National Dead Parrot Day

BPL has been dealt a fatal blow with the Australian Government’s announcement of its national broadband network that will mostly be fibre-to-the-home with some wireless technology in remote areas.

Until now, the electromagnetic-spectrum polluting and hungry, and under performing technology BPL, has often been referred to as being a case of ‘the parrot is not dead yet’.

But what happened on Tuesday 7 April was the government’s decision to go for fibre-optic, casting aside the existing copper network that currently delivers ADSL, and BPL was treated on its merits and got nowhere.

The BPL lobby had at one point in Australia sought to have amateur radio treated as second class users of the radio spectrum, stripping radio amateurs of protection from harmful interference.

BPL trials have come and gone in the Australian states of Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales. Monitoring of trials showed that they produced intolerable interference.

One of these trials was by Aurora Energy in Hobart Tasmania that after much hype about it being the solution for broadband delivery, was abandoned in November 2007.

Immediately the Australian Government made its announcement of a $A43 billion National Broadband Network this week to reach 90% of homes and businesses, the Tasmanian Government and Aurora Energy were quick to get on board.

These former champions of BPL have now announced they will build a fibre to the customer network to service 200,000 households and businesses, all hospitals and most schools.

The Australian Government’s decision to roll out fibre under a joint government and private sector project also mandates fibre as an essential infrastructure for all new ‘greenfields’ property developments.

From 1 July next year property developers will be required to install fibre optic cabling to service all new properties, and the cable will be open access for all broadband service providers at a throughput of 100Mb/s.

Not only high-speed internet, education, health care and recreation/entertainment for the home, but it will also be a boost for business competitiveness, home-business and work from home options.

While BPL may still have a limited role to provide in-house communications technology via a building’s internal wiring, the date 7 April 2009 has been declared as 'National dead parrot day' in Australia.

Jim Linton VK3PC