Broadband Services in Australia: Optical Fibre vs 5G Wireless

This report discusses the need for upgrading broadband services in Australia and compares two proposed services: optical fibre broadband and 5G wireless broadband. It analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of both services and recommends the one that is more beneficial to the people of Australia.

Running head: NETWORKING
NETWORKING
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1NETWORKING
Executive Summary
This report has the primary aim of putting forward a discussion regarding the broadband
services that had been utilized by the people living in the country of Australia. Due to some
of the issues, there is an urgent need for the upgrading of the broadband services in the
country. This has led to the proposal of two broadband services namely, the optical fibre
broadband service as well as the 5G wireless broadband service. The report will also compare
the both and put forward the service, which is beneficial to the people of Australia in
particular.

2NETWORKING
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Discussion..................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................7
References..................................................................................................................................8

3NETWORKING
Introduction
Provisioning of the varied regions existing within Australia with the services of high –
speed broadband, all of the majorly existing telecommunication as well as the political
players belonging to the country have put forward a variety of ways. Referring to one of the
instances, the National Broadband Network (NBN) that is completely based upon the Fibre to
the Premises (FTTP) is thinking of providing the country of Australia with the services of
broadband (Goode et al., 2018). This specific approach has all of the support from the
Australian Labor Party (ALP) placing forward the statement that the NBN would have
provisioned the existing optic fibre to 93 percent of the existing homes as well as the
businesses operating all around the country of Australia. This should have provided with a
much faster speed such as the likes of one gigabyte per second within the network that is very
much easily scalable to get hold of much faster speeds within the same network (Lane, Tiwari
and Alam, 2016). This report specifically makes a proper discussion of the specific approach
that is necessary for the provisioning of high - speed internet access to the whole of Australia.
Discussion
Labor is commonly referred to as the building party of the nation. In reference to the
Snowy Mountains Scheme belonging to the National Broadband Network, Labor is the one
building the entire infrastructure for the employment opportunities of the people in the near
future (Pugh, 2019). Originally, the Labor NBN carried the singular potential of delivering 93
percent of the homes with that of the optical fibre along with that towards the operating
businesses as well. This could have resulted to faster services as the service had grown. That
would have provisioned all the businesses, the entrepreneurs, the students as well as the
scientists belonging to the country of Australia with all the necessary tools that would have
been needed to give a competition within the globalized economy existing within the 21st
century. In reference to the last three years, the country of Australia has gone down the
ranking of 60th from that of the 30th ranking in reference to the speed of internet (Tiwari, Lane
and Alam, 2016). The country is now behind that of Europe, most of the Asiatic parts, United
States as well as Canada. The country is also behind the countries such as the likes of
Romania, Russia, Poland as well as Slovakia.
As a result of which, the Malcolm Turnbull’s second grade copper NBN has been
holding back the progress of Australia in this case. The country is expected to suffer more

4NETWORKING
degradation in reference to the Liberal’s making use of old uneconomical technologies, as
well as well as the opportunities in relation to the Australian enterprise as well as the
innovation that shall be lost to that of the overseas market followed by the job opportunities
(Ewing, Rennie and Thomas, 2015).
Hence, the country is in urgent need of a newer infrastructure related to that of the
broadband within the competitive region as well as in the global world. As a reason of the
fact that the neighboring regions such as that of Japan, Singapore, South Korea as well as
New Zealand have given up the usage of fibre networks (Murray, Rice and Worstell, 2016).
Hence, it has been placed forward that Labor will give the assurance to that of Australia to
renew the digitalized infrastructure, which is specifically in need for the creation of the job
opportunities within the varied regions of Australia.
However, this issue has been approached with a diverse replacement of having the
possession of wireless broadband that provision the user with the fixed amount of usage. This
technology particularly refers to the 5G networks, which has a greater demand in most of the
privately operating sectors that has the avoidance of the monopoly within the government as
well (Gunaratne et al., 2015). The service of broadband utilizing the 5G standards have been
planned at a minimal rates for the data that shall be provided along with that of the latency as
well as the prices that can provide a serious competition to the service that has been promised
by the NBN to the country of Australia.
In relation to the above fact, the Optus has made revelations of the first 5G that shall
be provided by them to the country of Australia. Telco has made plans to offer all of the
homes existing within the varied regions of Australia with that of the broadband service
utilizing the newly formed wireless standard at such a price that shall be difficult to the NBN
for providing their own service (Schram et al., 2018). The service of Telco has been
approximated to cost around $70 per month as well as has the inclusion of unlimited
downloads having expected the ultimate satisfaction from the end of the customer. This shall
even include the provision for the customers to cancel the contract without having to pay any
kind of fees if the customers at any point of time gets a download speed less than that of 50
MB per second. Telco has made revelations regarding their plan of provisioning the 5G
service to be delivered to over 1200 sites by the year of 2020 across all of the varied regions
existing within the country of Australia (Martin, 2016). Especially the regions such as the

5NETWORKING
likes of New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland as well as the whole of Western
Australia all together.
The speed of the broadband as well as the availability can be provisioned with much
better services within the cities existing in Australia, the suburbs, the towns as well as the
farms. Both of the ALP as well as the coalition had agreed upon the substantial role
belonging to the government within the upgrading of the networks for the delivering of much
higher speeds (Stern et al., 2014). Both of them have agreed upon the fact to make use of the
NBN Company to properly operate the National Broadband Network.
The major differences that have been observed between both of the existing parties
are the likes of the download speed, cost of the connection, usage of technology as well as the
design that belongs to the infrastructure of the system. The NBN belonging to the ALP
completely relies upon the taxpayer funded monopoly taking a specific time of more than a
decade to provide the 93 percent of the homes existing within Australia with that of the optic
cable having included a cost of nearly $37.4 billion as well as a total funding that amounts up
to $44.1 billion. The major difference between both of the parties in relation to the service
that is being provided by the companies are the speed towards the accessing of the internet
from both the connections (Adams et al., 2017). The Coalition offers a service to the
customer having a minimum of speed that is considered to be slow by the customers that that
offered by the Labor’s. 50 MB per second is considered to be the efficient bandwidth for
most of the applications running within the systems.
In here, the Labor NBN puts forward the supplying of the broadband services within
93 percent of the varied regions existing in the country of Australia. The company has put
forward the recommendations of utilizing optical fibre for the provisioning of the broadband
services within the houses in Australia. However, there has been visible issues regarding the
optical fibre technique. The most evident issue among the set of issues is the speed of
download within this connection. Along with this, the price of the connection is a lot more
compared to the other approach that has been placed forward. On the other hand, to provide a
competition to this, Optus is the company that has put forward the first ever 5G product in the
country of Australia. This company will provide with the technology of wireless broadband
service to that 93 percent of the houses existing within Australia itself (Barry, 2018). As a
matter of fact, this 5G technology of wireless broadband is the most effective method of

6NETWORKING
internet service that shall be opted for the country of Australia because of the faster download
speed that this service shall be offering to the country and its people.
Conclusion
The above discussion can be concluded with the fact that the country has been in need
of upgrading the existing broadband services due to the fact of utilizing the previous
generation technology to be precise. In this regard, two of the technologies related to newer
broadband services has been introduced. The first one includes the introduction of broadband
services utilizing the technology of optical fibre but having the inclusion of a number of
issues such as the likes of slower download speed. The second one refers to the inclusion of
5G wireless broadband service that is placed forward by the Optus Company. This ensures a
much faster speed of download compared to the other one. In addition to this, the technology,
which shall be much more beneficial to the country of Australia, has been placed forward
along with the reason of why it should be chosen.

7NETWORKING
References
Adams, P., Farrell, M., Dalgarno, B. and Oczkowski, E., 2017. Household adoption of
technology: The case of high-speed broadband adoption in Australia. Technology in
Society, 49, pp.37-47.
Barry, T.S., 2018. Australian broadband regulation reviewed. Australian Journal of
Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 6(1), p.134.
Ewing, S., Rennie, E. and Thomas, J., 2015. Broadband policy and rural and cultural divides
in Australia. Digital divides: The new challenges and opportunities of e-inclusion, pp.107-
124.
Goode, S., Gregor, S., Martin, M., Rolfe, J. and Stern, S., 2018. Factors Affecting Household
Broadband Adoption in Australia.
Gunaratne, R.L., Ilavarasan P, V., Fernando, S. and Rohman, I.K., 2015. National broadband
networks of Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Australia: A comparative study. Competition and
Regulation in Network Industries, 16(1), pp.23-46.
Lane, M.S., Tiwari, S. and Alam, K., 2016. The Supply and Use of Broadband in Rural
Australia: An Explanatory Case Study of the Western Downs Region. Australasian Journal
of Information Systems, 20.
Martin, F.R., 2016. Mobile public service media in Australia: Ubiquity and its
consequences. International Communication Gazette, 78(4), pp.330-348.
Murray, J.F., Rice, C.W. and Worstell, H.R., AT&T Intellectual Property II LP, 2016. Intra-
premises wireless broadband service using lumped and distributed wireless radiation from
cable source input. U.S. Patent 9,264,741.
Pugh, N., 2019. The wireless threat to fixed broadband services. Australian Journal of
Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, 7(1), p.7.
Schram, A., Friel, S., Freeman, T., Fisher, M., Baum, F. and Harris, P., 2018. Digital
Infrastructure as a Determinant of Health Equity: An Australian Case Study of the
Implementation of the National Broadband Network. Australian Journal of Public
Administration, 77(4), pp.829-842.

8NETWORKING
Stern, S.E., Gregor, S., Martin, M.A., Goode, S. and Rolfe, J., 2014, March. A classification
tree analysis of broadband adoption in Australian households. In Proceedings of the 6th
international conference on Electronic commerce (pp. 451-456). ACM.
Tiwari, S., Lane, M. and Alam, K., 2016. The challenges and opportunities of delivering
wireless high speed broadband services in Rural and Remote Australia: A Case Study of
Western Downs Region (WDR). arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.03513.