[caption width="800" align="alignnone"]<img src="http://www.itandtelesys.com/images/opticalcommunication.jpg" width="800" height="600" class /> Source: IT and Telecommunications Systems[/caption]Working in IT, people are often surprised that I don't support Fibre to the Home for the NBN. Here are my reasons:

<strong>1) Costs vs. Benefits</strong>
The main reason I don't support fibre to the home is cost-benefit: With Fibre to the Node (street), Australians will get almost all the benefits of fast Broadband for 1/3 of the cost. Would 100+mb/s at home mean that my kids have better educational opportunities? I think not. Wikipedia, Google, ITunesU, and Skype, all work perfectly fine over old copper or wireless. Thinking of this reminds me of a question I asked my Engineering professor back at Uni when talking about alternative engineering solutions: I asked "What is the best solution?" Their answer? "The best solution is the one that meets all the requirements, including aesthetics and safety, at the lowest cost". Faster speeds at home really benefit entertainment and little else. It would be <em>nice</em> to download Game of Thrones in one minute instead of fifteen, but would that really improve my quality of life?  And is it really government's role to divert scarce resources away from areas that are more important toward improving our entertainment choices? So my first, and most important, point is about <em>value</em> to the community.

<strong>2) Priorities</strong>
I believe that faster Internet speeds are a 'nice to have', not a 'need to have'. The extra $30 billion required for fibre to the home would have to come from somewhere; either more debt or <em>instead of</em> more worthwhile spending in areas such as health and education. If we had already overcome challenges with homelessness, aboriginal disadvantage or were leading the world in educational outcomes, I might be more inclined. But we haven't. We must choose our priorities carefully - as unfortunately there are real financial constraints which we have to live within. We are not talking pocket change; thirty thousand million dollars, I can't even comprehend that amount of money. So my second point is about choosing our <em>priorities</em> correctly as a community.

<strong>3) Appropriateness</strong>
Places that need fibre to the premises (for example; hospitals, schools, universities, and organisations) will get it because they really need it. Homes do require fast broadband, but not "super-fast broadband at any cost". At home we do not <em>need</em> to stream 15 high-definition TV shows at the same time - this is not a goal that inspires me to think it is acceptable for government to take more money from us as a community than they already do. Just as the universal solution to providing public transport is not to buy everyone a Ferrari, fibre to the home is not proportional to the need. Providing everyone (including me) with a Ferrari is just wasteful; spend the money on more worthwhile things. So my third point is that as individuals and as a society we should making decisions that are <em>appropriate</em>, that are 'fit for purpose' for the use-cases. In this world, where we unfortunately need to make trade-offs, the very fastest internet only needs to be available where it clearly provides the tangible benefits to the community that can justify the costs.

<strong>4) People Centric Internet</strong>
With the move of the Internet towards social media and mobile devices, people are choosing the shape of the connectivity they want. They want their Internet ubiquitous - available everywhere they go, and personalised to them. In years gone by there was a need for a family, residential telephone service. But this has given way to multiple mobiles in one home, with many families now choosing to forgo their home landline altogether. (The only home calls I get these days are from telemarketers anyway!). Wireless communications naturally fit this preference for ubiquity, which is why almost everyone now agrees that the last-leg (how the physical device is ultimately connected) should be wireless. People don't like wires, they don't want to be tied-down. They really want great access wherever they happen to be; at home, in the street, on the bus or at the shopping mall. In practice, providing that wireless can give them adequate speed, they will choose wireless over wired every-time and care far more about cost than whether their wireless access is from their home-LAN or a node down the street. 

So the questions we need to answer as a community become practical;<li>How far can last-leg wireless be, while providing the bandwidth realistically required?</li>
	<li>Do we really need the most costly option of fibre to every one of the 5.6 million homes in Australia to feed these transmitters, or will fibre to each of the 120,000 streets in Australia provide the speeds we need?</li>

<br/>Now that I have covered my reasons why the NBN should be built using Fibre to the Node, I want to address some of the political spin surrounding the NBN. 

I fully understand the 'vision' of providing the very fastest possible Internet to every Australian. I want Australia to lead the world as much as the next guy. But it is immature and negligent to give scant regard to the costs of doing this, and I feel the benefits of fibre to the home are significantly overplayed. 

Please consider:
	<li>Korea has the fastest internet in the world and they do not (and will not) lead the Internet-economy. Indeed I struggle to think of one Korean software or Internet company.</li>
	<li>The fastest possible Internet may indeed revolutionise remote surgery, but surgery isn't (and will not be) conducted in the home. So healthcare is, at best, a weak argument for fibre to the home.</li>
	<li>People argue that the problem with wireless spectrum is that it is limited, and we all have to share it - unlike our own fibre line to our house. But the history of technology has shown these kind of so-called 'physical limits' wrong again and again. I recall in the 1990s that not much more than 14.4kbps was physically possible over copper - hilarious in retrospect. In my own experience, improvements in wireless bandwidth have continually outpaced my demand for the increased speed (Wifi A/B/G/N/, 3G and 4G). And the latest wireless research has achieved 100Gb/s (1000x faster than what fibre-to-the-home is currently promising), so there is a very good chance that this improvement in wireless will continue. And even if I'm wrong, we can always do fibre when the costs of that particular technology have come down further.  
 	<li>The 'Educational' benefits of Fibre-to-the-Home are tenuous at best. The benefits of faster Internet tail-off fast. There is indeed an enormous difference between having no Internet and having access. And again there is a significant benefit to having fast Internet; moving up from say dial-up to ADSL. But there is a much smaller difference between ADSL and Fibre. I see evidence of this everyday; I pull up to 100mb/s at my office and it is barely any different to the Internet experience I get at home. Indeed for most of the things we currently do, latency is far more important than bandwidth.</li>
	<li>Another justification I hear for a $100 billion Fibre-to-the-Home programme is that the "Copper needs replacing anyway" - but does it really? People are moving away from having fixed phones at home, choosing to live mobile only. And more people now access the Internet by mobile than through fixed connections. Fixed fibre to the home feels like a 20th century solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The future is indeed wireless.

<br/>To conclude, I agree that to avoid unassailable disadvantage we must guarantee access to high-speed Internet as a right for all Australians. But I contend that while ensuring this right for all the members of our community, we must favour the most cost-effective way of achieving our goal; keeping in mind our bigger priorities and  recognising the way in which the Internet is <em>already</em> moving.


