This post is based around a paper on the National Broadband Network (NBN) by Paul Brooks called Possibilities and pitfalls of universal competitive broadband .
According to Brooks’ the Federal Government’s NBN project , launched in April 2009, is expected to deliver optic cable to 93% of Australia and wireless and satellite to the remaining 7% by 2017. This network, expected to cost 43 billion dollars, is a wholesale only endeavour and as such is providing the infrastructure between the provider and the user but not the services.
Some of the benefits of the NBN are clear, current ADSL service slows down after 1km while fibre maintains full speed for up to 40 km and this means less transmitters and infrastructure cost. The up-stream speeds for ADSL are 1-2 megabits per second Mbps) while fibre optic cable can handle 100 to 1000 Mbps and can be upgraded to take even more data.
Fibre optic is also 1:1 symmetric which enables up-load and down-load speeds to be equal, this allows users to trust their services are capable of handling commercial business transactions, like hosting video conference without falling over.
The other point Brooks was clear to point out was that the NBN was limited to the infrastructure which supported end users and commercial service providers. The intent of the NBN is to sell access to the service, probably in the first instance to large wholesale companies who will then on-sell the services to thousands of new providers opening up a new realm of opportunities for business, and government agencies.
Aside from laying the cable the NBN will also install a box in every home, and these currently have four Ethernet and two PSTN ports. This will allow users to choose more than one provider, the example Brooks used was a person with an account with one provider could simultaneously test the services from another to compare services. While people will be able to hook up multiple devices such as a TV feed, a computer, and telephone Brooks also pointed out that people are currently using one device, the router, to service a number of devices around the home. The only problem with this current arrangement is that routers will need to be updated to take advantage of the four ports as currently they only have one connection out to the rest the world.
Another problem is how effective all this broadband will be when content delivered through its pipes then has to make its way into our lives through our WiFi routers much more limited bandwidth.
Even if these problems are solved I think there are an increasing number of issues relating to how useful broadband will be for the Museum sector, particularly when other other NPO's who already share many of their backend services like libraries, the education sector, and health can see real benefits from the data streamed through the NBN.
Personally I’m looking forward to the rollout of the NBN and the multitude of new options it will bring, especially for government funded bodies. Hospital & Community services; ABC and SBS feeds of interactive content; digital radio; video coferencing and educational content accessed by every house in Australia.
But Museum managers and peak bodies have not made it clear to me yet as to how NBN direct cable links to the services are going to differentiate themselves from mobile or from our existing network connections. Increasingly many of the online services offered by Museums are being directed to mobile solutions: exhibition, events, walking tours, data access, blogs, and these are not going to be serviced by the NBN. Given its going to be up to Museums to populate this space we still seem to be lagging behind the library community in thinking about what NBN services we need which can make use of the NBN. Currently this doesn't appear to be very clear?
Does anyone have any examples of museums making full use of broadband?
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