NBN: To Wireless or Not To Wireless?

I’ve been following the debate on the NBN for several years now. While the debate over whether to go with the optic fibre service currently being planned and deployed by the Labor Government or to scrap it and implement a cheaper(?) wireless based service proposed by the Liberal Party is the hot issue, there’s never been much debate that I’ve found on the reliability of a wireless network.

I had a 3G wireless broadband service at home at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges, 30km as the crow flies from the Melbourne CBD. I got tired of its unreliability and switched to a fixed line service over a year ago.

It must be noted that a proposed national wireless broadband service wouldn’t run (I hope / expect) on 3G so hopefully reliability would be better.

But for me, here’s the clincher – the 3G service claimed a bandwidth of 3.6Gbps. At home, testing against speedtest.net, on a clear day I could get 330kbps. When the weather was bad, I was recording 180kbps or so – sub-broadband speeds. The government says “broadband” begins at 256kbps.

So the most basic wireless fact that every UHF and HF radio operator knows (and the politicians and commentators are forgetting) is that radio performance is heavily affected by the amount of atmospheric moisture. “Next gen” wireless can’t deny physics.

A wireless NBN is a joke.