Relocating the office...where to?

[rankamateur]

There isn't enough bandwidth on the wireless exchanges in regional areas to properly service the customers they had two years ago, last year the decline became noticeable and this year it is total crap from after school til about 10.30 at night. about one in five pages doesn't load to completion and has to be refreshed, More download wasted.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Yes, it's totally out of kilter and the suppliers seem to have no idea of the massive market they are dis-incenting.

The curse (and blessing) of Australia is distance and low population density. No commercial organisation is going to offer top-quality service for people like me west of the divide. The urban concentrations, where the vast bulk of Australians live, is where they get their profits. It takes government incentives (and visionary projects like the NBN) to get some sort of parity for rural people. Until deregulation of the airlines, telecommunications, rail, etc. the services we in the country enjoyed were far closer to what city people had access to. And now Uncle Joe is forcing the states to privatise even more assets.

 

 

[coljones]

The sole purpose of the NBN is to give people who already have fast affordable internet, internet that is even faster than they need now or in the medium future, at a price that will make them squirm. The rest of us can just get stuffed and put up with our satellite latency issues or our over priced, undersized wireless plans that could be mobile if we had anywhere else to take them too.

Rank, "sole purpose" might be close but not very. You have to start somewhere. If you were to build a new road between Warialda and Inverell would you start at Warialda or Inverell? It would take a longish time for people at Warrialda to get a good Rd to Inverell no matter which end you started at but if it started at Inverell the people of Delungra and Little Plain would get to benefit from a better drive to Inverell before the whole road was completed and the people of Warialda would be no worse off.

 

 

[rankamateur]

My point was if you wanted a better road between Inverell and Warialda you wouldn't start widening the F3 to eight lanes at Gosford!

 

 

[robinsm]

but remember, Inverell and Warialda are not part of the NSW triangle (Newcastle/Sydney/Wollongong)

 

 

[coljones]

My point was if you wanted a better road between Inverell and Warialda you wouldn't start widening the F3 to eight lanes at Gosford!

But if you wanted a faster trip to Sydney widening the F3 to 8 lanes at Gosford would be a good start but starting at Warialda wouldn't get you there any quicker. Starting at Gosford would relieve the gridlock on the F3 that the good country folk from Warialda and such would get stuck in on the way. F3 has nice scenery but a bugger of a place to sit around waiting for thousands of cars to clear after a prang. Time to spare, go by air - but be careful of the F3 on the way.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

but remember, Inverell and Warialda are not part of the NSW triangle (Newcastle/Sydney/Wollongong)

The NSW triangle is a bit like the Bermuda Triangle - imaginary. There really is only one point to the alleged Triangle and that's the "S" bit. Most Sydney people have no idea what's north of the Hawkesbury Bridge, West of Penrith or South of Southerland. The second largest city by population in NSW and Australia's largest non-capital city is unknown to most Sydney-siders. The city, in case you were wondering, is Lake Macquarie City (no, not Port Macquarie).

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...The second largest city by population in NSW and Australia's largest non-capital city is unknown to most Sydney-siders...

-and I bet they want to keep it that way!

 

 

[Keith Page]

Good Morning Don

 

I could not let that one go by without comment, "Sydney people not knowing what is happening outside Sydney".

 

I must hasten to add that situation is the same as what you are asking in Post 34 Special Resolution 4 regarding the the Queenslanders.

 

Just change it geographically and there is the same story.

 

The other point for you to contemplate..get the pollies to do something outside that triangle..well you will be working because Sydney has some very large bins for all the letters those poor people from outside the triangle send in.

 

Regards

 

Keith Page

 

 

[DonRamsay]

. . . "Sydney people not knowing what is happening outside Sydney".I must hasten to add that situation is the same as what you are asking in Post 34 Special Resolution 4 regarding the the Queenslanders.Just change it geographically and there is the same story. . . .

But Keith, the difference is that the Governments have lots of dollars to dish out and do so in different places. They can favour SEQ over Central Qld or favour Sydney over the Hunter Valley. But, RA-Aus does not dish out dollars to anyone, anywhere. It uses them up in the office - wherever that is. RA-Aus is not going to paint your hangar in Qld or pave the road into YCNK for me. It doesn't matter where RA-Aus is based in terms of member benefits. We all get the same Pilot Cert and aircraft rego, we all get the same insurance, we all get the same Magazine. There is no difference to the service you get from RA-Aus wherever you live - even if that were on Thursday Island or Tasmania.

There is absolutely no parallel with State or Federal Government largess.

 

Keith, if Qld were dominating RA-Aus, can you think of one single thing that RA-Aus could do to favour Qld over NSW or Vic or any other region?

 

Don

 

 

[Keith Page]

Hello Don

 

What I am on about.... Just for a bit of fairness If we want to organise a fly in under the RAAus banner up in the northern part of Australia (I will not say QLd as that will make a few jittery) there would be a great debate as why we should have anything up this way, then ask for help, Oh what a big ask and then the excuses.

 

I hope that explanation is not cryptic.

 

The best idea I have seen was written in these forums... Migrate the Easter Fly Inn around Australia what a brilliant suggestion.

 

I know that will get a lot of yells however we will be promoting Sports Aviation Australia wide.

 

Regards

 

Keith Page.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Keith, I agree that Regional Fly-ins are a great idea but, to be fair to all RAA members, they have to be a break-even proposition. A good example is the WA fly-in. It was well promoted and organised by the locals and cost RAA, iirc, nothing. The NQ fly-in was not so well promoted and run with too much "assistance" from Steve Tizzard. It was budgeted to cost between $0 and $5,000. It need up being costed at many times that amount.

 

NATFLY costs RA-Aus less than nothing - it actually makes a profit.

 

It is hard to ask WA and Tas members to pay for part of a fly-in in NQ or any other region. No fairness in asking that.

 

RA-Aus was happy to sponsor the first NQ fly-in to get the concept off the ground and could have sustained a small loss under the heading of promotion. But, it is simply not fair to run such a show at a loss year after year and expect other regions to kick in for the party that they probably could never get to.

 

 

[frank marriott]

SQ - Never been anything run in NQ.

 

 

[DonRamsay]

Got to be at least CQ doesn't it or is the Mason-Dixon Line drawn just south of Townsville?

 

 

[frank marriott]

Measure it for yourself.

 

 

[kaz3g]

Yes, the whole NBN thing is a bloody mess. Anybody who thinks it's all about fast movie downloads has the cow by the wrong teat........

It certainly is a mess. The NBN work seems to have come to a complete halt in my town whereas it was going ahead in leaps and bounds up until the election. We have a rural university campus, a large TAFE facility, significant export oriented operations including SPC, the milk factories and Furphy Engineering. We desperately need more employment opportunities (high unemployment and poor education levels) and the early introduction of the NBN here was going to give us an edge.

 

My youngest son has just done a flying visit with his family from Singapore. He is design director for a multi-national advertising agency and he can't believe how slow the connections are here and how limiting it is of opportunities for business and education. My grandson is not quite 5 years old but speaks both Japanese and English fluently, plus he is learning French and Mandarin at school (he started at age 4 years).

 

Singapore is a high-tech state of the art nation with a burgeoning economy and it has reached this status in my lifetime. We in Australia will go down the economic gurgler if we don't continually advance our technological capacity. Yes, the Labor NBN was expensive. Yes, it was probably going to cost a heap more than the estimates. And Yes, it will cost us a heap more again to adopt the Conservative's fifth rate alternative.

 

I write this sitting at home not 3 kilometres from the centre of Shepparton (population 60k +). I rely on a wifi connection and my iPad is currently showing the reception is "1 bar". I have an $800 signal improver and that's the best I can get. I got 5 bars in Bourke 2 days ago FFS! I would pay to get an NBN connection but I'm dashed if I will give Telstra any more until then.

 

Kaz

 

 

[coljones]

Snip .. snip ... snipI would pay to get an NBN connection but I'm dashed if I will give Telstra any more until then.

There is always Optus. Yes? No?

 

 

[skeptic36]

It certainly is a mess. The NBN work seems to have come to a complete halt in my town whereas it was going ahead in leaps and bounds up until the election. Kaz

Kaz,

The previous government connected the first town in Tasmania in July 2010, by the election in September 2013 they had completed a massive 2%. Hmmm 2% in 3 years, at that rate the thing would have been complete in 150 years!

 

 

[kaz3g]

There is always Optus. Yes? No?

Col

 

Optus and the others are of no use in rural areas because their coverage is even worse, unfortunately.

 

I pay Telstra nearly $170 per month now for phone and internet and I refuse to put in a landline or use their second rate ADSL connection at even more expense.

 

Kaz

 

 

[turboplanner]

I pay Telstra nearly $170 per month now for phone and internet and I refuse to put in a landline or use their second rate ADSL connection at even more expense.Kaz

This is the secondary disease; not only are the download speeds third world, but the telcos are charging what the market will bear,and the Governmnet is not stepping in.

 

 

[Keith Page]

SQ - Never been anything run in NQ.

You will have to give them geography lessons Frank.

I think they do not know where NQ is and plus they could get lost getting there.

 

Regards

 

Keith Page

 

 

[turboplanner]

Try that again Keith; what were you saying?

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

I Like Turbs work from home via clever IT. Previously for a head office in Adelaide but shortly I expect to work for a Silicon Valley HQ in the USA. The essential part of that possibility is the connection I have to my home. previously under Telstra ADSL2+ from about 3:30 in the afternoon the bandwidth available was a fraction of what was earlier possible. That had nothing to do with the ADSL2+ technology and was all to do with the backhaul that Telstra chose to have in place between the local exchange and the next upstream location within its network. Backhaul hasn't changed in technology and sizing is only ever driven as a function of profitability. Expecting that fibre will solve this, or wireless is the answer or satellite is the bee's knee's is simply people misunderstanding the reality of Wide area networking.

 

I'm now on NBN fibre all the way, speed is better (and that's merely a measure of best possible speed) but bandwidth is still contended at times because backhaul is still constrained as a function of profitability. Only people in IT will know what the commercial costs of backhaul are, but let me tell you that they are a number of orders of magnitude more expensive than the $99 per month that the end user pays.... Tubs thinking his 4G is great, that's fine but 4G is priced at a premium over 3G and as people over time pay more to move to 4G then unless your network point of connect is on the same cell, then you have to traverse backhaul..... Backhaul availability and costs are cheapest in the citys and are hence less an issue, but still one, and either relatively non existent or very expensive as you move to the country.

 

The absolute benefit of NBN that we might now not see, was that NBN required backhaul to work that isn't in place, or is too expensive and was built into the cost of NBN.... It now wont be delivered as widely as was planed and as such whatever the next technology is, it too will be knobbled by lack of appropriate backhaul. Most wont understand what an opportunity was lost as the libs killed NBN but in time I'm sure they will be labeled as vandals when people finally understand what they have done.

 

Nextgen networks were the backhaul providers of choice for NBN, if you look at their network (all fibre) they are the real competition to Telstra and Optus and were competing actively with them. Now that competition wont happen and we can go back to the safe duopoly where Optus competed in citys but couldn't give a stuff about country, and Telstra was required by law to provide solutions for the bush, but does so ensuring that the commercial entities in the bush pays for the solution and the inefficiencies and the PROFIT Telstra as sole arbiter determines is required.....

 

Viva la competition

 

Andy

 

 

[jetjr]

Costs of using next G for business connection is horrible but for many this is the best available.

 

Service varies with load on the network......probably what Andy was talking about....I think...

 

Can go from excellent to bloody slow and dropping out, etcetc. Just outside work hours seems to be the worst.

 

So whats the solution for regional services? Private wireless links to Fibre/ADSL conneced point?

 

Whats stopping people setting this up commercially?

 

I am having to review this as we have projects nearby major centres where cost of cabling OR Next G is just too high but theres an ADSL 2+ connection 3-5 km away

 

 

[Chird65]

Once you have worked in a (properly-organised!) virtual office situation, you will never want to go back to a 'traditional' office environment because it is clumsy, slow, and far less efficient. The only caveat here is the absolute necessity for high-quality communications access - and I'm talking fibre-to-the-site between sites. It also requires some training in effective use of IT and a good network manager.

I have to disagree, I do all of that and have done for many years. High quality communications means giving you what you need when you need it. I have used ADSL1 and 2 and currently Cable (Not Fibre). I agree that having access to files can be an issue but cloud storage and collaboration makes the need to download a large file almost redundant. The only time I would need the whole file is if I wished to lock everyone else out while I did changes. Generally, that means I have time.

 

What Turbo described is very exciting but 90% of workers do not need it and current speeds (remote areas excepted) work well. Note: most people think the current phone/ pad use of WIFI / 3g to be sufficient. The reason for this is the way they work changed from when they needed to physically plug in and carry a laptop.

 

of course I can't wait for the Turbo vision to be more available, just because I can. :-)

 

Chris

 

Having read the two posts above I have to agree, Back-haul and Cache are the expensive infrastructure and commercial profitability is what will drive its delivery. Unless you monopolise the infrastructure then the vast majority will not pay for the minority.