In Search Of ... Australian Broadband

Reader reports on an Australian power company's broadband solution.

[Response to In Search Of ... Broadband Customers from June 28, 2002.]

[May 18, 2002]

Dear Editors:

Your article on hesitancy of broadband penetration in the US was good. I love my broadband. Here in Australia, Canberra is one of the first cities to have a broadband cable provider—we get (for a fee of about US$40 a month) cable TV (a few free cable channels and FTA as well as pay per view), a broadband connection (speeds up to 400Kbs ) and telephone.

That's terrific because here until recently buying each of these services separately would have cost around US$100-US$120 per month. And we wouldn't have even been able to buy broadband because it hadn't happened!

The secret here is the rights-of-way. The broadband company "Transact" is part owned by the power company—so the poles are freely available to use for stringing the cable. There is fiber to area distribution cabinets then UTP to the home. An obstacle imposed on the cable company was that they run separate (but bundled) copper to each subscriber for telephone—as phone is seen as a safety of life issue and the AC power to the set top box couldn't be guaranteed.

In a way it is a pity this was imposed as it raised the cost.

I would have preferred to see fiber to the home, and use a separate wavelength or fiber carrying a powerful light source to illuminate a voltaic cell within the set top box to power the service. Now this would have been truly future proof (at least as far as bandwidth goes) and provided huge interactivity—but perhaps the technology is not perfect yet.

All the best and keep the great articles coming!

Regards,

Andrew Hope
Satellite Solutions