with asbestos
It looks as though someone in our country finally put their thinking cap on.
Right technology (no need for gigabit residential connections yet), VDSL2 is highly scaleable reaching into the hundreds of Mbps, is relatively asynchronous (one of the main problems with ADSL), can be deployed much quicker and for much less than the cost of FTTH. Wrong price, it is I believe one of the most expensive FTTN rollouts in history, possibly the most expensive and costs more than many FTTH rollouts. Wrong time-frame, it is going to take way to long to roll-out.
Also given the whole mass survaillance debacle, the attempt of the australian government to create a censorship list of websites to be banned (which failed because of a lack of support), and given the fact that government companies create a massive barrier for competition I don't think this is a good idea. In my opinion it would be better if the government used regulation to improve competitiveness (breaking up vertically integrated companies thereby making it possible for companies to enter the market and compete in a chosen segment), reformed the tax system to penalize companies that don't reinvest, and created a grant system to help improve the network.
+1 No one seems to remember the censorship bullshit all anyone has to say on the subject of the NBN is 'herp fibre is better than copper, I need gigabit because reasons, etc.'