[clug] [OT] Broadband clangers

[Bob Edwards]

Kerry O'Brien on the 7:30 report last night interviewing Tony Abbott:

"KERRY O'BRIEN: It's fibre that - where the signals will travel at the 
speed of light."
(from http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2010/s2979381.htm )

As if, somehow, signals travelling down fibre that "last mile" will
somehow be noticably any faster than signals travelling down copper
that same last mile...

There was also a debate on ABC News 24 last night with Sen. Conroy
(sorry, I simply can't grok the ABC archives...) where he says
something like: "we need 100Mbps to enable future technologies like
the SmartGrid".

My grid meter runs at 19200baud and is bursty... I guess they may
want to have 5000+ grid meters running per household... that would
be a killer app for a 100Mbps connection...

I am not necessarily against having a 100Mbps link, I just don't see
why the minister is using SmartGrid as part of his argument. This is
not going to need anything more than about 300bps, if that. The
minister must have more compelling reasons to invest $43B for the
NBN than enabling SmartGrids.

Cheers,

Bob Edwards.