Once again the flailing Australian National Broadband Network is in the news with a couple in Melbourne being quoted up to 1.2 million dollars to connect to the NBN. The primary reason for this is the the house in question is seven kilometres of fibre would be needed to connect the property. With the copper network being switched off around Australian, even in places where it is still viable, the only option is to switch to the NBN unless a competing network already exists. The NBN has stated that it can cost $30,000 to run fibre for a "few hundred metres". It is getting to the point where it can be cheaper just to move house if the internet is bad.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:56PM (4 children)
Isn't wireless an option? I mean, an ubiquiti airfiber24 can cover about 13km. so for that 7km one such pair should be enough, or for the 50km to its nearest hub five pairs (the specs also clain up to 20km, so you might get away with three pairs). It seems to be priced at about 3.5k USD each (CBA to see if it is per pair).
So just the hardware would go for between 3k or 35k USD, add to that housing. So if you are willing to be limited to only 2gbps per second and have a few hops extra for a couple of dozen ms delay it should be possibly to do it for less than about 75k.
Since australia isn't exactly dense in terms of population (outside of cities) they really should standardize relayboxes for such things simply plonk it in where there is long range coverage and power.
(I might have missed something fundamental - network is not something I enjoy)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:18PM (2 children)
The guy has wireless. It isn't cutting the mustard.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:40PM
Thanks, it made me bother to skim the FA (STFA?). Seems like NBN selects really crappy solutions (or rarely upgrades them).
Also made me skim the unbt website, seems like they have a thing priced ad about 1k usd (again, no idea if pair or single) that can push about 1Gb/s for about 100km with a latency below 1ms.
Kinda makes me wonder he could just buy a 2x2m plot at nearest place that already has a hookup and ask NBN to hook that in and install a relay station there.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:21PM
WISP is like cable tv in the 80s, you can do it right and it'll work great, but you can also half ass it and make even more profit, so you guess how that works out.
(Score: 2) by Entropy on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:12PM
Wireless sucks. The only person who thinks wireless doesn't suck is that idiot running Verizon wireless.