Australia's proto-NBN now decaying in the desert

analogous

i just love how clearly articulated the analogy/contradiction between 1870 and 2009 is made. the relatively slight justification for the couple-hundred-thousand-pound spend - though i suppose we don't truly know how that expenditure was justified, the tremendous effort of laying telegraph by hand and horse and cart through amazingly remote country... really clearly constructs the contrast to today's too hard/cant afford it/no point. thank you.

the other part, the current day abandoned sites and the historical microwave construction detail and photographs adds a very cool historical context to trans continental communication tech. loved reading this.

If

If the “firm belief” is that people will require very high speed internet connections to get a fair go in life – not the same thing as faster access to cat videos – then the question becomes how much are you willing to spend, per head, to give everyone that go?

If satellite is never going to provide truly high speed - low ping - connections, then an awful lot of money will need to be spent on between 3% and (guess) 9% of the population; far more per household than city dwellers.

One of the problems being – because of the likely project duration – each election there is a saving to be made by scrapping such a (nation building) project, or continually scaling it back (as happened last election, to an extent, with FTTH).

Like the telegraph, railways and a great many other Victorian era mega projects; they were done almost as much to display the might of the builder – for the love of doing the project – as they were to provide useful services. The point also has to be made that labour costs and conditions were somewhat lacking, compared to today.

So whether old (or not so old, as with microwave) facilities are upgraded and utilised for 21st century comms isn't really the issue (either that is cheaper/better than an alternative, or it isn't) but whether successive governments want to stump up several billion – never mind a single billion to get it started - to connect 100% of the population, in a speed-time equivalent way.

There will almost certainly never be a commercial reason to hook up the 3% - and probably the same for many of the 6% who live nearer civilisation, but not quite near enough – so either it's public money, or it's the best we could manage (sorry).

Long term investment – chasing a dream because you should – is a difficult business. There are many ghost towns, in a very vague line between Adelaide and Alice Springs (and in many other places across the country) that were built for what once must have seemed a great idea - and may well, short term, have been just that - and/or through a lack of “foresight”. It will never be the future and in the future, people will very probably look back and marvel at how enterprising and industrious their forbears were (and had to be), when compared to themselves.

Off topic: Those aren't wasp nests

Loved the story and the illustrations, thanks and well done.

The nests in your third picture belong to Fairy Martins, a kind of swallow. They don't need to be cleared out!

At least the author makes clear that he is equating connecting the country to the world news, with connecting your house to broadband TV. It's clear that many of the commentators here agree with that analysis.

Microwave still in use

I can show you locations where the microwave links are still in daily use for telephone calls and can handle a blindingly fast 9600baud if you are lucky.

Nation Building has become Nation Blinding

The rhetoric and lack of planning of the current LNP government is appalling.

But then, they do take their lead from the Dirty Digger.

Recycling old comms kit

I remember working in the Pilbara back in the 1990s. The terrestrial TV reception in town was woeful even though it was coming from an ABC transmitter a few kms away. The reason? All the steel house roofs on new houses, required for cyclone proofing, were causing ghosted signals. The fix? I retrieved a pole from the old North West telegraph line, attached it to my house, put the TV antenna on top about 5 metres high, and voila, excellent reception. (I did get permission from the land owner to take the pole.) It was manufactured on Germany in the late 1880s and had survived rain and cyclones.