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SILICON
SILIC
CHIP
www.siliconchip.com.au
Publisher/Editor
Nicholas Vinen
Technical Editor
John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.)
Technical Staff
Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc
Bao Smith, B.Sc
Tim Blythman, B.E., B.Sc
Technical Contributor
Duraid Madina, B.Sc, M.Sc, PhD
Art Director & Production Manager
Ross Tester
Reader Services
Ann Morris
Advertising Enquiries
Glyn Smith
Phone (02) 9939 3295
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glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au
Regular Contributors
Dave Thompson
David Maddison B.App.Sc. (Hons 1),
PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov.
Geoff Graham
Associate Professor Graham Parslow
Ian Batty
Cartoonist
Brendan Akhurst
Founding Editor (retired)
Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD
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Editorial Viewpoint
5G and the stupid Broadband Tax
When I first heard about the upcoming 5G mobile technology and its touted high data speeds,
my first thought was: isn’t 4G fast enough? 4G is
capable of data delivery at close to 1Gbps, and that
seems more than fast enough for most users’ mobile
data needs. You could fill up the flash memory of a
256GB phone in less than half an hour at that speed.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realised
that it isn’t the maximum throughput that matters,
it’s the aggregate bandwidth in a given area. It might be possible to get
1Gbps download if you’re the only person in your suburb who’s awake,
but when thousands of other people are all trying to stream videos at the
same time, each only gets a small slice of the pie.
This became especially apparent to me when my NBN connection was
down (as detailed in my June rant…). Many people were working from
home due to COVID-19, so 4G data speeds in my area were miserable
during the day. I was lucky to get more than 1Mbps most of the time.
So having more spectrum space and more mobile ‘towers’ servicing
smaller cells starts making a lot more sense. There are more and bigger
‘pies’, so even if the maximum size of a slice is similar, users can still get
larger servings when demand is high.
It still seems like it will be a vast job to roll out 5G across all urban areas in Australia, given how many millions of microcells that would require, but at least the rationale for doing so makes a certain amount of
sense. The existing NBN infrastructure presumably will help with that.
That brings me to the stupidity that is the recently-passed Broadband
Tax (its implementation now delayed until January 2021). As David
Maddison points out in his article starting on page 12, that doesn’t apply to 5G connections, only fixed line internet. But you have to wonder
if that might change if lots of people ditch their NBN connections and
hop onto 5G instead.
Can you think of any other area in which a monopoly is funded by taxes placed on its competitors? I can’t. That the government has to funnel
money to the NBN from private businesses to keep it going shows how
poorly it was conceived and executed.
Despite all this, I can’t imagine mobile broadband taking over from fixedline services. It would be a colossal waste of spectrum. Even if mobile
data can burst to higher speeds than the NBN, the aggregate bandwidth
available is much more limited. Perhaps the ideal would be a fixed-line
connection for streaming video and so on, plus wireless technology used
in parallel to speed up large downloads.
Altronics catalog delay
Astute readers may be aware that Altronics publishes a new catalog
every 18 months and, as the last one was bundled with our March 2019
issue, you might have expected to get a copy of the new catalog with your
copy of the September 2020 issue.
However, COVID-19 has caused delays in sourcing products and, as
a result, Altronics has decided to delay their new catalog. So if you live
in Australia, you can expect to receive a copy of the next Altronics catalog with your copy of the March 2021 issue of Silicon Chip magazine.
In the meantime, please see their website at www.altronics.com.au to
see what they have on offer.
Nicholas Vinen
24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204
2
Silicon Chip
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