Telecoms Stuff

One aspect of the Government's new deal with Telstra and the NBNCo is the revision to the process of USO delivery. This could be either done very well - by realising how few people actually need a subsidised service - or very badly - by perpetuating the myth that the copper network has existed as a "carrier of last resort".

Meanwhile I've thought that the approach the RTIRC took had a lot of merit of defining a standard, and then the government procuring services to meet the standard if suppliers didn't.

What I can't understand are the reports today because a Finnish Law of October last year came into force. I don't know how passing a law that someone must offer something actually makes it come to pass. How is it structured to require all providers to be able to offer a service to one new dwelling outside the network fotprint?

Equally misleading has been the headlines saying Finland has made the Internet a "right". I don't see in these reports anything other than a right to access a 1Mbps service - our Government's promised us a right to a 12Mbps service and through the ABG we already have a right to a broadband service.

Meanwhile our friends at Telstra and Huawei have announced a first in the trial of FDD LTE in the 1.8 GHz band. Telstra said that it "expected that this spectrum will complement 2600MHz spectrum and the 700MHz band anticipated to be made available through the digital dividend." Apart from potentially being misleading in suggesting the 2.5/2.6 GHz band is being cleared by the digital dividend (its not the ACMA is relocating ENG services - a task that Telstra needs to cooperate in to find the new home for ENG), it begs the question of whether once 1.8 GHz can be used for LTE there is a need for all the extra spectrum that they want allocated.

I know President Obama has told the FCC to go find 500MHz more spectrum for wireless broadband - but no one can quite figure out where to get that. If you accept that the best spectrum is between 300 MHz and 3 GHz that 500 MHz is about one-fifth of all spectrum. There are better ways to use the spectrum more efficiently, the question is whether we will find a pathway to do so.