🚀 go-pugleaf

"David Clayton" <dcstar@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com> wrote in message 
news:pan.2010.11.01.23.17.41.289193@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com...
> On Mon, 01 Nov 2010 20:46:21 +1100, noname wrote:
> ..........
>> You will pay double for the same + higher taxes.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> NEXT PM
>>
>> (The most educated and intelligent Australian)
>
> Is it credible that there is someone out there that believes that the
> price of a bit of scrap metal will be worth pulling out all the buried
> copper telephone cable in the ground in Australia?, I suppose it must be.
>
> As with most comments on this issue, it is based on another invalid
> assumption. "Replacing" copper with fibre actually means the services
> using the different medium, the actual old copper cables will (in the vast
> majority of cases) remain in the ground because the cost of removing them
> will be enormous.
>

David,

There are aproximatelly about 900,000 kms of telephone cables in Australia.

Most of them are not underground.

NBN wants Telstra ducts empty to put fibre in - the cooper cables have to be 
pull out.

Copper is 100% recyclable without any loss of quality whether in a raw state 
or contained in a manufactured product. Copper is the third most recycled 
metal after iron and aluminium. It is estimated that 80% of the copper ever 
mined is still in use today.

http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/cx98ppal.htm

Once upon a time, when the world was simple and Telstra was a telephone 
company, the telephone system was entirely analog, and the whole system ran 
over copper.

Then optical fibre was used to link exchanges, and this left Telstra with 
large bundles of redundant inter-exchange copper wire.

Over the years, mainly through bad record-keeping, Telstra lost trace of how 
much it had in the ground, and in a 1997 memo, Frank Blount chastised his 
staff claiming that up to half of Telstra's $3 billion in copper assets were 
unrecorded and effectively 'lost' to the system. Through "concentrated 
efforts", he said, the company had been rediscovering this cable at a rate 
of about $200 million in value a year.


http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/1442499

We had 341,000 km of roads in 2004:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+km+of+road+in+Australia

Seems low. Then again, that is enough to circle the earth almost 27 times.

Consider that to each person from the exchange, or each line may have to go 
several streets.

Also consider that businesses in the CBD and so on often have several 
connections.

Whatever it is, it would not surprise me if it was significantly larger than 
the length of all the roads.

I managed to get hold of the right people and got the stats back from a rep 
at our Global Operations Centre.... I my jaw dropped when I saw them!

This is of course the Telstra network that I am referring to.

At last count approx 6 million km of fibre and 154 million km of copper are 
laid around Australia- enough to wrap around the world 200 times and then go 
from the earth to just past the sun.

We have direct access to over 360,000 km of submarine fibre optic cable

Over 16,000 mobile base stations

Next G cover over 2 million square km inside Australia - largest mobile 
network in the world

So in short, we have ALREADY more fibre than roads.

Have a look at 2009 Telstra financial report/investors report thingy. It 
details the exact maintenance costs, they aren't that big.

You generally never have to touch copper cable once it is layed, only 
terminators/connections in pit/posts wherever they are.

Not to mention that most of these "ducts" end at existing exchanges, 
buildings which are sitting on the prime real estate.

http://nationalbroadbandnetwork.net.au/

ONE of Japan's richest men has labelled Australia's billion National 
Broadband Network a stupid waste of taxpayers' money.






Masayoshi Son, who heads Japanese internet and mobile giant Softbank and 
counts Apple's Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates among his friends, 
attacked the Gillard government's signature project yesterday.

Quizzed about the NBN by The Weekend Australian after delivering a speech in 
Tokyo, Mr Son said it was completely unnecessary to spend so much taxpayers' 
money.

"It's a waste; it's a stupid solution," he said. "Without using taxpayers' 
money you can get 21st-century infrastructure."

Mr Son had just finished delivering his own vision of how to deliver 
fibre-to-the-home connections throughout Japan without any taxpayer 
contribution.

He claimed that his solution, recently put to Prime Minister Naoto Kan and 
several members of his cabinet, would deliver basic fibre connections for 
just 1150 yen () a month, far cheaper than what is envisaged under the NBN.