That argument falls apart when you realise that most of the money made in rural Australia is in agriculture and mining and most of the money made in the cities is services. The latter being the part of the economy which would most benefit from faster broadband. So if you're trying to make an economic rather than a social argument you're going about it the wrong way I think.

It's also worth noting that these sub-par services the last 7% or so are going to get are equivalent to what most of suburbia already get. There is also potential for upgrades to these services which would bring them on par with the minimum the opposition is proposing for suburbia (25Mbps+ via FTTN). Sorry to bring up the political football but you can't say rural Australia is being ripped off with one hand while saying FTTH is overkill with the other.

Lastly you should probably step back for a second and take note of the types of places included in that 93%. It's not just coastal towns and cities by any stretch. I'd hardly call places like Southern Cross and Newman non-rural and if I was to list the most urbans place in WA Katanning wouldn't be the third place on my list after Geraldton and Pinjarra.

You're ignoring my point. The rural industries, mining and agriculture, will keep going regardless of how good the internet connection is to the last 7%. On the other side of things the highest population areas can't rely on Coal, Gold, Iron, Wheat or Cattle because they don't have land. So in those areas the strongest industries are things like education and media. Things which do benefit from having significantly improved internet services.

As for the NBN encouraging more people to buy online. You do realise that it goes both ways right? The internet is a network not a download pipe. Especially true if someone wants to start up a new company selling ideas, software and/or media rather than physical things. We could have our own silicon valley if we wanted to.

Lastly.... that 93% goes beyond the 83% that you're complaining about. Ontop of that the quality of services to that last 7% will improve with this investment in Sats and LTE. It would be nice if they were doing FTTH to 100% but I guess we can't always have what's nice. There's enough complaining about the cost of this as it is.

"Rural australia is always getting shafted"? Or would it be more accurate "Rural Australia is always getting subsidies"?

I'm sure this is going to make me unpopular, but there seems to be an attitude (and I'd include the good professor in this) that there should be equality of outcomes in rural areas irrespective of the cost, which, by the way, should be borne by "others". Socialise the losses...

Note that in the article the possible funding sources are ALL taxpayer/ratepayer supported (actually I have little problem with ratepayers subsidising - at least they are also beneficiaries - with the exception of the local-authority support from State/Federal taxpayers).

The article doesn't say how many premises are in the 5 remote towns, but lets say a few hundred each, say 1500 total. And let's say the $22m for 700km of fibre is accurate (I have no idea, but these sorts of estimates have a habit of blowing out later...). That's roughly $15000 per premise. Even at the (dodgy-low) required rate of return for the NBN, that's a cost of $1000 per year for your broadband. So Barco residents, are you willing to pay that much for your fibre (as opposed to the maybe-not-so-flash-but-easily-workable-satellite that is otherwise proposed)? My guess is - not out of your own pocket.

And sheesh, using the "caravan-in-the-winter" cause? Give me a break, what do you expect, some NBN tech to run up to each parked caravan he sees with a cable-end in his hand saying "do you want it"? I "know" when I'm going out in the country for a holiday that mobile coverage will be scarce and internet connectivity poor to non-existent, so I plan accordingly. I don't expect city-style services.

OK, rant off now, I feel much better...

So, you are quite happy to have rural areas disadvantaged by their location such that rural people move to the cities?

That makes sense. So Andy, who is going to grow your food and dig up your exports (you know the stuff that actually drives the economy so that the government has money to spend on the NBN) and manage our natural resources?

You seem to forget that your lifestyle in the city is subsidised by the rural and regional areas. Those businesses need access to the technology and resources so that they can continue to make cities possible.

"So, you are quite happy to have rural areas disadvantaged by their location such that rural people move to the cities?"

Yes... of course some rural areas are advantaged by their location, so people move there instead. I don't favour telling people where to go, or forcing them to.

"So Andy, who is going to grow your food and dig up your exports (you know the stuff that actually drives the economy so that the government has money to spend on the NBN) and manage our natural resources?"

Whoever I pay to do just that through my purchases of "stuff". Generally, if there is money in it, someone will do it.

"You seem to forget that your lifestyle in the city is subsidised by the rural and regional areas."

Oh is it? I thought I paid for my groceries and mineral-related stuff myself. So why are you suggesting a subsidy for rural NBN?

An increased fiber footprint is not financially feasible. The cost of the current project is under scrutiny as it is. Imagine the increased cost to push fiber to the other 7%. $22 million to get 700km of fiber to a single shire is a good indication let along the costs to add extra POIs and the supporting network for back haul.

As it is, the nbn prices are already accounting for a cross-subsidized connection with a projected financial return of 7%.

This article also only points out current infrastructure. As the coalition likes to point out, there are always advancements in wireless data transmission. Before the network is complete there will be newer techniques out that will increase bandwidth and transmission integrity.

The reality is that people on the Land (I count myself in that after 130 years here as the continuation of a family Enterprise) are not being paid vaguely near reality.

Cost of production if you are lucky, even debt free operations' are near the breadline now - climate change is rapidly making this worse, lack of communications and education opportunity deny us even further to viably run a Rural Business.

I should think that my urban 'cousins' would approve of sharing the burden of the digital divide and here I mean that Fibre should ultimately replace the Copper network, don't mind a couple of decades but it should happen.

Of course I choose to operate a Grazing Enterprise, but after 37 years since I left school, only a couple of holidays and no wages, where would I be employed and what sized fibro home would my Station buy.

On that light, maybe we should re-think and replace the Copper with Fibre - give your source of food a fair go!

I'm not buying into what you are paid (no idea, plus there are plenty of profitable rural enterprises).

Not sure what a 12MB satellite connection can't do that fibre can in a practical sense. And you'll get that probably about the same time as many city-dwellers get their fibre. I suspect that over time you are right - fibre will keep growing even after the end of the official NBN rollout.

Your urban cousins *are* sharing the burden of the digital divide. If there was no NBN mandate to cover 93% of the population with fibre, fibre wouldn't get anywhere close to that - a rough guide would be the cable coverage (Foxtel/Optus Vision). I sympathise, but that's the economics.

Andy Saunders,

While I agree with most of what you have written, it is quite wrong to suggest that rural people get a lot of subsidies. Most get absolutely nothing and all get much less than their more fortunated city cousins - whose transport every day is partially subsidied, whose access to arts and theatre, (both almost totally dependent on government hand outs), water, electricity etc are all subsidied. In the bush one pays the full cost of power distribution at about $500 per pole (a 7 km line costs the user $350,000) now, (the SWER lines were put in about 40 years ago with the requirement then that connections involved payment for much higher minimum usage thn any poroperty could use, so the property owner paid off the cost but over an extended period). Freight costs are higher and NOT subsidised evcen though long haul rail pays a dividend to rail companies which (subsidised urban trains and buses do not).

Could you please name the rural subsidies to which you refer and indicate the moneys paid out for these over a period of time?

Even when governments talk about "drought relief" very few if any farmers receive any money or assistance. Generally the forms required to be filled in are too complex and the whole prcess too time consuming.

On the other hand, the car industries involving many city based workers, and recently iron and steel, have a habit of receiving HUGE hand outs which everyone conveniently forgets because they involve both political expediency and the maintenance of jobs which in a free market we may be better off without.

However, I do believe that the manufacturing industry is worth supporting and do not have a problem with the subsidisation of these, but for Goodness sake, don't try to make out that rural industries are subsidied.

Back to the question of the NBN, I would be interested to know what the real time speed difference is between ADSL2+ and the nominal speed of the fibre network? Since it appears to me, perhaps wrongly, that most of the delay in using the internet is very site dependent, not cable dependent. On occasions, I can down load large files at amazing speed on ADSL, but at others the speed is about the same as dial up (though not often that slow!). Overseas sites are particularly slow. Given that the sending of information is by way of packets, I would not have thought that the speed say at my end (ADSL) would inhibit data coming from Sydney, Melbourne or New York if that were coming by fibre?

My second point would be to the main author, Mark Gregory. Why would a tourist spending a week in Longreach want to be dependent on a faster broadband connection. Why would anyone carrying on a business in Hughenden or Tenant Creek do with a much faster connection than will eventually be available by satellite and radio?

I do agree with David Boxall, that there needs to be much more work on satellites to improve the general usage. Some provide a quick service with few or no dropouts I believe Others, which were my unfortunate lot to experience, are quite quick, but when not dropping out they are either recovering or just about to drop out again - much worse than dialup actually. But David, the time of flight for the signals travelling at 3 x 10^8 metres per second, does not add to the slower speed which is a function of processing inside the satellite or elsewhere on the path.,

, .

Most of those subsidies you list are subsidies available to everyone, not just rural and regional people. So if they are available to everyone, how is that the preferential treatment you've been carrying on about?

So again, you are suggesting that everyone who doesn't just live in a city should receive a lower standard of everything. You are thus asserting that you don't want people to live outside of cities, because people should just move to the city to get services.

This is a completely stupid idea. All the businesses, families, people, industry, economic wealth that is generated outside of the cities is necessary for the entire country to survive. In fact, the economic position of the city is one of a money sink, taking more resources than it generates. Thus rural and regional areas subsidise the cities (one calculation put forth indicated that the Pilbara region was responsible for sustaining most of the capital cities).

If you want to cut off the services to rural and regional areas then you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Without the services to rural and regional areas, they can't function to produce the food and wealth. I invite you to come out to rural Australia and try to run a modern business with antiquated technology. Rural and Mining industries compete on an open market internationally, so you need to wake up a bit and recognise this fact.

I've already said here that GDP is not a good measure of anything other than spending, which is biased by population centres. Economic wealth isn't really GDP it is about actual wealth created, product created.

Also, in one of your previous comments to this article you did say that while you weren't forcing anyone to live in any one place you weren't suggesting they move somewhere that had the services. Essentially I read from that that you are in favour of not having rural and regional people. You even stated that "someone would do it" suggesting that it wasn't your problem these areas would have no services, it would be solely on them. This does not make for a workable society.

Also you can't make that claim about the Pilbara. Recent tax changes illustrate this point very well. WA will now get 27 cents on the dollar returned. So for every dollar that is created in tax revenue in WA, only a fraction of it comes back to support the state. Even less of that would make it back to the Pilbara, most of it being gobbled up by Perth.

John Nicol: "... I would be interested to know what the real time speed difference is between ADSL2+ and the nominal speed of the fibre network?" Apples and oranges; physics gets in the way. Any form of DSL (and wireless, for that matter) is distance dependent. The latest technologies yield fantastic speeds, but distances are measured in hundreds (sometimes tens) of metres. beyond that, speeds drop exponentially. There's also the problem of shared bandwidth; the more users online, the less bandwidth (=speed) each user has.

Copper and wireless both have less potential bandwidth and suffer greater distance attenuation than fibre. Copper and wireless are near the end of their development potential, whereas fibre is near the beginning. The capacity of fibre laid today will potentially increase by orders of magnitude as the technology develops; the potential of copper and wireless is almost exhausted. We need wireless as a complement to fibre, but copper's had its day. Fibre also lasts longer and costs less to run & maintain. For my money, fibre's a good investment.

John Nicol: "... the time of flight for the signals travelling at 3 x 10^8 metres per second, does not add to the slower speed ...". With geosynchronous orbit at 35.786*10^6 metres, and the signal traversing that distance twice for each request, then twice again for each response, bearing in mind that (for example) each element of a web page (graphic, text, etc.) takes a request/response pair, it adds up. Don't hold your breath for faster satellites; physics gets in the way again.

Andy Saunders,
Thank you for your comments and your list of "subsidised" benefits for people in the bush. I would have liked to see your analysis with dollars appended.

I do now live in Brisbane and am now enjoyng my subsidised transport, as I use buses and trains whenever I can. The proximity to hospitals and doctors and pharmacists is also a pleasant experience with the Government subsidised (read totally supported) art gallery and museum and QPAC and the Suncorp stadium $300 m from the state governemt, roads to die for...

As I said elsewhere, I have lived 35 Years in the bush and 32 years in the city. In my time in the bush I did not receive a single penny or cent in subsidy.
You claim:
Irrigation – we put down bores at our own cost but also paid the government fees to allow us to drill for water (unrefundable if no water was found), registration fees (for them to do nothing), pumping costs, metring costs. Where was the subsidy? I don’t believe we were treated any more harshly than any other irrigator.

Deisel rebate is against the governments charges already in place and is ONLY for fuel used in crop production, not for general purposes. We already pay taxes on profits from the crops so the deisel charge which is BTW more than the rebate is an additional tax. There is no subsidy on the extra cost of delivering fuel to the inland which makes it much more expensive than in the cities.
My wife was a social worker at the Townsville hospital and was responsible for many travel arrangements particularly for children in the ward where she mostly worked.. Travel for medical reasons is only when there is no appropriate medical aid for a particular problem. The funding is not complete and is means tested. Many rural people do not receive any subsidy at all. I’m not sure what you mean by “clinical placement”

Drought assistance is limited to loans not hand outs, and are so hard to come by that most people don’t have time to fill out all the paper work, only to be told NO!! As usually happens.

Since living in the city I am aware of what a huge number of many unnecessary roads are built here while rural areas are very poorly provided for. The grain haulage and cattle and coal haulage roads are a disgrace. These are roads which carry industry – not one per car luxury travellers who refuse to use subsidised public transport in the city (which I am happy to use – trains with three passengers, buses with two perhaps)

Need I remind you that every child in the city can go to school for free. In the bush there are two options for primary children – school of the air which you must be defining as a subsidy, but is no different from the stateschool down the road which is totally government funded, or send the child to boarding school, which is NOT subsidised beyond what all private schools receive. I attended boarding school for eight years but my parents did not receive a brass razoo. I put three children through University, who had to be accommodated in a college, with NO government subsidy!!
The “NBN itself” is NOT going to arrive in small rural towns. For example, the trunk now goes out to Mt Isa, through Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek and many other smaller places. NONE of these will be connected to the NBN, ever, because there is a population limit above those of these and many other towns. They will get satellite!!!
The fact that there are more unemployed in the bush (although I doubt your claim here) does not represent a “subsidy”. Put them on a train for Brisbane and they will still be unemployed (probably!) and receive assistance.
There are now NO regional tax concessions. Sure there were up until about 1985 I think but certainly not now. I did receive a regional tax concession when I lived in Townsville, a city, so it was not restricted to the bush any way.
I do not know of any preferential loans except the drought loans which I have already covered.

“Structural Adjustment” programmes!! I ahve not yet come across these – please explain just what they are?
Any marketing assistance is totally remote from any grazier, cattle man, wool grower or feed lotter and I doubt that there are in fact any such which benefit rural industries – you need to be much more specific. Perhaps meatworks are assisted but not to anywhere near the extent to which the tourist industry, the car industry, the iron and steel industry... need I go on! Meat producers, wool growers and graim producers all pay significant levies on production (as in for instance $5.00 per head at slaughter), pay government fees for the number of calves branded and lambs marked when thay send in annual “Stock Returns” to the government, but they do not receive any direct benefit from these costs.
I would appreciate your further comment.
Regards,
John jonicol18@bigpond.com

John, communications satellites need to stay in a fixed point in the sky relative to the earth, in a geostationary orbit. To do this, they must be kept at 35,800 km altititude.

The distance the digital signal travels from you, to the satellite, to the destination server or VoIP telephone call recipient, and back again is two times 35,800 km plus up to a few thousand km depending on the exact angles to the satellite. This journey takes about 480ms.

When you make a VoIP telephone call via satellite there is a minimum half-second delay, which sometimes mean you start talking, and half a second later you realize that the other person is also talking, so you both stop, then both start. It can be annoying, but at least the call is free.

The signal whether in a vacuum, copper or glass is all travelling pretty close to the speed of light, but you deliver increased bandwidth by multiplexing, i.e., splitting the total data you are sending into parallel steams that are sent in separate frequencies and reunited at the receiving end.

With ADSL, each frequency slice carries 256 Kbps, and a speed of up to 24 Mbps requires many 256 Kbps slices to propagate on the copper from exchange/node to premises. However, higher frequency slices fade extremely quickly. Half cannot make it even one kilometer, hence the speed of ADSL at a one km radius from the exchange will never reach more than about 12 Mbps. In a four km radius, this leaves only 1/16ths of premises with a physical maximum of 12 Mbps, which is why the median ADSL speed in Australia is only about 3 Mbps.

With laser light, each slice of frequency is capable of far more than 256 Kbps, and many more slices (colors, if you like) can be multiplexed down the fibre, multiplying the combined bandwidth. In 2010, Japanese engineers sent a sustained, fully error-corrected signal of an astounding 69.1 Tbps down an ordinary fibre such as NBNCo is laying now. The fibre was 240km long. They couldn't generate faster data to see whether this was even the limit of the fibre. In other words, there is no known limit to the speed which today's fibre will be able to carry in future.

So it is not the speed of light that constrains bandwidth, but rather how many simultaneous channels of signals travelling at that speed can be transmitted down the line. Fibre is the champion here, and always will be. Do it once. Doit right. Do it with fibre.

Just the sort of response I've been looking for, as actual explanation of transmission. Thanks!

John, you might start by reading:
http://www.tja.org.au/index.php/tja/article/view/19/191

Hi, John. Satellite latency will always be 480ms, ie half a second. The satellite must be at 35,800 km altitude or it will fall to earth or spiral into space, and a round trip from earth to satellite to earth and return will always take 480ms give or take depending on the exact angles from satellite to ground station.

The present NBN deployment is the beginning, not the end. For a town to get fibre in the initial ten year plan, it had to be large enough to spread the cost of the very expensive Fibre Service Area infrastructure over a lot of premises. Small towns are generally getting very fast fixed wireless and will also retain their copper lines and ADSL if they wish. This is all happening in the first three years to 2015. Tiny outposts can also get fibre if they can be supplied with a terrestrial signal such as a microwave link to be shared, and they can obtain a quotation from NBNCo for the cost difference, which will in some cases be able to be subsidized through various programs.

I know it is difficult to get one's head around the phenomenal possibilities of fast broadband, but they are very real. The more remote you are, the more things that are utterly impossible now, will have a means of being done when a very capacious broadband connection is available.

As to wasting money, look at what you are getting now for your monthly spend.

Your household communications bill will be less when you switch to a fixed broadband service (fibre, fixed wireless or satellite) on the NBN.

My final comment (I wish you well, but will not participate after this) is that the NBN is a user pays construction project, not taxpayer funded. NBNCo is currently borrowing money for construction with the government as guarantor. Wholesale revenues to NBNCo will repay the loans. The forecast tipping point for cash flow was 2019, but despite the legislative delays, we already see much faster than forecast take up in regional Australia, with only 8% choosing the slowest service compared to 50% forecast. This proves that the loans will be repaid even sooner than forecast. The NBN is certainly Labor's only well handled major program, and instead of sniping and half truths, the coalition should make it bipartisan, and avoid another 2010 style election fiasco.

John Nicol: " It is not the concept of the major trunk lines in fibre which I do believe, will be a big leap forward. It is the rush to put these into homes directly ...". It seems you've forgotten the history. We have John Howard to thank for fibre to the premises.

In the beginning, the Howard government sold Telstra. Unfortunately, he included in the deal, the only land lines into most Australian premises. When it came to negotiating access, then CEO Sol Trujillo played hardball. In truth, he was trying to stifle competition. Eventually, it became obvious that the government's only option was to build over Telstra's assets.

If they were going to do that, then fibre to the premises is a no-brainer. We'll inevitably need fibre to the premises (unless you can tell me what's going to stop the rise in demand for bandwidth) and it's cheaper to do it right first time than to go back and do it again. In case it hadn't occurred to you, the main cost is not the fibre, but labour and construction equipment. Actually, fibre's cheaper than copper or so people in the industry tell me.