🚀 go-pugleaf

On Nov 2, 10:05 am, "Real Clear" <Real...@clear.invalid> wrote:
> "David Clayton" <dcs...@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.
>


To Clarify - do you mean "Telstra" or Telecom Australia ?

Telecom Australia started about 1975 or 6 (from memory) and that would
fit into your post.


By the time Telstra came around (they changed the name from Telecom
Australia about the mid 1990's), there
was already Optus service available, and digital was already around
(saw the new gear that was
progressively replacing the ageing electro-mechanical gear in our
local regional exchange on an "open day" in 1993.)

I can also remember seeing them installing fibre optic links earlier
than that - maybe 1991 or so out west between towns.

I'm sure that newer and big city exchanges, particularly in high usage
business districts where even then there would have been lots of fax
machine and other data traffic coming on-line even back then as the
demand for phone lines would have risen enormously and new capacity
would be needed.




> 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.