Would I pay $100-200 to access all FTTH offers, inc the world’s TV on my computer (no need for fancy TV sets, “cable TV”, movie hire, newspapers etc etc etc)? Dumb question!

Yeah, but what cap are they going to stick on this? 50GB-80GB sounds like a lot at first, but not when you consider it as a replacement for TV, radio etc. You can get uncapped internet at a reasonable price in most other countries but in Australia we have to have these piddling little caps and we’ll probably still have them with RuddNet.

As for monthly cost … When Internet was a pup, I paid $750 py for my initial “uncapped” dial-up private internet connection; by 2003 $49.99 pm; later $24. Would I pay $100-200 to access all FTTH offers, inc the world’s TV on my computer (no need for fancy TV sets, “cable TV”, movie hire, newspapers etc etc etc)? Dumb question!

I don’t think you’re the common case for how much people are willing to pay for an internet connection. Remember content will in most cases be an additional cost unless you’re willing to break copyright. Good to see in the news that Labor are looking at the cost of international data (and a bit at interstate data as well) – high speed connections are not much use if you can’t afford to use them.

Huggybunny @ 144 – agreed that software as a service is the way we’re heading. With a good enough network most people who just want a web browser and a word processor may not even need much of an OS at home – back to dumb terminals again I’m getting increasingly skeptical over the costs though – but hey if the government wants to hugely subsidise something I like to use who am I to complain

The list goes on and on. In short a total revolution that cannot ever be supported by “broadband”. Well the only way you could do it would be to install waveguides to every home.(Sort of like fibre optics except slower and more costly). Oh and did I mention that a National system of broadband service with the same speed and capacity as fibre optics would require about 2 GW of extra power stations to be built?
Huggy.

This is what Telstra was going to roll out instead of a decent NBN plan, what a laughing stock.

If I have a faster speed, I need a higher download limit, it is inevitable as I will be able to peruse video content much faster.

I just finished “The Return of Depression Economics” – brilliant and terrifying read. Have you read it? Be honest.

True, Krugman’s fallible like the rest of us, and I’ve heard people dismiss Krugman – though I’ve yet to pin down the reasons why. I understand the Right’s reasons – they started attacking him once he became an unabashed liberal, even though, awkwardly, some right-wing intellectuals once praised him. But what are your reasons?

I often wonder how much the centre-Left really reads the centre-Left. Perhaps it’s capitalism imploding around us, but lately I’ve found myself reading all those dusty old secondhand John Kenneth Galbraiths I bought years ago but never got around to reading. After all, I had the gist of Galbraith nailed down, so why bother? I have the sense that many on our side don’t bother to properly read the likes of Krugman or Galbraith, that they’ve been subtly influenced by the Right’s tactic of automatically dismissing anyone not on the Right as “discredited”.

The thing that impresses me about Krugman is that he was once considered a moderate (read neoliberal-ish) and seems to have changed his views on the basis of evidence.

And like Galbraith, is Krugman now dismissed because he’s admired by plebs like me and can write an intelligible sentence?

That the tubes should be made wide enough to allow the grubby proletariat access to all the tools and services that are now the province of the academic elite is an unthinkable situation.
The smell of threatened privilege is wafting across the land.
The hairy palmed wannabe professors we are going to have to learn to share – get it?
Huggy

Lemme at those tools and services; I’ll buy the wannabes some razors and suck up the stench of threatened privilege. Ahhh! like the odour of a bbq in full flight on a lazy Saturday arvo.

As for monthly cost … When Internet was a pup, I paid $750 py for my initial “uncapped” dial-up private internet connection; by 2003 $49.99 pm; later $24. Would I pay $100-200 to access all FTTH offers, inc the world’s TV on my computer (no need for fancy TV sets, “cable TV”, movie hire, newspapers etc etc etc)? Dumb question!

DeeCee, I’ll second and third that.

… if takeup of wireless broadband continues at its present rate”

Robert, the very premise is absurd, as is the notion that web traffic will remain constant. And of all people who should know better than to scaremonger or rain in the parade, Malcolm “OzEmail” Turnbull is it. More.