Broadband - Should the government simply buy a satellite?

[mynameis]

actually, I wonder if we might be better off if the govt still owned telescum now. Perhaps we might see some real investment in infrastructure, rather than all this ripoff dodging the consumer type bullshit from its' current owners.

DB

Working on it slowly and unbundling would be the way to go just like they have in Auz, UK...

[Mully]

Can anyone tell me why there is an obsession with putting cables in the ground, rather than putting cellphone type towers up and having a national wireless grid? Couldn't you then purchase a wireless modem for home (or log in via a mobile device) with a price-plan to suit the speed you want? Couldn't you stick internet "repeaters" on to Cell towers?

Or run fibre optic to the towers and beam it wirelessly from there?

Is it:
Cost?
Resource Management to get the towers?
Wireless can't run as fast? Not as reliable?

Just curious.

[007XX]

Wow! you'd rather see the Sky tower than Eiffel's grand erection?

When I want to see an erection, I stay at home ...

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

Can anyone tell me why there is an obsession with putting cables in the ground, rather than putting cellphone type towers up and having a national wireless grid? Couldn't you then purchase a wireless modem for home (or log in via a mobile device) with a price-plan to suit the speed you want? Couldn't you stick internet "repeaters" on to Cell towers?

Or run fibre optic to the towers and beam it wirelessly from there?

I get bombarded enough from all the other radioactive crap... and cell phones give yah cancer with smoking...

Is it:
Cost?
Resource Management to get the towers?
Wireless can't run as fast? Not as reliable?

In all seriousness yes to all the above,

• it probably is cheaper to lay cable,
• yes Resource Management would be a major problem... think of the problems they have getting the resource consent now for the cell phone repeaters
• on a over-cast day, satilite is no as reliable...

[Swoop]

A gubbinment satellite?
Just shoot Heilen into orbit.
Oh, hang on. "She" (using that term loosley) would frighten all the other alien beings up there.

Wow! you'd rather see the Sky tower than Eiffel's grand erection?

When are the froggies going to finish the thing? They have put all the reinforcing into position but when is the boxing and the concrete pour going to get done?

[chrisso]

A Sattelite HaHa .get real---you dont even have a fucking Air Force-how ya gonna afford a Sattelite?

[limbimtimwim]

Can anyone tell me why there is an obsession with putting cables in the ground, rather than putting cellphone type towers up and having a national wireless grid? Couldn't you then purchase a wireless modem for home (or log in via a mobile device) with a price-plan to suit the speed you want? Couldn't you stick internet "repeaters" on to Cell towers?
Or run fibre optic to the towers and beam it wirelessly from there?
Is it:
Cost?
Resource Management to get the towers?
Wireless can't run as fast? Not as reliable?

If it is a privately owned wireless network you are stuck with them. A few money laden organisations can buy the licences to blocks of radio spectrum and then charge you too much money for the privilage of using it. As far as I know, the only way of getting data performance that people find acceptable is via managed spectrum. The wireless router your have in your house shares it's radio spectrum with bluetooth devices, cordless phones and video senders. Using unlicensed spectrum works fine in many cases, but you wouldn't be able to build a national network that provides consistent acceptable performance because one crappy 2.4GHz cordless phone can spam a wide area with radio garbage.

A problem, that can be countered somewhat by throwing technology at it, is that as the range of your data radio system increases, the data rates decrease. This means that to get acceptable data rates, you need to put your cells close together. The cellphone type technology can counter this because they have quite expensive cell sites with clever antenna technology and the computer running it all is also quite clever. And they also don't have to deal with interference from other people's crap. And they control to some degree the devices that connect to the network. Vodafone and Telecom check the models of cellphones they sell (To some degree anyway) to make sure they don't misbehave and disrupt other users.

Ergo a wireless network would have to be run by one organisation with a plan to ensure good performance. It also has to be quite expensive. Now either this organisation is owned by the government, who will charge too much because that is what happens. Or by a private company that has to return money to it's (Overseas) shareholders. The private company also wouldn't bother putting in whizz-bang technology in poor parts of town or out in the styx because there would be no return for shareholders.

Now the idea of a fibre going to a box at the end of the street does not need central control. There would be some glass that pops up in your land somewhere, and there would be some glass that pops up in the box. There is no need for control except for handing out the keys to the boxes on the streets. Once installed and the fibre certified as meeting a certain standard, that's it. There shouldn't be much maintenance except when someone puts a digger through a cable or the box gets hit by a car. Authorised people could open that box and connect your bit of fibre to their bit of equipment. Then you could buy something to put on your end of the fibre, or perhaps rent it. You could do whatever you liked with your fibre and not disrupt anyone else. Likewise with whomever has connected to your fibre in the box; they could connect your fibre to the internet, perhaps some sort of television system or maybe a phone system.

Anyway, that's how I'd like to see it work. ..dum-de-do pipedream..

[jrandom]

A Sattelite HaHa .get real---you dont even have a fucking Air Force...

I vote for using the death ray on the other side of the Tasman first.

[Mooch]

Can anyone tell me why there is an obsession with putting cables in the ground, rather than putting cellphone type towers up and having a national wireless grid? Couldn't you then purchase a wireless modem for home (or log in via a mobile device) with a price-plan to suit the speed you want? Couldn't you stick internet "repeaters" on to Cell towers?

Or run fibre optic to the towers and beam it wirelessly from there?

Is it:
Cost?
Resource Management to get the towers?
Wireless can't run as fast? Not as reliable?

Just curious.

IIt is feasible and available, the argument is 3g mobile data verse technologies like Wimax. The mobile providers that already have the towers are able to do this. The dury is out on Wimax becoming widely adopted. If it isn't then it's unit cost will not come down. It comes down to the cost of capital verse the return on investment. It's also down to tarafing, the mobile providers have traditionally charged a premium for Data (internet) over there networks.

This technology have been expensive to purchased compared to Ethernet based data solutions which the likes of the ISP's normally run.

Speed wise, standards based wireless lags behind fibre and cooper cable and it's speed drops over distance more so than the other two.

EG Fibre , 10,000 Mbit is getting common , Copper 1000 mbit , ADSL to your house can be unto 8 meg , 20 meg with adsl 2 , Mobile 3g 800k to 3.5 meg currently.

Satellite is the most expensive form of wireless data, and has delay and lag due to propagation delay of the signal to be sent from space and back twice. Most satellite owners charge a premium for bandwidth channels, based on the cost of getting the equipment into space, the expensive low volume technology required and the lifecycle of the satellite.

[Jantar]

Couldn't somebody engineer something so that data traffic fitted into the peaks and troughs in an AC power sine wave, and people could get their broadband out of a three-pin wall socket?

There are already speech and data systems using HV power lines. The AC is a carrier and has the speech and data superimposed on it. However, the signals are not strong enough to be transferred through a transformer, so it only works as point to on the HV circuits. There are technical reasons that limit the frequency of the superimposed signal, that will also make it unsuitable for high speed internet.

[NighthawkNZ:Me]

There are already speech and data systems using HV power lines. The AC is a carrier and has the speech and data superimposed on it. However, the signals are not strong enough to be transferred through a transformer, so it only works as point to on the HV circuits. There are technical reasons that limit the frequency of the superimposed signal, that will also make it unsuitable for high speed internet.

I have thought control over my system and 600 million tera-quads of storage using a Grid Operated Database, which allows the fast data transfer. The great thing is because its thought control, It has unlimited range and speed.

The main problem I have is all the porn that comes in, all at once and I only have so many minutes a day to look at it... :sigh:

[Finn]

In the unlikely event something like this got started here it would take 8 years at least.....

And that's just to get resource consent.

[YellowDog]

I don't like the idea of yet more wireless radiation, plus it would be a crap system designed for ships and remote data feeds.

You'd also have trouble getting the Death Ray idea past parliament.

Perhaps if you rename it as an "Illegal Alien Termination of Visa Advisory Service", they might go for it! (forget the Broadband idea).

[Mully]

"Illegal Alien Termination of Visa Advisory Service"

I don't think the Gummint would go for that.

Maybe if it was the Illegal Immigrant Finder, cuddler and supplier of taxpayer funds they'd go for it.

[CookMySock]

Can anyone tell me why there is an obsession with putting cables in the ground, rather than putting cellphone type towers up and having a national wireless grid?

There just isnt the radio bandspace to do it. No way everyone could get a gigabit (each) over a shared wireless link, but over fibre that is easy.

Fibre everywhere is the only real option.

DB